By way of World of Crap. The ‘best’ stuff is the second part of the piece, where WoC stops going into the shenanigans of Randall Terry and examines the latest sexist nuttery to come out of Wingnut World: sexual purity lockets.
“This locket and what it stands for is the sentinel of your heart. Here’s why: from this day forward you will wear this locket as often as you wish. It will send the statement that you are waiting for your husband. It is more than that though, Sue. It has a lock on it. It can only be opened with this key. I will guard the key until your wedding. On that day, I will present the key to my little girl’s heart to your husband. He will take the key and open the locket, the only one ever to do so.”
As WoC says, nothing Freudian going on here, move right along…
Digby and Echinde have already weighed in on this, but I’d just like to add my sense of how uttery sick and creepy I find this overwhelming paternal interest in a daughter’s sexuality. It takes the normal parental impulse to protect their child and pole-vaults right over into the land of obsession and even incest.
And, of course, there’s who whole “why only girls?” angle. It’s not news that many religious zealots are obsessively focused on women’s sexual purity. As Echinde put it:
The only difference from the past is that the wingnuts can’t possess their daughters in the same legal sense, so they have whittled the process down to the essentials: the sexuality of the woman is not hers but belongs to the male members of her family. This may also be linked to the idea of honor killings and other ways in which women’s sexual behavior is interpreted as affecting the esteem of the whole family while men can run loose.
I do not have kids of my own, but I have a number of young female nieces and cousins. I’ve worried about their possible misadventures, but the thought that they should be literally or symbolically locked up and forbidden to act like people with their own autonomy is revolting.
