Opponents of purity balls claim that they encroach upon women's freedom of choice to date whom they please and to make their own independent decisions without the help of men. In this view, the philosophy of purity balls implies that young girls are not capable of making their own choices. Jennifer Freitag, a Southern Illinois University Carbondale doctoral student, argues that, from a feminist perspective, the purity ball ritual can be considered sexist discrimination as it rarely applies to men, and ignores whether women desire heterosexual marriages. Freitag further asserts that the purity balls and virginity pledges give women fewer opportunities to explore their future mates and presume that the girls will marry men, ignoring lesbianism, bisexuality, and transsexualism. Also, Freitag claims that purity balls have psychological elements of father-daughter incest.