Vyckie Garrison has a terrifying post about the enforcers of Biblical patriarchy: the women who tell other women to serve men.
Admittedly, the public face of Quiverfull (also known as “Complementarity”) is overwhelmingly male: John Piper of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, John MacArthur of Grace to You ministries, Dennis Rainey, radio host of Family Life Today, mega-church Pastor David Platt, who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board and author of “Counter Culture” which calls on women to ditch feminism in favor of wifely submission, Voddie Baucham, author of “What He Must Be If He Wants To Marry My Daughter,” Scott Brown of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches (in which “family integrated” is code words for Quiverfull), “Kill The Gays” pastor, Kevin Swanson, the “pissing pastor,” Steve Anderson, and so so many more.
But honestly, no sensible woman would give these misogynistic jerks the time of day if it weren’t for the influence of dedicated Christian female mentors: the “older women” of Titus 2 whom the apostle Paul charged to “teach the younger women” to be obedient keepers at home.
I listened to about a minute of the saccharine-sweet, praise-god lecturing of Nancy Campbell and could take no more. Spare me.
I did laugh at one of Garrison’s explanations for why women actually fall for this patriarchal crap: They’re married to losers. How weak must a man be if he has to invoke the aid of the imaginary all-powerful ruler of the universe to make his marriage viable?
By the way, Garrison’s daughter has a heritable bone disease called Hereditary Multiple Exostosis, and she’s asking for help. That looks like a good cause. She sure can’t expect God to help her out.
The awesome (and by awesome I mean terrible) extra twist to those teachings is that if you are submissive to your husband and let him control everything, and he makes a right fuckup of your family and your home and your finances and your relationship, that is also your fault because you somehow must not have been submissive enough and a good enough example of a godly wife. Heads I win, tails you lose.
The secret of all systems of oppression is that the oppressor always has scraps to share. They can always reward a few who are willing to betray their own the most. Because opposition means that while there might be jam tomorrow, there’s no bread today
@1 carlie
That works for everything in religion! Many years ago I met a woman who had two job choices. She prayed and believed God wanted her to take Job A. She soon got an illness that put her in the hospital for six weeks. Of course she thought this was a punishment from God for not correctly understanding that she was supposed to take Job B. God always wins.
Carlie @1,
Yep, somehow you tempted him to sin, just like Eve. Like Vyckie Garrison, I grew up in one of these communities, and we were taught that men’s errors were always due to the temptation women used to lead them astray. Never advise your husband on anything, because even if you think you are faithful, the devil may be using you as a tool without your knowledge. It makes me sick to my stomach to think about it now…
Serious question: I understand feminism to mean that women can make whatever choices they like. Some women actually like patriarchy, though I can’t for the life of me understand why. If a woman chooses to obey her husband and make lots of babies, so long as it is her choice, why isn’t her choice as valid as another woman’s choice to be an astrophysicist?
I’ve always viewed this as somewhat akin to consensual S&M: Getting tied up and flogged isn’t my thing, and I don’t understand why someone would enjoy it, but there are people who do. Their bodies, their choice.
It’s a cookbook?
thirdmill @5,
In these communities, there is no choice. There is duty. There is grooming from the time you are an infant. Would consensual S&M still be consensual if your parents were teaching you to do it all through your childhood and passed you off to a Dom when you turn 18?
There are plenty of relationships out there that are mutually respectful and assume traditional gender roles. There is nothing wrong with those relationships if people are happy in them. But they aren’t what we are talking about here.
@thirdmill
“Choice” gets a bit complicated in situations like this. If someone is raised their entire life that their purpose is to serve men, get married young, and raise religious babies; if their entire extended family network and friends are built around that ideology, where leaving involves a total social rupture – is that really a choice being made? It sounds almost like telling people facing poverty if they quit an abusive job that they have a “choice” to be broke and unemployed.
