Hännah Ettinger – Homeschoolers Anonymous

Devoted: Book Review by Kierstyn King

June 3, 2015May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team4 Comments

HA note: The following is reprinted with permission from Kierstyn King’s blog Bridging the Gap. It was originally published on May 28, 2015.

I have to admit, I was really hesitant to start reading Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu – not because I doubted it’s good-ness (she worked with my friend Hännah on it, so I knew it would be good) but because I wasn’t sure I was ready to face the story I know so well, again. Devoted is about a Quiverfull daughter escaping, and Jennifer worked really hard to get the story, and the feeling, and capture everything it means to leave that environment right, without making it over the top. She did so beautifully.

It was painful and cathartic, as a former quiverfull daughter myself.

I remember what it was like to leave and not say goodbye, I remember what it was like to have to clear my browser history, and feel like the eight of us who existed just weren’t enough. Devoted captures those experiences perfectly, and I think people who are curious about what it’s like to grow up in that environment, now have a way that they can understand.

If you’ve ever been curious about what my childhood felt like, this book is it. Read it. This is the book I wish I could give to everyone who wonders, or everyone who thinks maybe this lifestyle is totally awesome.

If you’re an escapee from this environment, Devoted is so good it hurts. Someone else understands, and I can’t put into words how good that feels. We’re not alone, we’re not freaks, and we are undeniably tough as nails.

Devoted comes out June 2nd.

Go buy it. My copy is tear-stained, so.

Patriarchy in Homeschool Culture: Samantha Field’s Thoughts

June 20, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team1 Comment

[this is what "The Patriarchy" looks like in my head] — [this is what “The Patriarchy” looks like in my head]

Samantha Field blogs at Defeating the Dragons. This piece was originally published on her own blog on May 13, 2014, and is reprinted with her permission.

I grew up in a subculture of evangelical Christianity that’s known as “Christian Patriarchy,” which is what the people who preach and teach this “lifestyle” un-ironically call it. I was also peripherally a part of the Quiverful and Stay-at-Home-Daughters movements, which are all separate things. A family can be Quiverful without preaching Christian Patriarchy or requiring daughters to remain at home until marriage, for example.

However, that’s not what I’m going to be talking about today.

One of the ex-fundamentalist Christian feminism blogs that I read is Wine & Marble, by Hännah Ettinger. She wrote one of my favorite posts on sex, and I highly recommend her as a writer. [Recently], her sister, Clare, wrote the fantastically-titled post “Fuck the Patriarchy,” about how she was kicked out of her “Homeschool Prom.” It went viral, showing up on Gawker, Fark, Cosmo, Jezebel, American Conservative, NYPost, and it should be up at the Daily mail and HuffPo pretty soon.

I was curious to see how each of these sites would handle a story about a homeschool prom, so I followed her story all over the internet, and, of course, ended up in the comment sections. Most were your standard internet outrage, but there were some people questioning the validity of her story (because of course there were). It was interesting to me that a bunch of different men thought that Clare was lying or exaggerating supposedly because men who were “ogling” her wouldn’t have asked her to leave.

It actually took me a second to figure out the rationale behind that, because it seemed so obvious that of course they would ask her to leave if they were “tempted” by the “strange woman” who was “dressed like a harlot” (not saying that she was, just that they thought she was). To me, asking Clare to leave was the entire reason why they were there. When Clare said these men were “chaperones,” that was instantly what I assumed.

However, to these (male) commenters, it seemed counter-intuitive that any man would ask a woman they thought sexually attractive to vacate the premises. If they found Clare attractive, why admit to enjoying the show– or asking the show to leave?

That’s one form of patriarchy, all on its own; implicit in many of those comments was the belief that women exist for the sexual gratification of men, and that men will compulsively ogle women they find sexually attractive, that “boys will be boys.”

