Spiritual Self Defense - Get Ready For War - Part One

The fourth installment of the Botkin Sisters blog posts on sexual abuse, rape, harassment and consensual sexual relations that don't fit the CP/QF courtship mantra "Get Ready For War" is an astonishingly tone-deaf work about how victims of abuse, rape or harassment absolutely have to do something to stop their attackers from hurting anyone else afterwards. 

At the end of reading this section, I had two basic observations.  First, most people who want their readers to do something include direct, clear, specific directions for the next steps.  If I want my readers to learn CPR, I'd include a blurb for the Red Cross or American Heart Association.  If I wanted readers to understand how to report child abuse/neglect or domestic abuse, I'd tell them that they call 911 if a child/erson is in immediate danger (e.g., a passerby sees a child being harmed by a parent; the couple in the apartment next door has a screaming, crying fight that includes the sounds of objects being thrown followed by dead silence) or the non-emergency line for their local police department for more chronic issues (e.g., concerns about a sister's refusal to get her niece medical attention for an ongoing issue).   The Botkin Sisters include absolutely nothing about how or even to whom to report abuse, rape, harassment. 

Why do they repeatedly - and annoyingly coyly - state that their podcast and blogs aren't the right venue to discuss the nitty-gritty details of reporting?  I believe they refuse to do so because of the second observation: the Botkin Sisters are completely unable to function as adults.  That's a harsh assessment - but I believe this section highlights how unprepared and inexperienced the sisters are for women who are 32 and 30 years old respectively.

Take a second to think about what you have experienced in your life prior to age 32-30 years (for those who are old enough) or what you've experienced so far if you are younger. 

• In terms of education, I had earned a high school diploma and college credits through AP tests by 18.  I completed a bachelor's degree in Biology/Education with a minor in Chemistry and was a certified teacher for 6-12th grades in Biology and Chemistry.
• In terms of a career, I had worked as a bagger/cashier/department clerk for 8 years and a teacher for 5-7 years. I earned tenure the year I turned 32.  I had held a variety of short term or contract jobs for supplemental income or experience building concurrent with my main income from working at Meijers or teaching.
• In terms of building my nuclear family, I started dating seriously when I was 26 (I think...).  Most relationships petered out when the guy I was dating and I realized we simply were not suited for each other - but I did have one serious relationship with a depressed functional alcoholic who dumped me on his way to a vocational retreat for future priests after lying about his intentions to look into the priesthood.  He never made it into the priesthood - or back into my life.  After that cluster-fuck, I decided dating online could not possibly be worse than that last relationship so I went online and met my husband six months later.  We dated for about a year, and we were engaged for 9 months before we married.  We supported each other through depressive episodes, family squabbles and major surgery for my husband. 

Keep your real life experiences in mind as we discuss some of the more jaw-dropping, eye-popping moments from the Sheltered Sisters:

In response to the deluge of sexual abuse and harassment reports, it’s astonishing to hear so many voices – even from the feminist camp – implying that we can’t ask or expect a woman to do something that would be hard or require personal sacrifice. “She couldn’t have refused him… she might have lost her job!” “She couldn’t have told anyone; she knew a previous woman had told someone and gotten in trouble.” “She couldn’t have fought back; she had so much to lose here.”

See, not all difficult personal sacrifices have the same costs attached.  Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin are kept women; their family's income is enough that they can live as upper-middle class adults without having to do anything as distasteful as finding jobs that support their accustomed lifestyle..   If you read the "About" section on their website, they include a non-descript statement that they 'collaborate' with the rest of their family on ministry items...and the only other item they include that describes work is house-cleaning for their immediate family and child-care for their niece and nephews.  I strongly believe that a lot of traditionally women's work like childcare, support for ill or elderly relatives, and care for a home is devalued since it doesn't earn wages.  Having said that, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth are kidding themselves if they think serving their immediate family including siblings is anything similar to the grind they would have to do if they had to earn their own living.  Their home includes six adults (Geoffrey, Victoria, Anna Sofia, Elizabeth, Lucas and Noah) and no young children or adults with needs for extensive caregiver needs.  Even if the male members do nothing but create messes, that's full-time work for one adult woman if she cooks three meals a day from scratch and does all the laundry.  A second woman might be useful if she gardens and keeps enough animals for food - but that doesn't sound like the Botkin Sisters.   Likewise, sporadic childcare duties and housecleaning support for the 2-3 kids of their married brothers is probably a great relief for their sisters-in-law - but it's nothing like trying to support a middle class lifestyle on house-cleaning and babysitting. 

