Spiritual Self-Defense: Fight This Fight

I hate this post with a deep and abiding passion.  The very first paragraph is the only part of the whole damn thing that I find funny (and let me be honest - I often find the Botkin Sisters writings to be unintentionally rip-roaringly funny):

As we all arm ourselves to walk through our still-very-present culture of harassment and exploitation, there are countless things we’ll need to study outside the scope of what this series has touched on: practical issues like how to recognize a predator’s tactics, or how to build our own self-defense strategies and arsenals; legal issues like how and when and to whom to report; spiritual issues regarding things like recovery, true forgiveness, and identity; ecclesiastical issues like what to do when your church won’t help.

Pssst!  I've got a tip, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth!  "I need more time to study" is a plausible argument for why you two didn't understand the legal issues surrounding sexual assault and harassment when you were teenagers.  You could even stretch that argument into the first year or two of your twenties but no later.  See, lots of freshly minted college graduates of age 21-23 enroll in law school and learn  the intricacies of sexual assault and harassment laws in their state.  By the time a person is in their early to mid-thirties, they should be able to explain the laws of sexual assault in their state even if they've never gone to college.

The kicker is that the same argument applies for all of the other "topics beyond our scope" that the Botkin Sisters never bother to follow-up on.   Therapists are great at identifying predatory tactics; they are also fully minted after a Masters or Doctorate degree at a lower age of 26-30.  Spiritual issues are handled by clergy of all stripes who are often fully fledged between 24-30 depending on denomination.  Ecclesiastical issues is a hoot; in my church, that's implying that someone should consult a canonical lawyer - but even those people are as young as 30-35.   In CP/QF land, there's a bias against secular and theological training so pretty much any man who is married and has produced a kid can pronounce his beliefs on the issues around a church.

My very favorite, though, is the refusal to take on a serious discussion of self-defense and which guns to buy.  Believe me, plenty of teenagers have very, very detailed and well-thought out ideas about how to defend themselves in a pinch and what to use. 

Next, the Sisters give a longish rant about why abusers, feminists, Good Christians(TM), and the legal system tell victims not to report abuse.  I've pulled out the sections on feminists and Christians:

On the other side, feminist voices tell us: If you feel that what he did was not consensual, then it was wrong, and if you feel that it would be more empowering to you to resist or report, then go ahead… but it really all comes down to what you personally want right now, and no one should expect you as a woman to have to do something you don’t want to do. This is only worth fighting if you feel like it.

Too many Christian voices tell us: You just need to forgive and turn the other cheek; bringing consequences for sin isn’t loving and isn’t forgiveness; it will really damage the reputation of Christ to have things like this brought to light in the Christian community; you’re a sinner too, so you have no right to point a finger at him. It’s not Christian to fight back.

I think the strawman feminist created by the Botkin Sisters comes from two places.  First, the Botkin Sisters cannot handle the cognitive dissonance that would come from admitting that feminism's push to bring sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual abuse into the light of day is an exceptionally moral action.  I'm afraid they would die from shock if they agreed right now. 

The second issue is that the Botkin Sisters lack the mental habit of running through all the possible permutations of a situation.   Not all inappropriate sexual behaviors are criminal.  Not all criminal actions are prosecutable.  Not all people can handle one more stressor at a given time.  The Botkin Sisters' impassioned defense of what women are supposed to do reminds me of a quiz I read that discussed the level of Natural Family Planning (NFP) privilege a person enjoyed.  One end of the spectrum was "I can't wait to practice NFP someday when I eventually get married."  The Botkin Sisters sound like that end of privilege "I'd totally report a sexual assault or harassment if I was abused or harassed!".  Good on you - let me know how you feel once you have actually experienced life.    The opposite end of the NFP spectrum was "Even your NFP instructor thinks using NFP is a horrible idea for you!"   And you know what?  That happens with sexual assault or abuse or harassment, too.   What if the abuser is dead?  What if there is no overarching authority available to intervene?  What if you can't identify your assailant? The emphasis that feminism places on doing what feels acceptable to the victim is because often there is no straightforward or simple choice - and feminism focuses on helping the victim heal regardless of if the perpetrator is adequately punished.

I've heard of the "don't damage the reputation of the Church" line of logic for dismissing abuse victims.  The Catholic Church tried it - and that course of action makes everything worse.  The Church is complicit in child abuse and there is no positive way to "spin" that.  The victims are hurt worse while the criminal is protected and allowed to continue attacking people.   The best course of action is whatever protects the innocent and provides consequences to the attacker within the scope of justice.  That line of action creates a church that is reflective of the love of God.

As for the other justifications - you're fucking kidding me, right?  Turning the other cheek occurs within the idea of handling religious persecution - not rape, not molestation, not sexual harassment and not sexual abuse.  The entire Bible - the whole thing - is about how God is one day going to bring a whole lot of hurt down on unrepentant sinners.  That's a whole lot of consequence for sin - so why pretend that sending someone to jail for rape is unchristian?  And let's be honest - I don't believe for a second that the people who want to sweep sexual assault under a rug take the same line when someone breaks into their house, steals their car or sucker-punches them during a dispute.  If these Christians really bought into the belief that 1) consequences are wrong and 2) no sinner can judge anyone else, they would have to be as willing to forgo any interactions with the justice system as the Amish are. (In fairness to the Amish and other non-resistance groups, none of  their beliefs are based in either of these toxic reasonings.)   Since CP/QF groups are all about legal remedies for perceived slights, their sudden expectation of humble piety from sexual assault victims is sick.

Moving on.  The Botkin Sisters manage to mangle retelling Rachel Denhollander's brave action to move forward against Larry Nassar.  The most charitable way I can explain the mauling of  Rachel Denhollander's brave story by the Botkin Sisters is that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth either didn't bother to read the materials they linked in their fourth post or that their reading comprehension is so poor that they are genuinely confused.   If they did competently read Rachel Denhollander's victim impact statement and her op-ed to the NY Times, the Botkin Sisters are guilty of erasing Ms. Denhollander to pursue their own agenda - and that's abusive, too.  To keep myself from throwing my laptop, I'm just going to shoot down the untruths sequentially.

It would be hard to be in a much more vulnerable and powerless position than 15-year-old Rachel during the year that her physician, Larry Nassar, repeatedly sexually abused her on the therapy table, and when people she trusted to help her hushed her instead. But later, as an adult, she was convinced that “a swift and intentional pursuit of God’s justice” was worth attempting again. “I made this choice knowing full well what it was going to cost to get here,” she said, “and with very little hope of ever succeeding. I did it because it was right.” What Rachel did not know is that hundreds of other Nassar victims were waiting, silently, for someone else to go first.

1) No one shushed Rachel Denhollander until she came forward in 2016.  Like many victims of sexual abuse in a medical setting, she thought what he was doing must be wrong on a gut level - but assumed that since he did this a lot and hadn't been stopped she as a 15-year old girl must have been misunderstanding something.   Thankfully, the people she disclosed the abuse to in 2004 were willing to support her when she came forward in 2016.   The tricky bit is that if she had disclosed in 2002 (at age 17) the medical professional she disclosed to would be legally required to report the abuse.  Once she turned 18, medical professionals generally follow the lead of the victim if there is not an open-and-shut case for physical violence.  Rachel Denhollander did nothing wrong by not telling anyone; I only bring that up to explain why there wasn't an report filed by the medical professional she disclosed to.

2) Prior to Nassar's assault of Denhollander in 2000, there had been four separate accusations of sexual misconduct against him by gymnasts or female athletes at MSU.  

3) Allegations of sexual misconduct during therapy sessions continued to be reported to MSU and the US Gymnastics Association between 1998-2016.

Plenty of girls, teenagers and women trying to get someone - anyone - to stop Larry Nassar from raping patients.  For any of the women attacked in Michigan, forced digital penetration is first-degree rape - but MSU and USAG ignored, belittled or patronized the victims and protected Nassar.

