Maidens of Virtue: Scrapbooking Hell

I have a confession to make.  I hate scrapbooking with a passion that I generally reserve for important matters.   My mother-in-law made one good-hearted and genuine attempt to sell me on the joys of making scrapbooks soon after I married.   She loves scrapbooking and hoped it would be something we could do together.  I made it clear that was never going to happen.   I have a hard time explaining exactly why I hate it - but let me give it a shot.

• With mild cerebral palsy, using scissors to cut little shapes out of colored papers is physically painful when the muscles in the palms of my hands cramp up and exasperating because I will have a spasm that causes the scissors to cut in the wrong place destroying the shape.  
• I like looking at photos.  I like arranging and curating descriptions for photos if needed.  Adding a bunch of doo-dabs and frills around the photo distracts from the photos themselves in my opinion.  
• Those doo-dabs and frills seem insanely expensive especially since the final project must be carefully protected from all forms of liquid or oil or light. 

I think most of these issues boil down to the fact that I arrange my home on utilitarian principles. That's my fancy way of  saying I don't like knick-knacks or purely decorative items that require more care than being hung on a wall and dusted every few months.   I add color and interest by purchasing or making visually interesting functional items.  I crocheted a three-color interlocking block patterned afghan made with 7 bold colors to add a splash of color to my beige apartment; it looked good and was warm.   I made a wall of metal hooks in our kitchen to hang pans, skillets, strainers and oddly shaped utensils; it's visually catching and freed up a lot of space in the cupboards.  The central decorative focus in bedrooms is a brightly colored or intricately patterned quilt; they are easy to swap out for guests and provide lots of warmth in an old farmhouse.

Keep this in mind as we slog through the scrapbook section; it's pretty close to my version of hell.

The scrapbook appendix starts with a nostalgic fable about how current maidens will someday show their scrapbook of purity to their grandkids:

"This is the scrapbook your mother and I made together during our Maidens of Virtue study. She was 14 and so full of questions. I felt terribly ill equipped to teach her since no one had ever taught me. As God faithfully revealed his truth to us both, I learned what it means to be a true maiden of virtue by watching God create one- your mother."

Elizabeth hugged her grandmother tightly. " Grandma!" she cried, " I want to become a maiden of virtue just like Mommy was. Do you think that's why Daddy wanted to marry her so much?"

" Yes, Elizabeth, I think your mother's purity and virtue probably had quite a bit to do with your father's interest in her." She smiled. (pg. 195)

First, I enjoy how Stacy McDonald manages to imply that Grandma was a sexual pervert; after all, Grandma had never been a "Maiden of Virtue".  (Also, I read "Maiden of Virtue" in a combination superhero-Oprah voice which makes the entire experience more pleasant.)

Second, don't marry a guy who is interested in your "purity".   That's a sign of abnormal psychology and you don't want to get into that mess.

Third, my husband's grandmother who recently passed away had been married to Opa for 66 years.  He first saw her on a boat passing under a bridge in the Netherlands.  He turned to a friend of his and asked "Hey, who's woman with the great knockers?"  (*After many detailed discussions with native Dutch speakers, the general consensus is that the closest English terms for breasts would be "tits", "knockers" or "hooters" depending on region.)  The well-endowed woman was the friend's younger sister - and Opa lost his ride home.  To this day, he swears it was worth walking 4 miles (and pissing off his friend) to find out who that lovely young woman was.   Their marriage survived living in two different countries where they didn't speak the language, four children and the problems of farm life - so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the importance of "purity" in a marriage partner.

Virtue, on the other hand, is important - but only if it includes the virtues of patience, forbearance, courage, justice, faith (in the broader sense of believing in goals larger than self), hope and love.  If virtue is being used as a signal word for "I'm sexually inexperienced, see the third section.

Apparently, a major part of making the scrapbook of a "Maiden of Virtue" is forcing yourself to enjoy one specific style of femininity as evidenced by this strangely detailed list of ideas for page decorations:

Antique engravings or illustrations from books beautiful, feminine images cut out of old stationary, calendars, or greeting cards ( examples: flowers, babies, leaves, herbs, dresses, ladies, carriages, perfume bottles, bonnets, Victorian-style letters and graphics, teacups, teapots, baking scenes, and cottages) (pg. 197)

Yeah.  The Victorian Era - especially for middle/upper class women - is my version of hell.  I can visualize what that scrapbook page looks like and I want to consign the page to a bonfire.

What is the purpose of idolizing this anyways?  A young woman can fill a scrapbook with pictures of hoop-skirts, ball gowns and bonnets, but she's not going to spend her life wearing them especially if she's from the lower income levels of CP/QF.  I enjoy flower arranging, growing herbs and cooking - but making a scrapbook page of those things doesn't increase a girl's skill level in those areas nearly as much as actually doing those things.

Probably not allowed to make the babies look like they're getting drunk on perfume bottles that look like tiny flasks, huh?  And yet....that's what mine would have looked like.

Final note: Please don't destroy real books to make a scrapbook; that's gross and short-sighted.

The next series of projects is categorized under "Memory Making Projects" - but one of the projects feels a lot like a biography report I did in 4th-6th grade:

Memory making projects

Read a biography, or glean information from the encyclopedia or Internet about her life. Make sure you use the sources and take plenty of notes. Write down specific anecdotes or sketches from her life. Was she married? How many children did she have? Will she persecuted or murdered for her faith? What makes you think she was a Godly woman? (...)

Lady Jane Grey

Katie Luther

Corrie Ten Boom

Sarah Edwards

Susanna Wesley

Anne Bradstreet

Elizabeth Prentiss

Florence Nightingale

Your mother or grandmother

a Godly Titus 2 woman in your life (pgs. 201-202)

Good luck finding a biography, reference book or online encyclopedia on your mother, grandmother or that nice lady from your church. 

I ran quick internet searches for the other ladies - there's plenty of information on all of the women (especially if you recognize "Katie Luther" as Katharina Luther or Katharina von Bora) except Sarah Edwards.  She was the wife of Jonathan Edwards who preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God".  All I could scratch together on her was the fact that she was married to Edwards who was impressed by her piety and that they had eleven children.  I suppose Mrs. McDonald may view that as an adequate amount of information to scatter on a page among pictures of children playing with flowers in carriages with Gothic font - but I wouldn't send a kid off after such a scantly researched person.  Of course...she might have meant Esther Edwards Burr.  The third daughter of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, she left behind a series of letters in a journal that describe her life and theological leanings.

I wonder if it is by design that the two women who were unmarried and childless were Ten Boom (who is about the only person on the list I would recommend a kid research because she's awesome) and Florence Nightingale.  I've got no beef with Nightingale - but I doubt McDonald has really looked into her actual life accomplishments in statistics, epidemiology, and professionalizing nursing compared to the romantic myth of "The Lady with the Lamp".

Mrs. McDonald has a thing about baths and cleanliness being next to godliness.  Enjoy this insanely detailed outline of how to make a page about the joys of bathing.

Powdered and perfumed

Create a "Powdered and Perfumed" page. Find Scripture verses pertaining to cleanliness and purity, and place them in hand-drawn "bath bubbles." Write out short statements that were meaningful to you during the section of study. Be sure to communicate why you think cleanliness is important.

Use graphics, photos, stickers, or drawings of things pertaining to the bath. Decorate further with dried lavender, rose petals, or decorative soap wrappers.

Graphic or drawing suggestions:

Old fashioned bathtub, shampoo bottles, perfume bottles, herbs, soap, towels, bubbles, bathroom, Victorian dressing down, vanity table, slippers, rubber duck, scrub brush, water faucet, clotheslines, wash bucket. (pg. 203-204)

I can see an immediate problem for me.  I do not own and do not want to own decorative soaps - or the wrappers they are sold in.    I'm sure there are ways to place decorative soap wrappers in a scrapbook tastefully, but mine would end up being crumpled messes held in place with Scotch tape.  Eventually, the wrappers would drop into the lap of unsuspecting victims like a mis-sized glitter bomb.

Earlier, Mrs. McDonald rightfully pointed out that floral material needs to be stored in waxed paper envelopes within the scrapbook.  Decorating the bath section with rose petals and lavender will both hasten the breakdown of the scrapbook from acids within the plants and attract a fascinating series of mites.  (Ask me how I know...)

The repeated descriptions of lotions, soaps and powders are making my skin itch.....

The best way to normalize a new, strange ritual is to include descriptions of a daughter pledging her heart to her father over and over and over:

A daughter's heart

Compose a poem or letter to your father describing your trust in his guidance. Let him know by your words that you are committed to remaining pure and are thankful for his protection and leadership.

