Spiritual Self-Defense: Know What God Requires - Part Three

This series of posts by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin is disturbing on a few levels. 

• The divine plan they lay out works if a boundary-violation is serious, happens over an intermediate period of time and the attacker does not become violent when confronted.  For all other situations - and thankfully most situations are minor or fleeting - the response becomes overkill...or potentially dangerous.   

• The sisters have taken a large step away from direct victim-blaming (yay!), but instead blame women for any actions they have taken that deviate from the Divine Botkin Response laid out in the series.  

• Their theological skills are underwhelming at best.  

• They've been so steeped in patriarchy that they cannot orient themselves to the idea that women (or children) have rights separate from what is licit for a man to do to another person.

The first three quotes are from the section elucidating how women fail to "Confront Sin at the First Stage".

The failure to confront men’s over-steppings at the beginning is often the first inch that we give. Perhaps we are flattered by a man’s attentions and allow them… or perhaps in discomfort or fear we deflect them in a way that sounds as little like “no” as possible – we turn it into a joke, we laugh, we change the subject, we try to ease out of the situation in a way that won’t make things uncomfortable.

Psst.  Anna Sofia, Elizabeth - let me let you in on a secret.  The vast majority of boundary
violations - especially those that occur within CP/QF lives - can be handled by communication leavened with humor.   There is no overarching uniformly agreed set of standards for platonic relationships between single men and women or courting couples so frequently one party will transgress the other party's deeply held boundaries.   This is not the time to lecturing the other party on their morality.   A simple "I don't ......" followed by a smile or laugh is a normal way of handling this issue.

On the flip side, there's a difference between fear of breaking social norms and fear of violence.  If the main reason a woman is telling someone to stop doing something is that she doesn't want to hurt their feelings, seem rude, interrupt them, or accidently teach a man, that's a great time to try acting a bit more assertive and seeing that the world doesn't end. 

 If the reason you are afraid is that you fear that the other person will move from a non-violent offender to an attacker, deflection and de-escalation are morally acceptable.  Remember the story of Abigail, Nabal and David that the Botkin Sisters love so much?  Abigail never reproved David for breaking about 10 Biblical laws when he wanted Nabal to throw David a huge party instead of caring for his workers.  No, Abigail realized that David was an extremely unstable and violent man so she offered him everything he wanted and flattered him to protect her household.

Sometimes the problem is that we don’t realize what a man did was even wrong. Perhaps we haven’t been taught anything about boundaries. Or, something very gratifying to our flesh, such as flattery, may not bother us, if we don’t know what God says about it (Prov. 26:28, Prov. 29:5). A physical overstepping-of-bounds from someone we’re attracted to may not repulse us in the same way as the advances of an old lecher, if we’re not steeped in God’s teaching on fornication, adultery, and “youthful lusts.” And romantic or sexual pressure being presented as “godly” from someone we look up to may not register as “lust” or “extortion” unless we have developed a healthy hate for those things which God also hates.  

Ok.  This paragraph is a mish-mash of  confused ideas even under the CP/QF understanding of licit sexual activities.  Remember in Anna Sofia/Elizabeth's world, licit sexuality is anything that happens that is approved by their father during courtship or by their husband after marriage.   "Flattery" isn't a sin - even with the strange mandates of CP/QF theology.  Under the mainstream understanding of consent as the method of determining whether a sexual activity is licit, the paragraph is a hot mess. The two illicit examples of being hit on by an old man who you have not shown interest in and the blanket idea of  'sexual pressure' are surrounded by legitimate sexual activities in which both parties consent.

Since this series is about helping young women navigate the world, how does using really vague terms like "romantic pressure" or "sexual pressure" help anyone?  There's a world of difference between a couple in which one party wants to move a bit faster sexually but respects their partner's desire to wait and a relationship where one party is being actively pressured repeatedly with threats to overcome their lack of consent.  Labeling both as equally sinful and stating that the only acceptable response is to say "You are sinning!" make women less likely to speak up when a boundary is crossed rather than empowering young women.

And don’t think you have to figure it out alone – where the rubber of specific situations meets the road of general biblical principles, most of us will still have a lot of questions, and we should not hesitate to ask a parent or trusted counselor, “Is it OK for a guy to…” or “How do you think I should handle…”

Anna Sofia/Elizabeth and their parental censors didn't blink an eye at including a model sentence that states "Is it OK for a guy to..." instead of "What boundaries should I have in regards to sexuality?"

No.  No.  No.

I'd be freaked out if a daughter of mine (or a female student) wanted a list of activities that were ok for men to do to her regardless of her feelings.  I'd be equally freaked out if my son asked me that question - but I doubt sons in CP/QF families frame sexuality in terms of what women are allowed to do to them; that shakes the foundation of the sexual double-standard in play.

