Talk:Purity ball

American phenomenon
Please add somewhere that this perverse, backward and medieval ritual is a strictly American phenomenom. It is insulting to the world in its current state. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.252.43.117 (talk) 02:22, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Criticism section
Added feminist critique of Purity Balls. --Chalyres 10:44, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Are there purity balls involving mothers and sons, or is it only for daughters? Some statistics on that subject might be insightful --Gargletheape 12:56, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I have seen no evidence of mother-daughter purity balls and I doubt one could find one. As a culture, we place almost no value on male virginity and that includes both the main culture and the primary culture behind purity balls. - 67.166.136.32 (talk) 18:37, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Age range
12.160.185.126 recently added info about the girls' ages (though without sources):
 * Many of the girls who attend these events, some as young as age 4, many 10 -13, do not really have an understanding of what they are signing, and many of these children come from very insulated communities, even at 18 or 19 they may not have a real understanding of what their sexuality is, before they give it to their fathers.

It would be interesting to know what the typical age range for these events actually are, though the 4yrs claim is no doubt true as an exception. --Andrew Delong 23:25, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Use of word "cover"
Have any of the critics commented on the use of the word "cover", as in "the father promises to cover his daughter"? It is one of the farmyard euphemisms for "to have sex with", as in the ram tupping the ewe and the stallion covering the mare. It seems an odd choice, a word with an ancient sexual history, for such a pledge. BrainyBabe 10:12, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
 * The whole thing smacks of incest, but a source would be needed to add that criticism. Шизомби (talk) 13:31, 2 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It does underline the whole incestuous and perverse theme. It should be added to the article for these reasons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.252.43.117 (talk) 02:24, 28 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree that the use of the term "cover" requires explanation, as it is jargon used only within many evangelical Christian churches (many, not necessarily most, as I have no idea of the proportion). It comes, of course, from the concept of "spiritual covering," which has no connection with the term "covering" used in animal husbandry; rather it is similar to the insurance term "umbrella policy." In the churches using the term "spiritual covering," a father is said to "cover" his family members—including daughters—as their "spiritual head," meaning that he takes responsibility for their spiritual well-being in the same way he takes ultimate responsibility for providing their needs of shelter, food, etc. In the pledge described in the article, the father is accepting responsibility to pray for his daughter and, often, for her future husband, as that young man is somewhere growing into a man; prayers are made that he will develop into the loving husband the father desires for his daughter. Another way to understand it: as the peel of an apple covers the apple, one must go through the peel in order to get to the light-colored insides and seeds. So the young man who wishes to court the young lady would need to "go through" the father to do so. The father, by promising to cover his daughter, is promising to take responsibility for prayerfully considering her pursuers, not to prevent her eventual marriage nor deny her choice of a mate, but to guide her in her choice, taking into account the direction of her affections. (No loving father wants his daughter unhappily married.) But the word "cover" without explanation is jargon or insider speech, making it a poor choice for an encyclopedia entry. Redrocketred 22:06, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Unsourced content
The following content has been in place for a long time; I am moving it here. If it can be appropriately sourced, it can be moved back. However, the content of the pledge that the fathers make sounds as though it is specific to one particular purity ball, not universal to purity balls in general. If reinstated, it should be made clear as to the origin and use of this pledge.

What follows is the content. Whatever404 (talk) 11:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

The content
1 Fathers must sign the "Covenant of Purity and Protection," witnessed by their daughters, and openly commit to the pledge, a typical example of which might be:


 * I, (daughter’s name)'s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in her area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

2 Many individuals also criticize the fact that such balls take place between fathers and their daughters only, leaving out sons for whom it can be assumed chastity until marriage is not as important.

clean up
The article here (firstly doubtful for notability) is rather poor,. the criticism read largely like a book of quotations from specific editorials/writers, which in turn is almost an advert for them. The criticism needs to flow in a passage better with the sources listed in the end. No point rehashing old quotes simply to fill up space. Maybe the intro can be shorter and a 'background' section can follow. Lihaas (talk) 18:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't have enough knowledge of PBs, at the moment, to help. I invited WikiProjects Christianity and Sexology and sexuality to help. Whatever404 (talk) 12:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

"the virgin daughters"
there is a doco by channel four on purity balls, full of references to make if anybody wishes to find some more. Mathmo Talk 09:39, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Dance culture category?
Is that a weird category or what? Yes, technically purity balls are a dance culture, but most people when they think of dance culture think of nightclubs rather than daddy-daughter purity evenings. Opinions? —Tom Morris 09:46, 9 January 2011 (UTC)
 * A dance culture is any culture centered around dancing. It certainly includes clubbers and ravers but also includes purity balls and the Débutante culture. It doesn't necessarily imply that they are all one single culture. - 67.166.136.32 (talk) 18:39, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Impact of recent student edits
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 * The students seem to have added summaries of sources like with such gems as "First, Nolte exposes the heteronormative romance narrative as a construct that sets up compulsory heterosexuality and the social relationship between women and men" Since this was actually (claimed to have been) published in an academic journal, I won't unilaterally remove it. But really, if "Kaleidoscope" is publishing this stuff, I believe that its status as an source on Wikipedia needs to be investigated to determine whether it represents a WP:FRINGE viewpoint. It seems to me that the predominance of heterosexual themes in US culture is usually attributable to the small portion of the population who are primarily homosexual or self-identify as such (sources in article), not some desire for forced conformity. The principle of assume good faith has applications outside the Wikipedian context. This phenomenon of entirely innocuous inattention to uncommon views and practices can be observed in unrelated and less politically charged subjects. Does the dearth of GNU/Linux coverage in mainstream media imply compulsory Windows/Macnormativity, or just the small proportion of Linux desktop users? The fact that homosexuality is a politically and religiously heated issue, with some fairly high-profile and blatant cases of actual malicious hatred shouldn't confuse an analysis of sources for the frequency of homosexuality, or imply that most Americans, or most of their culture is at the same level as the Westboro bigots. Since there is plenty of mainstream criticism of the compulsory chastity element of purity balls, it seems unnecessary to search out professors who intend to deconstruct "heteronormativity" along with it. Is the Derridaesque view of this subject really that common outside some very thin ranks of academics? 75.94.128.56 (talk) 19:06, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