My two-cents: Teach your kids about medical consent in an age-appropriate way.  The rough rules of thumb are that kids under the age of 7 need to rely on their parents' decision for medical treatment.  I love my toddler - but he'd be dead if we needed to get assent for medical treatment because he is far too young to understand the importance of medical treatment compared to his dislike of people messing with him.  I do let him express his anger, frustration and rage as loudly as he wants and I acknowledge his feelings when they happen.   Ages 7-13 need to have procedures explained in an age appropriate way and a good faith effort made to secure the kid's assent to the procedure - but parental consent still can override the child, especially at the lower end of the age range. (Like if you are a 12 year old who is refusing to get an MMR...in spite of knowing people who suffered severe disabilities from measles and congenital rubella because you abhor shots.  Thanks, Mom. I love you!)  Age 14 and up has the mental maturity to decide if a treatment is appropriate.   Rachel Denhollander had the legal right to say "Stop" or "I don't want to have this treatment done" when Nassar was assaulting her - but she didn't know that.

Rachel’s courage, conviction, and thoroughly-prepared legal case was enough to break the previously-impenetrable dam;

Why did Ms. Denhollander succeed when so many women and girls had failed before?  It's not because she is a conservative Christian.  It's certainly not because she followed the Botkin Plan for dealing with sexual abuse.  No, Ms. Denhollander succeeded because she is a lawyer.  She attended college and graduated from law school.  Ms. Denhollander knew what materials she could collect to make a strong legal case against Nassar for assaulting her.  Ms. Denhollander walked into the Michigan State Police Department with an entire file of evidence including statements from people who were willing to testify that she disclosed the abuse between 2000-2004, proof of real pelvic floor physical therapy techniques from journals, expert witnesses willing to testify that what Nassar did was NOT therapeutic, and statements from two other women abused by Nassar.   She collected and handed the police department everything they needed to start a criminal case against Nassar - and that lead to contacting MSU and USAG who had multiple "resolved" cases that added new victims to Nassar's crimes. 

Plenty of courageous women, teens and girls had attempted to stop Nassar before; the Botkins' dismissal of those heroes is sick and a sign of the Botkin Sisters' dismissal of unpleasant realities.  Ms. Denhollander brought a brilliant mind, a stellar education, and a mountain of evidence for her case to support the courage and bravery of so many other women.  Those women together took down a monster - and they deserve our recognition of their individual and collective acts of bravery.

Shame on you, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin.  Shame on you.

Spiritual Self-Defense: Master Your Greatest Enemy - Part Four

We survived the first half of Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin's exposition on how various vices can lead to sexual sin in their blog series "Spiritual Self-Defense".  Personally, I found their logic underwhelming and their childish dismissal of abuse victims disturbing.   Thankfully, there are only four vices left.  Amusingly, the Botkin Sisters invented one vice I've never heard of before - and I'm clueless how that vice is different from another vice they listed.

Fear – the fear of loss, of retribution, of shame, of the unknown; of making a scene, of taking a risk; of rational things, of irrational things. It doesn’t make a difference what it is: Once we fix our fear on something other than God, we are bound and gagged. 

Oh, Anna Sofia and/or Elizabeth - your innocence surrounding fear is sweetly touching.  Believe you me; the world is full of scary, scary situations for people who fear God.   When the very young resident OB told me I had HELLP syndrome, I was absolutely terrified.  Not because my faith faltered; no, I was retroactively fucking terrified that if I hadn't had some random abdominal pains, my husband would have come home from work to find me dead on the couch when I laid down for a nap just before I had a stroke or heart attack.  Or perhaps he would had found me comatose in the time between seizures from eclampsia with a dying or dead baby.  I was well aware that I could bleed to death during the C-section in spite of the best efforts of my amazing care team.  I was even more petrified that my son could die before we got to know him and before he got to live. 

I don't believe God wants us to know fear or pain or suffering or death.  I believe that the people doing God's work that day were the multitude of medical professionals who kept me and my son alive.   I know that my faith helped me survive - if only because praying was something I could do while laying in a hospital bed attached to IVs and deep breathing.   But I was scared - very, very scared - and I don't believe that fear is a sign of a lack of faith.

We’ll need to practice keeping these truths at the forefront of our minds when we’re around other people, and we’ll need to practice speaking up and taking a stand for these truths when it’s scary and makes us unpopular. The more we do this, the more the focus of our fear will be shifted from people to God, and we’ll develop a reputation for being the kind of girl that would get an abuser in deep trouble.

Mmm-k.  This is sadly ironic coming from two women who have been told repeatedly since childhood or infancy that women are incapable of detecting deceit or malice in a potential suitor.  According to the Botkin Family line, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth have been completely sheltered from any bad influences their entire lives.  Who knows if that is true - but I hope for their sake it isn't.  As women in their thirties, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth should be experienced at comparing the actions of people with their words and alleged values.    Anna Sofia and Elizabeth were among the monied royalty of Vision Forum.  That's all good fun - but what does it say about the values of Vision Forum that there was a clear separation between the families with money and the far more common families that struggled to make ends meet?  The Sisters have never spoken out in any way shape or form about economic inequality in CP/QF.  My guess is that the Sisters have never thought about economic fairness at all - but they really should.  After all, that would give them plenty of practice taking a stand for a basic Christian belief that will evoke strong feelings from other monied former Vision Forum folks.  That would probably be quite scary for Anna Sofia or Elizabeth - but they are old hats at this, right?

Selfish ambition – wanting the perks (you name it – favorite-status, admiration, promotion, money, fame, popularity) that would come with being on this person’s good side. There is a kind of covetousness and ambition that women are very prone to when it comes to men, especially when it involves competing with other women.

*blinks*

I've never met a woman who had consensual sex with a guy for the sole purpose of competing with other women.  Like....never. 

I've never met a woman who abused or raped a man for the sole purpose of competing with other women.  Never ever.

And honestly, I've never seen women get particularly competitive with each other around dating.  I think this is because for women outside of CP/QF lifestyles, we have many other options for satisfying our competitive spirit.  There's a plethora of competitive sports for adult women.  Women can compete for employment or academic accomplishment.  The entire blot on Western society known as "Mommy Wars" comes from women (and men) treating child-rearing as a form of competition.  Dating as competition feels rather dull compared to joining a softball team, earning an advanced degree or landing a great job.

That's why I completely believe that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth's target audience IS tempted to look at romantic relationships as a competition.  They've got damned few legitimate avenues to compete with other women so courting a highly attractive suitor may well be counted as a win.

The suggested solutions for being ambitious are off-the-wall....as well as in sentence fragments.

For instance, to start thinking of the other girls as being more important than we are (which would even include seeing their relational lives or marital prospects as more important than ours). To stop seeing ourselves as the main character in the story, and all the other girls as supporting characters (or villains). To consider the souls of the young men around us (including their focus and their purity) more important than the ego boost we could get from them.

Yup.  Imagine living a life where a young woman is more involved in the marital prospects of church acquaintances because she knows she's not the main character in her own life and doesn't want to erode the focus of a young man by showing her interest in him.    That sounds like the beginning of a CP/QF version of "Single White Female" rather than a solid life choice.

Ladies, you are allowed to be the main character in your own life.  Full stop.  Other people do not need you to elevate them to the main character position of your life because they are the main characters in their life.  It's a win-win-win-win for all people to take center stage in their own lives.  If you don't, you risk becoming a passive-aggressive martyr who expects to control other people's lives as repayment for never living their own life.  Hint: passive-aggressive martyr is not an attractive character to play.

The next vice is the mostly made-up idea of "instability of soul".  Every time I read that section, I have a mental image of Geordi LaForge discussing how the Enterprise's engine is becoming unstable - and then an explosion of soul-goo.....

Instability of soul – 2 Pet. 2:14 says that men who have “eyes full of adultery” “entice unstable souls.” The word “unstable” means “unfixed,” “vacillating,” “unsteady.” An unstable girl is one who is not solidly, unshakeably rooted in what God says – she can be drawn or persuaded or manipulated by some other voice telling her “I’m only doing this because I love you so much…” “Did God say it’s a sin to do X? Don’t be such a legalist!” “It’s actually your fault I did Y, because you tempted me…” “If you tell anyone, my life will be ruined, and you’ll have to live with that!”

Man, that whole "CP/QF homeschoolers are smarter than the brainwashed masses"  idea keeps taking a beating every time Anna Sofia or Elizabeth defines a word that native English speakers over the age of 12 should already know. 