However, what the chaperones did in pointing Clare out to the “Mrs. D” of the original article was another, more archaic form of patriarchy: the form of patriarchy where men are the guardians of honor– both of their own, and of “their” women. I’m not sure what the homeschooling culture is like in Richmond (not much like mine, if they have a prom), but at least some of the people in that community are probably familiar with books like Beautiful Girlhood:

One day a handsome young gentleman alighted from a train … As he paced the platform, he soon attracted the attention of a young girl. She watched him flirtatiously out of the corner of her eye, coughed a little, and laughed merrily and a bit loudly with a group of her acquaintances; but at first he paid no attention …

At last he noticed, turned, and came directly to her, while her foolish little heart was all in a flutter at her success …

“My dear girl, he said, tipping his hat, “have you a mother at home?”

“Why, yes,” the girl stammered.

“Then go to her and tell you to keep you with her until you learn how you ought to behave in a public place,” and saying this he turned and left her in confusion and shame. It was a hard rebuke; but this man had told her only what every pure-minded man and woman was thinking. Girls can hardly afford to call down upon themselves such severe criticism. (130-31)

Things like this are the subtext at events like “Homeschool Proms” that are chaperoned by conservative Christian homeschooling fathers. When those men saw Clare in a theme-appropriate dress, looking like a woman and enjoying the evening with her friends, what they saw was a “foolish girl” who deserved the “harsh rebuke” of being escorted out by security.

In this culture, it is the sacred duty of every man to police the actions of every woman. Women are not to be trusted with decision making, let alone gifted the ability to make up their own mind on what they want to wear to their Senior Prom.

If a man in this culture even notices a woman sexually, it’s a problem, and she deserves to be confronted and chastised because of it.

There’s two options available to men in these situations: either the girl is simply “silly” and telling her that her dress could cause “impure thoughts” is information she should be grateful for, and she should humbly leave in shame and humiliation– or, she is dressing provocatively on purpose, which makes her a “strange woman” who is “playing the harlot” and she definitely deserves to be confronted and removed. When Clare stood up for herself, that put her firmly into “strange woman playing the harlot” category.

It’s rape culture on steroids. It’s “she was asking for it” dressed up in Bible verses and cutesy Victorian language about knights and fair maidens.

Here’s To Girls Who Have Been Made Ashamed Of Their Bodies: Pearl’s Story

May 22, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team28 Comments

HA note: The author’s name has been changed to ensure anonymity. “Pearl” is a pseudonym.

I’ve been loosely following Clare’s viral blog post about getting kicked out of her homeschool prom. The story resonated with me because it was similar to things I’ve experienced growing up in conservative homeschool/purity culture. Unfortunately, some homeschool parents gave a really ugly response to her story. They felt that, since she had used bad language, and put purity culture in a bad light, that it would be OK to publicly share unsubstantiated claims about her behavior the night of prom. They didn’t like her individual narrative, so they replaced it with another individual narrative they did like, because, well, any girl who would use curse words must also be a liar and a slut.

I thought they were supposed to be adults, but all bets are off when you step out of line in their eyes.

Fine, if they won’t believe Clare’s story I’ll share my own.

Growing up, my mom put a lot of importance in how I appeared to others. We had a lot of conflicts about her wanting me to dress in a way that would look good to her friends. For example, wearing a dress to Thanksgiving dinner at a friends house even though I knew I’d be playing outside all day. When I started wearing bras she bought me a really uncomfortable bra that she would make me wear on Sunday. I hated it because, besides being uncomfortable, it had thick seams through the cups that showed through every top and made me very self-conscious.

I still don’t understand how breasts can have a Sunday-appropriate look.

There was such fuss about bras and how they made my breasts look that I started slouching badly to try and hide my breasts entirely. At 17, she bought me a hideous dress that didn’t fit for a special occasion at church. I didn’t have a choice, I had to wear it because it made me look “nice”.

