Babblin' Botkins: "Good Girls and Problem Guys" The Four Types of Guys -Part Two

The first post in this series covered the first two "groups" of "problem guys".  From an outsider's perspective, the only problem with these men is that they showed romantic/sexual interest in an adult woman and responded in a way that was appropriate within the larger American society.

The next two groups include more problematic behaviors - but also demonstrate CP/QF Christianity complete disregard for consent as the main determination of if an event is moral or immoral.

Group Three according to Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin in their podcast "Good Girls and Problem Guys: Taking the Moral High Ground with Men Who Are In Sin

[00:40:53] Ok. We're getting worse and worse as we go. [laughs] The kind of guys we're talking about.

Ok, so next would be dealing with the creep, the seducer, or the molester. And some of us may tend to think that we will never, ever come up against a predator or a pervert because we're really nice girls and we don't move in those kinds of circles. But the fact is guys like that pop up in every circle and the odds are that the most of the girls in this room will have to deal with that at least once at one point in your life. And a lot of us are not prepared for it.

And I think that the main thing that we're not prepared for is where the threat is likely to be coming from. It's true that there are plenty of creeps in the grocery store, on the street, and in the parking lot. And hopefully, [laughs] we're already alert to be watching out for those, but according to some of the research that I've done, the majority of sexual attacks are not perpetrated by strangers out on the street. They are perpetrated by friends, friends of the young lady and happen in her home or apartment.

[00:41:49] And the thing that I think that we can learn from this is that the biggest danger to us isn't streets. It's dangerous relationships. It's not who you already know not to trust, but it's who you do trust. Who you have already let into your trust. It's in who you let your guard down around. And it's more likely to be someone who is very dear and close to you that you don't want to hurt and that you don't want to cut off, but bad things can happen when a girl is not willing to do that.

Let's start with the obvious: "creep", "seducer" and "molester" are three massively different categories.

• Seduction is based on mutual consent. There is no sexual assault in seduction.
• Depending on how "creep" is used, a guy could be acting in a way that is potentially threatening - or it could mean he's homeless - or it could mean that the guy is acting in the boundary of US standards of behavior but outside of CP/QF norms. It's not a useful descriptor.
• A molester is a criminal - pure and simple.

Words matter greatly. The Botkin Sisters are trying to explain that violent, stranger rape is rare compared to sexual assaults by acquaintances. That's an important point to make - especially since the Botkins Sisters believe that the young women in the audience are more concerned about being attacked by a stranger.

 The problem is that by choosing to describe the attacker as "friends", she's leaving out sexual assault or abuse by parents, relatives, people in authority and parents of friends. That's the situation that Ms. Torres found herself with Doug Phillips - and that's a particularly hard situation to handle without the added baggage of being trained as a girl to be gentle, non-confrontational, subservient to men and obsessed with physical purity. CP/QF has raised up a generation of young women who are particularly at-risk for assault - and we see the fruits of this in the victims of Josh Duggar, Toby Willis, Doug Phillips, Bill Gothard....the list goes on and on.

The last paragraph sounds good - but it assumes that unmarried daughters have way more control over the people allowed into their lives than they do. 

Cutting off a peer is mainstream American society is painful and awkward at times - but most people have some separation between family, church, school and recreation.  That's an impossible dream in CP/QF land; family is recreation, school and often church.  If a family is serious about protecting their daughter and maintaining that every interaction is based around whole families, then there must be a separation of the two families - no matter how that affects the other members of the family.  In that context, young women will be hard-pressed to minimize the effects that unwanted attention from a young man in the family has on her.

Imagine how much harder that situation is when the unwanted attention is coming from the father of the family.  In a worldview that blames the victim and represses any mention of sexuality, a young woman is facing intense scrutiny over what she did to attract his attention - rather than having her family stand up to the person who is preying on young women.

The situation becomes nearly impossible if the young woman is separated from her family.

[00:42:18] Ok, so let's... let's take a look at how do you... how do you recognize one of these? And it can be tricky. Some of these guys will seem really weird and off-balance, but some will be incredibly polished and well-mannered and respectable. Without becoming suspicious of every guy that comes around, here's just a few definite red flags we can watch out for and that we need to be careful for. I'm going to just list some. Um.