Apparently "instability of soul" is also a synonym for "not bright" or "very gullible".  The first three arguments given by "other voices" are easily proven false.

•  "You love me?  Then stop doing _____ because I don't like it."  Problem solved.
• "Don't insult me for holding a boundary with you.  I expect an apology."  Problem solved.
• "Bullshit. You made a choice;  you need to own your actions." Problem solved.

The fourth one is a little more complicated - but only because people often feel guilty when doing a morally right action sets morally right consequences in action against someone they love.  Here are some options to try mentally:

• "If it was ok for you to do ______, it's ok for me to tell people about it."
• If _______ couldn't deal with the consequences of their action being known publicly, they shouldn't have done it in the first place.
• "I can live with that.  I won't let ______'s dislike of consequences dictate my actions"
• "Why do I have to keep a secret to protect _____ from the consequences of their actions?  That's unfair."

To be clear, you may not feel safe saying these things to the other person.  You don't have to; you do not need their permission or blessing to discuss actions that have affected your life.  

Spiritual laxness – when we identify as the Lord’s servants, and yet are not actively seeking out our Master’s will and striving to understand what He wants us to do.

By this definition, everyone is spiritually lax multiple times a day.  I don't have the skill set to seek out God's will while mowing my lawn or shopping for groceries.   I figure God wants me to exercise to keep my body healthy - but does God prefer when I go for a walk, mow the lawn, do water aerobics or swim laps?   What is the correct ratio of "play with the toddler" compared to "complete household chores"?  Before anyone quotes the story of Mary and Martha, remember that there was not a toddler in that story covering his glasses in barbeque sauce while crawling after an unguarded electrical cord.... 😜

But too often, we have adopted a brand of personal faith that expects God (and other people) to do all the work of seeking, buffeting, and striving for us. We may call this “letting go and letting God” – God calls this being wicked and lazy servants.

What is the last example of the Botkin Sisters dealing with any buffeting?  When have either of them strove for anything?  In their free podcasts, the Sisters claim that the second-generation of CP/QF homeschoolers have entire areas of theology to reconquer; remember their argument that they would personally need to look at every example of femininity ever to come up with an comprehensive new Christian form of femininity?  That's time consuming for sure - but they've dropped off producing anything new.  So....how does that fit in striving to change the world?

Good news: We've finished this post.  Bad news: there's still one post left.

Spiritual Self-Defense: Master Your Biggest Enemy - Part Three

I'm going to start this blog post with my overarching thought process about the entire "Spiritual Self-Defense" series on the Botkin Sisters blog:  Why is this series SO LONG?   I know that I often post long posts myself - but a six-part prattling reflection on why sexual abuse or assault won't happen to the Botkin Sisters as long as the Sisters stay firmly within the lines drawn by their father is five parts too long.

I digress.

After explaining all of the things that Emily did wrong that led to whatever the hell happened between her and Bryan, the Botkin Sisters decide to explain an entire list of vices that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth are certain put women at higher risk of being victims of sexual assault or abuse.  Now, I can see the argument - kind of - that indulging certain vices could lead a person to compromise their previously held beliefs on sexual purity.  That could lead to that person participating in consensual sexual activity.  It's a bit of a stretch, but I could see the rationale.  The problem is that this series is supposed to be about women who are victims - not consensual actors.  The Botkin Sisters' inability to differentiate consent from non-consent creates the galling situation where victims of abuse are told that they didn't do anything to deserve being attacked - but it's kind of their fault for being vain or needy.

That's not how the world works.

Vanity – the pride that makes us find our worth in how much men notice us, admire us, and want us. When men’s affirmation of us becomes something we’re dependent on, something we use to feed our egos and puff us up, something we’ll strive for at all costs (even the cost of sinning), we’re in trouble already.

That's not the definition of vanity.  Vanity is excessive pride in one's looks or achievements.  I highlight the second example because the Botkin Sisters drop the fact that they've written books in podcasts, blogs and lectures all the time.

I am not seeing how vanity would lead to breaking sexual mores consensually for the readers of the Botkin blog let alone how vanity would lead to being the victim of a violent crime.    I've known a handful of women (out of thousands of women) who might sleep with a guy who admired her or flattered her - but that's pretty rare and often time-limited.  As women grow up, most women I know are looking for longer-term relationships and raise the bar for men they want to be around.

Because this is a Botkin blog post, the prerequisite female-bashing comes into play:

By the way – though we pointed out in the first article that a man’s choice to commit the sin of lust is his own responsibility, we do need to acknowledge that doing anything calculated to provoke their lust is our own sin of lust (the lust to be lusted after), and our own kind of being predatory.

*Blinks*

That's all kinds of confused.  That convoluted "lust o' lust" rationale is extraneous on top of badly thought out; if the person is acting out of lust - they are guilty of lust. 

Equally importantly, there is a bright, clear, clean line between the morally acceptable actions of being attractive and approachable towards available romantic partners, the morally illicit action of being lustful, and the potentially illegal actions of a predator.    The Botkin Sisters have staked their livelihood on teaching young women that any movement towards a young man prior to paternal approval is immoral - and we can see that the proof of their system has lead to two women who are "aged-out" of the marriage market for their society.

Unbiblical neediness, or emotional idolatry – having needs that we feel cannot be or are not being met by God – whether for companionship, love, affection, security, comfort, or a sense of worth – that we depend on other sources to meet. If we feel like we would die without attention/a boyfriend/a particular guy, and attaining that is the main thing that drives us, we are putting our faith in an idol and not God.

I agree that placing a romantic interest in the first place in a girl's life or heart prior to engagement or marriage is a terrible idea.   A woman old enough to date is old enough to have responsibilities to herself, her family, her community and her church.   As two people date, it's natural and healthy for the romantic interest to move higher in the list of responsibilities - but not right off the bat.   Of course, CP/QF young ladies are at much higher risk of this because they are prevented from having a form of external employment or much involvement in the wider community.  When the only form of change available in life is finding someone to marry, women and men both are far too likely to invest in a relationship that should have been discarded.

 I don't believe that falling in love is a form of idolatry; CP/QF writers use the charge of idolatry to cover sloppy reasoning.   At the risk of being crass, God doesn't provide sexual satisfaction or the chance to bear a massive number of offspring to single women no matter how pious she is.

The Botkin Sisters' solutions the moral problems are vague or strangely detailed while being completely unbelievable:

This will probably involve an overhaul of the minute-by-minute choices we make throughout the day: to either spend 30 minutes shopping for a particular clothing item we hope will impress a certain someone, or to spend it engaged in the good works of (invisible) service that we know will please the Lord; to listen to a song that stirs up our inner romantic neediness, or to listen to a sermon; to spend an hour texting a particular person, or to spend that hour reading the Word and communing with Christ.

I have never spent 30 minutes shopping for clothes to catch a man.  The Botkin Sisters are old enough to realize women mostly dress to impress other women; picking an outfit for a date night takes a tenth of the time as it does for a women's ministry meeting.    In picking out an outfit to wear on a date with my husband, I only needed to see if the outfit fitted well - e.g., showed off my excellent chest and hips while minimizing my stomach.  For a meeting with other women, my outfit needs to complement my coloring, be fashionable without being overly faddish, be impeccably clean, and draw out the better features of my figure.

The fact that the Botkin Sisters view 30 minutes as plenty of time to complete a real work of service in their lives makes me believe they do little or no service work.    Most real service requires a few hours of work, not 30 minutes.

How long are songs in Botkin-land?  I can only think of a few songs that are longer than 2-3 minutes.  Perhaps sermons have been trimmed down to mini-sermons that fit in 2-3 minute frames.  Or perhaps the only secular songs the Botkin Sisters know are "In a Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly and "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.

I'm amused that the Botkin Sisters inadvertently implied that religious topics cannot be texted or discussed for an hour.....

Lack of steadfastness – the inability to persevere. After battling to make a hard decision, sometimes we’re not prepared for how many times we’ll have to fight the same battle over and over again. And we get worn down. We get tired of saying no. We say “Don’t call me again,” but we answer the phone as soon as they do. The ability to win the battle depends on having the steadfastness to stick to our own principles, and that’s hard when other people and our own flesh are battering, relentlessly, against our resolve.