The emphasis on modesty really began around 11 or 12 when I began puberty. Whenever we went shopping my mom would examine clothes on me in the dressing room to make sure they were modest enough before purchasing. (Or have me come out and model for pre-approval in the case of hand-me-downs.) I would see clothes other girls were wearing, and naturally wanted to dress in a way that made me feel cute and like I fit in with other girls my age. Around age 13 I would try choosing clothes at the store, but when mom gave them the once over in the dressing room they rarely passed the modesty test. Shorts had to go pretty much to my knees, shirts had to be loose enough to create a straight line down my sides. If clothes I chose didn’t pass the test I had to stand in front of the mirror and look at myself while my mom pointed out all of my undesirable body parts the clothes were supposedly drawing attention to.

It was so humiliating I eventually took the easy route and started dressing like a boy.

The grunge era was only about 5 years past, so you could still buy flannel shirts and baggy jeans for girls. I stopped wearing shorts entirely around age 14.

My mom would always tell me that I just couldn’t understand because I didn’t understand how boys think. Boys, she said, think about sex all the time, and I could cause them to stumble (lust after me) by dressing immodestly. I couldn’t possibly understand, she said, because girls don’t care that much about sex, they really only want love. I became very ashamed of my body and for the most part tried to hide it. If I ever felt a burst of confidence and wanted to wear something cute and feminine I would usually have it pointed out to me that someone would see the shape of my breasts, or the curve of my waist, or that my bra was showing, or that these shorts or skirt were too short and any thing more than an inch or so above the knee was too tempting.

By the time I was 19 years old I had a job and had saved up some money and started going shopping for my own clothes for the first time. The clothes I chose were kind of tacky, because I didn’t have any practice dressing myself. But by nearly anyone’s standards they were very modest. I didn’t even wear shorts, I was still too ashamed of my legs, but I did wear skirts to church. The skirts I chose always went below my knees. I didn’t wear tank tops, most of my shirts actually had collars. The shirts were fitted, and except for one not tight.

The first fitted, collared T-shirt that I brought home made my mom cry.

She said she could see the curves of my waste and the shape of my breasts. I felt cute and feminine for the first time in my life, so I didn’t allow myself to be guilted into giving it up. I started standing up straight. I also bought bras for myself, and chose some with some amount of padding because I felt more covered in case of cold weather. My mom saw one out drying after I did laundry, and brought it to me to show me how the padding made my breasts look bigger, and that was immodest. I had a pair of shoes I’d wear to church that had one and half inch heels. My parents expressed concerns that they were too sexy.

A few months after buying my own wardrobe, my parents came to me to tell me that an elder in our church had approached my dad to tell him the way I was dressing was causing his sons to stumble.

My parents made me show them each piece of the clothing I had bought so they could decide whether it was modest enough. Very few pieces passed their test. The rest they ordered me to put up in my closet until I was married and it was my husband’s job to decide how I dressed. (Fortunately my wedding was only a few months after that.) In the meantime, I bought a few baggy T-shirts to get by on; it would’ve been too humiliating to go back to the flour sacks I had to wear before.

Modesty/purity doctrines and body shaming are an unfortunate realty of conservative Christian culture. They may or may not be directly related to homeschooling, but I have yet to find anyone who believed these things that wasn’t a homeschooling parent. There is nothing girls in these situations can do. Once someone has told you you are causing them to stumble you have to change your clothes, no matter how humiliating or unreasonable it may be. To do otherwise would be tempting someone on purpose, because now you know that you’re causing them to sin.

Growing up hearing these things made me very ashamed of my body. It took years after getting married before I was even comfortable wearing shorts. Making a girl ashamed of her body is a horribly cruel thing to do. It’s not like there isn’t enough pressure to look and dress certain ways from mainstream culture.

So that’s my story. It won’t be a viral success, but if enough girls tell their stories there is no way that homeschool parents can say they are exaggerating, or that they have some kind of malicious vendetta, or that they deserve to have their reputations damaged.

So here’s to girls who have been made ashamed of their bodies.

You are a person, body and soul, your body is you. And you don’t have to be ashamed of having a female body. It is beautiful, don’t hide it.

