A century ago, fathers owned their daughters. Women were transferrable commodities – owned by their fathers until being sold off to a husband who was willing to pay for her. In exchange, the husband would not only have a new wife, but a “chaste” one with a key to her “virginity.”
Jessica Valenti puts it right in her book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Purity Is Hurting Young Women, when she says that “women who have sex were and still are, at times, referred to as damaged goods, because they were literally just thatŃsomething to be owned, traded, bought and sold.”
Here were are, a century later, and women staying abstinent before marriage is still being pushed. Through the years, the US government, for example, has funded abstinence-until-marriage initiatives; in December of 2011, the US government earmarked $5 million towards such programs.
A trend called the purity movement promotes abstinence-only education and events called Purity Balls. These events are father/daughter nights of dining, dancing, and pledging. As a symbolic gesture, daughters are given a key to their virginity, which implies that it’s a key to their vagina. They then give the keys to their fathers, pledging they will remain “pure” (abstinent until marriage).
The father accepts the key and pledges he will protect his daughter and do whatever it takes to keep her pureŃhe keeps the key until she gets married and then gives it to her The notion that fathers own their daughters’ sexualities is troubling, to say the least.