I heard this week that a scrappy little nonprofit called Dads and Daughters is closing its doors after a decade of great work.  Their reason for closing is funding problems - not surprising in this tough economy - but still sad and worthy of a mention here.  The mission of this group has been to promote the importance of father-daughter relationships, both in the real world and in the media.  After all, dads are the first men to love us, to value us, to tell us in a million ways that we are worthy, smart, important, and safe.  Talk about building blocks for the future! 

It makes me so mad, and so scared, that a group like this - devoted to committed parenting, girl empowerment, and healthy relationships - can't survive, while the creepy purity ball culture continues to pack the banquet halls of America.  Why is it easier to find support for virginity pledges to dad (that amount to little more than contracts of ownership over teen girls' bodies) than to find support for smart, constructive, relationship-building work that truly values the role of fathers in girls' lives? 

Check out their 10 tips for Dads of Daughters.  Good stuff. 

It's like deja vu all over again at The New York Times.  For the second time in the past several weeks the grey lady is red in the face over virginity.  Today's entry: purity balls.  (See previous postings on the topic here and here.) 

Leaving aside everything else one might say about these father-daughter purity balls, I am left wondering--like so many others---where are the purity balls for fathers and their sons.  Don't these father-daughter gatherings underscore the sexual double standard still alive and still well---the double standard that tells young women to say "no" and young men to be "careful." 

Check out some polling data on this topic here (charts 5, 15, and 16)---65% of teens and 61% of parents of teens agree that parents send one message about sex to their sons and an altogether different message to their daughters.  Not too good.

Bill's post on Straight Edge got me thinking about abstinence and what it means to declare yourself a "Virgin" (you can almost hear the capital letter 'V').  I was a student at an all-girls, Catholic high school.  It was a wonderful academic environment and - contrary to what you might have heard - we had regular dances and social events, shared with the neighboring all boys' Catholic high school. 

With this proximity to (gasp!) the opposite sex AND a rigorous dedication to creating a sheltered...goody-goody...parochial  secondary education experience, one might assume that the administration would have jumped at the chance to present its captive audience of impressionable young girls with the chance to sign a virginity pledge.