You could take the idea from chapter 18 and plan to give a symbolic " heart" to your father as a gift. www.jamesavery.com has various unique and reasonably priced heart charms to choose from. Ask your mother if she is interested in contributing to your project by buying a chain or pin from which the charm can dangle. It will be a great blessing for him to have a reminder that you have willingly surrendered your "heart" to him.

Make a "kingly protector" scrapbook page. Fill it was father-daughter momentos. Include poems, letters, photos, postcards, or other reminders of your relationship. Be sure to include special photos of the giving or receiving of heart charms, promise rings, or other symbolic gifts. (pg. 204)

I laugh every time I think of the poor fathers whose daughters stumbled into EmoPure themselves who get this insane letter from their daughters.  I suspect that if I had handed that letter to my dad, either he - or more likely my mom - would have had a serious sit-down talk with me about....dunno really.....growing up?  Being an adult? Not letting fear control my life?  The creepiness of an Electra complex? 

Much to my surprise, the www.jamesavery.com site is still fully operational - but hardly what I would call affordable for most CP/QF families.  The cheapest heart charms are $30.00 each.  I also cannot find any masculine jewelry that could hold a heap of heart charms. 

How many letters can you fit on a scrapbook page?  One?  For families in which the father doesn't do long distance travel, how many letters or postcards do dads write to their kids?   Of course, mine would be decorated with scraps of theatrical lighting gels that I purloined interspaced with Canadian coins and bills. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by lighting gels - but I wasn't allowed to play with them because the oils on hands can degrade the material... so I collected the tiny scraps leftover from burnt gels from my Dad's productions.   Dad took a yearly trip to Stratford, Canada with his high school students to watch a well-done Shakespeare play.  He brought us back souvenirs - but my favorite was always the far-cooler Canadian coins.   Long live the loonies and toonies!

Courtship and marriage
 Write a short letter to God indicating your trust in him and that you are committed to remaining faithful to your future spouse (whether a husband or the Lord, if God calls you to remain unmarried). Decorate it with beautiful fonts, stickers, flowers or other embellishments, and place it in your scrapbook. Include Scripture that relates to purity, trust, faithfulness, contentment, and joy. Pray that God will guard your future husband's heart and help him to remain pure in thought and deed for you as well. Ask the Lord to bless your womb and give you children to train up for his glory.

Warning! Be careful to guard your heart against of obsessing. Remember that God is sovereign and it is possible he may call you to single maidenhood. Remember, God will not only equip and give you special grace for whatever he calls you to do, he will also give you joy in it! Therefore, be content. Ask your mother if she feels it is wise for you to do this project. If it might cause you to fall into temptation, it is better that you skip this one. (pg. 204)

Warning!  This is a bad idea.  If young women are following this advice literally, they are stuck writing a strangely divided letter that declares their trust in God who will decide if they should marry or stay single - but the girl would really appreciate it if God keeps her future husband's heart pure...and blesses her womb with kids....unless she's going to be single. 

I don't know which would be worse - coming upon this letter years later as a SAHD in her late thirties who expected to be a mother celebrating her 15th anniversary by this point or coming upon this letter as an unhappily married woman who is feeling trapped because of her large family and few job prospects.

We have one post left in this series: A series of ridiculously shallow questions on the great classic novel "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte!

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.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 19

I am over this book.  I've been over this book for a while, but I'm reaching the point that I'm dragging my feet to avoid having to blog about it.  The stories make me feel claustrophobic by proxy. 

On a positive note, we've got about three chapters left and I skipped one entirely.  Oh, and the remaining chapters are short.   At the end of the chapters, I'm going to discuss my feelings about some of the "projects" included at the end.

Anyway, this chapter is titled "The Heart of a Maiden".  It commemorates the day that Mrs. McDonad's daughters gave their hearts to the safekeeping of their father.  Most of the chapter is reprints of the letters or poems the older daughters wrote and read to their father during the ceremony.  There's not much to discuss there; it's pretty standard teenage writing.

The chapter starts with a snippet written by Jessica McDonald:

This was our morning - the morning we gave Daddy our " hearts." He already had our hearts, of course, this is the moment we showed him we really meant it. Today we gave him a keepsake - a representation of our hearts - a symbol of our trust in him. I'll remember this morning for the rest of my life. From the way Daddy smiled, I think he will too. (pg. 172)

I remembered this quote because Jessica McDonald unconsciously demonstrated how absent the entire idea of consent is in CP/QF homes.  There is no way for any of the daughters to decide that they are perfectly content keeping their own hearts.   There's never any discussion that teens or adult women are capable of managing romantic relationships without a male gatekeeper.  This absence of a way to opt out is important because if a person can't say "no", they can't really say "yes" either.   Yes, Jessica and her sisters are excited about ceremonially handing their hearts over to the keeping of their father - but it is meaningless since he "already" had their hearts.

Before our children reached the " dating" age, we made a decision to explore courtship. There are many different opinions of what courtship should look like, and each family will have to determine how this will play out in their own lives.

In 2003, my daughters decided to give their father a special gift, one that will symbolize their willingness to trust in him with their hearts until the day he walks them down the aisle to entrust them to another in marriage. After the girls and I discuss their plan, I purchase a sterling silver engravable bar pin charm holder and had Malachi 4: 6 engraved on it in soft script. Each of my daughters then purchased a unique heart-shaped charm and wrapped them separately. ( I bought the younger girls' charms.) (pgs. 172-173)

Again, Mrs. McDonald demonstrates that even adult children are not allowed to have autonomy over their romantic lives.  The parents have decided that their children will meet spouses according to a courtship model created by the parents.   I see a practical problem with individual families deciding how courtship should go since this means that every family has a different set of guidelines.  This lack of autonomy is worrisome for the maturity level of the adults who are looking to get married and have children.   Of course, that lack of maturity may well be a feature of raising CP/QF children rather than a flaw; it's easier to prevent people from leaving when they don't have the emotional skills to do so.

I hope that she got all of Malachi 4:6 engraved on the holder since it states "He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse".   I know that's a lot of characters to fit on a pin, but he's got a heap of daughters to hang heart charms for on the pin. 

Let's talk for a minute about how old the McDonald daughters were when this whole ceremony went down.  The oldest three young women were certainly old enough to be dating by US standards at ages 19, 17 and 16 so this ceremony makes sense.  The next daughter was 13.  That feels a bit young to me in broader US culture for anything other than going to a school dance or a movie with a young man.  After all, she's too young to drive.  In CP/QF land, it makes even less sense because she's not supposed to be thinking about romance at all since she's way too young to marry.   Their last three daughters were ages 5, 2, and 1.  Oh, there's an implication that the youngest girls will do the same ceremony when their older - but, holy shit, they should simply be spectators!  The five-year-old might remember the ceremony, but the two babies won't.    The only way I can wrap my head around it is that Mrs. McDonald pre-purchased the little girls heart charms to be sure that they matched (but they are supposedly unique) or to be sure that the charms wouldn't have been discontinued in the next 12 years or so. 

So...what happens when one of the girls get married?  Does he rip the charm off the pin?  Does he hand it to her husband at the altar?  Is handing the heart over to the husband the literal moment of marriage since women obviously can't handle something as hard as consenting to a marriage?

That's the end of the main section of the chapter.  In the middle of the "Share your heart" questions, there's a random list of tips for guarding your heart:

Practical tips for " guarding your heart":

1. Read God's Word and pray everyday. Specifically ask God to help you guard your heart. Pray for your father to make wise decisions regarding your training.

2. Avoid being alone with a young man. It is best to fellowship and foster healthy relationships with young men within the environment of the home and family.

3. Avoid fantasizing about who might be " Mr. Right." Stay on guard, especially when you sense that you may be attracted to a young man (or that he might be attracted to you). Remember your goal is to stay pure for the one you marry, both physically and emotionally.

4. Talk to your parents about your feelings. Let them know when you need prayer in a specific area. God has placed them over you for your protection -trust them and Him. (pg. 175)

Let's see. 

The fact that girls are supposed to pray for their father's to make good decisions about their "training" is super-weird in a creepy way.  What are they being trained for exactly?  If it's to be a wife and mother, shouldn't her MOM (who successfully navigated the transition from child to wife/mother) be making those decisions?

The second point is just going to make the awkward preteen and early teenage years when young people are trying to figure out how to interact with peers of the opposite gender without being totally self-conscious last forever.  Heck, Ask A Manager - which I love - already has a decent selection of people who are messing up their own careers by enforcing stricter versions of the Pence Rule.

The third point is going to make people insane while causing them to spend more time obsessing over Mr. Right.  The funniest part is that interacting with Mr. Right alone is the best way to kill a crush quickly. 