I wonder how much of this moral exhaustion comes from being raised in a protected greenhouse of like-minded homeschooling families.  One of the benefits of traditional schooling is that students learn how to defend their right to live as they choose.  All of your classmates drink chocolate milk - but you prefer white or strawberry milk.  You want to play on the twisty slide when your friends want to play on the swings.  You realize that one of your friends isn't a good friend and need to confront them about their behavior - or cut off contact.   These are all real-life examples of drama I faced prior to third grade.  I learned how to stand up for my own wants in decidedly low-stakes times.  As I got older, the stakes got a bit higher - but so did my ability to deal with my emotions.

I bring this up again - getting education, vocational training or even a minimum wage job provides a form of relief from the "relentless battering of resolve".  If a woman is living at home - especially a home as monotonous and dreary as most CP/QF homes - she can obsess over how the end of a relationship would feel for hours or days.  Put the same woman in the same home with a job as a part-time cashier and she's got blocks of time where she has to ignore the obsession over a relationship to remember the PLU for kale or how to ring up a marked-down cut of meat.  Give her a chance at training to become a nurse, an ironworker or a chef and the appeal of obsessing over breaking up with Mr. Stud Muffin of the Soul drops more.

Next, the Botkin Sisters make it clear that victims who maintain a relationship with their abuser are at fault:

The recent flood of scandals, including in the Christian community, includes far too many examples of women essentially saying, “Oh, I did rebuff his advances – every time we went out! I was never OK with the things he was pressuring me into doing, and I would tell him so every time it happened.” As a critically-injured young woman said when asked by her doctor why she didn’t just leave her abusive boyfriend: “Oh, but I have, Doctor – dozens of times!”

Why is the person at fault the woman who said "I don't like that" and gave the guy another chance when he stopped?  The guy is the one who crossed boundaries that were clearly stated.  The Botkin Sisters are far too willing to give ground to men who misbehave when they state that women should leave when men act inappropriately.  Following their advice means that misbehaving people gain access to everything while moral people are hiding in their homes.  I don't think that's going to fulfill the Great Commission any time soon, ladies.

The Botkin Sisters are also old enough to realize that their little vignette about a critically-injured woman is manufactured and cruel.   I've been critically ill before; you don't have the energy to make small talk with doctors because you feel horrible - and I wasn't in much pain when I was in the labor and delivery ICU.  Being critically injured is even worse since that means the woman is dealing with major injuries from a beating, strangling or attack with a weapon which means she's in pain, shock and traumatized.  If the Botkin Sisters were as in to doing service work as they claim, they would have been around people who were ill.  Every congregation I've been a part of has plenty of elderly people who are in and out of the hospital and congregants with chronic health issues.   The fact that the Sisters believe that a critically-ill abuse victim would sound like a debutante at a tea party shows how sheltered the sisters are.

 Why does the woman bear the stigma of not leaving her abusive boyfriend?  He's the one who beat, strangled, stabbed or shot her!  Her mistake was believing that he chose to change or that she simply didn't get out in time - neither of which is a crime or a sin.   The most I could say is that the abuse victim lacked the self-preservation instinct that is so important in adults - but, hey, how many of the Botkin family friends were left without jobs or contacts when Vision Forum folded? 

Taking cheap shots is easy; practicing compassion and steadfastness in the face of real human mistakes is hard.

The actions to learn steadfastness are so vague as to be ironic:

So let’s practice sticking to our resolves (even the little ones) whenever temptation is calling to let them go. Let’s practice standing firm on something we know is right when the pressure of the crowd is against us.

You first.  Anna Sofia, go tell your dad that you are going to study to pass the GED and plan to start attending college next year.  Elizabeth, go get a job as an in-home caregiver and tell your parents afterwards.  Make sure you stand firm in the face of their disapproval. 

If the Sisters can't do that, they have no right to tell the rest of us how to live our lives.

I looked at this post and realized that it's huge - and we're about half way through the subject of what vices lead women to be victimized.  I'll discuss the other half in the next post.  With a bit of luck, I should post that on Thursday or Friday - God willing and I don't get a migraine.  :-)

Spiritual Self-Defense: Master Your Biggest Enemy - Part Two

The second section in "Master Your Biggest Enemy" by Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin attempts to finally work out the spiritual aspects of Bryan and Emily's story.  Since this series is long and convoluted, I've pulled out the entirety of the original story in case we've forgotten any pertinent details:

Bryan is pushing his girlfriend Emily’s physical boundaries. Emily says no, I don’t want to do this. Bryan pushes harder. Emily finally gives in, but reluctantly. Afterwards, she’s furious and devastated and blames him for forcing her. Bryan says, What are you talking about? You were going along with it the whole time, and besides, look how you were dressed. Don’t try to tell me you weren’t asking for this. It was half your fault; don’t you go trying to get me in trouble like you’re some victim here.

Re-reading this synopsis, I'm reminded of the problems with attempting to write a scenario about a situation that you've never experienced.  Or perhaps the problem is a lack of deciding what actually happened between Bryan and Emily.  For people in the non-CP/QF world, the confusing bit is that the idea of consent between adults is totally absent.  I've read that story a billion times and I'm still unsure if what happened between the two of them qualified as rape/criminal sexual conduct or just miserable consensual sex. 

Let's look at the details more closely.  The first five sentences are a mess.  For example, the verb "push" is used twice in five sentences - but obscures the actions performed by Bryan.   Was Bryan threatening Emily physically?  Was Bryan threatening to harm Emily in a serious way in the future if she did not comply?  If he was, he's guilty of rape or criminal sexual assault by force or coercion even if Emily consented later on.  Was Bryan asking Emily to perform a sexual act repeatedly without threats of a serious nature?  Was Bryan threatening to break up with Emily if they didn't have sex? That's legal - although  red-flag towards Bryan's suitability as a boyfriend. What's the difference between "is pushing" and "pushes harder"?  Did Bryan start in an area that is legal and move into illegal territory?

The total lack of a timeline in the paragraph is another issue.  If the paragraph happens in a single, date night  between Bryan and Emily, that's deeply concerning.  On the other hand, this could be a sloppy synopsis of days or weeks or months of Bryan wanting to do more physical interaction while Emily doesn't want to do more - which Bryan accepts for days or weeks or months.

Emily's response to everything is another hot mess.  Emily says no.  According to later portions of posts, Emily says no over and over.  Meanwhile, Bryan keeps asking until Emily eventually changes her mind and says "yes" - albeit reluctantly.  I'm not a fan of reluctant consent - and I don't think the Botkin Sisters are doing anyone any favors by writing up a female example who says "yes" then tells Bryan she was forced afterwards.   Yes, Bryan should have picked up on the fact that Emily didn't seem that into whatever they were doing since they were dating - but unless Emily did or said something that clearly delineated that she revoked her consent - Emily's on very shaky ground for arguing that Bryan forced her. 

Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure what's going on with Emily emotionally.  At some point she made a choice to do something sexually with Bryan.  What is missing is how Emily reached a point where she made a choice and then freaked out about the choice she made afterwards.  Emily seems oblivious to the fact that "bad sex" - a consensual encounter that one or both parties regrets afterwards - is not the same as rape or criminal sexual conduct.  From my read, the story is closer to "bad sex" than rape - but it's still a mess. Emily's reaction to blame Bryan for her choice is not a healthy or fun way to live when you don't have the skills to make choices and manage feelings that come after the choice.

Finally, Bryan is an ass based on his reaction to Emily's emotion.  I'm cutting him some major slack because his girlfriend is accusing him of rape - but the whole victim-blaming spiel is deeply disturbing and is a sign that Emily should run away from her relationship with him. 

The saddest bit is that the Botkin Sisters act as if all romantic relationships are adversarial when it comes to sexuality.  In reality, most relationships manage sexual issues just fine.  Partners understand that everyone has different likes, dislikes and boundaries.  If the two people are too discordant, the general outcome is that they break up - not that one person decides to bend their boundaries markedly and then regrets it.

