Daughter of the Patriarchy Series: Safe Now

This is an installment of the Daughter of the Patriarchy series that I have been slowly putting together over the past couple of years. Read the rest of it on No Longer Quivering.

Princesses do NOT eat turkey legs.

A month after my acceptance, I was moving onto campus for my first autumn semester at Rowling College.* Most of my community college credits had transferred, leaving me a semester ahead of that year’s incoming freshmen. The same summer, my mother and I had finally filled out the paperwork to get me a diploma from a Pennsylvania homeschooling agency. I was deeply self-conscious about the 2005 stamp on my diploma; it was an emblem of what I perceived as failure, as my other homeschooled friends liked to boast about graduating early, and I was a year late. I also desperately wanted to be part of a group of people my age, for once, so I aligned myself with the previous year’s incoming class and corrected anyone who tried to fit me into the later one. I had started college when they had, I reasoned, only I’d started out in community college instead of coming right in.

I was anxious about my roommate situation and listened raptly to many warnings about setting boundaries early. I learned that the girl I would room with was named Molly, a year ahead of me, and a straight-A student. I’d requested an all-girls dorm with air conditioning; in retrospect, both excellent decisions. I was in no way prepared to share a dorm with men, even if they did live on opposite floors. Knowing that Rowling was a posh college – and quickly unloading my stuff so we could hide our shabby car from the ranks of brand new BMWs and glaringly clean Lincoln SUVs – I became terrified that Molly would be all the things I was raised to believe about “worldly” girls: shallow, selfish, boy-obsessed, condescending and wasteful.

Modesty and False Empowerment

Wearing the hijab or dressing modestly (no low necklines and leaving miniskirts to models) can, for some women, act as a way of empowering them, and I’ve seen its benefits first hand. When I wear a top that goes up to my neckline, as I do when I’m around Usama’s family (or to be honest most of the time – I wear hoodies a lot!), I feel like I’m actually being listened to and enjoy engaging in debates about religion and feminism with his family, without the feeling that someone is staring at my tits – which was the case in a lot of other situations. It reminded me of Simone de Beauvoir’s concept of female freedom lying in a woman’s ability to be removed from her physical attributes. Maybe there is something in it, after all. From guest post “Islam and me” on The F Word (UK).

I’m sure most of my readers are familiar with the concept of manufactured need. Usually it appears in anti-consumerist arguments about the psychology of advertising, and how marketers first have to make people feel inadequate to sell them products that alleviate the feeling of inadequacy. Today, I’m going to apply it to the modesty doctrine.

The guest blogger above doesn’t seem to realize that she’s being sold a line about empowerment that’s not empowerment at all.

Memorial Monday’s Massive Modesty Media Mention

I know, I know, I got carried away by the alliteration automobile. Here’s a definition of the modesty doctrine and a bunch of other people talking about it:

The Modesty Doctrine: A Definition

The “modesty doctrine” is the belief that women need to cover their bodies to prevent men from being attracted to them, because sexual attraction is lust that leads to sin and death for both.  The modesty doctrine is not the same as wearing conservative clothing. You can do the latter without believing the former. It is the belief, the mindset of the modesty doctrine that is so harmful. Not the clothes. The modesty doctrine is found in fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism and Islam, with milder echoes in mainstream Western culture.

Fundamentalist Aesthetics

The monstrous regiment of “Good Christian Men.”

Man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. -1 Samuel 16:7
Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. -Mark Twain 

In preparation for my next series, on how evangelical-fundamentalism instills homophobia in its youth, I’m going to talk for a moment about fundamentalist aesthetics. Every once in a while, I run into fundamentalist women while shopping. The experience is always a little jarring. It’s a bit like finding yourself accidentally behind one-way glass: you can see them, but they can’t see you. I can identify women by denominational clusters, especially Apostolic (the dress code my church followed). I wonder now how many ex-fundamentalists I used to pass in the grocery store, feeling conspicuous in my floor-length denim skirt, so certain that no one there understood why I was dressed that way. My church assured us constantly that “the world” couldn’t possibly understand our modest dress. It never occurred to me that “the world” might actually consist of ex-fundamentalists, that there might be more people recognized my clothing for what it was than people who didn’t.

Gendered aesthetics were and are hugely important in evangelical-fundamentalist culture. When we were praised, it was for looking like “real women.” When outsiders were criticized, it often took the form of a cliche: “The devil has so confused people that they don’t even know if they’re men or women. When you see them in the street, you can’t tell the difference.”

