An Open Letter to Judith Warner
Dear Judith,
Rarely, if ever, do I agree with your analysis or point-of-view. However, I think it is more important to consider all view points to an argument rather than to live in an echo chamber. Thus, every Friday, when the NYTimes.com “Opinion Today” e-mail hits my inbox, I always click through to your Domestic Disturbances column. And I read it. And I give it thought. And often times I comment.
Today was no exception, though it was exceptional.
In today’s posting “Pure Tyranny” you have drawn an unholy triangulation between hymen replacement surgery for Muslim women in France, the kidnapping Austrian incestor Josef Fritzl and an evangelical Father-Daughter Purity Ball in Colorado Springs. It was to my surprise, that your harshest criticism was reserved for the latter. Referring to a May 19 New York Times article about these events, you liken the idea of a purity ball to male domination over their daughters and wives. If I may, a quote from your piece:
“But there is nonetheless a kind of horror to their obsession with their daughters’ sexuality. And there is even greater danger to the fact that this particular aspect of the nationwide ‘abstinence movement’ has not been broadly denounced as the form of emotional violence against girls that it indisputably is.”
To which I ask, in all seriousness. Are you out of your mind?
I cannot recall the last time I read such a convoluted, twisted retelling of an event to suit a personal bias. Yet, you accomplished that today with you inaccurate portrayal of the Purity Ball and the even more inaccurate comparison to the other two current news events.
Reading your piece, and reading the original Times article, It would appear you hinge your entire thesis “Our condemnation of cultural practices and beliefs in our own country that violate girls’ and young women’s dignity and most intimate personal boundaries should be no less total. For, when it comes to female chastity, much of what passes for ‘protection’ is nothing less than sick” – based on 16 words said at the two-hour plus Purity Ball: “before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity.”
Yes, if you break out this one section, then your analysis can almost become validated. But the focus on 16 words said after dessert takes the entire event completely, totally, unequivocally out of context.
Thus, it begged two questions of me, and I’m sure others: What other messages were delivered to the women and their fathers at the Purity Ball? And where are the mother’s in all of this?
After reading the original Times article, I can see you deliberately left out key messages from the event to bend this piece into your own warped argument. Do you know what was discussed at the event? “Abstinence is never mentioned at the Colorado Springs Purity Ball, but a litany of fathers’ duties is — mainly, making time to get involved in their daughters’ lives and setting an example.”
The fathers at this event were asked to set an example and to hew to evangelical ideals in a society they say tempts them as much as it does their daughters. By setting an example, they provide a role model and it would appear as though it has a knock-on effect. In addition to being good role models, they become better fathers and also better husbands. “It’s also good for me,” said Terry Lee, 54, who attended the ball for a second year, this time with his youngest daughter, Rachel, 16. “It inspires me to be spiritual and moral in turn. If I’m holding them to such high standards, you can be sure I won’t be cheating on their mother.”
The fathers participating in the Father-Daughter Purity Ball are taking an active role in the development of their daughters. They are casting off the post-modern obsessions to career, greed, power and money to devote time and attention to the health of their family. They are providing a beacon in an uncertain world to young, impressionable women, who are bombarded with images of vapid celebrities engaging in an endless stream of debauchery. In short, they are being fathers. Or at least, what fathers should be.
And what about the mothers? Turns out, similar events take place between mothers and sons. Called A Knight to Remember, Salon.com reports at these events “mothers and sons spent the night together talking about integrity, purity and character while feasting on ‘groom’s cake.’ Mothers took a pledge to be available for their sons, while the young men took a pledge to remain pure until marriage.”