Christian Homeschool Dads Lust After 17-Year-Old Girl, Get Her Kicked Out of Prom

May 12, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team201 Comments

Clare on the way to homeschool prom. Photo source: http://www.hannahettinger.com/fuck-the-patriarchy-guest-post-by-clare/

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

A 17-year-old homeschool girl, wearing code-appropriate clothing to her homeschool prom, got slut-shamed and kicked out because some middle-aged homeschool dads couldn’t stop ogling her from a balcony.

Hännah Ettinger at Wine and Marble reports today that her sister Clare was recently attending the Richmond Homeschool Prom. The prom has a specific dress code, which you can view here (click image for full-size version):

Clare was excited for this evening. She searched over 6 stores for the perfect dress, eventually finding it at Macy’s. She spent her own money on the dress — money she had been saving up from tip money from work. Not only was it “gorgeous, silver, and sparkly,” it was carefully vetted: “Like a good little homeschooler,” Clare writes, “I made sure that the dress was fingertip length on me; I even tried it on with my shoes, just to be sure.”

Unfortunately for Clare, the night of her much-anticipated homeschool prom didn’t go as planned. She didn’t expect — and understandably so! — that there would be “dads on the balcony above the dance floor, ogling and talking amongst themselves.” These dads were ogling to the point that Clare and her friends felt “grossed out.”

As it turns out, these dads couldn’t be bothered to exercise self-control to keep their eyes and minds off of Clare’s 17-year-old homeschool body. They told one of the prom assistants that Clare’s “dancing was too provocative,” even though Clare hadn’t been dancing, and that she “was going to cause the young men at the prom to think impure thoughts.” The prom assistant then tried to make a different excuse, saying Clare’s outfit wasn’t up to dress code — even though Clare immediately proved it was. After being challenged, the prom assistant called security and refused to let Clare speak to a higher-up.

Security then kicked Clare and her friends out of their own prom, and all because — as Clare puts it — “I was told that the way I dressed and moved my body was causing men to think inappropriately about me, implying that it is my responsibility to control other people’s thoughts and drives.”

Clare’s closing remarks are spot-on:

“Enough with the slut shaming. Please. Goddamn I’m not responsible for some perverted 45 year old dad lusting after me because I have a sparkly dress on and a big ass for a teenager. And if you think I am, then maybe you’re part of the problem.”

Be sure to read Clare’s entire post at Wine and Marble here.

Also: visit Richmond Homeschool Prom’s Facebook page here. Tell them that, maybe next they should be more concerned about grown men creeping on underage homeschool girls than homeschool girls just trying to enjoy their hard-earned prom celebration.

UPDATE, 7:45 pm Pacific Time:

The Richmond Homeschool Prom’s Facebook page has deleted a bunch of comments from people protesting their treatment of Clare. Here are two pages of comments they deleted.

UPDATE, 8:45 pm Pacific Time:

The Richmond Homeschool Prom appears to have deleted their Facebook page entirely.

UPDATE, May 13, 1:25 pm Pacific Time:

Hännah Ettinger has posted an update on Clare on Wine and Marble. View it here.

Coming March 1: Swan Children Magazine

February 25, 2014May 11, 2020HA Editorial TeamLeave a comment

From Swan Children Magazine:

Art without apologies.

Coming March 1.

*****

The Swan Children is an online art gallery and magazine founded to curate and showcase the creative work produced by artists of homeschooled, Quiverfull, and conservative Christian upbringing.

*****

We are the Swan Children and we look after our own. We have inherited the kingdom and we’re singing for our lives – on street corners, in attics, in spare bedrooms, in the shower, at the family dinner table.

The Swan Children publishes drawings, paintings, photographs, music, poetry, stories, dance, and anything else that enchants us on a bimonthly schedule. We accept submissions on a rolling basis.

There are no rules here.

We want to show you something.

www.swanchildrenmag.com

More info at Wine and Marble.

Counting Sheep

December 7, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team17 Comments

By R.L. Stollar, HA Community Coordinator

Recently Kathryn Joyce wrote a story for The American Prospect on the rise of the responsible homeschooling movement. I have never seen a piece on this movement spread as quickly as Joyce’s. It lit up Facebook and Twitter like a forest fire starving for oxygen.

If you haven’t read it, you should do so. (You should also check out responses it inspired from Hännah Ettinger, Chris Jeub, and Kate Schell.) Don’t let the length scare you away. The piece is amazingly detailed, giving voice to a diversity of individuals previously not amplified in this conversation. And don’t let the name, “Homeschool Apostates,” cause you to hesitate. The name is an inversion of Kevin Swanson’s radio broadcast where he himself used the phrase to marginalize and dismiss us.

I shy away from Facebook wall debates when stories like this are shared by my friends. I watch them unfold, silently and from a distance. At the very least, I want to understand how our rhetoric is received and interpreted; I may not comment, but I am listening. I want to know what is being said — both positive and negative — so I can continue to improve my own communication and our shared messages.

One individual’s comment on a friend’s wall stuck with me.

I have heard this sort of comment before. In fact, I considered it ironic that this individual said it in such a way that indicated he thought himself clever. Fact is, it’s dreadfully unoriginal. Everyone in this movement has heard it a million times before. But this time it provoked new thoughts for me. The comment is as follows:

As long as millions of families homeschool, it will always be possible to find some who are outliers and thereby call into question the practice. Tis a common practice of the statistically challenged.

Ah, yes. A jazz riff on the “not all homeschoolers are like that” argument. “Not all homeschoolers are like that” is the broken record of homeschool abuse denialism. My inner sarcastic debater wants to respond like this:

However, my shared humanity understands that sarcasm isn’t always the best rhetorical strategy. There are better strategies:

Reiterating time and time again that we do not think all homeschoolers are “like that”;
Reminding the skeptical voices in the conversation that, in the absence of required registration (or at least notification) of homeschoolers (which the mainstream homeschool lobby opposes), we will all remain statistically challenged because we will have no reliable statistics;
Pointing out that nearly all homeschool research has involved self-selective surveys that describe the participants but prove nothing about homeschooling in general.
Providing counter-self-selective surveys, like the 2013 HA Basic Survey which pretty much “proves” as much as most of Brian Ray’s research — namely, still nothing about homeschooling in general.

If you think the statistical side is lacking, you’re welcome to get in line. We’re right there with you. Those of us speaking up aren’t to blame for a lack of statistics.

That’s the fault of irresponsible homeschool advocates.

(What sort of statistics do you want anyways? Statistics of dead kids? Exactly how many dead kids will it take before we’re taken seriously? While we’re busy trying to make homeschooling better, you get busy figuring out how much abuse you can tolerate before you act, too. Deal?)

For today, however, we are all in the same position: we are feeling around in the dark with anecdotes and stories. You might tell different anecdotes and stories than I might. I choose to respect your storytelling. Whether you choose to respect mine is not in my control.

But at least remember that I have stories. In fact, I probably have more than most homeschool students and parents. I spent a decade of my life traveling around the United States because of homeschool speech and debate — meeting new people, making friends, competing in tournaments, and teaching thousands of homeschool teenagers. I have taught the children of national homeschool leaders.

All this while I was a teenager myself.

As a homeschooled teenager, I saw things that you parents have not seen in your own communities. I have lived a life that you parents have never lived. It is like an alternate universe. My first taste of hard alcohol was provided by the son of one of the most prominent national homeschool leaders. I have lived this life. So while I don’t have statistics for you, and while we in this movement are trying to fix that inherited problem, keep in mind that my “anecdotes” — and our stories — carry the enormous weight of experience.

Have you seen the underside of this world? Because I have. The rabbit hole goes down deep, and I have yet to reach the bottom. There are so many hurting kids, now as there was back when I was a kid. There are secrets and sorrows and fears. We have shared those secrets as friends, we have carried each other’s sorrows, we have whispered our fears like prayers.

But maybe you’re right. Maybe at the end of the day, we’re in the minority.

Maybe we are statistically challenged.

The possibility doesn’t faze me one bit.

Because I don’t look to you for a stamp of statistical approval. I don’t take my cues from your homeschool orthodoxies or your convention speakers.

I take my cues from my conscience. And my conscience says go to where the shadows lurk, to create safe places even where the wild things are.

See, a long time ago, I heard a story. It was about a shepherd who had a flock of 100 sheep. One day, one of those sheep got lost. Instead of remaining with the 99, the shepherd did not sleep, did not stop, until he found that the lost one.

I learned social justice from that story. I learned the meaning of activism. I found the meaning of revolution — that you can “change the world” all you want, you can “redeem the times” ad nauseum. But if you neglect the little ones, it’s all for naught.

See, I learned that Jesus of Nazareth was not content with 99 sheep when 99 sheep means that one gets left behind to suffer in silence and solitude.

And I saw how the Pharisees did not understand. I saw how they looked at each in bemusement, clicked their tongues at Jesus for fretting so much about that one fringe sheep, saying, “Tis a common practice of the statistically challenged.”

But Jesus dealt with human beings, not statistics.

Human beings are what I want to deal with, too.

So go ahead. Keep surveying your 99 award-winning sheep. Us “bitter apostates” will be out in the wilderness, searching for the one you abandoned.

Call For Help: Sarah’s Story

August 5, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team1 Comment

HA note: The following call for help is shared by Hännah Ettinger, who blogs at Wine & Marble. It includes the personal story of Sarah.

Note from Hännah: I’ve used my blog to share the story of a friend’s sister after she got kicked out of her QF family home for being vegan, and you wonderful people chipped in to raise $10,000 for her to replace her clothes, art supplies, and go toward her college tuition in the fall.

This time, a 24 year old QF daughter, Sarah, reached out to me to share her story with you — she’s a beautiful person with a knack for words, and she wrote up her story here for you to read. Sarah just started blogging at The Pathway Maker, and will be doing a series of posts on her story in longer form. We set up a PayPal account specifically for donations to her tuition fund, and she made an Amazon wishlist for her school and apartment supplies that you can help her out with, too.

*****

Sarah’s Story

My world spun inside my head, each thought more terrifying than the last. I would lose my soul. The demons would get in if I ate that food. They would get in.

Then my father was there, forcing the spout of the water bottle between my clenched teeth, jamming it into my mouth. I struggled and fell. My father bent over me, forcing the water down my throat as I choked and cried out in panic. Over a decade of my internal tortures had come and gone, but now things were worse than ever.

I hadn’t always been like this. My early childhood had been reasonably happy, despite the anger and the yelling and the spanking. But these had never crushed my spirit, and I had been a carefree child in many respects. But then things changed.

I began struggling with scrupulosity as a young child. My labored confessions were the first signs of the mental illness which would destroy me for years. As if this growing inner torment were not enough, I began to struggle to see the physical world around me and learned, at the age of 8, that I would one day be legally blind because of an incurable retinal disease.

I lost my sight gradually over a period of several years, and at the same time, struggled increasingly with my mental illness, later diagnosed as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.*

When I began exhibiting signs of OCD, it manifested in the form of terrifying, uncontrollable thoughts (obsessions) that prompted ritualistic action responses (compulsions). Because my OCD was religious in nature, it was only exacerbated by my fundamentalist, Christian Patriarchal, Quiverfull, homeschooled upbringing. My fear of hell and demonic possession drove me to pray for hours, forego food and sleep and pace for hours in the middle of the night.

My family treated my OCD like silliness or sin that could be rationalized or prayed away. Worse, while they disregarded my obvious need for mental health assistance, they treated me as though I was already possessed by demons…

*****

For the rest of Sarah’s story, or for more information on how you can help her, please see Hännah’s original post at Wine & Marble.

Relationships, A Series: Part One — What is Courtship?