As for the OP question, it’s because even patriarchal societies usually have roles where women can gain some informal power and control if they “play ball”, even if it’s just control over other women. Christian congregations in the US, for example, often depend on a backbone of volunteer labor from church women for everything to run smoothly. That’s not even getting into the fact that women can have other kinds of privilege and power that might be threatened by changes to a patriarchal society – for example, in the 19th century, there was a women’s league against female suffrage, dominated by the wives and female relatives of rich plutocrats who feared the impact women voting would have on the political structure they benefited from.
Speaking as someone who has been involved in the kink and BDSM community for some time, these are different things. If someone, personally, wants to be involved in some sort of relationship that does not suit me or others, some sort of slave/master role, a submissive housewife, etc. I am fine with it. It is their life to live, and they can do what works for them. But that is very different from someone that actually believes that women should be submissive. It is quite possible to desire to be submissive and not think it is way women should have to be, and promote it is the right way of living. I have a problem with people that are unable to separate the dynamics they personally enjoy from what they think is right for everyone else.
@5 thirdmill:
Yeah, kind of an informed consent situation. It’s often fine to choose to be something others might find weird or creepy. For example, me being atheist makes my Christian parents unhappy, and I’m relatively okay with it.
It’s less fine to be trying to spread your form of submission (or your other kinks/hobbies) with threats of hell, curses if you stray, dangerous advice to totally submit despite the existence of abusers and violent partners, and unsubstantiated claims of fundamental superiority or being the only good way.
Then, you’re coercively pushing other people into your own choice despite their differing temperaments, situations, and partners; and THEY will suffer for it.
For example, my fundamentalist parents were taught Bill Gothard’s marriage crap (didn’t know until recently that this fucker wasn’t even married despite his parental/husband superiority bullshit), and they heard it was one-size-fits-all-or-you’re-disobeying-God.
Unfortunately my mother HATED trying to be submissive and sniped at my father for not leading well enough, and my father HATED trying to lead her and constantly passive-aggressively withdrew from communication, let alone leadership.
They were constantly trying to push bullshit they could not stand themselves, and we felt their misery too. Both openly threatened each other (and by extension, us children) with leaving and starting over somewhere else.
A more egalitarian arrangement would probably have suited them great (and mostly did before they got into that Biblical submission crap), but “NO, GOD SAYS DO IT THIS WAY!” was basically what they heard from the church elders and various books, which just let the emotional abuse and unhappiness continue.
Trying to forcibly shove themselves into this box leaves them with bloodied edges, cramps, and other contorted injuries, all for a marital bliss that obviously wasn’t happening.
My first adult girlfriend was a born-again Xian. She was fairly responsible and motivated, and put herself through nursing school. But before we met, she had been married off as a teenager to a “good Xian husband,” who drank and smoked meth, spent money that she had earned to cover bills and rent, and instead bought himself guns and off-road toys. When forced to sell off the toys in order to keep a roof over their heads, he sold them and went on a 2-week bender instead, and then split town, never to be seen again, saddling his wife with $35k in his debt.
So she got divorced, and because of her upbringing, she felt like she was responsible for the whole mess. I think that was ultimately the reason she hooked up with me: if she could convert a pagan into a good Xian husband, she could erase the sin of divorce from her soul. One it became clear I was never going to be any sort of Xian, we split up and she was married & pregnant to someone who would be, within 6 months.
That is a seriously fucked-up set of priorities and rationalizations.
For a really good (well, not good, but illustrative) look at matriarchal support of the patriarchy, check out this writeup about the Prairie Muffins .
(would have linked this earlier, but keep getting ‘failure to connect’ messages; and I’m either banned on En Tequila es Verdad or that site is also wonky for me)
Oggie, all of FTB was wonky just now. It took me a bunch of tries to post a transcript in the Oliver thread.
@5 thirdmill:
There are no safewords in religious/MRA style subservience.
When you are raised from infancy by all adults around you to believe that if you don’t act submissive enough you will go to hell, there is no free choice in the matter.
@Ogvorbis #12:
Next time, can you please provide a sick bucket too?
@thirdmill #5: It can’t be “choice” when you are not given any other option.