But you will have none of it and certainly demonstrate no desire to tell both sides of the story. Nor do you even make an attempt to understand these events. Rather, it would appear as though you have lost your moral compass and feel any effort to establish a moral bearing is somehow oppressive to women. You are practicing a sort of moral relativism, a lack of moral standing that has destroyed this nation and plunged entire generations of people into inescapable poverty. If the poorer communities in this country would take greater steps towards encouraging more (any?) parochial participation in their daughters lives, then perhaps, just maybe, we as a society could begin to tackle the leading causes of urban poverty: births to unwed, teenage mothers. And if mothers were more involved in their son’s lives, perhaps women wouldn’t been seen as objects which can be obtained with gifts.
So here we have an example of just the kind of parental involvement and guidance that is needed in this world, and you think of it as “emotional violence”?
Judith, I am afraid you have looked beyond the message because of your hatred for the messenger and the medium of delivery: an evangelical church sponsored event. Because of the messenger, and the medium of delivery, you have deliberately misled your readers to think this is some sort of master/commander ritual being played out between father and daughter. You draw parallels between this event and a despicable case of incest half a world away for crying out loud!
Yet, all you have done is deceive and mislead your readers. I do not see how anyone’s interests are served with your piece.
Sincerely,
Eric
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13. June 2008 at :
Owned
13. June 2008 at :
The problem with Ms. Warner’s view of sexuality, that it is completely within the control of the individual woman, is that it has resulted in almost a majority of births being without benefit of wedlock. Now there are some people who object to this because it creates a society where children are being raised without fathers, and there are others who object because the single mothers are unable to adequately support their progeny. And, or course, there are those who believe that having children out of wedlock is a bod thing because it corrodes the morality of society.
I myself agree with all of those feelings, but then I was raised in a house where I had a father to talk to, uncles and aunts to speak with, cousins to play with and even grandparents to go to. This conglomerate of influences is not available to the people who raise their children alone.
The problem with Ms. Warner, and it is frequently on display in her column, is that she always takes the radical feminist view of everything. As a radical feminist, she seems to assume that any limitation, whether moral or ethical that impacts upon a woman’s behavior is objectionable. She obviously believes that women are still at a disadvantage in American Society. This, in a society where more than half of all college students are women, 60% in many schools, and our professional schools have a plethora of women students. Things have reached the state in American Education where there is talk of addressing the problem of male students who have abandoned education. Clearly, Ms. Warner lives in a mental state unaltered by the reality of women in American Society today.
I believe that her influence, with the exception of her 11 year old daughter, has been waning for some time now. Most women in the younger generation know that they are now the masters of the universe and aren’t about to listen to Warner’s drivel.
Personally, I think that it is time to reassert a moral compass in America. I have met too many people who think that out of wedlock births are perfectly ok, despite the benefits of intact nuclear and extended families. The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of license; we need to reassert control, even if it means that some women choose to be, oh horrors, chaste and pure. Men too perhaps!
14. June 2008 at :
Joel, I’m not sure I can 100% agree that women are not at a disadvantage in American society. To be sure, it’s not 1950 or even 1980 anymore. Women may have a serious advantage when it comes to college education (maybe advantage isn’t the right word. Just because they are a majority doesn’t mean it’s an advantage), but in the professional world women continue to lag behind men. They earn less, but certainly some of that can be attributed to the fact that many women choose to forgo a career to raise a family, thus lowering the earning power ration between men and women. But honest to goodness sexism still exists in hiring practices and sexual harassment hasn’t disappeared from the workplace.
You definitely don’t want to make the claim that women are not at a disadvantage to any women seething with rage about the coronation of Queen Hillary being stolen from her by a male candidate and the male voters (despite a majority of the electorate being women, but never mind). Many will tell you that Hillary failed to get the nomination because of sexism. They’ll point out Hillary Clinton nutcrackers for sale, pundits and analysts on television who continued talking about her dropping out of the race as early as February, some who made comments about instinctively crossing their legs when she’s on TV, etc.