After that long digression, we can move into these added reflections by the Botkin Sisters:

Emily truly did want to do the right thing in her relationship with Bryan. She genuinely believed that the things Bryan continually pressured her to do were wrong, and she really did mean “no” every time she said it. But in each encounter, her resolve crumbled under the pressure of his arguments and pleadings, the fear of hurting or angering him… and honestly, sometimes, the overwhelmingly strong desire for what he offered her. Emily’s no floozy, but her natural desires are simply a lot stronger than her spiritual ones. Does this feel familiar?

Honestly, no, this does not feel familiar to me at all.  I make decisions about what I want to do sexually based on what I want to do sexually.   For me, it's based on if I feel that doing something more sexually fits the relationship based on where the relationship is at on emotional and commitment levels plus what I feel comfortable doing as a person.   My partner's wishes, wants and desires matter exactly as far as letting me know if they are comfortable with doing something.  Outside of that, I expect my partner to be an adult and treat me as one as well.  IOW, if a person starts arguing or pleading with me about a sex act I don't want to do, I am leaving that relationship pronto.

Again, the Botkin Sisters miss a chance to talk about the different degrees of "fear of hurting or angering him".  Bryan is guilty of rape if Emily has a rational reason to think that Bryan is going to cause her physical pain, injury or harm to herself, love ones or personal property if she refuses sex with him.   If Emily's fears are the more germane type where she doesn't want to hurt Bryan's feelings or is afraid that Bryan will be angry enough that he will break up with her, Emily's consent still stands legally.  After all, Bryan didn't sign off all autonomy when he started dating Emily.  He has a right to have feelings and to act on those feelings as long as he doesn't break any laws.

The last problematic issue is that the Botkin Sisters ignore the fact that Emily may have given honest consent - in spite of the nagging ghosts of her fundamentalist upbringing saying she was a floozy - and struggled with her feelings afterwards.   Those ghosts might have hit Emily with a wave of guilt, anxiety and self-loathing after the fact.  Emily deserved help dealing with those feelings preferably from a trained professional.  Instead, she blamed Bryan - which isn't terribly helpful.

So that paragraph tipped the story towards "consensual sex with later regret" - and yet the very next paragraph labels Bryan as a predator...and Emily as a weakling:

We can’t say often enough that Bryan and Bryan alone bears the blame for what Bryan did. Emily’s weaknesses didn’t force Bryan to sin against her, and also didn’t mean that she deserved it. But they did betray her into the hands of a predator when it was fully in her power to escape.

How does a weak woman become strong? Does Emily have any hope of becoming the fearless champion of right that she aches to be… a woman who could actually stand by her words, who could actually walk away from her encounters with Bryan without regrets, who could dare to ask trusted friends for help without fear of Bryan’s fury…? What do you do when you know you don’t have the strength you need?

The first paragraph crystalizes the major flaw with the CP/QF views on morality in sexual encounters.  According to CP/QF logic, procreative sex between married heterosexual adults is licit; everything else is illicit.    Because of that fuzzy logic, the dueling scenarios of rape vs. sex with later regret have the exact same level of moral blame for Bryan.  In CP/QF land, Bryan is always wrong for having sex with Emily premaritally; Emily, on the other hand, is not morally culpable if she was raped.   The scary side-effect of CP/QF morality is that the ONLY way Emily is not culpable is if she was raped.  The Botkin Sisters throw the word "floozy" around quite easily; I'm sure they've got other more descriptive and crude ones available once they've learned that Emily and Bryan had consensual sex. 

The vast majority of Christian churches take a more....well, nuanced....view of human sexuality.  My Catholic schooling was pretty clear on the fact that people should wait for sex until they were married - but an awful lot of my classmates were born well under 40 weeks after their parents married.   As we got older, it became pretty clear that real adults - people who were financially independent of their parents - who were in committed relationships could do more sexually than was viewed as being OK for teenagers because adults can make adult decisions.  Equally importantly, gossiping about adults' sexual matters was more morally abhorrent than having sex.  After all, sex is an expression of love between two adults; gossip is a form of hate.  We also had a church-sanctioned method of repairing our relationship with God if we had premarital sex and felt bad known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  The simple existence of that Sacrament tends to mess up the gossip chain anyway because gossiping about someone else's forgiven sin is really, really crass (and probably a sin as well, now that I think about it) and you never know if they've repented or not.

What do you do when you don't know if you have the strength? Guess what?  No one ever feels strong in the middle of a crisis!  Adults simply do what needs to be done. Yeah, having a tough conversation with a boyfriend about ending the relationship because you have different sexual needs or wants is hard.  Applying for jobs and not getting a job over and over is hard.  So is supporting a spouse through a medical crisis.  So is sitting by an incubator with a tiny infant who will die without advanced life support - and the only thing to do is wait for him to grow.  Caring for a person with complicated medical needs is hard.  Saying goodbye when loved ones die is hard, too.  Here's the upside to all of those hard things - doing hard things is the only way to gain wisdom.  I've known people who have chosen to run away from hard situations in life.  That makes me angry at times - but I also have a great deal of pity for those people since they are choosing to live as children instead of adults.

If we’re using music, movies, or novels, to sow to inappropriate fantasies, misplaced longings, or emotional roller-coasters, we must not expect to reap purity, clear-mindedness, emotional self-control, and a strong grip on reality. If we’re sowing to moral confusion by sympathizing with people in those movies, music, or novels doing things we know are wrong, we must not expect to reap moral clarity and resolve in the times when we need it most. If we’re sowing to an affection for the wrong things in men, we must not expect to be more drawn to godliness and holiness than good looks, rakish charm, and edgy humor. And if we’re sowing thoughts and actions from our natural desire for men to notice us, like us, want us… we must not expect to respond really selflessly, righteously, and uncompromisingly when one does. Because God’s laws of sowing and reaping don’t work that way.

*rolls eyes*

That's the most absurd thing I ever heard. 

I grew up hearing about how people defrauded Meijers on a regular basis from my mom who worked in Loss Prevention.  In other words, we had all the information we needed to be super-thieves - and yet I've never stolen anything. 

My favorite Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character was Kai Winn who managed to set up a contract killing before killing a servant for trying to stop her evil plan - and yet I started crying in my yard yesterday when I thought I had hit a rabbit's nest.  (The baby bunny survived unharmed; I rebuilt the cover of the nest as best I could because otherwise the little kit kept trying to hide in the middle of our driveway.)

I've been listening to Shakespeare's plays being rehearsed and performed since I was a toddler.  I was awash in a sea of alcohol, drugs, illicit sex and violence - and yet my life has been so vanilla that I describe my alcohol usage in drinks per year, have dabbled in no illegal drugs, and have only ever fought my twin sister.

My favorite two binge-watching shows are "White Collar" and "Arrested Development" - but I have no interest in becoming a white-collar criminal or joining a passive-aggressive dysfunctional family for that matter.

So, no, I don't think any part of Emily's issues with Bryan come from her love of Christian romance novels or the fact that she listens to contemporary Christian music.

Finally, beware quashing all of desire to have someone be attracted to you sexually...to want to have you as a life partner...to travel through life's good and bad times together if you want to be married to someone who likes you and is sexually attracted to you.   Yeah, it's a terrible idea to get so fixated on marriage that you marry the first guy who seems attracted to you - but it's an equally bad idea to send out the vibe of "I'm not into you romantically" if you want a romance.

Think about it.  If I walked around all the time looking mostly unexcited about teaching, why would anyone offer me a teacher's job?  How is marriage different?

Spiritual Self Defense - Get Ready For War - Part One

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*slow claps*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiritual Self-Defense - Know What God Requires - Part Two

A rite of passage for Catholic teenagers in the area I grew up is watching a well-meaning friend of yours attempt to convert you away from Catholicism into some form of Calvino-Baptist Christianity using "The Roman Road". 

 The Roman Road is a series of verses from the Book of Romans that walks people through the stages needed for a correct conversion experience and away from their previous unsaved sinful lives. 

The reason this is a rite of passage is that watching your friend attempt to recite something like 6-8 verses from Romans in the correct order is rather agonizing to start with.  Even the most zealous teenager starts to make minor mistakes like inserting the chapter and verse numbers at the end of each quotation.  That's a shame because "The Roman Road" is more like a Drunkard's Path quilt than a straight line; the verses are not sequential let alone consecutive - and the teenager is generally unprepared for having a friend say "Why are the verses out of order?"  (Some other questions/comments that generally stop the conversation dead are "You realize we read Romans in church a lot, right?  This is not new information to me" or my favorite "Are you sure you've memorized that verse correctly?). 

After belaboring their way through a few paragraphs on how much weight God puts on obeying him mindless by following ideas like the Botkin Response against sin, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin finally decide to start laying out the four easy (or agonizingly hard in their opinion) steps to responding to sin.  Here are the steps in my words:

1.  Tell the other person what they are doing is wrong.
2. Separate yourself from the person who might sin against you.
3. Yell for help.
4. Tell authorities about what happened.

Simply scanning the article for the Bible verse references they use brings up Genesis, Proverbs, Romans, 2 Timothy, Luke and Deuteronomy.    The verses are not sequential or consecutive - and the Botkin interpretation of the vast majority are suspect.

Allow me to start with the most egregious example. 

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth gleefully hold up the story of Joseph and Potiphar's Wife as an example of how Joseph followed the Botkin Response for steps 1 and 2.   

I'm still trying to figure out how.....why.....who in their right mind would pick that story to support a method of self-defense that is supposed to be "devastating" to attackers. 

 Allow me to do a fast recap of the story in Genesis 39.   Potiphar's is Joseph's Egyptian slave-owner.  Joseph is a handsome man and Potiphar's Wife wants to have an affair with him.  He says no.  She propositions him repeatedly.  He says no repeatedly. 

The Botkin Sisters rave happily over Joseph's incorruptibility!  Following God is great!

This is the point where the Botkin Sisters drop the story like a hot potato because the rest of the story might scare off their readers.  See, one time Potiphar's Wife gets a hold of Joseph's clothing causing him to escape without his clothing.  She hangs onto his clothing and accuses him of attempted rape.  Joseph is sent to prison.

The second half of the story is important if you are a CP/QF woman because it demonstrates that society frames a discordant story to blame the victim so that the rest of the group avoids uncomfortable feelings.  The idea that Potiphar's Wife would willingly have an affair with a foreign slave - even a handsome, skillful slave like Joseph - was repugnant to the other members of the household.  That situation would weaken the authority of Egyptians over foreign slaves while the attempted rape of Potiphar's Wife demonstrated that foreign slaves were untrustworthy and dangerous and deserved to be kept under close scrutiny.   In CP/QF society, men are religious leaders in authority similar to Potiphar's Wife while young, unmarried women are in a powerless group of people like Joseph.   In much the same way, when women accuse men of sexual misconduct in CP/QF society, the community coalesces around the men who are accused by questioning what the woman did to seduce the man.

I have two more minor points on this issue. 

First, Joseph didn't follow the second step of separating himself from Potiphar's Wife as thoroughly as the Botkin Sisters claim he did.  How could he?  He's a slave who cannot leave his master whenever the slaves pleases.  In one of the paragraphs, the Botkin Sisters snidely deride a victim of Harvey Weinstein for allowing herself to remain around him when he's crossed personal boundaries.   The Sister's lack of compassion or empathy is staggering - but it is also a natural side-effect of having lived a sheltered life where they have never needed to earn a living.   Quitting a job has both short-term and long-term ramification on a person's life;  storming out of a producer's office and quitting in a huff means taking an immediate financial hit since the person loses their income when they quit the job.  The person who leaves is putting an ugly black mark on their career.  People who worked with them who are unaware of the harassment will be under the impression that the victim left a job without notice for whatever reason the harasser decides to tell everyone else.   

Second, Joseph never told the authorities what happened to him.  Joseph - the beloved of God whom fortune smiles on - understood intuitively that attempting to rebut Potiphar's Wife's story would only create more danger for him and so stayed silent.   CP/QF young women are in the same boat.  Until this post was published, our best guess as to how Anna Sofia and Elizabeth would respond to a person disclosing a sexual assault to them is that they would blame them partially unless the woman could prove she screamed when attacked.  And as a frequent commentator pointed out, that was the liberated viewpoint in the family; Geoffrey Botkin has recommended bring back the death penalty for fornication - including women who didn't scream when raped.  Vision Forum's sister-cult of IBLP/ATI has an entire worksheet to help counselors work through how best to blame victims for sexual crimes.  The SBC is struggling with newly surfaced documents about how Paige Patterson discouraged a seminary student who was raped from reporting the attack to the police because it would reflect badly on the church - and put the victim under probation. 

If you are a CP/QF girl, I can see where Joseph's story makes sense.  In a situation where Joseph was powerless, he stayed silent and eventually God rescued him.   Sometimes that's the best option.  Sometimes that's the only option....but not always.

The Botkin Sisters ignored the story of Tamar and Judah in the previous chapter.  Judah withheld one of his living sons from becoming Tamar's wife when she had been widowed previously without children.  Tamar fought back by dressing up as a temple prostitute and getting pregnant by Judah.   I concede that her revenge is specific to the time and culture in which she lived, but she was as powerless as an unmarried CP/QF daughter is today, but she managed to right a wrong through cunning and perseverance. 

IMHO, she deserves as much discussion as Joseph in this story because she demonstrates that sometimes the road to justice can be long, exhausting and dangerous - but that some people in some circumstances can travel that road.

My husband's grandmother passed away last night peacefully in her sleep.  I will most likely be off-line more than normal this week to support my husband and his family during this time of grief.

Spiritual Self-Defense - Know What God Requires - Commentary One

I graduated from a small Catholic college that required all undergraduate students to take a single "theology" class during their attendance at the college.  I placed theology in quotes because the college was about respecting students' beliefs so there were a wide range of options from traditional theology classes to philosophy classes to comparative religion classes and even work-study classes that did volunteering in communities. 

I appreciated the plethora of options, but I was a Biology major with a Chemistry minor who was earning a Secondary Education teaching certificate which is essentially a second major while working part-time off-campus.   In other words, I wanted the simplest course I could take so I signed up for "Intro to Christian Spirituality"  and figured 12 years of Catholic schooling would carry me through the course without too much extra work.  I was right - but I did manage to learn some new things along the way. 

One day, the professor introduced the topic of theodicy which is a fancy term for theologians who attempt to explain why God allows evil to happen - or a related topic of why God allows bad things to happen to good people.  Bluntly, this is a loaded topic for anyone who has lost a family member so I was pretty checked out - but I'll never forget the professor's words of warning at the start.

He started by saying that theodicy is a great topic for academic arguments between theologians - but never, ever bring up any of those arguments in the real world when doing pastoral care...or just being a human. 

I wish the Botkin Sisters applied that piece of wisdom to the blog post I'm reviewing tonight. 

I am not a theologian - and no amount of training could convert me into one; my brain doesn't work like that.  With that caveat, I think that Anna Sofia and/or Elizabeth Botkin could get away with an academic, deeply researched treatise about ideal responses to sexual aggression in the Bible.  They'd need to bone up on how to support ideas from the Bible and need to show some basic understanding of the literary forms in the Bible, but the real benefit of academic research is that nearly any topic can be delved into without doing harm to other people.  Read the Bible, play "Concordance Chance", learn some ancient Hebrew, reference a few commentaries, figure out which formatting the journal wants and poof!  The Botkin Sisters can act out their fascination with the actions of women facing sexual aggression in the Bible without doing harm to any of their readers.

The second paragraph in this post shows a major flaw in their argument that the Bible has a neatly defined plan of response for women facing attackers:

As we explained in Part 1, 100% of the guilt of the abuser’s crime rests on the abuser, no matter what the victim does or doesn’t do. There is nothing a victim can do to “deserve” abuse, and if she fails to stop a crime being committed against her, it’s never “her fault.” However, while God promises that the sin of our abusers will not go unpunished (Num. 32:23, Isa. 13:11, Prov. 11:21), He has also given us specific instructions for becoming a type of woman and developing a type of strength that can make us devastating to this kind of man. But that first requires knowing how to draw the lines.