Number four is ok assuming that the daughter's parents are sane.  Raising a kid in emotion purity, though, feels like the parents might be a tad overprotective.   Also, remember that Geoffrey Botkin would deride every single guy his daughters were remotely interested in....and the sisters are both unmarried at 30-ish.
 

The following letters and poems were written by our daughters. None of us will ever forget Tiffany's wedding day, and the moment at the reception when my husband, with tears in his eyes, read her poem aloud, and handed to Ben Tiffany's heart on a chain. (pg. 175)

Huh. Tiffany's symbolic heart was handed off to Ben while everyone had to listen to a poem she wrote when she was 17. I 've been through worst toasts, I suppose.    What does Ben do with the charm now?  Does he have to wear it all the time?   Is he buried with the charm or does Tiffany reclaim it if he predeceases her?   

Probably best to simply leave it in Tiffany's jewelry box.

Mally Family rejoices in survival after neglecting basic safety:

I had lost track of the Mally family since I finished reviewing "Before You Meet Prince Charming" and decided to go visit their blog. 

Sarah Mally has written a new book for young women that teaches them to suppress all of their negative emotions or critical thoughts under the guise of following Jesus.   I'll probably review that at some point - but I prefer getting second-hand copies so it may be a while. 

Next up, Grace Mally wrote a post about how her family was in a serious single-vehicle accident during snowy weather.    Their brother Steven was driving when he lost control on an icy area.  The heavily loaded passenger van they were driving hit a post-and-cable center median barrier and went through it.   The van rolled across two lanes of oncoming traffic before stopping on the far side of the highway. 

The accident itself is pretty normal in the northern US.  Steven was trying to pass a semi-truck on the highway.  The passing lane is often less traveled and more slick than the right-hand through traffic lane.  The air flow around semi-trucks often includes areas of increased wind pressure.  A tall vehicle like a van is at higher risk for a rollover and can act like a sail in windy times. 

What really pisses me off is that Sarah, Grace and their mother were all not wearing seatbelts at the time of the accident - in spite of known bad weather and, oh yeah, the fact that seatbelts are counted as one of the most important public safety inventions of the 1900's. 

Grace ends with an asinine reflection about how people will remain safe until God decides to bring them home.   

My take is more cynical: people survive absolutely insanely dangerous life-choices pretty regularly - but I don't think God appreciates people who skip basic precautions. 

Idiots.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 18

I'm sorry that I have to review this chapter.  As with many chapters in "Raising Maidens of Virtue" by Stacy McDonald, the material in this chapter is simply gross.  There's nothing particularly graphic in this section, but I do need to have a frank discussion about sexual assault within the context of military and warfare.   If this is going to bring up painful memories, please skip this post.

Thankfully, this chapter is blessedly short and I've only got three quotes to discuss.  The first quote is standard gender stereotyping:

Every little girl dreams of being a princess- especially one who is rescued by daring and valiant prince! Something in the female design relishes the thought of being cherished and protected by a man- first by her father and later by her beloved husband. This is evident in the way a daughter's eyes light up when Daddy says she's pretty and the way a young bride's heart skips a beat because her enamored husband fawns over her, insisting on carrying the " heavy things" - the same heavy things she managed to carry just fine before they met. It is in the face of an older woman who smiles at a young man who opens the door for her- a disappearing practice. (pg. 163)

I never wanted to be a princess.  The average princess of fairy tale lore has a miserable life.  She's orphaned, dealing with an abusive step-parent, kept in total isolation, and pretty much waits around for a guy to rescue her.   Additionally, princesses wore floofy dresses and heels.  For someone with minor mobilities issues as a child, the idea of trying to walk on stilts with material underfoot was terrifying.

No, I wanted to be an explorer.  I wanted to go to new places and create maps for other people to follow.  As I got older, I realized my courage wasn't equal to the risks of exploration - but I could lead students to new places as a teacher (even if the journey was a bit metaphorical).

As a child, I appreciated the fact that both of my parents loved me and protected me.  I also liked the idea of getting married and raising kids some day in the future.   I don't think I ever really thought of my husband as a protecting force.  My husband generally carries items that are too large, bulky or heavy for me to deal with - but he doesn't make a big deal about it.  I suspect the reason he doesn't preen about his ability to carry in the bags of water softener salt is that he grew up on a farm and knows he's strong.  Likewise, I did giggle appreciatively (and still do occasionally) when he moves something that seems insane to me like his ability to scoop up a 100 pound wiggly damp newborn calf and carry it across the barn.    That always blows my mind - but he points out that he's got much longer arms than I do so he can essentially bear-hug the calf.  My arms don't overlap so I often lose my grip on the calf.   The biggest difference between the newly married groom and my husband is that my husband pitches in as a matter of basic courtesy.  Yeah, he carried water out to the chickens when I was on a weight lifting restriction while pregnant with Jack - and he'd do that for anyone else who needed help.   It wasn't about flaunting his strength; it was about getting the job done effectively.

I generally cared for my son's NG tube including placing and taping the tube.  My husband was quite capable of doing it, but years of crafting, sewing and mass-batch canning has honed my fine motor skills so I could do more quickly and more confidently.   Honestly, placing the NG tube through his nose into his stomach involved a hand-motion very similar to threading a sewing machine needle and I had an easier time feeding the tube down until it was in Jack's stomach.

Cry me a river about disappearing social customs.  *rolls eyes*  The custom hasn't disappeared; it's just adapted.  The main rule now is the person who gets to the door first holds it open for anyone who is passing nearby.  The only exception is that someone who is unencumbered holds the door for people who might have issues opening the door.  Believe you me - I give a grateful smile and "Thank you!" to anyone who grabbed the door when I was carrying my son or dealing with a recalcitrant stroller or had two bags of chicken feed in my arms.

It is no longer unusual for a mother to allow virtual strangers to feed, nurture, and trade her infant while she heads her off to a self-promoting career. Sometimes the father is left home to tend the little ones and applauded for becoming a " Mr. Mom".  Roles are reversed, and everyone cheers.

In our day, young maidens even have the "right" to go to battle to protect and die for perfectly strong and able grown men who choose not to serve their country - or in some cases, not even working an honest job. Young maidens are given equal opportunity to crouch in muddy ditches, shoulder to shoulder, sweating and bleeding alongside " fellow" soldiers in combat. Equal opportunity might just end if she finds herself captured by the enemy, but we're not supposed to think about that. (pg. 165)

Good God, Stacy.  NO ONE leaves their baby with virtual strangers.   When people leave their children with caregivers - either in a daycare center, a home-based center, a relative or medical professionals - the parents get to know the caregivers dearly.  We never picked a primary nurse for Jack - mainly because his nurses were so awesome that we didn't want to exclude anyone - but we got to know the main 10-15 nurses who worked with him very, very well.  The nurses got to know us well, too.  I became the local "no, your teenager is behaving totally normally for a ____ year old" comforter while my husband was known for having great random explanations of how our son was like or unlike a newborn cow.

Yes, men have become much more involved in the lives of their children in the last 50 years - and everyone outside of CP/QF thinks that's a good thing.  I've been so glad that my husband has been directly involved in caring for my son.  I'm sure that it's good for my son - but I know my husband cherishes his time with our son.

Many conservative Christians revere the US military - and yet are completely oblivious to the actual realities of the military.   Currently, the US military is run entirely by volunteers; we don't have an active draft.  This means her yammering about unemployed young men not being in the army is completely pointless.  During both editions of this book, women were excluded from most combat roles in the military.   Mrs. McDonald did somehow realize a truth that many people have pointed out: the 15% of active military members who are women do end up in combat zones and are at risk.  What Mrs. McDonald misses, though, is that there is nothing new about women being present in combat zones.  Wars do not happen in unoccupied deserts or on mountain tops above human habitation.  Wars happen in agricultural fields, in towns, in villages and in cities.   Throughout history, women have followed armies as support workers of all stripes.   Since nursing became a profession, women have been in field hospitals to care for the wounded.  Having military women at risk of death or injury is not new.

Bluntly, only in the US have CP/QF women been cossetted enough to assume that the main way that women end up in danger during war is as soldiers. Most women who are harmed during war are local women who were simply trying to work and raise their families prior to the war - and who are still doing so in terrible conditions.

One of the horrible things about war is the history of sexual abuse of soldiers by captors and by comrades.  Now, Mrs. McDonald cattily reminds us that women are at high risk of being raped if captured during war.   Her off-hand bitchiness about rape is horrifying enough - but she also shows herself to be completely oblivious to the risks of sexual assault for men in the military.  The long-term physical and psychological issues for male victims of rape have been ignored for far too long.  A good first step was recently accomplished when a law was passed that allows veterans to access VA psychological support for sexual assault after leaving active duty so that members of the National Guard and retired service members can get badly needed supports.