It's easy enough to preach while sheltered from reality.  Of course, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth would quit a job (or classily submit to being fired) if they were harassed; their income is pin-money for them.  How about if the two of them were supporting the other four adults in the home?  Would it be so easy to walk away from even a single babysitting or house cleaning job with a leering man if that job literally paid the rent?  That requires a bit of imagination on Anna Sofia and Elizabeth's part so let me make it more simple: why haven't Anna Sofia or Elizabeth categorically denounced Doug Phillips after Ms. Torres' accusations?  All the Sisters would be risking is whatever income they receive from lectures involving former Vision Forum members and potentially the disapproval of their father who holds the purse strings in the family.  Huh.  Not that easy, is it?    Hmm....what do we call people who tell other people to do a course of action that they themselves won't do because of the consequences of their actions?  Hypocrites. 

Of course, we must sympathize with these women’s pain, fear, and prospective loss. Saying no or speaking up can cost a woman everything, and it has for many brave silence-breakers. But we also have to realize that statements like this send a message to young women: Doing the Right Thing is what you do when it’s not hard, when it’s not scary, and when there’s no danger that you’ll lose anything.

Or...you know....we can speak out against the structural issues that cause people to lose everything when they speak up about unfair practices.   Let's start with an easy one: gossip.  The Botkin Sisters have managed to turn gossip-mongering into an income stream.  Their two books are filled with little anecdotes of how people they know personally have failed morally.  Is that kind?  Is that going to induce victims to feel confident that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth will support them in the aftermath of going public?  Heck, their podcasts subtly mock young women who ask them very specific questions about what is allowed and not allowed for women to do.  If they are that unthinkingly cruel to people who already trust them and confide in them, who in their right mind would disclose sexual harassment to them?

Their spiel about doing the right thing even when it is hard is a hoot!  These two women have never traveled without a male immediate family member.  They've never volunteered to do physically or emotionally messy work in the community.  The thirty-something women live with their parents and don't have to cover the entirety of their expenses.  The "family ministry" that keeps them SO BUSY is moribund.  In thirteen years, they've written two books, made one documentary, and created one webinar.  They produce about 2 posts a year for their website - and their father's site is even less frequently updated.

I know the two sisters find the idea of moving out of their parents' home morally repellent so I'll make this easier for them.  They should spend a year trying to earn enough money to cover what they would need if they were living independently.  They can do it however they want - home business, working for church members or revitalizing their ministry - but if they want to be taken seriously, the two of them need to start clearing enough income from their endeavors to pay for a two-bedroom apartment, transportation to and from their jobs, food, health insurance (or cost-share ministry), renter's insurance, clothing, and utilities.  Looking up apartment or house rental comps isn't hard; they can track their own needs for food, clothing and transportation; the rest they can get from talking to other people in their church or in their jobs.   On the months they fall short - and there will be months they fall short - they need to cut back in real life the same way they would if living separately from their parents.  (Added benefit: they'll understand the jokes people make about living on Ramen noodles, Tina's burritos, and bargain-basement pot pies since cooking from scratch falls apart when working 60+ hours a week with $100 a month for food.)