Notice that the Bible states unambiguously multiple times that sins will be punished.  The verses in Numbers, Isaiah and Proverbs - along with lots of other ones - make it clear that people may get away with sin on Earth, but God will punish sin eventually.   That's super clear - so where are the clear, clear verses that sum up God's "specific instructions" to women? 

Interesting fact: those verses don't exist.  The Bible has plenty of cases of sexual harassment and assault in it - and there's no single way that people responded.

I'm glad the Botkin Sisters have moved away from direct victim-blaming (yay!).  Notice, though, that there is still an indirect condemnation of women who don't follow the allegedly Biblical way of resisting sexual harassment and assault.  A woman versed in the Botkin Method is "devastating" to abusers.  First, what the hell does that mean?  I've worked hard over the years to be able to be intimidating as hell when I need to be - but I've never managed to devastate someone due to inappropriate behavior.  Second, women who haven't followed the Botkin Method have managed to devastate  some pretty big names in CP/QF land.  Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips both managed to lose their entire ministry thanks to women who discarded all of the Botkin Method steps - and, man, those women managed to prevent them from hurting others while also taking all of the trappings of power and fame from them.  Lastly, what does it mean for women who come away from a sexual abuse situation and feel devastated themselves?  The world has some seriously messed up people who hurt others while being strangely resistant to punishment themselves. 

Branding a family-level defense strategy as Godly is dodgy enough; don't worsen the insult by promising that the attacker will feel bad - or lose everything they value - if women follow three easy steps....

The next paragraph shows how unprepared CP/QF young women are to think.  (I was going to say "think independently" - but a few of these statements make me wonder if the girls are supposed to get rid of their brains at puberty,)

After all, are we sure what this man did was wrong? What if he’s a mature Christian who has studied his Bible and is assuring us that this is OK? What if he was in a position of authority over us – doesn’t God say we’re supposed to submit to authority? And besides, what are we going to do? Slap him? Call the police? Would telling someone else be gossip? If this gets out, how will it reflect on the church? Is that really what Jesus would do?

I discussed this idea in the last post - but people can stop actions for reasons other than morality.  My given name is Melinda.  A common nickname for Melinda is Mindy - and I shut anyone down who calls me Mindy.   There's nothing immoral about a Melinda being called Mindy - and many, many other Melindas like being called Mindy.  But this Melinda abhors being called Mindy and I have every right to expect that people call me Melinda or Mel. 

Here's another example: I am not a hugger.  I hug close family members.  I hug some friends if I haven't seen them in a long time.  I will hug people who are struggling with grief if they want a hug.  Rarely, someone who is not in one of those three categories hugs me before I have a chance to stiff-arm them.   There's nothing morally wrong with hugging someone and there's nothing wrong with me stating my categorical preference to not be hugged by people I don't want to be hugged by.

A far more important question is "Am I comfortable with what happened between me and so-and-so?"   I get it; CP/QF girls have been socialized to ignore every thought, feeling, drive, talent, ambition, whim, wish or desire that starts within them if it doesn't conform to what their father or husband wants.  I get that - but gut feelings are a quick and surprisingly accurate way to determine when someone is behaving in a potentially problematic way.

As for the rest - yikes.

Mature Christian Authorities can lie.  See Bill Gothard and Doug Phillips for details on how they did that.

The Bible is full of admonitions to obey authorities.  It's equally full of  people who defied authorities and lived in God's Blessings.  See Rebecca, Jacob/Israel, Leah, and most of Jacob's sons for details.  Want New Testament examples?  What percentage of the time does Jesus tell the Apostles to stop arguing about personal ranking and get back to work?  How many times does Paul and a companion return separately from missions?   So...I think it's a wash at best......

I don't recommend slapping as a form of defense..  It makes a lot of noise, but will anger an assailant without incapacitating them.  Think of movements that produce a lot of force like punching, stomping, head-butting or elbowing or actions that cause a lot of pain and damage to the face like scratching, eye-gouging or biting.

Call the police if someone is putting your health (including mental) or life at risk.  If you are not sure, you can always call the non-emergency line and discuss with an officer if the interaction is worth filing a police report.  (For people who are worried about "overreacting" - women are still working on getting fair treatment for sexual crimes so you don't need to worry about accidentally ruining someone's life.  The system is still tipped greatly in favor of protecting attackers over accusers - so if an officer tells you that you can make a report, do it.  That means something bad happened to you.)

Jesus.  Gossipping is the exchange of negative information about another person for the sole purpose of amusing other people.   Neither discussing an event that happened that hurt/scared/or confused you nor reporting a crime is gossip.

I'm Catholic - so let me tell you that crimes will out.  Whatever crime is potentially being covered up to "not reflect badly on the Church" will come out eventually - plus the added scandal and crime of covering a crime up.   Handling a crime that occurs within a church community by reporting the crime to the police and assisting in the investigation is much better PR than ignoring victims, moving perpetrators to different churches and creating new victims....

What would Jesus do?  Well, the Jesus in the Gospel of John is essentially the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels written for John Wayne so I guess he'd get a posse together and ride the offender out of town.    Or shoot them.  Or tip their tables over. 

My last quote for this post makes me wonder about the Botkin Sisters sense of irony or lack thereof:

If our knowledge of the Scriptures primarily consists of some vague or misapplied concepts about forgiving, overlooking offenses, covering sin, obeying authorities, not gossiping, and having a gentle and quiet spirit, we are not ready to fight this battle.

I am drawing a complete and total blank on Scripture verses that recommend covering sin.  Oh, don't get me wrong; people try to cover sin up all_the_time especially in the refreshingly human Old Testament - but it generally ends badly.

As for the rest, well, most of humanity understands the difference between the normal rubs and wrongs of people living together and egregious offenses that threaten health and safety.

Let's look at the differences:

Forgiveness -

• Good idea: your sister "borrows" your new shirt without asking for the third time, returns it unharmed, but is genuinely contrite when she realizes you were planning on wearing it and couldn't.
• Bad idea: Bryan in the first post who responded to your distress at a previous sexual activity by telling you that you can't complain because of the way you dressed.  (Remember, run away from the Bryans of the world.)

Overlooking offenses -

• Good idea: You work with Jack, an attractive single man.  Jack says that he finds you very attractive and asks you out on a date.  You decline because you want to follow the courtship motto.  Jack is disappointed, but goes back to your previous working relationship.
• Bad idea: Same set up, but Jack asks you out the next day.  And the next.  And twice the day after that.  You start dreading coming to work because avoiding Jack is exhausting.

Obeying authorities

• Good idea: Your boss tells you that you need to put together 30 copies of the 500 page year-end report for the company - and you hate photocopying.
• Bad idea:  Your boss tells you that you need to put together 30 copies of the 500 page year-end report for the company - and you hate photocopying - but she'll assign it to someone else if you go on a date with her.

Not gossiping

• Good idea: You recognize the new youth minister.  He went to prom with your best friend 5 years ago and threw up from nerves. 
• Bad idea: You recognize the new youth minister.  He took off from your last church in another state when there were some accusations about inappropriate behavior at a weekend camping trip.  

Meek and gentle spirit

• Good idea: you are goosed at work by a three-year old.  
• Bad idea: you are goosed at work by a coworker, boss or client.

Oddly enough, the title of the Botkin Sisters' second book applies here: It's NOT That Complicated!

Spiritual Self-Defense: Part One - Commentary Three

When I read a new Botkin Sisters post, I always get the same three thoughts. 

The first thought is "On which planet do these women live?"  I generally have this reaction from their revisionist histories (feminism is really a plot by Marxists to subsume the American way!) or when they make a sudden, breathless declaration that they think they've realized something that no one else has ever (paintings from the Romantic period ignore historical realities!).

My second thought is "You've really bought into this, haven't you?" in response to their wishy-washy efforts to justify their beliefs.  My personal favorite is the podcast "What It Means to Honor Our Parents" where each kid at some point attempts to explain that the word "honor" really means "obey"...but the results are atrocious because the two words aren't synonyms in English.  A close second is Anna Sophia and Elizabeth's adoration of comparing and contrasting the stories of Abigail and Bathsheba in the Bible - but they always miss the fact that the woman who bore David's eventual heir Solomon was....Bathsheba.

