I knew that Lauren’s wedding picture would make the post far more emotive and impactful than it would be without. This post was not about Lauren, or about her wedding. It was about patriarchy and what it does to its daughters, and people need to hear that. I knew that Lauren’s wedding picture would spread the reach of my post in a way nothing else would. Two things have happened in the last twenty-four hours that have confirmed my decision for me. [Read more...]
“Libby, you could be an engineer. You have the mind for it.” My dad made this comment while we were in the car, driving by a factory of some sort. I was probably around sixteen. My dad’s comment was completely offhand, and I didn’t bother to respond. Inside, though, I was baffled. Why would my dad suggest such a thing? Didn’t he realize that my lot in life, the lot God had designed for me, was to be a homemaker, raising children, caring for my husband, and tending the home? [Read more...]
My parents homeschooled me K-12, and during those years they fell under the influence of several Christian leaders who spread toxic dogma and find their following within the Christian homeschool movement. My parents never followed Gothard, but they did follow both Michael Pearl and Doug Phillips. I think it’s worth fleshing out what my parents adherence to Vision Forum did to my life, because, well, let me put it this way: Without Doug Phillips, I would have been spared an incredible amount of pain, grief, and yes, broken family relationships. [Read more...]
My dad told me he was going to pay for my college education as a dowry for my future husband. He said it would be wrong to settle my future husband with debt wracked up for my education when I was going to be a stay at home mom and would never work outside of the home anyway. This is what came to mind when I read the recent viral post Six Reasons Not To Send Your Daughter To College. [Read more...]
In many ways, my upbringing and background isn’t that weird. Yes, I had twice as many siblings as most people have cousins, but in general my upbringing was very normal—for the evangelical subculture, that is. But when I tell people about my background, the thing that always trips them up is the part about unmarried adult daughters being under their fathers’ authority, to the point of requiring complete submission and obedience. [Read more...]
This weird insistence on the father/daughter relationship being of utmost importance ends up overshadowing the importance of the father’s relationship with his own wife and the daughter’s gradual move beyond the family unit toward eventually establishing her own family unit. Everyone loses in this scenario—the mother who feels she must compete with her daughter, the father who sabotages the depth of relationship he could have with his wife, and the daughter who ought to be learning to stand on her own two feet and venture outside of the home. Everyone loses. [Read more...]
But let me move away from the more conservative circles of Christian homeschooling and speak to more mainstream evangelical purity culture more broadly, because all of this is there as well, albeit less bluntly. Almost two years ago I wrote about part of what is behind the purity culture focus on fathers and daughters. The basic summary is this: Teenage girls need male attention, and they should be getting that from their fathers. If they don’t get it there, they will turn to teenage guys for that attention, which will of course end up destroying their purity and happiness. [Read more...]
The fact that Driscoll can’t even see that we might be able to work towards a society where there are fewer abusive boyfriends and sexually harassing bosses, or work to empower women to value and protect themselves and refuse to put up with any such shit from the men in their lives, makes me want to strangle something. Mark Driscoll may think he has has some new improved attractive version of patriarchy to sell to his flock, but the stuff he’s peddling has been around for millenia, and it hasn’t gotten better with age. [Read more...]
Hazardous Journeys. Leading Christian Patriarchy organization Vision Forum is worried that boys today are not manly enough. It’s solution? Many trips into the wilderness to build courage, risk-taking, leadership, and manhood. In this post I discuss Vision Forum’s Hazardous Journeys Society, post some videos from Vision Forum regarding this project, discuss the historical precedent for this sort of thing, and point out that it’s, you know, just for boys. [Read more...]
To Vision Forum, the post important thing about a child is its gender. This has changed in mainstream American society. Sure, it’s far from perfect – as the mother of a daughter growing up in a princess pink girl culture, I know this better than some – but we no longer blink at the artistic boy or the athletic girl. Skills, talents, and interests matter. But not for Vision Forum. No. For Vision Forum, your gender matters first, and any skills, talents, or interests that don’t fit your gender, well, you can just forget about those. [Read more...]
I read the Chronicles of Narnia over again and again and again as a child. My dad read them aloud to us, and we read them to ourselves, and then we acted them out in the woods, creating wooden swords and bows and going on adventures. The oldest four of us, two boys and two [Read More...]
When I post a collection of blog posts and articles that I consider “worthwhile reads” I generally try to come up with a theme that unites them. These three posts all have this in common: They all deal with expectations. Danielle dissects an e-card on fathers and daughters, Haley explains that parenting is about being [Read More...]
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