Just like Grandma used to say, "If you act like a lady, you'll be treated like one." Likewise, if you act like a harlot, you can be certain there will be those who are more than willing to treat you like one. Furthermore, if you act like a man, you just may get what you ask for.

We do live in a fallen world, and many sweet young maidens have, in fact, been treated like harlots through no fault of their own. Similarly, many harlots who do not deserve honor have been treated with great respect bye well trained Christian gentleman, but the general principle still applies you will most likely be treated according to how you present yourself. (pg. 165-166)

Jesus.   Mrs. McDonald is gross.  Just....gross.

I don't remember either of my grandmothers saying the "if you act like a lady" spiel - but if they did, they only meant it in that case.  If you expect people to treat you with respect, most will.  My family feels that a more important example of this would be "If you treat people with respect, you will be treated with respect."  Stacy McDonald doesn't believe that all people are worth of respect.  Apparently women who are classed as "harlots" are no longer worthy of respect.   My family believes all people are worthy of respect.  We do that because we follow Jesus who was pretty straightforward in his beliefs that all people are worthy of basic respect. 

Stacy McDonald needs to read the Bible more.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 17

Well, the chapter "Daddy's Fair Maiden" in Stacy McDonald's mother-daughter book "Maidens of Virtue" does an excellent job of portraying how creepy the idea of a father keeping his daughter's heart safe prior to marriage sounds to the rest of humanity.  Along the way, Mrs. McDonald takes swipes at non-CP/QF teenagers, offering age-appropriate Sunday Schools at churches, and the entire idea of Youth Group at churches.  Really, all this has done is make me extremely worried about any churches that hired her husband James McDonald as a pastor. 

We may as well jump in at the beginning:

Emily waited for her parents by the water fountain, the designated meeting place after Sunday school class was over. She watched the young people file out of the classroom. Many, she knew, did not claim Christ, although they came to church and Sunday school each week - a prerequisite for attending Friday night youth group. Youth Group - this was one of the seemingly many activities she wasn't allowed to join. Emily tried to shrug off growing sense of resentment. Why did her family always have to be so different?

Emily's parents had asked her if she would join them in their adult Sunday school class, so they could all learn together. She already attended the worship service with her parents, instead of sitting with the " youth kids." Emily had begged to remain in the teen Sunday school class at least until the end of the year, and her father reluctantly agreed. All the other kids at church were in age segregated classrooms -she didn't want to be different again. (pg. 155)

An important technique for creating a realistic fictional character is to map out their backstory.  An author would be well served by answering some questions about Emily like how many siblings she has, where does she fit in the family birth order and how old Emily is before launching into writing the story.   I bring this up because I have no idea why Emily is waiting for her family at a water fountain if she's old enough to be in a youth group and around people who are old enough to date.  If she has a ton of younger siblings who can't be trusted to head out to the car, that makes sense.  If not, is Emily too immature to make it to the car?

Let me get this straight: Emily's family attends an age-segregated church where they allow her to attend the teenage section under protest but won't let her go to the youth group or sit with the other teenagers at the service.  Those kind of parents tend to bring up three possible concerns for me.  First concern: the teenager is in a domestic abuse situation with one or both parents and is being isolated to prevent intervention.  Second concern: massively over controlling parents who are trying to keep their teens dependent on them.  Third concern: the teenager has such severe behavioral issues that they cannot be left alone without potentially bad outcomes. 

Has Emily's family asked anyone about if Emily (and any younger siblings) are welcome into the adult study group - or are they simply going to spring this on the facilitator/pastor? 

The parish I grew up in was relatively low on age groupings simply because it was a small parish focused on reaching Catholics who felt marginalized in "normal" parishes.  We had a much higher than average population of single parents, divorced parents, members with developmental or intellectual disabilities, and an entire group of Deaf Catholics.   In that setting, most of the classes held in the day or evenings were open to anyone who wanted to attend - usually.  The major exception was that some classes were covering topics that might be disturbing to kids, involved a long-term committment to a project, or involved people sharing life experiences like abuse or drug addiction.  Parents were assumed to steer their kids away from classes like that. 

I'd hate to be the presenter covering sexuality in marriage on the day that Emily's clueless parents trot their extremely sheltered daughter in to class....

Mrs. McDonald spends a few paragraphs making sure everyone knows that the other teenagers at Sunday School are unsaved heathens who are not worth the time to characterize.  Eventually, she drifts back to her main character:

Although Emily had many good friends, at the moment it seemed as though she didn't have a friend in the world. Confused by her intense desire to fit in, she temporarily lost sight of the wonderful family she had. For a moment she even seem to forget God. (pg. 156)

That paragraph was written to immunize the mothers reading this book against taking their daughters' heartfelt loneliness too seriously.  See, Emily isn't really lonely; she's got good friends who are so great that they don't even get names*!  Emily can't be lonely if she has a family!  Families fulfill every need a human has!  Loneliness is a sign of idolatry because if Emily is lonely she's putting humans before God!

*I described this quote to my husband.  He blinked, paused for a moment and said, "They name their girl children?  Shouldn't their names be given by their husbands?"  He paused for a moment and said, "Saying that makes me feel gross." 

Yes, my love, reading these books makes me feel gross, too.  That's why I write the blog.

She knew Brittney's dress and behavior did not honor God, yet Emily found herself drawn to her magnetic personality and even a little jealous of her sophisticated appearance.

Emily look down at the simple, pretty dress she was wearing. Her mother had made it for her last summer, and Emily had relished the time spent alone with her helping to sew on the lace trim and silk buttons. She had thought at the most beautiful dress she had ever seen and had twirled around as fast as she could to make the skirt form a circle in the air. Somehow, she now felt strange and conspicuous in her beautiful dress - maybe even a bit silly. (pg. 156)

*gasps and clutches pearls*

If Emily's behavior doesn't honor God....does that mean that works matter?  What kind of hard-core Calvinist are you! Brittney might be a member of the Elect -and won't Mrs. McDonald feel bad when she find that out later.

The second paragraph is a sweet reflection on the joys of sewing that leaves me wondering just how many siblings Brittney has.  If Brittney's an only child or youngest child at home, cherishing time alone with her mom doesn't make much sense.  If she's an oldest daughter in a massive family, it makes more sense (along with the water fountain meeting point) but makes me worried about how many kids are going to be dragged to the adult Sunday school class. 

On the sewing point: what kind of dress was Brittney wearing?  Lace trim goes into and out of fashion pretty regularly so that seemed reasonable on a teenager's church dress.  Silk buttons, though, were jarring.  I've only ever worn silk buttons on prom and wedding attire.  Maybe Mrs. McDonald meant fabric covered buttons which would have been dowdy on a teenager in the 1980's - but I think it would have been possible.  Or perhaps Mrs. McDonald knew exactly what she meant and Emily wearing a potential wedding dress to church every week to signal that she's of marriageable age....

Brittney sashayed passed Emily with an entourage of admiring boys. Emily wondered what it would be like to have boys look at her the way they looked at Brittney. She blushed as she imagined dressing in Brittney's clothes and enjoying the same attention. Emily knew Britney dated; she imagined what it to go out with a boy. Her mind continue to wonder...

Her thoughts suddenly switch to her father and how disappointed he would be with her recent thoughts. She found herself feeling ashamed and confused. (pg. 156-157)

CP/QF authors often describe teenage vignettes that I've never seen before.  I've never seen a teenage girl with such raw sexual appeal that scads of young men follow her around like ducklings to the exclusion of all other girls.   Teenagers are descended from people who managed to mate successfully.  Finding a potential mate or romantic interest is as much a numbers game as anything else.  Unless Brittney has a group of wing-women with her, guys who she's not that into will break off and find other girls.  Heck, if Emily wants the guys to notice her in her wedding dress Sunday dress, she could try talking calmly and attentively to Brittney..

Ew....

Emily feels ashamed because she thinks her father would be disappointed that she has sexual feelings.   That's a seriously messed up way to raise a kid. 

She's more than old enough to have sexual feelings and thoughts.  Emily's not done anything wrong under the vast majority of moral codes.  She's not leering or behaving in behaviors that make others uncomfortable.  She's not engaging in premarital flirtation let alone premarital sex. 

Teaching Emily to associate sexual feelings or thoughts with shame is setting her up for a hard transition to married sexuality....