I grew up in a thoroughly patriarchal church, in which women were expected to be obedient, and to be seen and not heard. None of my three sisters is there any more. As adults (and I think the process started well before adulthood) they took a look at it, decided it was crap, and left. They probably did lose some friends as a result, but they’ve made lives for themselves that don’t involve being a door mat.
So I’m not really persuaded by the argument that people don’t have a choice. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Just like the closeted gay senator with an anti-gay voting record, they’ve made a decision about which set of values is more important to them. Don’t treat them like children.
I know this is an extreme example, but I’m always reminded of female genital mutilation with stories like this. Despite being harmful and cruel to women, it is a practice that is propagated in sizeable part by women who were themselves affected and raised in that tradition and have accepted it for themselves.
thirdmill @18:
So if someone, anyone, is in a difficult, or dangerous, or painful situation and they do not remove themselves from that situation they are at fault? Does this mean that the citizens of Lubeck who died or were injured during the 28 March, 1942 air raid were really to blame as they didn’t get out of the way? A child physically abused by a parent is really to blame since they didn’t remove themselves from the house? Were the chattel slaves of the antebellum South to blame for their continued lack of freedom, short life span, forced breeding, abuse, beatings and well below substandard housing because they didn’t escape (after all, some made it to freedom, why didn’t they all?)? Are all abused women to blame since it is oh so fucking easy to walk out on a marriage — never mind the economic, social, and familial pressures, still gotta be her fault?
I am happy for your sisters that they were able to escape the cycle of abuse, the cycle of servitude, the cycle of marital slavery. Some people do have the ability — personal, economic, educational, social — to escape painful and hurtful situations. That is how progress is made in the world. But to take that and extend it in such a way that women who do not leave are therefore to blame for the mental and physical abuse, the limited and severely delimited educational opportunities, the social and familial oppression, the pressure of their peers to remain in servitude? You need to look up the idea of victim blaming.
Yeah, and you know what, thirdmill? Fuck all those whiny victims of domestic violence. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Don’t treat them like children.
Fuck indentured servants whose employers confiscate their passports, and who may not speak the language of the country they have been taken to work. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Don’t treat them like children.
Fuck migrant labourers whose employers confiscate their passports, and who may not speak the language of the country they have been taken to work. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Don’t treat them like children.
Fuck the victims of people-trafficking who may not speak the language of the country they have been taken to. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Don’t treat them like children.
Fuck anybody anywhere who has been deprived of access to education, deprived of access to information, deprived of access to adequate food, beaten, browbeaten and spied on every moment of every day. It may not always be an easy choice, but nobody ever said life was easy. If they’re still there, it’s because at some level they want to be. Don’t treat them like children.
I cannot believe you said that.
You think recognising how the odds are stacked against people escaping abuse = treating them like children. Because if even one escapes, let alone a handful, then the rest could all have escaped if they really wanted to, they just wimped out. Maybe they’re lazy.
Congratulations, I don’t know when I’ve ever read something as callous as what you just wrote.
I’m glad your sisters made it out.
Thirdmill,
These aren’t theoretical people to me. These are most of my childhood friends. They were not allowed to attend school, they weren’t allowed to date, many girls were not allowed to get driver’s licenses because it would make them “too independent.” Many of my friends got married as soon as they turned 18. Remember how I said they weren’t allowed to date? Yeah, their fathers chose the lucky guy for them.
One friend married a 37 year old man when she was 18 (he’s older than her mother, but he’s a pastor, so he has high credibility with her parents and the community). She now has 5 children, no money of her own, no education (though this doesn’t stop her from fulfilling her duty as homeschool teacher, like all mothers in this lifestyle), and no job skills. One of her sons is a special needs child. She could not leave if she wanted to.
I have a different friend whose father has been lazy about his responsibility to find her a husband. She’s the last of 5 children, and he just can’t be bothered anymore. She desperately wants to be married and have children, since she believes it’s God’s purpose for her, but she can’t date or find a man on her own. So she bounces around between her sibling’s homes to work as a “stay at home sister.” She’s miserable. But her misery is all her fault because she could change if she wanted to, right? It has nothing to do with her upbringing. Nope. This situation can happen to anyone, so there’s absolutely no basis to call her upbringing unethical. It’s all about choice.
