It's Not That Complicated: Chapter 10 - Part 3

This is the section where the Botkin Sisters decide to act as the arbitrators of how girls should interact with each other.  You might expect that they would have some personal experience in this area.  After reading this chunk, I don't think they have much more experience with female friends than they do with male friends.

Contributing to the delinquency of another  

They're not supposed to be head hunting... so don't ask them, “Who do you think is cute?” or “Who do you want to marry?” They don't need help thinking the wrong kinds of thoughts towards young men, or trying to pick out specific ones as if it were their place to do the choosing (pg 186).

• I know that the emotional purity crowd tries to convince people that no one should acknowledge any sort of sexual attraction before they are married, but seriously, ladies.  Come on.  Girls and guys talk about who is cute.  That's so normal - and it's not going to destroy your future marriage.

They're not supposed to be trying to catch a guy's attention....so don't try to get them to compete with you for it. We've often seen girls drive one another to become more desperate and shameless (immodest, out there, aggressive, etc.) n their efforts to one-up each other. ( pg 186)

• Damned if you do - because that makes you an immodest slut who is chasing boys - and damned if you don't - after all, the Botkin Sisters started this book explaining how women's sole purpose in life is to be wives and mothers.  Gotta love these Catch-22 situations!
• There's also a little voice inside my head that says, "Well, if the immodest, out-there, aggressive girls are attracting the guys and getting married, perhaps they've picked up on something you are missing....."

They're not supposed to be romantically volatile...so don't encourage emotional giddiness over this topic. Statements like “I saw Chad looking at you... “ or “You're going to see Todd today- aren't you nervous?” can be very unhelpful to those trying to keep a level head. And if we want to help our friends admire guys they know in the right ways and for the right things, it's a stumbling block to feed their thoughts with “Bradley's so adorable” or “Isn't Justin a dream boat? (pg 186-187)

• Yawn.  You've covered this before.  Move on.  

They're not supposed to be worrying... so don't try and work them up about the fact they aren't married yet, don't have boyfriends yet, or are out there enough. It doesn't encourage girls to be full of peace, joy, and hope to point out that they are getting older, inform them that their dads are scary, assure them that guys only like immodest girls, whisper to them that guys never seem to ask for girls anyway, and remind them that life without a significant other is hardly worth living.

Sometimes there can be real problems, but trying to get girls to panic is really not the best way to fix them. (pg. 187)

• Again, the Botkin Sisters state that God's plan for women is to be wives and mothers.  That's it.  There's no other options.  Why are they surprised, then, when their friends harp on their single status?
• No one ever told me my dad was scary.  That never came up among my friends.  Based on reading the interviews with Geoffrey Botkin in this book at in "So Much More", I think their friends have cued in on an important point - Geoffrey Botkin IS scary.  
• Remember that being full of peace, love and joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  Stop blaming your friends and start actually living a peaceful, joyous, loving life.

They're not supposed to be irrational... so help keep conversations grounded in reality. The kind of things that happened in secret girl-talk sessions- diagnosing problems without sufficient data, making statistics out of individual people's problems, seeing problems where none exist, attaching undue importance to things- would likely not happen if we are having these conversations with our parents. When estrogen and emotions are the fuel running these conversations, rather than reality and factual data, the situation can escalate and our minds until we can until we conclude that we have a national crisis on our hands... And someone must burn! (pg. 187)

• Dear God.  Please, please do not drag your parents into every conversation.  That's scary in its own way.  Remember, Geoffrey Botkin sees a New World Order behind every bush so I'm not so sure that he's the most rational one in the family.
• The Sisters also mentioned that they abandoned an earlier book that was pretty much about how feminism was causing men to disappear from the Earth.  That sounds like the paragraph above.
• There is another way to avoid premature problem solving.  The first step is living a life that is so full of meaning and satisfying work that you have plenty to talk about other than marriage prospects.  This doesn't require advanced education or training at all; there are plenty of people and causes in your own backyard that need helping hands and a willing heart.
• Of course, advanced education or training does allow you to do more jobs.  It is often needed to acquire the skills to be of the most help in human services.  As an added bonus, training gets you out of your own head and into the real world.

They're not supposed to be gossiping... so don't try to wheedle their own or anyone else's secrets out of them. We can help create an atmosphere where other people's affairs or turned into big community jokes, placing bets and making up scenarios - or we can help everyone honor the gravity and privacy of these matters. We can even remind people to keep their secrets to themselves (even when we feel like it in fringes on our Right to Know (pg. 187).

• I doubt Anna Sofia and Elizabeth understand what "Right to Know" actually means; they don't strike me as particularly up-to-date on chemical safety.
• Not only do you need to guard your own secrets - you are supposed to ruthlessly cut off anyone who tries to disclose their secrets to you.  Glad to see that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth know more about others' lives than the people who are actually living the life.....

They're not supposed to be obsessing over marriage and romance is though it's the sum total of the female existence

... so don't talk to them is though it is. Most girls already experience the temptation to think of the relationship arena is the only thing worth thinking about or talking about - we can affirm this, or help point them to a much bigger world. We can remind them that marriage is not the ultimate goal, they have value outside of their relationship status, and that there other things to think about. There are, for example, siblings to love, bugs to classify, Scripture passages to memorize, music to write, books to read, and people to serve (and we're not talking about friends who need boyfriends). Reminding people to keep cool, be content and trust God is the goal. (pg. 187)

• Again: this book TREATS romantic relationships like they are the end-all and be-all of existence by making girls paranoid about being around boys for fear of defrauding or being defrauded. 
• So....God created women to be help-meets, but that's not the ultimate goal of life for women.  Can anyone else see the contradiction there?
• "Bugs" to classify?  Are we talking microbiology or entomology?  I strongly doubt either Anna Sofia or Elizabeth have the skills to identify bacteria; that's college level laboratory work.  They might be excellent amateur insect collectors, but I'm skeptical on that point as well.

Do you have female friends remaining after you follow this advice?  Are you worried that those pesky female friends will never go away?  Do not fear: the advice in the next section should drive off any remaining female buddies you have.  (That's the purpose of this chapter, right?)

I feel like I'm reading a Simpsons' script involving one of those self-help videos by Troy McClure.