Purity Rings

I have no problems with men and women waiting until marriage to have sex, nor do I take issue with religions that urge their adherents to do so - I am an Orthodox Jew, after all.

I do however, take issue with "purity rings", where parents give children rings to wear that symbolize the commitment to not have PMS (pre-marital sex)*. Sometimes there are even chastity balls, where girls wearing white gowns pledge pre-marital virginity to their fathers, who then give them the ring.

My objections are:
1. Society has long tried to control women's bodies, but this takes the cake. A woman is pledging to uphold the social norms of her parent's community, and publicly displaying a commitment to do so. Now, if she takes the ring off, all of her society will know she violated the "norm" (even though it is probably more of a norm in violation than practice, it is still the officially mandated behavior). The ring is a ploy to use social and family pressure to whip women's bodies into line - or rather, to prevent their being playfully whipped.
2. I believe sexuality and sex are private. A person can choose to share whichever details they desire, but that should be their choice. This puts a person's sexual activity (or lack thereof) on public display, violating their right to privacy.
3. A woman should have control over her body and over her sexuality. This takes that power away from her and puts it into her parents' hands. The ring is essentially saying "I relinquish my right to my body, in favor of your right to control my body's sexual actions". Again, an attempt by patriarchal society to deprive women of agency.
4. This is way too Freudian. Leaving aside the obvious oedipal implications of women pledging to sexually behave (or not behave) in a certain way in order to please their daddies, if parents have that much of a vested interest in kids' sex lives, to the point where they want the symbol usually used to symbolize romantic/sexual love/fidelity to lover to be used to symbolize love of parents/lack of sex/fidelity to parents, there is something wrong - an unhealthy sexual tinge to the parental-child relationship. The parents essentially want to replace the role of the romantic lover in their daughter's lives. This may place them in quasi-incestual/emotionally incestual territory.


I notice such rings are not given to men. As usual, society prizes female virginity over male, and is only concerned with controlling the female body. By the religious standards that inspire purity rings, it should be just as "sinful" for men to have pre-marital sex as for women. But of course, why would society stomp on men's need for sexual conquest? As in so many cultures, there is a double-standard: Women should languish innocently while men sow their first seeds, because these women must be pure when the men decide to marry and sow the crop in their permanent pasture. Once more, women are land, territory to be conquered. It is no coincidence that in Haiti "land" can also be used as slang for a woman's vagina.


* Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is to be credited with the creative initials for this phenomena, which he used while teaching his Jewish Sex Ethics (aka "Sex with the Rabbi") class at the Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan.