This weekend is my last taste of freedom.
Before anyone panics, I'm not going to jail. As those of you who read these weekly excursions into life, Badbookistan, and everything have probably guessed, I'm one of those obnoxiously truthful, law-abiding creatures that other human beings wish to slap on a regular basis. I don't smoke, either tobacco or herbal mixtures, I rarely drink, I pay my taxes and parking tickets with a minimum of complaint, and I do my best not to indulge in common American customs like jaywalking, cheating at cards, or squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube.
I don't even walk on the grass, at least not until it's actually grass and not those weird little greenish patches of fertilizer, zoysia seeds, and mud that will eventually become what we in New England call "lawns."
So my lack of freedom has zippedy-do-dah to do with the law. No, I'm about to go into what I like to call Stealth Mode, when I clear my schedule, fire up the computer in the Garrett, and get to work on my next conference paper. The next six weekends of my life will be devoted not to these diaries but to finishing up Captain America 2: Vibranium Boogaloo! my next presentation at the Kalamazoo Medieval Studies Congress in mid-May. I'll surface occasionally to eat, drink, go to the day job, and wave at you, my most faithful readers, on Saturday nights, but original material will have to wait until May 16th.
Rumors that I will take a couple of days off to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron over and over and over until they drag my drooling husk from the theater and fling me bodily into the nearest locked ward will not be dignified with a response.
That's why the next six weeks of diaries will be Research Rewinds, when I'll repost an older diary for your dining and dancing pleasure. I'll include a short introduction for those of you who might have managed to avoid these tidbits of proof that yes, I am one of the Peculiar People of Easthampton, Massachusetts, but everything else will be a rewind.
Tonight we begin with a diary from September 2013 about a movement that's managed to fly under the radar basically unchecked for most of the last half century. Avowedly religious, conservative to the point of reactionary, and surprisingly influential, the so-called "Christian Patriarchy Movement" preaches feminine submission, wifely fecundity, and daughterly meekness. The subjects/alleged authors of tonight's Book So Bad It's Good have all but disappeared from the Internet thanks to the dramatic, sudden, and decidedly unchristian actions of their movement's leader, but their book survives.
It's both hilariously bad and utterly terrifying, at least if you're a woman who aspires to be anything more than a child-swollen adjunct to your husband, but anyone who wants a glimpse into the mindset behind so many of these modern attempts to turn back the clock on women's rights should venture below the 0.1 Orange Kossack Kaiju for tonight's Research Rewind:
BACK TO THE KITCHEN, MODERN JEZEBEL!
I didn't change my name when I got married.
There were several reasons for this. First and foremost, I saw no reason to do so; the old legal doctrine of femme couvre, which held that a woman's identity is subsumed by her husband when she marries, hasn't been valid in the United States in almost two centuries, so legally there was no requirement that I do so. Add in that I was the only child of an only child and didn't necessarily want my surname to disappear on my wedding day, and that it would be a royal pain to do all the paperwork to change my driver's license, Social Security card, college diploma, passport, and bank accounts, and it seemed much easier to simply stay Ms. Ellid Myname and not become Mrs. Wingding Hisname.
That some tiny, buried part of me might have wondered if there long-term disadvantages to being Mrs. Wingding never occurred to me until much, much later.
Regardless, I didn't want to change my name, and since Wingding swore it made no nevermind to him, that settled it. We opened a joint bank account, I put him on my credit card, and once we were back from our honeymoon, we settled down to married bliss.
We had few difficulties with friends and family addressing us as Mr. and Ms. It was Massachusetts during the mid-80s, after all, so it wasn't as if I was the only married woman with either her original name or a hyphenated surname. My in-laws didn't care, our friends didn't care, my mother didn't care...the only person who did care, unsurprisingly, was my aunt Betty, who insisted that my name was now “Myname-Hisname” despite numerous corrections. She didn't stop doing so until the day I told her the divorce was final, and even then she never quite got around to correcting her will.
Having to sign an affidavit to that effect before I could take my place as her executrix was something I never expected to have to do, let me tell you.
The only other time that staying Ms. Myname instead of Mrs. Hisname ever became an issue was soon after we married, and I must say that for all his flaws, Wingding handled it beautifully.
Our first apartment was shaded by a gorgeous old tree with deep, deep roots. Some of those deep roots kept trying to infiltrate the plumbing system of our apartment building, and since the Mallowville DPW was less than inclined to fix the pipes, it was up to us to call Mr. Rooter every couple of years to have someone come with a large and flexible snake, shove it down the bathtub drain, and beat back the evil tree roots that kept clogging our shower with fine particles of dirt, taproots, and other natural items that really didn't bear thinking about. And thus it was that when the particles of dirt, taproots, etc., showed up one fine day, Wingding, who worked the early shift at his job, called Mr. Rooter and made an appointment for that afternoon.
I was at work when Mr. Rooter arrived, but I received a full description of what happened next when I got home that night.
It seems that this particular Mr. Rooter was young, about our age, and when Wingding mentioned that he'd just gotten married, Mr. Rooter started plying him with questions about how he liked it, whether he felt different, where we'd gotten married and when – in short, all the usual questions inflicted on the average newlywed. Wingding, in an unusually expansive mood, soon learned that Mr. Rooter was either married or contemplating taking the plunge with his girlfriend, and so they spent a pleasant hour while Mr. Rooter cleaned the drain and Wingding kibitzed and kept our cat from getting involved in the proceedings.
All was well, and actually rather jolly, until it came time for Wingding to pay.
The bill was what we expected, so no problem on that end; we had more than enough money in our checking account to cover the bill, especially since we had an arrangement with our landlord whereby we'd submit a receipt for any work done in the apartment and deduct the cost from our next month's rent. No, the issue came when Mr. Rooter accepted the check, glanced at the amount, and then saw the names on the account...
Which were of course Ms. Ellid Myname and Mr. Wingding Hisname.
“Wait a minute!” exclaimed Mr. Rooter. “I thought you said you were married!”
Wingding blinked. “I am married,” he said.
“But your wife – she has a different last name!”
“That's right. She's Ellid Myname and I'm Wingding Hisname.”
By now Mr. Rooter was somewhat flustered. “But – but – you let her keep her name?”
Wingding drew himself up to his full height. “There was no 'let' about it. She's an adult. If she wanted to keep her name, why shouldn't she?”
“But – but – you let her?”
“It wasn't my decision to make, you know....”
It evidently took a good five minutes for Wingding to convince Mr. Rooter that yes, it was perfectly legal for a married woman to keep her birth name, that no, the marriage was still legal, and that if I was happy, he was happy. Whether Mr. Rooter was necessarily convinced that Wingding was still a manly man with testicular fortitude is not clear, but somehow I got the idea that even as Wingding told me about the silly plumber, the latter went down to the Dew Drop Inn and told all his buddies about the lunatic in Mallowville who'd let his wife keep her birth name.
Ironically enough, years later, long after Wingding and I split and I found that not having to change my name back to Ellid Myname was most pleasant indeed, I learned that Wingding had remarried -
And his new, much younger wife had decided that she preferred to be “Secunda Hisname” instead of “Secunda Hername” as a way to prove her love and loyalty after Wingding's hideous experience being married to someone he'd let keep her birth name.
Oh well.
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Mr. Rooter is, alas, far from the only man who thinks that women have some sort of obligation to change their names when they enter into the blessed state called matrimony. Most of society agrees with him, with reason that range from understandable ("I want my whole family to have have the same last name") to the traditionalist ("I don't feel right not doing it") to "the oh my God, I don't blame you at all ("my last name is Slutsky and I'm tired of the jokes"). I may not agree with these reasons (except number three, and yes, "Slutsky" really truly is a surname), but in the grand scheme of things, deciding what name to use is up the individual.
No, what's distressing about this story is the underlying mindset that too often accompanies the assumption that a woman takes her husband's name. It's the old, time-honored, and all too often soul-crushing belief that the man is the head of the household, the primary breadwinner, decision maker and disciplinarian, the all wise, all powerful pater familiaris around which the entire family unit revolves, from adoring wife to obedient children. His needs and wishes come first, and if that means that the little woman has to give up her dream job, or that she never finishes her doctorate so that they can move to a school where he can get tenure, well, that's just how the world works.
Nowhere is this belief more evident in the so-called Christian Patriarchy movement. This small but influential group of believers, many of whom are associated other ultra-conservative niche groups like Christian homeschoolers, members of the New Apostolic Reformation, and Quiverfull Protestants that deliberately eschew birth control to have "as many children as God sends them," believes that even the faintest, mildest whiff of female autonomy in a marriage is a grave, soul-destroying sin. Women should strive for spiritual perfection through submission to their husbands in all matters, these thinkers preach, preferably while running a home business, homeschooling a bountiful crop of children while raising a bountiful crop of vegetables to see the family through the winter, and being available at all times for activities that will lead to the next year's arrow for the patriarch's quiver of offspring.
Tonight I bring you only one book, but trust me, it's a prime example of this approach to life. Purportedly written by two young women raised to be dutiful daughters until married off to men of their father;s choosing, it is a wonderful example of what might be termed "Stockholm Syndrome for Girls":
So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God, by Anna Sophia and Elizabeth Botkin (????) - On the day his elder daughter was born, Geoff Botkin had a vision. The delivery had been difficult, and as doctors fought to stabilize his wife, Botkin was left cradling his newest child in his hands. Being a devout man, Botkin prayed for God's blessing on this new little life, so fragile and dependent. He also asked for God's blessing on himself, since this was his first daughter and he was unsure of his ability to raise such a mysterious creature after two boys, especially if his wife died.
As he prayed, he suddenly was struck by the realization that there, under his hand (and her skin, not that this seems to have registered), was not only his daughter, but her children and her children's children. Girls are born with all the eggs they will ever produce, unlike boys who continually pump out sperm, and Botkin was both awed and humbled that tiny Anna Sofia was already the “future mother of tens of millions" even though her umbilical stump was still firmly in place.
And so he spoke directly to the Lord he loved and sought to serve:
“What You will do with every single egg here. How many children will this young lady have? Who will be her husband? With what other legacy will these little eggs be joined to produce the next generation for the glory of God?”
Now, this may strike the average person as a somewhat peculiar prayer for a newborn; her mother was still in rough shape, survival uncertain, and Anna Sofia herself was only minutes old. Her talents, abilities, interests, future health, wishes and dreams...none of these were evident as yet, nor would they be for years to come. Reducing little Anna Sofia to her status as a mother before it was even known if she
could bear children, let alone want them, is not precisely normal.
Then again, neither is Geoff Botkin. A veteran of the “Great Commission” religious movement of the 1970s, he and his family (including Anna Sofia and her younger sister, Elizabeth, as well as several strapping boys) had originally belonged to a small church headed by one Jim McCotter. McCotter, who has been called a cult leader and worse for his "blitzkrieg" [sic] approach to evangelism and his advocacy of beating disobedient children black and blue, taught his followers that to fulfill the Great Commission of the last chapter of Matthew to “go out into the world and make disciples of all nations,” they needed to engage in strict discipline in their religious and personal lives. Only by keeping to a rigid code of behavior based on a literal reading of the Bible could they hope to manifest the material blessings and daily conduct that would prove they were salt and light to the world.
This Botkin was more than happy to do until the early 2000's. That was when he broke with McCotter and joined Vision Forum, a parachurch organization founded by Doug Phillips, son of ultra-conservative Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips. Vision Forum, which has become very successful selling homeschool curricula and training programs designed to make boys “manly” and girls “womanly” to the greater glory of Jesus, teaches an extreme form of “submission” theology that places virtually all responsibility for the spiritual, financial, and material well being of families upon the husband. Children submit to their parents, wives to husbands, and husbands to Vision Forum leaders such as Phillips and Botkin, “feminism” is a filthy lie of the Devil, and women are directed to bear as many children as possible to ensure their salvation. Some followers are so committed to the idea of male authority that wives are only allowed to discipline their sons until the boys turn thirteen, in accordance with Biblical prohibitions against women being in authority over men.
Regardless of how – dare I say it? - cultish this may sound to the unsaved, this is what Geoff Botkin believes, and this is how he has raised his children. His sons, clean cut and manly in a wholesome way, have been raised to be patriarchs of their own families. Anna Sofia and Elizabeth have been raised to be humble, submissive wives whose only desire is to marry, support their husbands in any and every way requested, and give birth to every child God sends to their fertile wombs.
And oh, along the way they're supposed to be thrifty housekeepers, wise mentors to their daughters and prepubescent sons, beautiful and sexually available partners to their husbands, and run a home business to bring in extra income and increase their appeal to a prospective husband. All this is in accordance with the ideal woman of Proverbs 31, whose price is "above rubies," Peter 3, who is subject to her husband, and Ephesians 5, who is to submit to her husband as unto the Lord Himself.
Whether they will be allowed to have the occasional nervous breakdown, or even sob quietly in the corner when yet another pregnancy test comes up positive before the most recent child has been weaned, is not clear, but my guess would be “absolutely not.”
As preposterous as the above may sound to the readers of this diary, if the Botkin sisters' blog is any guide, this is what they sincerely believe. From their youngest days, both girls have done what they are told, studied enough to improve their minds without the advanced training that would prepare them for college or careers, learned to keep a clean, hospitable house, and all but memorized the Bible according to Vision Forum's precepts for unmarried young women.
Along the way they've learned the basics for pleasing their future husbands thanks to such duties as cutting and combing their father's hair, untying his shoes each night upon his arrival at home, and similarly seeing to his every whim. They've even performed these services for house guests, at least one of whom told Geoff Botkin what a charming little daughter he had when the wee one untied his shoes and offered to give him a foot rub, and how he decided to have more children in the hope that someday he'd have such a charming little girl of his very own to untie his shoes after a long weary day debating transvaginal ultrasounds for slutty abortion-seeking sluts, or similarly worthy legislation.
What the guest's wife thought about this is unknown, but since this was probably a patriarchal family, does it really matter?
That cutting and brushing one's father's hair, taking off his shoes, and so on is – how can I put this while avoiding the appearance of impurity? - in, ahem, questionable taste does not seem to have occurred to anyone involved, nor that literally waiting hand and foot on an adult male is not necessarily the best way to teach a young girl how to relate to the opposite sex. It also leads the outsider to wonder just what is going on the Botkin household, why Geoff is incapable of untying his own !#$@!$@!$ shoes (or at least have his wife do it), and what prevented him from going to a barber for his hairdressing needs.
Especially since neither Anna Sofia nor Elizabeth Botkin, both now in their mid to late 20s, has shown the least sign of getting married and starting their glorious careers as the mothers of tens of millions.
Not that this has prevented these devout, well-schooled young women from filling the empty years while they wait for their father to find suitable husbands who can father the ancestors of those millions of descendants. Vision Forum may teach that unmarried daughters must live under their father's roof, safe from dangerous influences such as college, paid employment, or exposure to anyone from the secular world who might threaten their salvation, but that scarcely means that Anna Sofia and Elizabeth have been idle. Far from it! Studying Scripture, running their blog on “Biblical daughterhood,” making their own videos, conducting webinars about “inner beauty” and cosmetic use suitable for good Christian girls, reading history and literature on their own, housekeeping and doing their hair to be a crowning glory...all of these are worthy pursuits that keep them busy, busy, busy. They may long for husbands, but as faithful daughters they must bide their time until their loving father allows eager suitors to court them.
Still, not all faithful Christian girls are as blessed or busy as the Botkin sisters. What are they to do with their time until their very own patriarch arrives to whisk them away from their father's home to his proto-patriarchal roof?
The Botkin sisters wrote So Much More to answer this very question.
So Much More: The Remarkable Influence of Visionary Daughters on the Kingdom of God and its companion video Return of the Daughters: A Vision of Victory for the Single Women of the Twenty-first Century, argue that unmarried women, regardless of their age, must and should remain at home until they marry, securely under their father's discipline and protection. This involves the following pearls of great price:
- Daughters should have "little to no association with peers outside of family and relatives" to avoid the corrupting influence of evil feminists who might, say, give them a copy of the Constitution with the anti-slavery amendments highlighted.
- Gear their education not on developing their minds and talents, but on "advanced homemaking skills." The sisters themselves learned these critical skills, including how to manipulate "tools for dominion" in their "laboratory" (pots, pans, and cooking equipment in their miniature kitchens) and how to manage the servants their Christ-fearing husbands would hire, on the "doll estates" they were given in lieu of Barbies. "Cultivate a taste for managing domestic concerns…start to see the home as an extension of your body and your love."
- Unmarried women should become "heroines for their faith" by being pure of heart, mind, and flesh while still perfectly groomed and dressed in modest yet fashionable clothing that would have made the average 20th century fundamentalist keel over dead. This includes indoctrinating their younger sisters in the true ways of Biblical womanhood and submitting to all the males in their household, including their younger brothers, as a way to teach the boys to be wise patriarchs when they marry.
- Eschew any hint of feminism, which they curiously define as anything but Vision Forum's own brand of feminine submission; as far as the Botkins are concerned, promiscuous women hoping to seduce and "subdue [the] masculinity" of unsuspecting men, silicone-mammaried beauty queens, and the overworked, underpaid waitress at the local diner are just as evil and just as feministic as Betty Friedan and Jessica Valenti. Having independent thoughts should be avoided, since "[a]ny two-year-old girl has a mind of her own and most certainly thinks for herself…it's part of being Eve's daughters. It's not a sign of maturity to struggle for autonomy - that's toddler stuff."
- Always, always, always turn their hearts to their fathers in every way. "You will love what he loves, you will hate what he hates, and you will even think his thoughts after him. This will help you know how to be his glory" until the day comes when a suitably ambitious, suitably God-fearing young man manages to persuade their father of his sterling qualities and saved heart, and thus be given permission to meet them, discuss weighty matters such as doctrine, and then set a wedding date.
- And of course, prepare for the day that they, too, can implement a woman's "final secret weapon in the battle for progressive dominion…motherhood. [T]oo many women forget that the hand that rocks the cradle really does rule the world."
These are strong sentiments for such submissive young ladies, especially when one considers that they are supposed to have written them when they were barely out of their teens. That their great literary work may have had more than a little assistance from their father is but a vile canard promulgated by the ungodly and the feministic, even if Geoff Botkin himself has publicly referred to So Much More as "my book" more than once. His daughters, beautiful, intelligent, and submissive, sought only to instruct their peers in the rewards that would be theirs if only they returned to their homes and submitted to their loving fathers' loving dominion, and the horrors of independent thought, paid employment, and autonomy that awaited any daughter who ignored their words.
That the Botkin sisters themselves wrote a rather plaintive blog post on Valentine's Day a couple of years back wondering when their very own patriarchs would arrive so they could do more than play house or instruct other aspiring wives on properly modest makeup and clothing, is but a test of their fortitude. Someday their princes husbands will come, and after the appearance of first fruits of their sacred union, their father's lifelong dream of being the mother of tens of millions will come true.
After all, their father foresaw it, so surely it will come true in God's good time. Won't it?
Won't it?
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UPDATE:
Not long after I wrote this diary (as in, a few weeks, and no, I had no idea this was about to happen), Vision Forum basically collapsed when founder/head Christian Patriarch/all-time reactionary blowhard Doug Phillips was sued for sexual harassment by his former nanny, Lourdes Torres-Manteufel. The sermons, the films, the books, the homeschool curricula - all were swept away by the revelation that the all-wise spawn of Howard Phillips had been emulating the patriarchs of old to the point of knowing his handmaiden in the Biblical as well as modern sense. There's nothing left of the once-mighty web presence except a bunch of 404 messages and a couple of blog posts by a Botkin cousin who is a liberal feminist/dance teacher/nature blogger.
As for Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin...evidently they're still alive, still unmarried, and still living at home under their father's creepy oh god SO SO SO CREEPY loving eye. Whether they will ever fulfill Geoff Botkin's vision that Ann Sofa would become the "mother of millions" is not clear at this point, but given that they're closing in on thirty, I wouldn't bet on it.
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