Number one: If he's trying to erode your boundaries.  If he's trying to create sneaky opportunities for physical contact that goes beyond what he knows you're comfortable with with young men.

Another one would be if he acts differently around you than your parents when your parents are not around or if he tries to go behind your parents' back or belittle their authority. If he seems to have a lot more interest in your looks and your charm than your character. These are all things you should watch out for.

This advice is only marginally helpful for interactions with predatory men and nearly useless against well-intentioned young men.

Let's look at the easy group of well-intentioned young men first.

Unless two people have sat down and discussed exactly what their boundaries are, one person is going to accidently "erode" the other person's boundaries because they are not exactly identical.   Even a dictate as clear as "no physical contact" has ragged edges - what about if one of you loses their balance?  Is the instinct to steady the person before they fall "eroding" a boundary?  A lab mate at a company I worked at had a female coworker accidentally pull over a phenol tower onto herself.  The other workers were all men - but everyone rushed to help her remove all her clothes and get into a chemical shower as quickly as possible since the imperative to protect someone's from severe chemical burns over 90% of her body trumped concerns about modesty.

Young people act differently around their parents than they do their peers.  Now, CP/QF types will immediately jump to the conclusion that this is because young people are being corrupted by other immature sin-natures.  That's not generally true - and it's not what I'm talking about.  Young people act more informally and ways that reflect their chosen personality around peers.  This is true about every aged adults as well;  I am more restrained in my language choice and topic choice around people who are substantially younger or older than I am than I am around peers.

Mix in the nervousness people have around impressing their potential love interest's parents with a giant heaping helping of normal sexual attraction and now every young man is going to have the red flags of "acts different by your parents" and "seems more interested in your looks than your character."

For men who are grooming a potential victim, the only useful bit of advice is the part about "creating sneaky opportunities for contact" because those opportunities are often very brief and sudden.  Women and men may not be able to respond to the first time that happened; but if it happens again, being assertive enough to state "Stop.  Don't do that!" can scare off some predators.

The rest is useless; Doug Phillips and Bill Gothard respected the authority of their victims' parents.  They were busy grooming the parents as well as the daughters.

[00:43:11] If you're starting to sense he's a danger or if he's not someone that ... or if you're starting to realize what his intentions are [laughs] then you need to take quick and decisive action. And this would include telling someone like your parents who are in a position to help not just your girlfriends or something. Maybe rebuking him openly. But definitely getting totally away from him.

[00:43:33] You remember when Joseph was being stalked and propositioned by Potiphar's wife, he verbally refused the first time then he just ran away and would not [laughs] not come near her again. But he didn't keep having that conversation over and over.

My feeling is that Anna Sophia or Elizabeth unconsciously realizes how impossible this advice is for the young women in the audience to follow. 

This is a society that values emotional and physical purity in women above everything else.  To tell her parents, a girl would have to admit that she was in a situation that may end up lessening her value because her emotional/physical purity was "damaged".

This is a society that values submission to male elders - even to the point of reassigning "protecting purity" from the traditional domain of mothers and other older women to men.  Reporting against a male peer's behavior is awkward enough; accusing a married man or  a spiritual leader is a gross violation of those expectations.

The Botkin Sisters know that this action will rebound badly against the young woman; why else would they have chosen the story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife?   Joseph does the right thing in that he restricts their contact to talking and runs away when she physically accosts him..  The outcome is that Potiphar's Wife accuses him of attempted rape and Joseph is jailed..   The Botkin Sisters are saying "Do the right thing - but don't ask us how bad the consequences will be for you, please."

The last quote makes reasonable sense when discussing consensual relationships where neither person wants to transgress the sexual mores in their society.  When dealing with a predator....not so much.

[00:43:50] And then finally be aware that even the most scandalous interactions don't usually start off on a scandalous foot. They start out with one little tiny boundary crossing at time and you need to be firm and uncompromising in the very first moments at the very beginning. Don't go along with a conversation that you shouldn't be having. Don't let people talk to you into things that you know you shouldn't do. Don't let people sway you or wear you down. Resisting evil is something we probably need to be doing every day not just like one time in our lives. [laughs]

I believe that all people - men, women, and children - need to learn the skills to recognize and stop sexual abusers.  The problem is that the Botkin Sisters are not teaching any of the actual skills while putting far too much burden on the victims to stop their abusers.