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth disconcertingly switch between encouraging young women to stand-up to abusive authority figures and reinforcing that young women need to rely on authority figures to tell them what activities are legitimate.  Oh, the sisters attempt to separate the two groups by pretending that the Bible gives bright, clear guidelines on sexual activities that girls can understand - but that's completely untrue.  The Bible discusses the licitness of marital sexuality for heterosexual couples, the illicitness of same-sex intercourse, sex with temple prostitutes, besiality, and using withdrawal methods to deprive a woman of a child who would support her in her old age.  It has confusing rules involving unmarried women living in another man's home similar to the molestation accusations surrounding Doug Phillips - and states that polygamy a legitimate solution to that situation.  There's plenty of bad advice in the Bible surrounding human sexuality - and plenty of verses that can be used to make a man's behavior legitimate as long as a woman has been taught that the only thing she needs for consent to be licit is the approval of the Bible and a male authority figure.

That's the situation that makes asking a parent or authority figure for advice dangerous; abusive parents flock to abusive pastors who attract abusive or enabling congregants.  The lucky girls are the ones who have access to someone who cares about the girl's rights, desires and needs; the unlucky girls are surrounded by toxic people.

The next paragraph ends the section on "Stop Giving Opportunity" to the abuser:

Sometimes making distance between ourselves and an abuser takes physically fighting a man off. Sometimes it takes firepower. And sometimes it simply takes the moral strength to end a relationship with someone we love. But we need to take seriously the opportunity to stop men from sinning against us and God – for their good as well as ours.

Um...kay. 

Just for clarity, the law doesn't allow life-threatening force in the absence of direct threat to life, health or property.  Don't pull a gun on a single guy at a store who says that you are an attractive young woman and he'd like to go on a date.  (I'm being tongue-in-cheek - but the Botkin Sisters are seemingly incapable of sussing out different levels of response to sin.)

Here are the tricky bits.

The response of fleeing when threatened means that women lose control to most resources in the world.  Let's say I am taking a college class and I find a classmate's attempts to ask me out bothersome after telling him to stop.  Avoiding the classmate means I lose access to the lectures, labs, practice rooms, public speakers and study groups while the person who is behaving badly keeps control of all of them.   The Botkin Sisters routinely sneer at Weinstein victims who had the audacity to remain in his productions after being sexually harassed or assaulted - but not everyone has the luxury of living an upper-middle class lifestyle in their thirties paid for by their parents. If the women left, they were destroying their careers in a very difficult and competitive field.   Women have to make choices on how strongly they defend their bodies based on the economic conditions the women face in the worst-case scenarios of how the situation plays out.  That's not fair and it's certainly not right that abusers exploit that reality - but the Botkin Sisters denial of said reality is even less helpful.

All of the examples the Botkin Sisters imagine leave out the fact that abuse can be intermittent - so much so that the standard cycle of abuse includes a recurrent honeymoon period where the victim's boundaries are respected at least a little bit.    This ebb-and-flow cycle messes with the victim's view of the situation because the person who is harming them stops harming them for a finite period of time.  The victim becomes re-invested in the relationship because they hope that the abuser has finally changed this time.   It changes the victim's narrative from "This situation right now is wrong and harmful to me" to "That situation was harmful, but it is over now."

Recognizing this common cycle is important to understand how horrifying toxic the rest of this post is.  The rest of the post includes casual cruelty towards women (and in the Botkin world, all victims are women) who respond to abuse in any way that is different from the Divine Botkin Response.   The first example derides women who didn't scream during a date-rape situation:

However, many women also refrain from screaming during date-rape situations because they simply think that would seem ridiculous and over-the-top… and then press charges afterward because they do believe what happened was a crime. The desire to not want to make a scene is common, but if we believe rape is a crime, we must treat it as such at every stage, and be preparing ourselves to respond as aggressively and decisively as if we saw another woman being assaulted or raped.

The Botkin sisters swear left and right that being raped is not the fault of the victim (which is good), but they haven't thought through what that means.   In this situation, they've just blamed the rape victim for not screaming for help because the women are afraid of breaking societal norms.  The hypocrisy of the Botkin Sisters blows my mind since they've shamed women for breaking norms only held by the Botkin Family in "It's (Not) That Complicated" as well as teaching young women to submit mindlessly to males!  Any CP/QF woman who tries to stop an attacker risks being pilloried for being "unpure" or "tempting men" or being "outside of authority".  Added to the completely human reaction of shock, disbelief and confusion that comes from a boundary violation, it's amazing that any CP/QF woman has ever managed to defend herself from an attacker let alone report it after the fact.

This also ignores a real fact in self-defense: sometimes capitulation to one crime prevents severe body harm or murder.   Compare this to another crime that involves boundary violation - a mugging.  Do self-defense coaches tell men that they are morally required to scream for help and physically fight back against someone who wants their wallet?  Hell, no!  You hand the robber your wallet; better to lose money than be physically harmed in any way shape or form.  Does handing your wallet over under the threat of harm make the male victim more culpable in some way?  Hell, no!    Date-rape is no different.  Women assume that the man they are dating or courting won't rape them; that's the expectation of society.  If a woman is attacked by her partner, she's already realizing that there was a different side to him that she hadn't seen before - so how is she supposed to assess what will happen if she screams or resists him?