There’s no doubt that sexism played a role in this year’s Democratic primary, but I find it hard to swallow the argument that it was pivotal. In the US do you think it’s harder for a black man to overcome racism or for a woman to overcome sexism? Are Hillary Clinton nutcrackers worse than the Sock Obama?
http://www.thesockobama.com/order.html
But as to Joel’s larger point about nuclear and extended families being better than single-parent households, I tend to agree. While I think there is nothing wrong with a woman (or a man) raising children on her or his own, I think it’s better to have more people. Not, however, when the second person is a degenerate, abuser, drug addict, alcoholic, etc. This is why I don’t think marriage incentives, which inevitably encourage women to marry deadbeats, are a good idea. The government can’t create a family.
And it does seem there is too much push in the opposite direction from people like Judith Warner, who take the extreme view that because a woman has the right to raise children out of wedlock that she should be encouraged to.
But Eric, I think you’re missing what Judith Warner’s objection is about. It’s about the assertion of power of fathers over their daughters. Just because the purity pledge was taken after dessert doesn’t mean it served as a kind-of afterthought of the whole event. In reading the original Times article I learn that only the fathers sign the purity pledge - not the daughters. A clear sign of paternal authority being asserted. Then there’s this choice quote: “‘Fathers, our daughters are waiting for us,’ Mr. Wilson, 49, told the men. ‘They are desperately waiting for us in a culture that lures them into the murky waters of exploitation. They need to be rescued by you, their dad.’”
There’s nothing wrong with fathers taking an active role in the development of their daughters. But it should be about education and giving them the right tools to make the best decisions for themselves. The problem with the abstinence movement is that it completely misunderstands and ignores the fact that young people are going to have sex. Teaching ‘abstinence only’ then prepares a person to feel guilty when they have sex, but doesn’t prepare them to have guilt-free SAFE sex.
And the insistence on sexual purity until the wedding night is an outmoded, outdated, paternalistic assertion of sexual authority. Fathers should not be teaching daughters that virginal purity is the be-all end-all of sexual relations. It encourages a sexual politics that leads to the attitude (in men) that causes death sentences in some Muslim societies or the secret basement family of Josef Fritzl. That is Warner’s point. It creates a mentality in which men are the owners of women’s bodies and any sullying of female chastity makes her unworthy to be wed.
15. June 2008 at :
When Golda Meir held cabinet meetings as Prime Minister of Israel, she made and served dinner! We in America seem more conflicted about our roles. Personally, I do almost all of the food shopping, about half of the cooking, and most of the laundry at my house. Frankly, I don’t feel in the least emasculated. When I was a teacher for a couple of years my department head was Mrs. Kaplan, and the organizational skills which she taught me have been used in my law practice for over 30 years. I didn’t feel belittled that she was the boss.
Frankly, I am puzzled at men who despise women. My family had its share of tough women, but at the same time my grandfather on my mothers side and the one on my father’s side weren’t cowed in the least. I think that men who feel that they have to abuse women have severe mental problems that should be attended to.
Most of the men I know that give women a hard time are very insecure individuals. They don’t like women and frankly they don’t really like themselves. Some of them really don’t understand that they are doing something wrong because to do so would compel them to reevaluate their psychic organization. It is true that there has been a sea change in men/women relationships in the past 50 years, but things are what they are and it is impossible to make things as they were in the 1950s even if anyone wanted to.
I don’t think that overwhelming majority of men don’t want to go back to the days when a man couldn’t make his own dinner or do their own laundry. We have gotten used to an equal relationship with women; both intellectually, socially, in the workplace, and physically. It is too late to put the genie back in the bottle. I wish that I could say that sexism would disappear in society and the workplace but it won’t because it is embedded in the very spirits of many older men. Men get older and their influence wanes and a new generation takes over. When that happens old problems often resolve, not because of anyone’s best efforts, but because of an evolution of new ideas.
Women like Ms. Warner are bitter because they thought that they would live to see the promised land of sexual equality in their lifetimes but it hasn’t come to pass. Well, Moses didn’t make it into the promised land, but his people did. Things may not change enough while we are here but perhaps they will be better for our children. I think that is what Obama is aiming at.