Joyfully At Home: Chapter One - Part One

Hello, everybody!  I wrote this post in bits and pieces over a week-and-a-half so forgive me for the jump backwards to before Spawn's surgery!

Life continues jogging on in Michigan. 

This has been a rapid descent into winter year where we got accumulating snow starting in early November instead of early December.  The accumulated snow has not been terribly deep, thankfully, but it's been just consistent enough to be annoying.   I dawdled at mowing my lawn in mid-October and now I've got a six-inch long lawn growing underneath snow.  Two nights ago, we had strong winds caused by a warm front that brought our daytime temperatures from the high 20's-low 30's to the high 40's - low 50's.  That's ideal grass-cutting temperatures, in my opinion, but we had a slow, steady rain that prevented me from doing any lawn work.  Right now, I'm afraid to step on my lawn for fear that it's become a bog that will swallow my legs to the knee.

On the flip side, the hard freeze has stopped my seasonal allergies dead - so that's been marvelous.

Spawn's eye surgery is next Monday.   He's been medically cleared for everything.  After a 90 minute long opthamology appointment where three highly trained doctors had to independently verify that his eyes are still crossed AND a team of super-technicians had to take photos of his eyes looking in eight different directions, I declared that insurance claims departments should have to provide their own people to take the photographs. This was universally acclaimed by eye doctors of toddlers.  My son is a very mellow tot who seemed to think this was another example of adults acting weird - but trying to get a not-yet-verbal kid to understand that he needed to look up and to the left is a Sisyphean task.

The best advice we got from the cadre of people in the eye doctor's office on applying eye ointment was to do it as sneak attacks while he was sleeping in the morning and nap time.  He's going to be awake and fighting at bedtime - but my husband and I are both home then so we'll just immobilize him and swoop in. 

On a positive note, after a week of eye ointment, I think Spawn will look more kindly on his physical therapist.  She - after all - does not attack him with eye goop when his guard is down like his psychotic parents.

After reviewing two Maxwell books in a row, I needed a break.   A friend recommended reviewing "Joyfully at Home" by Jasmine Baucham.  Ms. Baucham was a featured spokeswoman for the Stay-At-Home Daughter (SAHD) movement after she was interviewed by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin for their documentary "The Return of the Daughters".  I own a second-hand copy of "The Return of the Daughters" but I have not been able to force myself to watch it yet.   "Joyfully At Home" was written after the documentary was filmed and was published in 2010 when Ms. Baucham was 20 years old.  In 2013, she graduated from Thomas Edison State University's online program - possibly through the use of College Plus.  If Ms. Baucham did use College Plus, she is the first person I've heard of to successfully earn a degree using that program.    In 2013, she met Phillip Holmes who she married in 2014 - which means she's the first SAHD published author I've heard of who got married.  Currently, she has a little boy who is close in age to Spawn and she appears to be pregnant with her next child.  Mrs. Holmes teaches two days a week and looks forward to homeschooling her kids once they are old enough.

The first chapter of "Joyfully At Home" is pretty much the standard overview of why Western Civilization is falling apart due to evils like feminism and how being a stay-at-home daughter is part of returning the US to its rightful path.   The section on feminism is strangely similar to writings by the Botkin Sisters:

Feminism is poisonous.

[...]

If feminism was simply the notion that women are of equal worth to men, it would be something that I supported wholeheartedly. (...)

But, also, as Christians, we need to be aware of the dangerous side of feminism: Egalitarianism, for instance, or the idea that men and women are interchangeable. Androgyny - the eradication of gender lines. A sense of entitlement - saying " I deserve this or that" or " I am woman, hear me roar!"(...) Sexism - the sneaky idea that women are of more value than the messy, awkward, mentally inferior, and naturally chauvinistic men in their lives. Defensiveness- the idea that women have to fight for their rights because men are hardwired to dominate and abused them. (pg. 25)

Feminism is the idea that women and men deserve equal rights.   That's it.  As ideologies go, it's very simple.   The bit that conservative Christians dislike is the practical applications of equal rights for men and women - like women should receive equal pay for equal work.   Conservative Christians are equally freaked out by the idea that leadership and authority should be a meritocracy where the people who have the most skills should lead rather than an assumption that men should always lead instead of women.

The rest of the ideas that Ms. Baucham stated are a part of feminism are a mix of straw-men and strange definitions. 

Egalitarianism is actually the idea that all people deserve the same rights. I don't like using the term "interchangeable" because it implies that people are like the parts in a machine and can be swapped out willy-nilly.   People are more more complicated than mufflers on a car.  No, egalitarianism could better be described as not letting arbitrary reasons like race or gender exclude people from opportunities. 

Androgyny means a mixture of male and female characteristics or more broadly that some people don't fit neatly into a binary gender system.   I'm not sure why androgyny is so scary to conservative Christians; letting someone else be outside a binary gender system doesn't force conservative Christians from being as gender-conforming as they want to be.  The Botkin, Duggars, Maxwells, Mally and Ms. Baucham can all live in pink floral dresses with long hair if they want.

A sense of entitlement is a genuine problem for practicing Christians - but what does feminism have to do with that?  I find CP/QF wet-dreams of an uneducated man earning enough income to support a 12 or more person family to be far more entitled than the idea that a woman could be president of the US.  Or how about the recent election whining spate of QF families who want parents to be able to vote for their minor children so that conservatives can win election again?  That's insanely entitled - and insanely self-centered.  I also feel compelled to point out that CP/QF families have been frantically breeding since the late 1980's-1990's and have failed to breed/keep enough members to be an actual political force - just ask the Santorums or Duggars.

I adore how feminism is always accused of being sexist.  It's as tone-deaf as the white conservatives who keep blabbing about people of color are really the racist ones......

Eh...the defensiveness isn't because men are hardwired to abuse women; it's because societies tend to have institutionalized ideas that disproportionately harm women, people of color, people with disabilities and LGBTQ+ persons.   Ironically, I think Mrs. Holmes has come to realize that as she's stepped out of the hothouse that protected and insulated her as the daughter of Voddie Baucham.   She's mentioned on her website that being the only African-American girl at those purity balls was not fun; I wonder if she's realized that the Botkin Sisters' adoration of Rushdoony means that the Botkin Sisters were more than willing to be Jasmine's friend - but Jasmine marrying Noah Botkin would be viewed as immoral because Rushdoony condemns interracial dating and marriage.

Ms. Baucham has plenty more to say on the topic of feminism - but I'm going to stop here so I can cover her next few ideas in the depth they deserve.