Erin Lovette-Colyer, director of the University of San Diego Women’s Center, says that when it comes to dealing with and reporting harassment, “I tell students that whatever feels the most empowering for them is what they should do.” Which, we’re pretty sure, is how Harvey Weinstein’s whole network of effectual accomplices covering things up to protect their own careers and success were operating all along. Actually… we’re pretty sure that’s how Harvey Weinstein was operating, too.

*slow claps*

This is the level of analysis I would expect from a last-minute slapped together essay from a young high school student. 

Harassment is a civil matter.  The most severe remedy for extreme cases involves filing a civil suit. Like many civil matters, there are relatively few hard-and-fast rules for how best to handle a given situation.  The Botkin Sisters - and the rest of their family as well - try to make the world black and white when it's filled with grey areas.  How a person chooses to react to harassment with vary depending on the severity of the incident, how the offender was connected to the person, the options the person thinks are available and the likelihood of the incident happening again.   IOW, getting harassed by a drunk stranger at a baseball concession stand will likely have a different response than the same behavior from a classmate, a professor or a supervisor.    Bluntly, "being empowered" in this situation is a different way of saying "listen to your gut."  If telling the guy at the lab table behind you that you don't want to overhear explicit stories of his sexual exploits sounds like the right response, it is the right response.  An undergraduate might choose to ignore a single issue with a professor that might be harassment as long as it doesn't reoccur - or they might feel the best option is to say to the professor that that interaction made them uncomfortable - or they might need to report the interaction through the college's system. 

I don't know how Harvey Weinstein's associates justified dismissing Weinstein's reputation, but I suspect the process was pretty similar to how Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin managed to miss Doug Phillip's skeevy behavior when it benefited their family.  The family made at least one podcast based on their trip to Boston in 2009 for Vision Forum's Reformation 500 where Anna Sofia and Elizabeth got to do cos-play under the guise of representing important women in the Reformation.  A variety of bloggers from both the upper-class royalty of Vision Forum and the working class supporters describe how chummy the Botkin and Phillips families were - so how did the paragons of virtue in the Botkin family miss Doug Phillip's predilection to molest their nanny?
  (Side note: the description of Anne Boleyn's execution as being caused by her support for the Protestant religion in England is a hoot. A more accepted reading was that her inability to give birth to a healthy son doomed her to fall the internecine power-plays of the court...)

This last quote is sad simply because the Botkin Sisters confuse feminism with the daily restrictions they place on themselves as members of a cult:

With all its promises of strength and liberation, feminism leaves women in the ultimate bondage, the bondage to their own natural sinful tendencies. Bondage to the fear that says, “I just can’t.” To the apathy that says, “It’s not worth it.” To the ambition that says, “It would be OK to trade my principles for success.” To the pragmatism that says, “What would it profit me if I think about my soul and lose the whole world?”

I'm sure the Botkin Sisters know fear; they believe they are too gullible to discern the difference between a potential rapist and a potential suitor.  They believe that listening to a college lecturer who is an atheist discuss any topic will cause them to lose their belief system.  They believe they need their father to dictate where, when, and with whom they go places. 

I'm sure the Botkin Sisters know apathy; descriptions of their busy life is somewhat less than the amount of work, fun, family time and community responsibility that an adult woman has - split across two single women.  I managed to keep up my blog while caring for a medically complex newborn; I have no idea why the Botkin Sisters can't do theirs except apathy or burnout.

We've already discussed how the Botkin Family has chosen silence to maintain their standing in the CP/QF society - so deriding other people's ambition is hypocritical.

Pragmatism - I would say that the Botkin Sisters have made a pragmatic choice.  To enjoy their lifestyle, they've passed up any opportunity to serve among the lost, forsaken, and hurting of the world so that they can be safely ensconced in the Botkin Family enclave.  By not reaching out, the Sisters avoid running into any of the inconvenient moments when life challenges their deeply beloved thoughts and actions.  After all, deviating from Geoffrey Botkin's plan means that they would risk having to support themselves like adults - so pragmatism dictates that it's better to skimp on following Jesus than risk losing their paycheck.