The WHAS11 Louisville News story on William Branham and the Message: a review

I am very impressed with Mr. Wasler’s coverage of the Message on WHAS11. It could easily have been a sensationalist piece, focused on the “horrible exploits of the Branhamite cult.” Instead, it was a balanced and accurate portrayal of a large segment of the Message population. Not all Message believers accept the doctrine of Branham’s resurrection. My church did not, nor did the churches we associated with on the East Coast, although we knew a few couples who did. One couple actually left our church over the relative lack of attention we gave to the prophet as a person.

It was validating to see the actual video clips of Branham talking about women. Two years ago, I wrote “Hello, Miss Dog-Meat” as a response to one of the quotes features in the video. I’m glad that the editors decided to let Branham condemn himself with his opinions on women rather than risking Message censure by paraphrasing them. I’m sure they will still argue that the quotes are “taken out of context” somehow, as if there’s a possible context in which they are not egregiously anti-women. (“Some women” is still “women,” y’all.)

Mike’s experience resonates with me and with the ex-Message friends who watched the video with me. The isolation from “the mark of the beast” (ordinary people), the assertions of Branham’s prophecies being true against all proof, the insistence that Branham is “just a messenger” while collecting and reproducing relics from his life… that’s all completely accurate.

I was astounded to hear that Voice of God Recordings has a net worth of nearly $110 million. One of the most vehement arguments Message believers make against the accusation that Branham was a fraud is that he never made any substantial money from it. (I wonder now, how much money did his “staff” make?) This blows that claim out of the water. When I was in church as a teenager, I was told that Voice of God Recordings took a loss to make the books and tapes and that they only charged for shipping. They claimed to be an absolutely non-profit ministry, mailing materials all over the world while meeting printing costs through the pockets of their own staff and unsolicited donations from believers. Without that cred, there is literally nothing left to separate the Message from organizations like the 700 Club and Benny Hinn except doctrine.

All in all, I’m excited to see the Message subjected to fair, dedicated research and presented in a way that allows Message believers to make their own points while demonstrating exactly what is going on behind the scenes. Well done, WHAS11!

Breaking: William Branham on the news

A friend just sent me a link to WHAS11 News, a Louisville program airing a special about William Branham and the Message of the Hour:

11 News @ 6pm: I-Team Investigates William Branham

A Message-believing sect has also been accused of child abuse and molestation in Germany.

Groups like Seek Ye the Truth are now attempting to defend the Message against the charge of being a “cult” by asserting their Biblical orthodoxy. I’ve already written an assessment of the Message against standards for diagnosing cultlike behavior. “We’re not a cult” is often one of the first things a Message believer says when a potential convert looks at them askance for mentioning a modern prophet.

It’s my opinion now that “cult” is not a particularly useful word for understanding coercive religious groups. I don’t deny that Message believers are Christians when I look at their actions. Their ability to defend Branham using Bible passages means less than nothing to me. What matters is how they treat one another and outsiders. A cult is not a creed, it’s a way of living. In any case, I’ll be watching that news story tonight (provided I can figure out how to get a Louisville station nowhere near Louisville.

[UPDATE: As a reader has pointed out below, Seek Ye the Truth is not a Message organization. It appears to be a conservative Christian group that argues against Branham through Scripture. I drew my former conclusion from its posts on the WHAS11 News facebook page, linked above. A written synopsis with embedded video of the news coverage is now available here.]

Homeschooling: The Good

I liked being homeschooled. To this day, I have no problem with it. Nonetheless, I will scrutinize my experience a little bit and discuss how I think things could have gone better. Hence splitting up the topic into good, bad and ugly, like I did with homemaking. Let me state up front, however, that I am not anti-homeschooling. I would consider homeschooling my own child up to a point (8th grade). I believe homeschooling actually did shelter me productively from things that could have made my childhood exponentially worse, as you’ll see below. Without further ado: “the good” in homeschooling.

Little Things I Love: Yard Work and Blue Jeans

Things would be much easier - albeit considerably less fun - if I had one of these.

I love doing yard work. Well, not so much yard work as forest-work. I’ve been clearing out the woods behind my house for several weeks now, and am seeing some promising results. I’m so excited to have a little space to myself by the stream. Clearing out a forest is hard work, especially since this one has been neglected for at least a decade. I’ve been hauling around fallen logs, snapping sticks and burning them, pulling out ancient weeds and garbage and carefully sneaking around the edges of thorn bushes. I even dug a huge plastic shelf out of the stream, enabling it to flow freely for the first time in… who knows how long. I’ve climbed trees and thrown down dead branches, yanked vines down from 45 foot tree limbs, and generally worn myself out. When I feel like I can’t move, I hobble over and roast marshmallows over the burning corpses of evil tree-killing vines.

I’m having the time of my life.

But something occurred to me recently: my legs aren’t all scratched up.