July 29, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team15 Comments

HA note: This series is reprinted with permission from Caleigh Royer’s blog, Profligate Truth. Part One of this series was originally published on January 8, 2013.

*****

*****

Part One — What is Courtship?

My dad once told me that he wasn’t going to let me get married until I was 30. I was probably about 12 or 13 when I first remember hearing him say that, but I couldn’t figure out whether he was joking or not at the time. I knew that there was some reality behind his joke because he is deeply under the courtship culture that I grew up in.

I grew up “broken.” Some normal girlish part of me has never quite worked. I never had any dreams about getting married, nor did I have any idea of what a relationship for me would look like. About 6 years later, I found myself in a relationship, and it was going a heck of a lot differently than any of the “courtship” books said a relationship was supposed to go. I read all of the courtship books I could get my hands onto. I found any book that had to do with emotional purity, courtship, dating or not to date, and I devoured the advice.

I even read a book by someone I used to know way back when all this was called “Emotional Purity.” I read almost all of Josh Harris’ books, and used to daydream about having a relationship that played out just like the couples in the books, or how the authors of all of these books said a courtship should be played out. Ironically, my daydreams usually included very complicated messed up situations where I was the maiden in distress where I almost died and the man who loved me saved me. Who knew that the relationship with my husband would actually turn out a lot like my daydreams, minus the almost dying part?

I have hated the word Courtship. I hated it because of what it stood for, what I have been through in the name of “courtship,” and what I have watched others face. But, I discovered something; it is not courtship in and of itself that I have been burned by, it is the twisted version of the word, act, that over the past decade or so it has become. I had a long conversation once with a friend about labels. We talked about how so many people have made up meanings for things such as courtship, family, fatherhood, denominations of churches, and whatnot and the original definitions have been lost. I used to cringe every time someone used “courtship” to describe their relationship. That was until I finally looked up the original definition of the word. According to the dictionary, Courtship is defined as thus:

Courtship
1. the wooing of one person by another
2. the period during which such wooing takes place
3. solicitation of favors, applause, etc.

There is nothing in this definition that says that the man seeking to win a woman’s heart must first “court” the dad and the parents rule the relationship. There is nothing in here that indicates that this is a strictly biblical, family based process. In fact, I find myself having flashbacks to a certain Jack Sparrow egging a certain Will Turner on about wooing said lady. This definition brings up memories of a sincere “I want to get to know you” relationship. This reminds me of a man and woman falling in love and choosing to marry.

This is my definition of Courtship: It is simply the wooing of one person by another.

[I have been asked multiple times to share my story about how Phil and I met and how our relationship played out. Let me just say this. I will never write that story under my real name. I consider some of the relationships that I have now with some involved in the story more important than what they used to be, no matter how messed up things were. Things were rough, parents controlled our relationship and forgiveness has been asked on all sides as has been needed, and that is all you need to know for now. ]

I found this story recently and it brought to light a pretty significant problem that I have with courtship as it is played out today. Even though this is a very radical (and true as much as I can tell) story, it shows how much the Patriarchal/Quiverfull/Fundamentalist Christian movements have gone back to the Old Testament for their rules. They believe that the father [of the woman] is in complete control of the relationship, and that father is holding the only key to his daughter’s purity. They believe that the man should ask the father to court/get to know his daughter, ask his blessing for marriage, and to give the daughter over to the man at the altar. Again, a very clear picture of how much control the father has in the entire relationship. Even though the purity culture within these movements believe that the women are to be cherished, that is roughly translated into these women are the men’s slaves and they have no voice. The women’s only responsibility is to keep house and spit out babies.

On the surface, these are all, for the most part, not all that bad. Underneath, it’s the legalism, control, and authoritarian structure that causes problems. It is not a bad thing for a father to want to protect his daughter, but her purity is not his to keep. It is not his to manipulate and flaunt about so that he can catch the man he wants his daughter to marry.