Emily had felt secure and protected the day her father had taken her hands in his and promised to protect her until the day he placed her hand in that of her husband. She had agreed not to give her heart away, but instead to remain emotionally and physically pure before marriage, and trust her parents guidance through courtship instead of dating (Isaiah 62:5)

"Where's my fair maiden?" asked a strong, loving voice behind her. Emily snapped out of her reverie of discontent and faced her protector ashamed. He stood beside her mother, his admiring eyes and cheerful words reminding her of who she truly wanted to be - her father's fair maiden. (pg. 157)

Did Emily truly have the option of saying no to her father's offer of "protection" in return for accepting a courtship model of dating?  If a person can't say no, they cannot really say yes either. 

That quote from Isaiah 62 has nothing to do with courtship, emotional purity or dating.  It's describing that God rejoices in Israel in the same way that a groom rejoices in his bride. 

There is a clear, bright line between the familial affection between parents and children and the inappropriate incestuous abuse.  This story is on the moral side of the line - but, damn, it's close to that line.   My dad and mom were often proud of me and happy about how mature and grown-up I was becoming.  The word "admiring" is a bit more ambiguous since it can imply an ownership of the other person or can be used to describe appreciating someone's sexual attractiveness.  With the public testimony of the Willis family's oldest daughter that she was sexually abused by her father starting in early childhood through when she left her home, I'm very sensitive right now to readers of this book who might be in a similar situation.

Then another thought hit her. What if she were to dress and act like Brittney? Not only would she not be able to bear the disapproving gaze of her father, but what would her future husband think of her? Would he turn and run? Would he want to marry someone who behaves like a loose, silly girl? Or would he be waiting for a true maiden of honor-has her father had done? Emily glance tenderly at her mother.

In stark contrast, she turned to see Brittney hanging on a boy's arm, laughing indiscreetly. She contemplated further: if he were interested in someone like Brittney, would Emily really want to marry him- a man with no depth, no standards or wisdom, lit only by his visual, temporal pleasures? No way! (pg. 157)

Hi, Emily's mom!  I'm glad you've received a token acknowledgement of existence.  This whole story makes me wonder if post-menopausal women continue to exist in CP/QF life - or do they disappear after they can no longer reproduce?  Equally importantly, women have traditionally been in charge of teaching their daughters the sexual mores of a community.  Women also take on the majority of monitoring their daughters' adherence to the mores.  Handing that job off the to men - even the girl's father - feels inappropriate.

Notice that Mrs. McDonald is slut-shaming Brittney for being more popular with the boys than Emily.  Brittney's not done anything inappropriate so far.  She's touched a guy's arm while flirting and laughed loudly.   That's normal operating procedure for Midwestern/Great Lakes teens.  In terms of wisdom, Brittney's not spent the last few minutes obsessing over what her father thinks of her budding sexuality so I'm giving the wisdom badge to Brittney.

So...Emily wants to marry someone as judgmental towards others as she is and expects him to be as confused and conflicted about sexuality as she is.  Cool.  That sounds like a match made in heaven.  *shudders*

The story wraps up with Emily giving her dad a hug followed by a completely far-fetched change of heart by Brittney:

Emily didn't notice, but Brittney had caught sight of the precious father -daughter embrace, and a curious pang of longing struck her heart. What was it like to be loved and protected the way this young girl was loved and protected? How much does it feel to be so confident of God's love that you didn't have to beg for the wrong kind of attention by stooping to flirtatious stunts? Emily was one of the only girls at church who appear different to Brittney.

[...]

Brittney had met many Christians at this church, but she hadn't met anyone who seemed to be so much different than anyone else you knew. Maybe Emily and her family were really different - maybe they had some answers. She decided to ask. (pg. 158)

Yes!  Go have dinner with Emily's family.  That will end well.   Emily is smouldering with barely repressed jealousy towards Brittney who she's pre-judged to be a whore.  Emily is transferring all of her budding sexual energy into her relationship with her dad.  I'm sure Emily's mother is totally ok with all this energy between her husband and daughter. 

In real life, teenagers will pick a budding romantic relationship with a peer over a healthy hug between a random father and daughter.  Thank God for that - it will keep Brittney away from this crazy family.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 15

Following the importance of raising good little homemakers, "Lady of Leisure" in Stacy McDonald's "Maidens of Virtue" is a realistic fiction morality tale.  I think the intended moral is that lazy, self-centered young women are not attractive to men - but the moral I got was that a stay-at-home daughter with absentee parents can get away with doing nothing of value for months at a time.

The writing in this section is solid since the genre is playing to Mrs. McDonald's strengths.  The main issue for me is that Mrs. McDonald's vignettes of farm life range stretch believability. 

The main thing I enjoyed about this section is that the female lead character is a full-blown narcissist.  She's a complete mental case - and I doubt Mrs. McDonald meant for her to be written like that.   This chick is totally unconcerned with anything that does not directly and immediately affect her and has an overblown sense of her own importance.   Mrs. McDonald implies that these characteristics are due to Ashley's habit of reading novels, but personality disorders do not spring from a healthy mind even a healthy mind with a habit for romance novels.

This is a bit of a first, but I don't have any direct quotes from the chapter.

The story starts with Ashley (who is 22) resting in a hammock while reading a book on a nice, if somewhat hot, day.   Her mom and sisters start planting a garden behind the barn.  Ashley decides that the female members of the family decided to start planting right then specifically to guilt-trip Ashley into helping them out.   Don't worry; ol' Ashley's smarter than that!  She decides to go into the house to finish her book.

Personally, I'm think Ashley's probably right about her family's motives.  Unless her mother and younger sisters (Emmaline, age 19 and Rachel, age 12) adore working in direct sunlight and heat, I have no idea why they would start planting a garden in the middle of the day.   I arrange my outdoor chores so that hot, sunny chores are done first thing in the morning or in the evening; in the middle of the day, I do chores in shade or in farm buildings.

Ashley enjoys a lemonade indoors and brings some out to her sisters and mother who are still working in the garden.   In a completely unconvincing moment, Ashley feels a twinge of guilt at not working with her family and far more convincingly collects the glasses and dashes to her room to read in peace so she doesn't get trapped into making dinner. 

Ashley's got avoiding work down to an art.  What I don't understand is why her mother (or mostly absentee father) doesn't nip this insane level of laziness in the bud.  Ashley's a fully emancipated adult; her parents have no legal obligation to provide anything for her.   In CP/QF land, her parents have a moral obligation to provide for her and keep her "safe" under their roof until she marries - and Miss Ashley's milking that obligation for all it is worth!

The door rings and eventually Ashley decides to answer the door.  A young man is waiting there who Ashley doesn't seem to know.  Louis is the orphaned adult son of a man who has a large family and a mother who is an invalid e.g., the standard stock family of handsome, virtuous young men in Victorian novellas.   (rolls eyes)  Louis is going to be working on Ashley's dad's farm for the summer in exchange for learning how to run "heavy equipment"(pg. 137) that Ashley's father owns. 

My take-away from this section is that Ashley's dad is taking advantage of a local dead farmer's son.  Look, Ashley's and Louis' families are part of the same community and the only rule in farming communities - the only rule -  is that you help out other families when tragedies strikes because your family could be next.   If Louis needs to learn how to run farm equipment to keep the farm going after his dad died, another farmer would teach him - for free - and would be horrified at the idea of accepting money (or work) for that right away.   The payback would be when Louis helped someone else out who was in need. 

In reality, the immoral actions of Ashley's dad happened because Mrs. McDonald knows nothing about farming.  Running equipment takes some practice for sure, but it's not the most important part of running a farm.  The make-or-break part is knowing what to plant, when to plant, when to harvest, and how to control risk.  Now, we never hear how old Louis is, but my father-in-law and grandfather-in-law were making decisions about planting and ration choices for dairy cows at age 14.  Clearly, that's not ideal for a lot of reasons, but in emergency situations teenagers can keep small farms running fairly well.   Since Louis is of marriageable age and inherited a large farm, he would not be taking a summer job at Ashley's dad's farm; he'd be learning on his own farm.   Now, make Louis a teenager who is the younger son on a small farm with an older brother who took over the farm and this makes more sense. 

One more issue and I'll get back to the plot line.  Who is going to inherit Ashley's family farm?  The time period on which this story is set is kept vague.  There is never a mention of any sons in the family so presumably one of the girls is the next presumed heir of the farm. 