What's up with Glamour Magazine and the NLSAH?
Since the article cites Glamour as a source for the claim that the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found virginity pledges to be counterproductive, I visited the NLSAH website to see if we could cite the NLSAH itself, and whether it said anything about purity balls. If not, then it would be Glamour drawing a conclusion about chastity pledges in the context of purity balls from the NLSAH's overall data. So we could more accurately write something like "Glamour says because the NLSAH says that..." But now I'm left wondering where Glamour obtained its information about the NLSAH. The NLSAH appears to be exclusively a primary source comprised of raw data, presented to the general public in tabular form to avoid compromising the privacy of individual survey participants. Despite this minimal processing of the experimental data, it is still primary for WP:NOR purposes. So the NLSAH can't be cited to support conclusions of any importance about the real world. One could say "x% of those surveyed chose answer y to question z" since it's right there in the table, but without accompanying controls for confounding variables, statistical analysis, a conclusion drawn, and academic peer review to validate the work, this information is useless. That's not to say that the NLSAH itself is useless; its purpose is to facilitate published original research and analysis by academics without the time and expense of actually conducting the survey. It's just that Wikipedia cannot use it directly. Nor should glamour magazine, since it's not a social science journal, its writers are not required to have academic qualifications, and its articles are not subject to academic peer review. If they did the data analysis themselves anyway, they should have published their methods along with the article. In the more likely case that their information about the NLSAH came from a third party, they should have cited the source they used. There is plenty of actual published research using the NLSAH data cited in Virginity_pledge, and likely other studies the article omits. Unfortunately, since these papers differ somewhat in their conclusions due to varying methods of analysing the same data, it's impossible to determine which, if any, of the studies Glamour is referring to. I am guessing they read, then restated the conclusion as an unqualified truth about the NLSAH, rather than saying "Rosenbaum analysed data from the NLSAH, and found that..." Since we don't actually know what Glamour did, it's most accurate to write something like "Glamour Magazine says that the NLSAH data supports the conclusion that..." Why not just bring in the Rosenbaum study itself? Her paper concerns virginity pledges generally, and never once even mentions purity balls. It would not be an unreasonable conjecture to claim that the usual outcomes of virginity pledges at purity balls do not significantly differ from the overall averages. But this implicit claim there are aren't likely to be any confounding variables is still original research, however plausible it might seem. General information from sources that never mention the subject of the article should only be brought in where the probability of individual variation from the norm is insignificant. For instance, the laws of mathematics do not differ from place to place, and those of physics are assumed not to, so it's fine to bring in relevant background material. Definitions of terms behave similarly, since the use of words in articles (hopefully) implies specific intended meanings. Here, however, we're dealing with a subject rife with heated religious and political debate, and apparently a scientific disagreement on exactly what the NSLAH data mean. Cherry picking just one study about the NLSAH data as it concerns virginity pledges, and implying that it (and it alone) applies here is inconsistent with NPOV and NOR. So we're left with Glamour's non-scientist, unexplained handwaving at raw data. Since Glamour is highly visible and generally regarded as a reliable source, this does deserve to be mentioned. But to leave the opinion as a fact by relegating all attribution to a footnote is to take Glamour's scientific credibility for more than it's worth. 75.94.128.56 (talk) 03:16, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Just to illustrate why the claim, or insinuation, that the outcomes virginity pledges at purity balls do not substantially differ from those undertaken at different venues, is an opinion that shouldn't be written in Wikipedia's voice as though it were a fact, let's consider how they might differ. The purity balls offer a carrot, while traditional virginity pledges are primarily sticks. Some people find the carrot itself to be reprehensible, believing that it implicitly conditions paternal affection upon a waiver of essential personal freedom, but the fact remains that the carrot is still there. Ideally, fact/opinion distinctions would be resolved simply by referencing reliable sources: do they agree, or is there controversy? Do the sources themselves claim that ideas have fact or opinion status? Having a RS that says X is a fact is, however, not conclusive when there's an equally reliable source which attaches similar veracity to not X. This cannot be really be done here without scientific RS; we certainly shouldn't accept as fact Time or Glamour's unreferenced claims about the details of quantum physics. There is even less reason to do so for their claims about virginity pledges at purity balls, since that specific subject does not appear to have been studied in academically published research. 75.94.128.56 (talk) 04:19, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

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Christianity
Tahc, regarding this, Christianity is emphasized lower in the article. It's why this article is in Category:Christianity in the United States, and why this talk page is tagged with WikiProject Christianity.

Pinging Anupam, who works on articles like these. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 01:14, 15 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Dear User:Flyer22 Frozen, thanks for pinging me here. The text Battleground: The Family, Volume 2, authored by Kimberly P. Brackett and published by Greenwood Press, states:


 * The mention of Christianity or conservative Christianity is therefore warranted, though "fundamentalist Christianity" might not be. I hope this helps. With regards, AnupamTalk 01:24, 15 February 2020 (UTC)