The bit about defending self as strongly as an outside victim is a red-herring.  The presence of a new bystander changes the likelihood of bad things happening to the attacker since there are now two witnesses to the attack.  Likewise, assuming there is only one attacker, a bystander who intervenes changes the balance of power to the side of the victim since there is now two people to fight off the attacker.  The simple existence of a neutral bystander increases the likelihood the attacker will flee - so comparing the morality of defense of another person to the morality of self-defense when alone is asinine.

The next bit is horrible for its blase condemnation of young victims of abuse with an anemic explanation that God doesn't hate people who are ignorant as much as he hates people who abuse authority.

What if we didn’t realize that something forced on us was wrong until years later? What if trauma blocked an old memory from our minds until recently? What if we long ago suffered a crime we knew was wrong, but had been taught that it was truly more biblical and loving to tell no one? Does God hold us guilty for staying silent in ignorance? And have we missed our window for crying out if we didn’t do it immediately?

Many of us were truly ignorant of God’s requirements at the time of an incident, and while that doesn’t change how God designed His system of justice to work, or the steps He requires of us, it does affect how He views our failure to take those steps.

Idiots.  I'm so sick of their half-assed attempts at Biblical interpretation; it's like they have an abridged set of Bible verses but have never read the actual books....

The Bible is very clear that women are responsible for obeying the Law starting at age 12 and men at age 13.  This is stated clearly and repeatedly in the book of Deuteronomy that the Botkin Sisters adore as the arbiter of sexual activity - so why do they ignore that here?  Holding children to a standard that is higher than the Bibical one is cruel - and an example of the extra-Biblical nonsense that the Botkin Family claims to abhor.   To be clear - the Bible does not blame children under the age of adulthood for failure to obey rules including anything involving sexuality.

Taking a step into reality - the idea that children or people who cannot consent are to blame for sexual assault or abuse is abhorrent and has been as long as I've been alive.   People who have been abused don't need the wishy-washy assurance that God doesn't hate them in spite of their failure to follow the Botkin Response magical steps; God made it clear in Matthew 18:6  that it is better for an abuser to drown themselves than to harm a child's innocent faith in God (and humanity by association).

The last section is about how important it is for victims to report what happened to them to some authority figure.  The Botkin Sisters begin this section with a detailed examination of how following this step will ruin the victim's life:

Going to the authorities, whether employers, parents, church officers, or the police, is often the last thing that a woman wants to do after suffering something traumatizing, humiliating, or painful. And on top of the horror of re-living the incident all over again, is the likelihood that she won’t even be listened to or believed. One of the saddest realities of our times is how often truth-tellers are met with the accusation that they are exaggerating or lying, which can lead to yet another volley of abuse against them. The cost of telling can be very high, and we can’t imagine anything giving a woman the strength to do it except the knowledge that God is the final judge, Who will execute justice on authorities for their oppression of the innocent.

*raises one eyebrow*

I don't agree with encouraging false hope - but holy shit, there's no need to tell victims that no one ever will believe them. Victims deserve to know that the first people they decide to tell will support them - and there are services available to help them.  In my geographic area, the YWCA run a 24/7/365 crisis helpline with access to trained nurses who will listen to victims and help them decide what the next step the victims want to take.  Other areas have that as well and RAINN can help connect people if they call 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).  If nothing else, the person on the other end of the phone at RAINN will believe you - and listen to the story you need to tell.

I'm a parent and I've been a teacher.  The kindest and most important thing an authority figure can do when someone discloses abuse is to listen and believe their story.  Yes, there are different rules that come into play when the legal system is involved or when a person is to be disciplined for a crime - but even if the person who discloses the abuse cannot meet that level of evidence, they still deserve to be listened to compassionately and to be protected from the abuser to the best of the person's ability.  Too often authority figures do nothing to protect the victim if the abuser cannot be found guilty in a court of law - but the bar to help a victim by finding new housing, providing therapy, adjusting a schedule or providing physical separation from the accuser should be much, much lower than the bar to send a person to jail.

Don't be a Botkin; don't pick apart what the victim did  "right" or "wrong".  It's none of your damn business and rankly unchristian to boot.

Lastly, the Botkins decide to let us know that you can report people to authorities in a way that the Botkins will look down on you:

When we take the principles and goals of real justice to heart, it makes a big difference in how we choose to break our silence. Will we seek attention and self-aggrandizement? Will we pursue a path of personal vengeance, simply trying to inflict pain and humiliation on the one who hurt us? Will we wait for dozens of other victims to come forward first? Or will we swiftly go to those who can actually bring the offender to account in pursuit of real justice?

So....damned if you do and damned if you don't.  Nice.

If you make a fuss, you are seeking attention selfishly.  If you don't make a fuss, you are failing other victims.  If the attacker feels bad, you did it wrong.   If you emulate "Kill Bill", you did it wrong, too, because everyone knows that katana attacks are only allowed to prevent a rape.   (Personally, after reading this, I'm a whole lot more partial to a knife-wielding protagonist; may as well get the satisfaction of blood vengeance if you're going to be pilloried for doing everything wrong.)

Don't be a Botkin; be a human being.  The world thanks you for it.