Back to the story.  The next scene shows that Ashley is so self-centered that she cannot follow a conversation during a family-style meal where everyone is talking about their day.  She jarringly interrupts everyone to discuss how she made the salad that they ate at lunch once everyone else was talking about using ornaments to keep birds from eating tomatoes (a problem I've never had...) and about an escaped cow coming on their property.  The cow had another neighbor's apron snagged on her head.   (That story was pretty funny - although nothing like really trying to catch and escaped cow with something trapped on their head.  Ask me how I know :-) ) 

Apparently, making a fool of herself in front of guests finally makes Ashley's mom realize that Ashley needs to be assigned chores daily.  Of course, there are no consequences attached to not doing any chores so Ashley proceeds to ignore the assigned list.    Truthfully, Ashley's behavior makes more sense to me than the behavior of the rest of the family.

Time passes.  Ashley decides Louis really came to the farm to be with her rather than train.  This would be an unbelievable plot twist for most characters, but since Ashley's a raging narcissist I'm more surprised that this outcome has taken this long to develop.  Of course Louis would be pining for Ashley!  Ashley's the center of the universe and everyone shines in her brilliant light!

One morning, Emmaline and Rachel are sitting nervously in the kitchen.  The two other sisters function entirely as foils to Ashley.  They are hardworking, reliable, skilled, pleasant, and completely undifferentiated characters.  The girls are nervous because their parents and Louis are talking alone in the parlor!  The younger girls are worried that something happened to Louis' invalid mother - the one who has been left alone at home during this whole story - while Ashley's calmly confident that Louis is finally asking her parents for permission to marry her.

Needless to say, the invalid mother is fine...somehow.   Louis has asked permission to marry the angelic shadow being known as Emmaline which Ashley learns by eavesdropping on Emmaline and their mother.  Apparently, Louis was impressed because she was Godly, pretty in a standard feminine way, didn't rock the boat and knew how to work hard.   (Seriously.  That's the answer to "Why do you want to marry my daughter?" apparently.)  No idea how Emmaline feels about this because the story pans back to Ashley sitting alone eavesdropping on the conversation.

In a believable moment, Ashley is enraged!  Not so believably, Ashley is enraged at herself for having foolish fantasies.  Sorry, Mrs. McDonald, but that's not how narcissists work.  In real life, enraged Ashley would go tearing into the library or parlor or wherever the people were and rip Emmaline to shreds, imply that Louis was a mistaken idiot for getting the two of them confused, and launch into planning for the wedding of Louis and Ashley.   Ashley is the CENTER of the universe - and woe betide anyone who forgets that! 

The chapter ends with Ashley having a heart-changing come-to-Jesus moment where she realizes her own weaknesses and decides to change.   It rings completely untrue.   Best case scenario would be that Ashley devalues Louis to a peon-yokel and simply makes everyone miserable as a bridesmaidzilla.  Worst case scenario - well, don't let Ashley near Emmaline's food or drink, ok? 

I wonder how often something like this happens in CP/QF families.  The toxic theology of forgiving means forgetting is bad enough with healthy people involved.  The absolute lack of boundaries combined with no consequences can lead to an unbalanced person holding the entire family hostage.

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 14

Every author has styles of writing where they excel and styles in which they falter.  Stacy McDonald has a notable strength in writing realistic fiction set in a semi-idealized CP/QF home schooling universe.  She struggles mightily when she attempts rhetorical or persuasive essays.  Unfortunately, "Homemade Homemakers" in "Maidens of Virtue" is a stilted, under-researched essay that aims to explain to young women why the only acceptable end goal for young women is to become a stay-at-home daughter to learn the intricacies of homemaking and child rearing. 

The chapter starts with McDonald's standard theme: Be like me or you offend GOD! 

If you have been raised to love God and respect His plan for families, then you almost certainly dream of someday marrying a godly husband who loves and protects you. You also probably hope for plenty of babies to rock and cuddle. If you have been raised by parents with a healthy vision for future generations, you may plan to homeschool and faithfully train your own children in the ways of God night and day ( Deuteronomy 6: 7- 9) (pg. 126)

Apparently God's expectation for all women is to marry, bear scads of children and home school all those kids. 

If that is the case, why are the Bible verses used to support these expectations pulled from a few books of the Bible and never from the Gospels or Acts of the Apostles? 

If that is the case, why are the few verses mangled beyond recognition?  Deuteronomy 6: 4-5 is when the Israelites are given the Great Commandment or Shema "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  You shall love the Lord with all your heart, all your soul and all your might."  Verses 6-9 are commentary on what following that commandment would look like.    I suppose that a shaky interpretation of verse 6 could imply that "Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and away, when you lie down and when you rise" could be used to support home schooling Biblically - but that also would require the wearing of phylacteries and affixing the Shema to the home which isn't done by most conservative Christian homeschoolers.

Random change of topic: how come every discussion of raising children in books for unmarried women focuses on rocking and cuddling an infant?  I enjoy a good cuddle with my son - but rocking and cuddling are only one of a million infant related chores.  She'll be spending far more time feeding, changing diapers, and cleaning up the messes created by the infant than she will rocking them.  Plus, horror of horrors, some babies are not fond of being rocked.  As much as I like rocking a baby, my son uses the motion to keep himself awake by focusing on how the objects around him look different. 

Yet not everyone will be called to marriage. We all know godly Christians who never married. So what if you are going to be single your whole life? Shouldn't you prepare for that day? Shouldn't you go to college in case you ever have to work? Shouldn't you get a part-time job somewhere to become independent and gain some experience in the workforce? Before we go further, let us consider whether singleness or marriage is normative in Scripture. (pg. 126)

Stacy McDonald never circles back to answer the important questions she poses in this paragraph so I'll answer them instead. 

Yes. 

Yes, women should prepare for adult life by being educated enough that they can be productive members of the workforce.  Pursuing a vocation is not about rejecting parental authority or refusing to seek out a qualified marriage partner.  Vocations are about finding the type of work that a person can do well and get enough income to benefit a family.  In a broader way, working helps achieve the Biblical mandates to do good and help others.  Some careers specifically revolve around helping people like medicine, education, social work and human resources.  Other careers do not support people directly but earn wages that can be given to help others. 

Mrs. McDonald launches down a rabbit hole by wasting pages of writing to demonstrate that marriage was the normative state during Biblical times.  Unfortunately, she does this by pulling verses about marriage and married couples before waving her hands and saying "See!  Marriage is normative!"  A more nuanced look at the Bible makes it clear that plenty of women were in a states of singleness known as widowhood or slavery.   Yes, some widows remarried and some women who were enslaved either became wives of their master or were freed and married another free person - but that's not the same thing as saying that marriage was normative.  Also, the Bible is pretty clear that polygyny was normative at points as well...but let's not blow Mrs. McDonald's mind.

Truthfully, marriage is still normative in the US.  The vast majority of adults will marry before age 40 and a sizable portion of the remaining singles will marry later in life.  Likewise, periods of singleness are also normative.  The main difference between "Biblical" times and now is that the period of singleness before marriage is longer and that divorce is a more frequent cause of singleness in all age groups except the elderly.  Plus, slavery is illegal and polygyny cannot be entered without a willing partner. 

Those good ol' days weren't so good.

Where do good wives come from? They don't just happen - -good wives are either trained to be successful wives and mothers... or they are not. If you are Christian maiden and plan to be a wife and mother, shouldn't you be working alongside your mother, focusing together on your goal of becoming this rare and precious jewel?

(...)

We might expect Scripture to instruct younger women to find a trade or means of making an independent living. Wouldn't this appear to be wise advice? Isn't that what most people say young lady should do - - prepared to be breadwinners, just in case?

Paul had different instructions for young maidens:

I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully. (1 Timothy 5:14) (pg. 127)

Where should I start this time?

I don't buy Mrs. McDonald's assertion that the only way a person can have a happy marriage is if their mothers trained the wife to be the perfect future wife.   Bluntly, Mrs. McDonald's far too old to still believe that pap.  Some happy couples come from dysfunctional families of origin; some miserable couples had functional families when they were growing up.  The outcome of happiness in a marriage has far more to do with how much work both members of the couple are willing to do than with how they were raised.

The bit about how being a wife and mother is "a rare and precious jewel" cracks me up.  In terms of rarity, being a lifelong single person without children is rare so I assume that makes the lifestyle precious as well.

Looking back at Biblical times to make connections involving working is as fraught with peril as making assumptions about marriage.  Every job, every task discussed in Scripture has changed beyond recognition for people who lived in Biblical times.  Keeping a home in Biblical times was far, far more difficult than it is today.  Women needed to bring water from a water source to their homes.  Livestock needed to have water drawn from wells which was an exhausting task.  All foods came in a raw, unprocessed form.  Grains needed to be ground into to flour, leavened, shaped and baked.  Baking required tending a wood fire in a clay-brick oven. Milk needed to be made into cheeses.   In addition to the never-ending process of feeding a family, textile work consumed any remaining time.  Linen plants needed to be retted and combed to remove the woody parts of the plant to ready the fibers for spinning.  Wool fleeces had to be cleaned and either combed or carded to prepare for spinning.  Women were spinning thread all the time.  Finished yarn needed dyeing before being woven into cloth.

