Chastity Rings

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by 3894

Hmmm, a couple of hundred dollars for a purity ring or a new pair of cute shoes? Oh, how will I ever decide!

No question, shoes, my dear.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Someone pointed me to a study that's probably the one I was thinking of in my earlier post.

The results were...mixed:

* Students taking a pledge of virginity were indeed more likely to delay sexual activity (by an average of 18 months)
* It was most effective for students between 15 and 17 years old, and had no effect on students over 18
* While the delay until initiation of sexual activity was about 1/3 longer among those that took the pledge...they were 1/3 less likely to have protected sex once they did become sexually active
* Only 12% of the participants remained abstinent until marriage
* The effectiveness of the pledge decreased when a larger percentage of a school's population took the pledge.

link

[Alex]

As with everything else we do, the important thing is to mean it, not just do it because the people around you are. A contract made under (social) duress is void in the eyes of the signer.

[Nephythys]

Originally Posted by Alex Stroup

As with everything else we do, the important thing is to mean it, not just do it because the people around you are. A contract made under (social) duress is void in the eyes of the signer.

Peer pressure is anything but void.

[Alex]

in the eye of the signer, I said.

There may be very good reasons for the peer pressure but if the person who goes along with it only does so because of the pressure (not because they believe in the reasons) then they aren't going to feel particularly bound by the commitment.

The reason why you commit is more important than the commitment. Believing that it is best to wait until marriage and not explicitly making the promise is likely (in my view) to be more effective than not really believing it but making the promise anyway (which would explain why effectiveness goes down as a "program" induces more kids in a population to do it; when a small population does it, it is the kids who already have internalized that idea but as you expand you get the kids who just want a piece of jewelry or are doing it because Susan is doing it).

[Not Afraid]

The problem with chastity rings is that chasity is not something to be proud of. sorry people, but sex is NOT a bad thing!

[scaeagles]

I'm not saying sex is a bad thing. Neither are guns. Nor drugs. Nor alcohol. Things are not bad in and of themselves, it is the usage of such things that is...bad, or better said, inappropriate.

Sex for my 13 year old daughter would, in fact, be bad. I say this without hesitation and unapologetically.

And I'm not sure why these rings are offensive or even made fun of, really. I don't see the big deal.

CP, what makes a birthday more special than any other day of the year? Seriously. It is simply the same as any other day. Simply a passage of time. It is just something that is chosen to be comemorated. What makes a bar mitzvah special? Is the turning of 13 supposed to magically make you a man? Different cultures, religions, people groups, whatever, have different tradtitions and things they place value on. This is something we place a high value on.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

CP, what makes a birthday more special than any other day of the year? Seriously. It is simply the same as any other day. Simply a passage of time. It is just something that is chosen to be comemorated. What makes a bar mitzvah special? Is the turning of 13 supposed to magically make you a man? Different cultures, religions, people groups, whatever, have different tradtitions and things they place value on. This is something we place a high value on.

On the topic of the specialness of holidays and celebrations, I feel that people are a forgetful species and often the day-to-day can blind us to the passage of time. Constructs like birthdays and holidays force us to stop and take notice. My younger brother brought up the subject the other day saying "why give gifts on bdays? It's such a phony construct. Why not just give a gift to someone you love on some other day, just because?" My response was "because people won't."

Again, I'd like to bounce this back to you. You place a high value on the fact that you taught your child a valuable lesson. To me, this lesson is the same as any other valuable lesson we teach our children. I could list 25 equally important lessons off the top of my head and I'm sure if I had time I could come up with hundreds. Why does this one get jewelry, or require a physical reminder, or however you want to phrase it?

If you want to compare a Bar Mitzvah to this, I have to say again that they are different things. A Bar Mitzvah is a change, a turned corner. It's a graduation from Hebrew school. It's a culmination of skills in Hebrew and understanding the Torah. You are treated as an adult in the synagogue and perform multiple adult-only good deeds in front of the congregation for the first time. It's an achievement, a graduation into the adult world, and from then on the 13 year old is treated as an adult in the congregation.

Originally Posted by scaeagles

I'm not saying sex is a bad thing. Neither are guns. Nor drugs. Nor alcohol. Things are not bad in and of themselves, it is the usage of such things that is...bad, or better said, inappropriate.

Sex for my 13 year old daughter would, in fact, be bad. I say this without hesitation and unapologetically.

And I'm not sure why these rings are offensive or even made fun of, really. I don't see the big deal.

I obviously agree that your 13 year old shouldn't be having sex. As I said before, I will have similar talks with my kids. The offensive part is the concept of "chastity".

What if I wore a ring to show that I was "Pure" because I didn't drink alcohol? Or one to show that I've never touched a gun? "I've never been sullied with weaponry" I'd think to myself. I'd also have a Purity Ring because I had promised to eat only foods that were high in nutritional value.

The connotation is that those that eat fatty foods are bad. That those that choose to use guns are bad, that those that drink socially are bad, and that those that have sex before marriage are bad. IMHO, this is closed-minded thinking.

I will tell my child, both explicitly and implicitly, how I feel on these issues. "We choose not to own guns because we don't like guns. We choose to drink alcohol socially. We chose to have sex before marriage but not until we were engaged. This is how we view the world and we present you with our values. You are not better than people that use guns or drink more often or have sex earlier. We feel that these are better choices, and while we strongly urge you to follow them from our own experiences, in no way do we claim that we know everything."

[innerSpaceman]

Originally Posted by scaeagles

Sex for my 13 year old daughter would, in fact, be bad. I say this without hesitation and unapologetically.

You're perfectly within your rights to feel when sex is appropriate for your daughter.

And yet, I have to wonder what's objectively wrong with sex at 13 when nature clearly designed (most) humans to be quite ready for sex at 13 (and well, because I was having sex at 13 ... and the girl was somebody's daughter).

[scaeagles]

CP, you're right - there are innumerable valuable lessons. For us, the linking of the ring to the sex talk is because we link sex to marriage, and marriage typically involves the exchange of rings.

The whole concept of "pure" relates to the biblical concept of sexual purity. This is the standard the we (speaking of my family) try to live up to but inevitably fall short of. The knowledge of failure does not mean the goal of acheiving it is any less important. I'm just not capable of doing it...I find myself rabbit trailing into doctrine, which is not my goal whatsoever.

And to bring up ISM's point, age has a lot to do with it. We didn't talk to our daughter about it when she was 4. We talked about it when her physical body was mature enough. Many cultures throughout history have had marriages (or something similar) at much younger ages. In that way, CP, it was much like a Bar Mitzvah. It was a change for her in physical maturity and the responsibility associated with it.

If wearing a ring or some such thing as a symbol that you don't drink alcohol, and to you that is related to some concept of purity, more power to you. I guess I don't understand why this is a problem for anyone.

I do agree with you that there are certain stigma associated with behavior. More and more so on all sides of the spectrum, and often this is because of what is deemed in the "public interest". Smoking has a huge stigma associated with it that I think is ridiculous (spoken as a non smoker who does not enjoy being around it). What I fear isn't that people don't like it, but that society as a whole deems something as unacceptable too costly to society and therefore systematically criminalizes it (which is what smoking has becoming and fatty foods will at some point). That's my concern....not that someone chooses something important to them - whatever it may be - to mark in a special way, be that with a ring or a tattoo.