The third thought is often the most disturbing because "You really believed that?" comes from those glimpses into the culture in which they were raised.  The first quote I'd like to discuss comes in the middle of a paragraph that breathlessly proclaims that people are learning about the extent of abuse for the first time ever!  That's hardly true - but I'm sure it's the first time the Botkin Sisters have been unsheltered enough to hear about it.  The paragraph continues with this gem:

This is not just a threat that lurks far away, in dodgy places where we never go – it’s all around us. And it doesn’t just threaten “bad girls,” “immodest” women, or black sheep who have stepped outside of some sort of “umbrella of protection” – strong Christian women face this evil, even in their own homes and churches.

Seriously?  This is NOT new information in wider US culture.  Women have been working at dismantling victim-blaming during rape by strangers since before the 1970's as well as the fact that sexual abuse occurs in families.  By the mid-1980's when my personal memories started, people were well aware that childhood sexual abuse could occur from outside authority figures (i.e., teachers, priests, coaches) and activists were trying to raise awareness of rape by acquaintances.  The 1990's brought widespread understanding of sexual harassment in the workplace and a huge breakthrough in awareness of consent (thanks in part to media sources).

I'm always a bit boggled when the Botkin Sisters excitedly explain that they've realized something that larger society figured out 40 years ago or more.   But once they've done it once, they decide to double-down by declaring that no-one's been trying to teach women how to prevent sexual harassment and assault either!

The culture of victim-blaming has been a major culprit in keeping the culture of abuse alive, first by taking the responsibility off of the abuser and keeping his crimes from being taken seriously – but also by creating a fear of honest discussion about whether there is anything we potential victims could or should do to fight against abuse.

I completely agree with them prior to the dash in the quote.  One reason that victim-blaming lives on is that it allows attackers to avoid responsibility for their crimes.  The problem is that the Botkin Sisters miss the second reason - and it's the reason they were more than willing to believe that rape or harassment only happened to "bad" women.  Blaming the victim allows other people to feel safer.  After all, if bad things only happen to bad people, then good people will never suffer.

Like victim-blaming, advocates working to empower women to avoid, stop or report abuse, attacks or harassment have been busy since at least the 1980's.     I remember talking about "good" and "bad" touches in elementary school.  We discussed rape and sexual abuse in junior high - along with the immorality of victim blaming - and again several times in high school.  I can't remember a time where adult women weren't teaching teens and young women basic safety techniques.

• Be aware of your surroundings.  
• Trust your instincts and don't be afraid of hurting someone's feelings if you are feeling uneasy.
• If you feel afraid, return to a safe place and seek help.
• If you think you are being followed, make it clear that you see the person who is following you - it often discourages attackers who are looking for someone who is unaware.   
• Take advantage of offers to be escorted to cars after dark.  
• If people are nearby who can help, don't let feelings of embarrassment keep you from screaming for help.   
• If you have to fight, fight as dirty as you can- bite, scratch, eye-gouge and kick as well as punch. 
• If you are alone, do whatever you think will keep you alive and as safe as possible.  This might mean not fighting an attacker because survival matters more than avoiding rape. 
• Keep an eye on friends at parties - doubly so if people are drinking alcohol.  
• Know the signs of abuse in relationships.  You always have the right to leave a relationship if your partner is abusive.

I won't pretend I know what Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin - or Doug Phillips - were teaching the Botkin Sisters, but my parents were busy teaching us that we had plenty of options if we were ever in a frightening situation - and that they would have our back no matter what happened.

Eventually, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth flounder into the most obvious question about why they are focusing on the victim rather than the attacker:

Absolutely the main problem we’re dealing with is the abuse and the abusers – not the things that victims do or don’t do. So why are we not focusing this series on those evils? Why not just tell abusers to stop abusing? Why “add burdens” to possible victims by talking to them about things they could or should do?

Because even victims have been given authority and power by God for responding to evil, and He wants us to use it. And because we each have the power to do a lot more damage to this abuse stronghold than we realize.

Mmm-kay.  Did that convince anyone?  Show of hands, please.

I feel like I write scads of obvious crap on this blog - and here's we go again:  The most effective way to prevent crime is to stop the criminal from doing the crime.

This is why high school health classes have added discussions about consent to curriculum.  In 2000, I got around 3 hours of training on "No means No!" during freshmen orientation.  The benefits of these discussions is two-fold.  People who are of more aggressive personalities are reminded that consent matters - and that non-consensual sexual activity is a crime.  At the same time, everyone is shown one way of stating their desire to stop a sexual activity from happening.

I won't pretend that this is a cure-all - but man, it's a whole lot better than only training women to a rigid form of self-defense....

Let's be honest about why Anna Sofia and Elizabeth can't tell abusers to stop.  The two of them are in the second least powerful group of people in CP/QF society through no fault of their own.  Near as I can figure, CP/QF has a rigid power structure that places married men at the top followed by single men, married women, single women and children at the bottom. 

The Botkin Sisters are stuck lecturing other single women and children about their responsibilities when being attacked because they don't have any standing over any men...or most women, really.

I need to point out again how creepy and skeevy and wrong it is for the Botkin Sisters to create a series of responsibilities for other people WHILE facing abuse or attack.   I don't understand how they reached adulthood without developing the sense of compassion or common sense that the vast majority of people have - because most people would never write the first post in this series let alone the remaining five.

The next quote is so very strange on a few levels:

Whether we’re still dreading our first bad encounter; we’re in the middle of an uncomfortable relationship; our bodies, hearts, and consciences are wracked over past incidents; or we’re just a bystander agonizing over whether to keep quiet about something we know about… these are spiritual as well as physical battles, and they require spiritual as well as physical strength and preparation.

Um... three of the four examples have no physical strength or preparation required.  Angst about future incidents (which may never happen), negative feelings about past events and decisions about information involving a third-party have no physical component.

I'd like to reiterate that hand-wringing about potential future issues is a waste of time and energy.  I believe there is great benefit to learning about situational awareness and how to defend yourself if you need to - but those are empowering skills just like learning CPR and First Aid makes people feel more confident about helping injured or hurt people.    Anxiety is paralyzing - and normalizing it does not help Anna Sofia and Elizabeth's readers.  A far better choice is to believe that you are capable of handling situations as they come.

What we will be focusing on is one specific sliver of the topic: The spiritual side of the battle the average young adult woman faces as she encounters challenges with male friends, boyfriends, employers, workmates, etc. – challenges in which she does have a degree of agency and control, and where her own preparedness can make all the difference.

Hoo-boy. 

Well, I guess my minor issue is that people always have a degree of agency as long as they are conscious and not severely incapacitated by pain or paralysis.   Likewise, people generally have some degree of control over their action albeit sometimes the amount of control can be extremely curtailed.

My larger point is by what standing do Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin have for discussing the spiritual (or physical or economic or socio-governmental or whatever buzzword they like today) battle that women face with friends, lovers, employers and coworkers?  By their own admission, they keep male friends at a distance emotionally through keeping conversations academic, religious and impersonal.  There has never been a publicized courtship for either Anna Sofia or Elizabeth - and based on "So Much More" I feel safe assuming that neither woman would be left alone with their potential spouse until after they were married - and that's hardly a safeguard against domestic abuse including spousal rape.   The work experience of the two of them is so limited that they don't realize that for most teenage or young women the workplace involves three groups of men, not two: supervisors, coworkers and clients/customers.

My last point for Part One is that preparation is wonderful, but it never promises a good outcome.  Learning CPR is admirable and beginning CPR on a non-responsive person is a good deed - but the person may still die.  Asserting the right to have a harassment-free workplace may cause the situation to worsen over the short-term - and may require legal intervention to resolve.  Being mentally (or spiritually) ready to resist an attacker doesn't prevent all attack from happening.

It's never the victim's fault.  It's not her fault if she was completely prepared - and her preparations didn't work..  It was not his fault if he was completely unprepared - because he never thought it would happen to him.  The only person at fault is the attacker. 

Pretending that excellent preparation will completely prevent sexual harassment, assault or abuse is a form of whistling in the dark at best - and is likely to hurt victims.