Even the most ardent homesteader today has advantages that Biblical women couldn't imagine in the form of water pumps, hoses, glass canning jars and commercially available clothing.

The reason Paul doesn't recommend that young women learn a trade is that he assumed they were already learning the trades of food preparation/storage and textile work along with any skills that a girl could learn to help out her father in his trade.   Women stuck to food preparation and textile work not because women were unable to learn a trade but because food preparation and textile work can be done around the additional work that lactation, infant care and young child care brings. 

I thought the McDonald Family were KJV Bible enthusiasts.  1 Timothy 5:14 doesn't talk about "younger women".  The group referred to is "young widows".  Most of the fifth chapter is about how best to manage the needs of widows in the church community.  Having young widows remarry if possible made the most financial sense because it reduced the number of people being supported by the church while increasing the number of households that could pay support for the needy.

The last quote brings up the favored strawman of CP/QF women - the dissatisfied college graduate:

I often hear from women who are never taught homemaking skills when they were young. Many genuinely struggle with organizing and cleaning their homes consistently, mastering basic cooking skills, and being content at home with children all day. What is even more interesting is that most of these frustrated women are college graduates.

Some are accomplished career women, yet many gave birth to their first child without having ever changed a diaper. In fact, many hospitals now have mandatory diaper changing classes which parents must attend before they are allowed to take their newborn infants home. Before marriage, most of these women knew how to drive a car, balance a checkbook, change a tire, and even run a cash register; yet they were unprepared for keeping a home, helping a husband, and nurturing children. (pg. 128)

I firmly believe that women who have graduated from college could use the same skills that got them through college to learn how to clean and organize a home and learn basic cooking.  Even before the advent of the internet, there are plenty of books on how to clean and organize a home at the local library; ditto for cooking.   I wonder if the difference that Mrs. McDonald is actually picking up is that women who have graduated college and are stay-at-home-mothers might not care as much about having a spotless house as they do letting their kids have creative play time.   I also question that a college degree causes women to find being at home with children all day more exasperating than not having a college degree.  I suspect that the main difference is how honest the different groups of women are being.

I did know how to change a diaper before my son was born, thank you - but let's not pretend that changing a diaper is a deep and complicated task.  It's three steps: remove diaper, clean baby's butt, put new diaper on.    I think that the mandatory diaper changing class is a bit of hyperbole; before we brought my son home, the nurses needed to sign off that we knew how to feed, burp, diaper, and bathe him along with knowing about safe sleep practices and the importance of using a car seat.  Because my husband and I were reasonably comfortable with infants before Jack, the nurses just watched us care for him and checked off that we knew what to do.  I'm sure that nurses do need to show some parents how to care for an infant - but baby care is simply not that complicated.

I think Mrs. McDonald should poll some young men about which wife they would prefer.  Would they prefer to be married to a woman who can drive a car, balance a checkbook, change a tire and run a cash register  but can't change a baby's diaper  OR would they prefer a woman who can change a diaper, but doesn't drive, can't balance a checkbook, can't change a tire or run a cash register?

I know which group I suspect would be more popular among men - and it's not the diaper changers who are confounded by a checkbook and a tire iron.....

Maidens of Virtue: Chapter 13

Whoo-boy!  When it rains, it pours. 

My son is down with his first runny/stuffy nose cold.  In spite of my best efforts to keep him from coughing, at least once a day he's coughed enthusiastically enough to spit up some of his last meal - and it always lands on my shirt and pants.   The albuterol medication that is keeping his lungs nice and open is also making him shake like a tiny little jitterbug. 

First thing Monday morning, I carried my hacking son down the steps and found my husband conscious but laying flat out in the the kitchen.  He had dizziness so severe he couldn't stand up or walk on his own.   He's never had anything like that in the past and there was no way I could safely spot him out to the car so I called 911, got the baby settled (and as mucus-free as I could), arranged for my mom-in-law to take the baby, and drove my husband to the hospital once the local first responders had verified that his vital signs were good and helped him out to the truck.

Good news is that my husband has benign idiopathic vertigo which has miserable symptoms but isn't a sign of a stroke or any severe medical problem.

As I told a good friend in exasperation, I trust my ability to deal with all sorts of insane situations - but what I'd like right now is a break from the insane situations.  As a side-effect of this week's crazy, I'm behind on blogging along with pretty much everything else right now.  I hope to be back to three posts a week next week, God willing.

Chapter Thirteen is titled "I love me, I love me not", but I think a more accurate title is "Stacy McDonald is a terrible person."  She spends the chapter going off the Calvinistic deep-end by explaining why "we" all are horrible, horrible sinners.  I might be more sympathetic if she started with or focused on her own failings but she spends the vast majority of the chapter blaming people with mental illnesses for failing to recognize their own personal sins.   

Bluntly, this chapter is gross and completely contrary to modern Christian teachings that recognize that Jesus wants his followers to support the most vulnerable among us including the mentally ill.  Feel free to leave without reading the rest if it will disturb you.

Mrs. McDonald starts by trying to rehash the theology of human sinfulness, but since she's not received theological training the gaps in her Biblical studies show quickly.

If we are to view ourselves biblically, it is much more realistic to deal with our depravity swiftly and honestly rather than to agonize over a false sense of our perceived personal goodness. Admittedly trying to locate our "good qualities" is much more fun and far less painful (Proverbs 27:5-6). (pg. 118)

I....have no idea why she pulled that verse in a paragraph that discusses self-examination.   Proverbs 27:5-6 is "Better is open rebuke than secret love.  Well meant are the wounds a friend inflicts, but profuse are the kisses of an enemy."  But then, I'm probably overthinking this.  Mrs. McDonald's major theme throughout "Maidens of Virtue" is that saved Christians or members of the Elect can be as judgemental as they want towards the unsaved/damned.  In case any of her readers have a gentle heart - or dare to question the morality of being crass and bitchy towards the rest of humanity - Mrs. McDonald tries to hide behind the "iron sharpening iron" rationale.  That argument is badly undermined by the fact that Mrs. McDonald already admitted previously that she had a friend who was clearly struggling with personal hygiene issues and her response was to do absolutely freaking nothing.  Wait - that's not entirely true.  She did nothing for the guy and then used his story to make money in a book.

In terms of her disdain for our good qualities, that is in direct contradiction to Genesis 1:27 which explains that all humans were created in God's image. 

The next quote is where Mrs. McDonald shows that her grasp of mental health issues is as tenuous as her grasp on theology:

Many young girls today have serious problems (anorexia, bulimia, obesity, promiscuity, drug abuse, alcoholism, and the list goes on). Many individuals are convinced that the answer to the issues young girls face today could simply be solved by a hearty dose of self-esteem. Actually, the search for self esteem is more than a modern buzzword: it is an age-old pursuit. For years man has thought too highly of himself. Our flesh screams for praise and glory (Genesis 11: 4). (pg. 118)

Having a healthy self-esteem is some protection against mental illness - but self-esteem alone is not a cure for anorexia or chemical dependencies.  All of the listed issues require some level of medical intervention in the form of drugs and/or psychotherapy.   

Mrs. McDonald is especially blind on the subject of obesity; doctors are finding more and more support for the fact that most humans can gain weight far more easily than they can lose weight.  Obese people are not lazy or sinful; they are fighting a very long-term battle where losing weight causes their metabolism to slow down drastically.  A slowed metabolism means that these people can be eating less than 1,200 calories a day and still gain weight.  Truthfully, a metabolic system that could keep a body going through long periods of semi-starvation by slowing the metabolism down was extremely beneficial through most of human history.  Naturally slender people who lose weight easily are more of a recent trend in evolution....

The Bible verse quoted is from the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis.  She interprets it as a sign of the human desire for praise and glory which is a bit strange.  The most literal reading I can get is that the humans were challenging God - not angling for praise or glory.   Ironically, that same literal reading shows that humans were doing a good job at challenging God; God was so concerned about this latest development that he went down with the other gods and scattered human kind.

I feel bad for Stacy McDonald's teenage daughter in this next quote.  It cannot be fun to realize your parent is a horrible person.

While writing this chapter, I discussed the subject with my thirteen year old daughter. Sympathetically she wondered about young people who fall into such a pit of despair that they take their own lives. Even as sheltered as my daughter was, she was somewhat influenced by the humanistic notion of value and self-esteem.

" But, Mom," she said, " if they knew how special they were, they wouldn't be overcome by hopelessness. Aren't some people depressed because they just don't think they're any good?"