Frankly, you just have no idea. You have no idea what it’s like be brainwashed, denied education, and denied any resources for independence. I know people who have left the lifestyle (including myself), and you just don’t seem to understand how that happens. It isn’t just a choice.
Nos. 20-22, when I was 14, the single mother who was raising me and my five siblings was told by the church elders that because I’m gay, if I wasn’t kicked out of the house the entire family would be excommunicated, so she dropped me off at a shelter and wished me good luck. For the next two years, from 14-16, I supported myself as a prostitute because I didn’t know how else to survive. So don’t fucking tell me what I know and don’t know about religious bullshit.
Now, while I actually agree with much of what you wrote, how do you empower people? Do you empower them by encouraging them to be victims, or do you empower them by telling them to take charge of their lives?
Yes, they go through hell. So did I. But the person who did me the greatest single service of my entire adolescence was a high school teacher who metaphorically gave me a kick in the butt every time I said something even remotely self pitying. He saw that as bad as my situation was, I was only getting out of it if I developed self-reliance and took responsibility for my own life.
And I suppose that as with anything else there’s a balance. I would never say that everyone has choices, or even good choices. But the ones who do have a duty to themselves to take them.
thirdmill,
I’m really sorry for what you went through. No one deserves that, and no child should be treated the way you were. That’s kind of what we’ve been saying though: people shouldn’t be abused in these religious communities. Vyckie Garrison is a person who lived in the Quiverful community for many years, and she’s actively dedicating her life to empowering people from that background (you might even be interested in looking in to her work if you haven’t already. She is amazing). You say that a high school teacher was your greatest influence to make it out of your situation, but the homeschool community doesn’t have high school teachers. The community is purposefully very isolated from outside influence. Activists are the people who are trying to make the problems with this community known so that there will be resources out there for people to get out. When you say that this lifestyle is a choice, just like bdsm is a choice, you are dismissing the hell that you admit people in this community are going through. No one should ever say that what you went through as a teenager was your own choice, just like no one should say that about the children and women who live in these very isolated communities with no resources to make another choice.
Toska, thank you for you kind words.
Like I said, there’s probably a balance. Some people have the internal fortitude to stand up to bullshit better than others, and I get that. My fear is that if you encourage people to not take charge of their own lives, some people will stay victims all their lives rather than learning to soar, and that’s not good for them. So I would err on the side of tough love, while being willing to draw back if in a particular case it became clear it wasn’t working.
And ultimately I think people are responsible for the consequences of their own belief systems. To use an extreme example, Randall Terry doesn’t get a moral free pass just because he believes his own propaganda. At some point, if a woman continues to believe things that result in her being a doormat, it’s a fair question to ask why she believes such nonsense, and to point out that believing nonsense has consequences. And that if you don’t like those consequences, find another belief system.
thirdmill I am so sorry you were put through that by the cult who forced your mother’s hand on pain of increasing the suffering of your siblings.
Without knowing anything about you, seeing only your comment in isolation, it read like you were suggesting people in trouble deserve no help and no compassion – which is something we usually see from right-wing authoritarians/libertarians and the like. I think that maybe you were thinking more about how you might address someone in a situation like that individually, on a personal level (as you describe in #25), while we were thinking more in terms of how this whole issue gets addressed on a public policy level, in public fora where all too often it gets twisted into victim-blaming and suggesting that people “just” need to decide to get themselves out without acknowledging how the odds are stacked against them. I think it’s wonderful that you and your siblings managed to get away eventually, and beyond horrible how you were abused during that time.
I agree with Tosca:
As a public policy matter, I think women who are escaping abusive situations (including religious abuse) need to be given help and support. No one should be put to the choice of staying in an abusive situation and going hungry. With that safety net in place, I then think that people who are in abusive situations should be urged to leave them, and if they choose not to, they are then responsible for the consequences of their choices.
So we’re probably not so far apart.