Photo: VGstockstudio / Shutterstock, Twitter
He's mad that he can't give away his "pure" daughter to her husband and can't stop thinking about it 10 years later.
By Nia Tipton — Written on Apr 30, 2023
A father faced heavy criticism after a letter he penned to his daughter's ex-boyfriend was shared on social media.
Photos of the letter were shared by Twitter user Isaac Robert, who claimed that one of his oldest friends had broken up with his high school girlfriend over ten years ago, and in the mail one day, his wife of seven years found a note addressed to him. "Just...stop what you're doing and read..." Robert captioned the photo.
A father wrote a letter to his daughter's high school boyfriend and berated him for taking away her virginity.
The letter, written by an overzealous father who is a bit too concerned about his daughter's sexual activities, was titled, "Demand For Restitution For Stealing My Daughter's Honor," and featured his anger over his daughter having lost her virginity to her high school boyfriend.
"It has been nearly ten years since I learned that you stole my daughter's virginity. Initially, it was my intention to forgive you," the unnamed father wrote. "But after I confronted you about it and you expressed repentance, I later learned that you have since gone and done the same to others."
He continued, saying that despite practicing the act of forgiveness through his religion of Christianity, he cannot find it in his heart to "forgive" his daughter's ex-boyfriend. "For a brief pleasure, you forever took from me the sublime joy of giving my pure, virgin daughter away in marriage to her chosen husband."
There are many things wrong with this letter, but for a father to think this heavily and often about his daughter's sexual activities and past is just scratching the surface of the detrimental purity culture that seems to only harm women.
His daughter's body is her own, who she chooses to be with intimately, and how often she chooses to do it, is no one's business but her own. As parents, their only job is to make sure they are teaching their children the correct ways to stay safe, instead of policing their bodies and thinking they have any type of ownership over their daughters.
Many Twitter users expressed the same thoughts, criticizing this father for not realizing the number of boundaries he'd just crossed by sending that letter. "It’s hard not to feel bad for the author. He’s mourning the loss of something that was never his from the most common activity in the history of humanity. He was always going to lose," one user sarcastically pointed out.
Another user added, "Men who try to control their daughters’ bodies and the religion that informs those beliefs are so weird and gross."
The purity culture on young women has nothing but negative implications.
The right-wing purity movement against women hurts everyone involved and only continues to teach women that their morals and value lie in how often they have sex, and who they have it with. Fathers like the one who sent that letter are spreading a culture that women are nothing but their bodies.
In purity culture, both boys and girls are taught that having sex before marriage is frowned upon, but it seems young women are the only ones who reap the consequences.
According to Vice, writer Linda Kay Klein observed and cited experts who found that many women who grow up in purity culture and eventually begin having sex report experiencing an involuntary physical tightening of the vagina — also known as vaginismus — that is linked to a fear of penetrative sex.
"Suppression, the years of holding themselves in and down, eventually affects them physically,” Klein explained.
Men never experience the same amount of judgment for engaging in consensual sexual activities, but women who have sex are treated as the scum beneath a shoe and put on blast for their moral values. Instead, men are labeled as "studs," and "players," and are given a clap on the back for how many women they can get in their beds.
Unfortunately, we are all living in a society that heavily fetishizes the social construct of virginity, but whether or not a woman is sexually "pure" or not shouldn't dictate what kind of person she is or how intelligent, kind, or loving they are.
Nia Tipton is a Brooklyn-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.