"Maybe so, but are they any good? Are any of us any good?" I asked, raising an eyebrow in her direction.

Knowingly, she smiled, " I see what you mean. It just seems so sad."

And it is sad. If we're to be like Jesus, we should have compassion for those who are suffering in the pit of despair. But viewing sin falsely will not lift anyone out of that pit. (pg. 118-119) 

I kept running away from writing this section - like I found myself doing chores around the house that I hated rather than dealing with writing a response to this section.  I finally made myself sit down and reflect the emotions it brought up in me - a mixture of anger and despair - and I realized why I didn't want to write this section.

My freshman year English teacher committed suicide when I was a sophomore in high school.  I wasn't particularly close to this teacher, but he was a damn good English teacher who forced me to buckle down and improve my expository writing skills.  I brought a pile of candy canes to school with me the last day before Christmas and was passing them out to my friends and anyone who wanted one.  At the end of English class, I walked up to the teacher's desk and offered him a candy cane.  He looked deeply touched by my offer and wished me a Merry Christmas.  Even as a rather naive 15-year-old kid, I felt saddened by how much my random offer of a candy cane meant to him; I wondered how lonely or painful his life was outside of school. 

His suicide crushed a lot of students.  A friend of mine has never forgiven himself for the fact that he and his friends acted like complete assholes in the teacher's class the year he died.  I grew up as the daughter of a teacher.  I tried to explain to my friend then - and now - that any teacher who survived the first 3-5 years of teaching wouldn't quit teaching - let alone commit suicide- because his students were jerks; that's one of the expected downsides of teaching. 

No, he committed suicide because the pain of his mental illness was too much to bear anymore.  I remember thinking that he couldn't have expected his own death to cause the amount of trauma for his students, colleagues and family that it did - and that I would keep that thought in mind if I ever felt suicidal.

I know this because four years later I had a severe episode of depression where I started having suicidal thoughts.  After my teacher died, I promised myself that if I was ever suicidal, I would do everything I could think of to get better before I attempted suicide.  I went to a doctor on got on an SSRI.  I started therapy.  The therapy was helpful - but it was overwhelmed by the fact that the first SSRI I tried caused me to have intense suicidal impulses.  Now, that drug has a black-box warning about that side-effect in teens and young adults, but I missed that warning by 18 months. 

After a few months of fighting the urges, I was so, so exhausted and my will to fight was slipping away.  I remembered that one of the things I had promised myself was that I would seek inpatient treatment at a local psychiatric facility before I attempted suicide.  I was so depressed and anxious at that point that I didn't think inpatient treatment would actually help me - but I wanted to be able to say that I had tried.

Well, inpatient treatment did help me a lot.  The professionals there got me off the SSRI that was not working well for me, tried a combination of other SSRIs and added an anti-anxiety medicine.   Truly, the anti-anxiety drug was a game-changing addition.  By taking my undiagnosed anxiety from a 11+ out of 10 down to a 1 or 2, I had enough mental energy left to start working on techniques to manage my depression until the SSRIs kicked in.

Slowly, but surely, I got my life back onto the track I wanted.  I transferred to a college much closer to home and started part-time.  I saw a therapist.  I exercised.  I met new people at college.  I started working in retail again.  I felt like a person again instead of an amorphous grey blob. 

The most ironic thing?  I was such a timid little mouse of a person at that point that I had no particularly interesting sins on my conscience.  I was a non-drinking virgin who had gone on sporadic chaste dates.  I attended church regularly.  I honored my parents and got excellent grades at school.  Hell, I grew up in a family that some people treated like pariahs - not everyone deals well with disabilities and death - so I didn't even go through a clique-ish, catty phase in junior high school; I was nice and friendly to everyone.

Stacy McDonald is a self-righteous prick whose ignorance is only outweighed by her prejudices.  Don't listen to her shit - she's a toxic whack-job. 

Next quote is a great example of how NOT to write a paragraph.   

Ours is an adulterous generation. The reason for the rise in " unwanted" pregnancies (fornication), abortion (murder), homosexuality (sodomy), alcoholism and drug abuse (drunkenness), and suicide (murder and faith in man, rather than God) is sin pure and simple. It's not just the fact that people are sinning; people have been sinning since the Fall. Our response to sin is the problem. When we redefine sin as " emotional problems" or a " sad result of a difficult childhood" we allows sin to remain hidden in the hearts of hurting people. (pg. 120)

Words have meanings.  This paragraph makes so little sense if we define the words that it gets ridiculous. 

Adultery is any form of extramarital sex - and nothing else in the paragraph talks about adultery. 

Fornication, on the other hand, is premarital sex where neither partner is married to someone else. 

An unwanted pregnancy can result from adultery or fornication, but it can also result from completely lawful marital sex since the unwanted quality comes from the readiness of the parents, not the marital status of the parents.  At the same time, some people who are technically fornicating have very wanted pregnancies.  (The world is a wide and varied place, Mrs. McDonald.) 

At all points of publication of this book, the rate of abortion in the USA has been dropping; strong economic times and easy access to hormonal birth control tend to do that. 

The Biblical fears around homosexuality I believe should be treated in the same way as the Biblical stipulations on legal slavery - a historical abominations that we have moved beyond into a more nuanced understanding of human rights and human sexuality.

Any rate of murder or suicide is too high, but modern rates are really very low because the rule of law tends to tamp down on the number of revenge killings and we have some medical options for dealing with some mental illnesses.. 

Drunkenness is a completely different can of worms than being chemically dependent; people with severe chemical dependencies may not get high or drunk but still require a substance to maintain a semblance of functionality.

So....is sin the problem or is our reaction to sin the main problem?  They can't both be the problem, Mrs. McDonald.

Personally, I think the main problem is that Mrs. McDonald likes knowing gossip about everyone around her far more than she likes behaving as a Christian.  In the Protestant ethos I thought there's no good reason for anyone to need to know the sins of anyone - that forgiveness was between a person and God.    As a Catholic, sometimes a person needs to confess their sins to a priest - but the priest is forbidden on pains of excommunication from ever revealing the confession.  Priests will also let you know (if you ask) that they don't remember who tells them what sins - partially because they are trained that way, but mostly because people confess the same 5 sins over_and_over_and_over.    Mrs. McDonald's fascination with digging the sins out of the hearts of hurting people from traumatic childhoods feel ghoulish to me.

The last quote for today is some nice revisionist history for us:

Not so many years ago, our country held to many biblical principles. Sin was usually treated as sin. Our laws reflected a biblical foundation, and the people -- Christian or not -- lined up with that thinking. There was a time when it was a shame for a young Maiden to even be alone with a boy. It was a disgrace to be found pregnant out of wedlock, and abortions were considered... murder! Homosexuality was so repugnant that it was rarely even whispered about! Now if we turn on the news, abominations are brazenly performed before our eyes, and we are told that we are judgemental, fanatical, or critical for calling these things sin. (pg. 120)

Ummm - when was that?   You can't just backward fundamentalist-Baptist-wash history. 

The early colonial USA averaged 20% of births to unmarried women - and more than 30%  when couples who gave birth to a living child 8 months or less after their marriage.  Even during times when sexual mores were more strictly adhered, women feared being exposed by a premarital pregnancy far more than they worried about being alone with a boy. 

Concerns about abortions were completely different than the current state of affairs; the major landmark involving abortion was "the quickening" which is when the pregnant woman can feel fetal movements at 15-22 weeks.   The concerns were somewhat about the life of the child - but as much about the fact that abortions prior to modern surgical techniques and access to antibiotics were as likely to end the pregnancy by leading to infections or bleeding severe enough to kill the mother.

I doubt we have a realistic picture of the number of people who were homosexuals in the past.  First, a lot of conservative pastors seem oblivious to the existence of lesbians.  Oh, they get all freaked out about gay men - but some percentage of "spinsters" and "old maids" who lived together were actually living with the woman they loved.  Secondly, people could be married to a partner of the opposite sex while having extramarital relationships with someone of the same gender. 

The local news that Mrs. McDonald watches is much more fascinating than mine!  Our channel focuses on local sports and events with a quick update on local crime.  We don't have abominations on tap - alas!

That last sentence is the crux of conservative Christianity hypocrisy.  Mrs. McDonald wants to be able to criticize everything and everyone freely - but no one else better dare criticize her!

Mrs. McDonald, if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.  If you want to call people unnatural abominations because of their sex life, you should be able to handle being called a judgemental fanatic because of what you say.

The last page and a half of the chapter is a surreal turn-around where she encourages girls to have self-esteem because they are saved....but it is completely unbelievable after her rant on our depraved nature.