Wishing my beautiful daughter a great time at prom after I shoot her date in the dick

@Dvarghundspossen:

That’s interesting. I didn’t realize it’s a specifically American tradition. I thought it was sort of a western Christianity tradition, if that makes any sense.

I went to a wedding in Ottawa, Canada many years ago. Come to think of it, I don’t remember the bride’s father giving her away.

Me and Husband decided to get married after we’d been a couple for only like six months or so, and we were pretty young too, so at first our parents were all sceptical. Then my mum did a complete 180 and managed to drag the rest of the parents with her; she got so wedding enthusiastic, I wanna call her a bridezilla, but since she wasn’t actually the bride I guess she was a mother-of-the-bride-zilla.

I’m from a working class background and grew up without that much money, but at this point in time my dad had managed to work his way up and become a manager. So my parents had money at this point, and mum announced (I think without asking dad first) that they were gonna pay for the wedding “since that’s tradition”. In the end, Husband’s parents also chipped in, but we didn’t pay squat; good for us since we really didn’t have much money at that point.
So basically it was the whole deal; I had a dress sewn up for me, my sisters who were maids had dresses specially made too, Husband wore a coat of tails etc, and we were driven from the church to the reception in a 19th century coach with horses.

Then late in the evening, when everyone was drunk, including mum, she went up to me and looked at me very sternly and said:
– You know, in the end, we had to take out a loan to pay for all this. So you can never get divorced now!
I guess I just nodded?

Anyway, 17 years later and no divorce on the horizon, so it’s all good…

One of five daughters here, dad never displayed anything like this crap. At one point when two of us were married, he told us that the first three would get weddings and the last two would get $5,000 and a ladder. In retrospect- I really should have taken the $5,000 and a ladder!

Whereby to climb out the window and elope.

I want to do it at the courthouse

I forgot judges could marry people over there. You could have great fun with a Bonnie & Clyde type escapade; then save money at the same time.

“Do you have anything to say before I pass sentence?”

“Er, I do?”

We have what’s called Registry Offices. So the registrar (who’s the person responsible for recording births, deaths, and marriages) can do a quick ceremony.

ETA: I think it’s different in Scotland; hence the tradition of eloping couples marrying at Gretna Green. That’s the first town across the border. Dalillama knows a bit about this I seem to recall.

That doesn’t sound too different from the US. It’s just that there’s courts in the same giant county government building as the driver’s licenses, marriages, birth certificates etc. There’s also various social services there.

There are smaller satelites with fewer services in the suburbs, but this is the downtown Minneapolis location

http://stmedia.startribune.com/images/1abeat102116.jpg

So yeah, a lot of stuff in there.

I like that building. Presumably that’s a copper roof? I’d like to see it with, what I’m guessing is a fountain, in use.

I’m actually surprised I haven’t seen manosphere apologia for Ted Bundy before. He was a political conservative who was manly enough to bust out of prison and he killed women that looked like an ex-girlfriend who’d dumped his loser ass. You’d think he’d be their hero.

ETA: By bust out of prison, I mean slipped out of the courthouse because the guards were way too fucking lax. But hey, details, details.

@Dormousing_it:

The most unbelievable thing in the whole Bernardo/Homolka case (warning: if you don’t know about it, it’s pretty unpleasant, so be careful when looking it up) is that the body of their first victim was dredged up from the river on their wedding day. If you pitched that to a studio, they’d tell you to go home and rewrite it because no one would believe it.

@Jurgan:

That shirt is brilliant. I have to admit that I actually find the photo in the OP funny, because it’s so clearly being silly. It’s mostly to do with the look on the daughter’s face. Admittedly, it’s not goofy enough for anyone to think that they’re actually taking the piss out of the stereotype, but still. At least they’re aware they’re playing with a stereotype. However, that shirt beats it by far. Hell, if I had a daughter, I’d buy it for her. I sorta wish they had a “Rules for dating me” version, though. That would be something you could uy for anyone.

@WWTH:

I’ve found that the best way to judge people who write about serial killers is how they talk about Bundy’s taste in victims. Most say that he had a girlfriend with long dark hair parted in the middle, and after a bad breakup he started preying on young women with the same features. Others say that he targetted young women with long dark hair parted in the middle, and his first girlfriend was damned lucky he didn’t kill her. You can imagine which ones are worth listening to.

To be fair, several of my close female acquaintances were literally forcefully raped by someone they went on a date with when they were young. These were men who claimed they had affection towards the women, and who seemed polite. There really are some pretty predatory men out there.

It is unlikely that I would kill or shoot someone who raped my child, but if I didn’t trust someone completely and I thought someone would be deterred by the threat, it might be worth making it. It’s not a very civil thing to say, obviously. But is it accurate to put this in the context of consensual sex rather than rape or abuse ? I can see people meaning or taking it both ways.

But in this thread, a lot of people jump to this:

“This woman is my property don’t mess with her virginity or I’ll kill you”

But maybe the fathers mean this:

“My daughter is young and might be tricked or intimidated but I am old and experienced and if you force yourself on her or hurt her I will find out and I will punish you.”

Again, I don’t go around threatening people. I am by no means justifying the gun meme, just wondering why everybody immediately jumps to the conclusion that this is about controlling the girl’s choices and not about protecting a child.

We have the two-tier thing in South Africa as well, at least among Afrikaans-speaking White communities. It’s because it’s something of an insult to fail to invite someone to your child’s wedding, and Afrikaners can get fairly obsessive about maintaining their social networks, so the wedding itself is dominated by the couple’s parents’ friends, family and business associates.

The party afterwards, by contrast, is for the couple’s friends.

I’m American and the culture as I understand it is that young men will try to have sex with young women, and the fathers need to protect their daughter’s virginity and honor. Not rape. Sex. The other time they hold a gun up to a romantic interest of their daughter is if she becomes pregnant and he’s trying to avoid marrying her (again, protecting her honor). This is the meaning behind “shotgun weddings.” Nowhere is the young woman’s agency taken into consideration; sex happens to a woman, after all.

Here are some articles that may clear up what purity culture is about.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/the-purity-culture

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2011/09/your-virginity-is-yours-not-your-daddys.html

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/03/how-the-purity-culture-made-me-afraid-of-men.html