God, the father and the patriarchal straitjacket….

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.” (Philip Larkin)

Watching the Cutting Edge’s The Virgin Daughters was rather reminiscent of a Channel 4 documentary shown a couple of years ago about virgin brides, abstinence and purity pledges in a town called Lubbock, Texas in the heart of bible belt country but dig deep beneath the abstinence and you come across soaring STDs and pregnancies. Lack of sex education and information coupled with lies and misinformation spread by the church that instilled ignorance and fear.

Last night’s Cutting Edge’s programme was a further dose of patriarchy intertwined with religion with women specifically under the cosh. The programme follows various families organising for the Purity Ball in Colorado Springs where they will sign a Purity Covenant.

Statistically, one in six American girls pledge to remain to a virgin until their wedding night and some won’t kiss a man until their wedding night. The programme actually unnerved and made me angry witnessing fathers controlling their daughters lives under the misguided belief they are instilling positve reinforcement, validation and a “wholesome” respect for themselves. Nothing more than power, control and property rights…chattels.

Many of the girls and young women reiterated the need for purity, God’s will and importance of a strong father figure. Everything revolved around the strong father figure, language that included chivalry. The exemplification of the ideal woman would be one who would be pure until her wedding night. The strong masculine father figure, the main provider to protect his family from the morass of temptations and vices, the usual suspects being sex, drugs and the rock ‘n roll kinda lifestyle. Girls and young women accepted the importance of getting their parents, their dads vetting their potential boyfriends and act as chaperones as you don’t want those raging hormones to interfere with God’s will such as holding hands.

What struck me was how easier it was for the young men that reflects the sexist double standards and hypocrisy, the pressure to conform isn’t as intense as it for girls and women. The personal narratives expose a real psychological maelstrom of control, conformity and coercion.

The parents have experienced bitterness, rejection, pain and generally life’s miseries in regards to personal and sexual relationships. What they seem intent on is projecting their own bad experiences onto their daughters by instilling this fear of the big insecure bad world and that only the family (along with religion) can “protect” them.

But surely, it is up to these young women to make their own mistakes and that means the trials and tribulations of sex, relationships and sexuality. And that life is one steep learning curve? Relationships are already minefields, you don’t need the extra head fuck of religion, guilt and obedience.

 It is all happy smiley faces of girls and young women in their cherished floaty dresses where they feel like a Princess for a day, being validated and supported by Dad…. But what happens when life isn’t that simple and nor can it be lived it in a vacuum?

What happens when one of these young women succumbs and ends up having sex out of wedlock… are the mums and dads still as welcoming, understanding, and forgiving? One young woman did all of that and ended up pregnant (later miscarried). Her parents made her aware in no uncertain terms that she was a failure, couldn’t trust her and made her feel guilty. She said that she had no knowledge of sex education and that her life was the church. Even now her parents try and control her relationships but it seems she has kicked against their authority and is now living her own life on her terms (hallelujah to that, sisters!). So is this what will happen to any of these girls and young women who, in the opinion of their parents, stray from the straight and narrow and transgress?

These parents may honestly believe that they have the best intentions at heart when they say that they want their daughters to have dignity and worth. But power and control is still being peddled with a diet of religion. These girls and young women are expected to live a life based on their parents own religious and fixed interpretation of the world. A scary and stifling understanding of the world where purity and Godliness is pitched against a society that they view has no values. These girls and young women are under the cosh of patriarchy and religion, dutiful daughters obeying the word of their fathers.

Rather like the young women in the programme about Lubbock I hope that these young women rebel and are able to express their own desires and needs based on their own terms without the rigidity of the Bible, fear and being able to break out of the straitjacket of patriarchy, conformity and the role of the family along with sticking their two fingers up to the patriarchal institution!!

People should be allowed to make mistakes, make their own choices and decisions, fuck up like everyone else and learn from those mistakes as opposed to pledging yourself to something that you may regret and that may become unobtainable.

And this momentous occasion, the wedding night, is being built up and blown out of proportion. What happens if it isn’t all cracked up to be? It everything expected to miraculously fall into place, patience being that over rated virtue?

You build an unreal bubble mythical world based on rigid expectations that tries to be separate from the secular world, a life tainted with a Godless and valueless society. But you can’t separate the two and once you escape from your family, you enter the big wide world. People change and expectations change. But even if you stick to the pledge and obey your parents but it still doesn’t work out, what then?

Women should be able to be who they want to be without any interference from the family, religion and the state. It’s about women being themselves on their terms. Hallelujah to that…..