BLARGH.

[apocalypsos]

I turned on the TV just in time to see an ABC News report on purity balls.

*scrubs eyeballs with bleach*

The creepiest was the guy who said that if your daughter is not a virgin on her wedding day, then what are you giving away when she gets married?

Ick. I don't think my skin is going to stop crawling anytime soon.

Comments

Remember the Prime Directive, Captain...

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

There are many things about other cultures that I find creepy. This is obviously just another "other culture." We may feel that it ought to be stamped out as an outrage against human dignity, but do we have the right to judge?

*covers ears against resounding chorus of "HELL YEAH!!!"*

Oh well. Just thought I'd mention it. I'll be in my quarters practising new ways of steepling my fingers.

Re: Remember the Prime Directive, Captain...

[bnh.livejournal.com]

seconded!

Re: Remember the Prime Directive, Captain...

[apocalypsos.livejournal.com]

Strangely enough I'm okay with being completely and totally skeeved by a ceremony where a father treats his preteen daughter like property that's worthless when broken and fake-marries her in public and something that, were my parents militant Christians rather than lapsed ones, I might actually have had to go through.

Re: Remember the Prime Directive, Captain...

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

And I completely respect your skeevedness. The Prime Directive is a crock and an excuse and I loathe it with a mighty loathing, and this purity ball thing is indeed deeply disgusting and should be banned by law. I just wanted to lob the PD up there to see how many people shot at it.

Re: **** the Prime Directive, Captain...

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

Except of course that banning the balls wouldn't get rid of the attitude that spawned them, and that's been with us for a loooong time. And the worst part is that the girls, and the boys who want to marry the girls, all buy into it, and will doubtless bring up their sons and daughters to believe the same garbage. How you stop that short of shooting them all in the head I do not know.

Re: **** the Prime Directive, Captain...

[fyrdrakken]

The best way to stamp out the attitude is to force people to really look at it and think about how ridiculous it is. I loved this blog post on the subject for the caption under the opening image.

Re: Remember the Prime Directive, Captain...

[fyrdrakken]

One of my favorite responses to the Prime Directive multiculturalist stuff was that bit a British officer or governor or whatever supposedly said in India, regarding the practice of incinerating widows on their husbands' funeral pyres, that if the locals wanted to follow their charming custom that was fine but that he would then follow his own native custom of hanging people who burned women alive. Just build a gallows right next to the pyre.