There comes a certain point in any child’s life when the parents truly have to let go and let their child figure out life for themselves. It is not a bad thing for a man to ask a father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. It is just not a biblical commandment or principle. It is cultural. It is not a bad thing for the family to be involved and around while a couple is working through their relationship. It goes south very quickly when it becomes an obligation for the couple to always be in sight of the family, and never have any time for themselves to talk, and to get to know each other without little siblings acting as spies for the parents, ultimately the father. It is not a bad thing for a couple to seek advice for their relationship from their parents, or others they respect, especially if they are serious about marriage. But that again, is not a biblical commandment or principle, and taken too far to say that the father has ultimate control is really wrong.

[ I am not a parent yet, and most likely when I reach this point with our children, I will probably have different ideas. But for now, this is simply what I am seeing, what I have pondered long and hard about, and what I am now ready to share. ]

Courtship isn’t about a man overcoming a woman and designing her life with her father’s consent but without her consent. Courtship isn’t about a man pressuring a woman to marry him because God told him so. [Read more about that here from my dear friend Hännah @ Wine and Marble.] Courtship does not have to be a deeply serious thing. It can simply become a man really liking a girl, she liking him back, and they take the step from being friends to something deeper.

Normally, in normal cultures, this step happens naturally. If there is something more in a friendship, usually it manifests itself and becomes clear as the friendship becomes deeper. Courtship is two people loving spending time together and enjoying each other while their friendship deepens. If they, as a couple, without parents pressuring them, or controlling the relationship, feel like it’s time to move closer to getting married, then by all means, it is up to them, and them alone. Courtship should be two people deciding for themselves that they are ready for a relationship.

The purity culture and the courtship culture (basically those both go hand in hand) have taken good things and turned them into extra-biblical commands that are expected for every couple, family, and parents to do.

Phil and I have had many conversations about what we are going to do when we have children old enough to decide for themselves. We will not try to control them, nor will we force them to date, court, marry someone we want and not who they want. I want to see my daughters truly wooed and my sons wooing their ladies. I want to rejoice in that, not feel concerned that our children aren’t obeying us. We will raise our children to make good decisions. By doing so, when they reach the age when they are interested in the opposite sex, then we want to give them the freedom to make those good decisions.

Courtship is the wooing of one person to another.

*****

To be continued.

Call For Help: A Quiverfull / Patriarchy Rescue

May 28, 2013May 11, 2020HA Editorial Team9 Comments

Call For Help: A Quiverfull/Patriarchy Rescue

HA note: The following call for help is written by Hännah Ettinger, who blogs at Wine & Marble. “Jennifer” is a pseudonym. Her name has been changed to protect her identity. Jennifer turned 18 recently and graduated high school the weekend of this rescue. She is currently in a safe home. HA has personal confirmation of this story from the involved individuals.

Update, 05/31/2013: Over $10,000 raised so far! Read Hännah Ettinger’s update here.

Last Sunday night, I got a call from one of my post QF/CP buddies–we’re both the oldest from big homeschooling families with some unhealthy dynamics, and we both left that world when we got married (which torqued both of our fathers, for different, but similar reasons). She and I have been discussing with some of our post-QF/CP peers the needs of new adults trying to get out of borderline abusive or codependent or controlling family situations.

“Hännah,” she said. “I need advice.”

And then she spilled a story about her family’s downward spiral into isolation, fear, and control (increasing after she left and got married as a reaction against how “bad” she turned out), about how her sister “Jennifer” was demeaned by daily screaming from her mom, Bible-based lectures from her dad on why her interest in being vegan and an animal rights activist were rebellious and wrong. Despite many requests to be allowed to make herself vegan food, she was never given permission to even make herself a salad. She wasn’t allowed to touch fruit or vegetables unless given permission, which sometimes meant that food would rot in the fridge even though she wanted to eat it. Jennifer’s parents also threatened her pets, telling her that if she did not eat meat for dinner, she would wake up the next morning to find one of them gone.

The final crushing moment came last weekend, after her high school graduation, when she wasn’t singing in church (out of self-consciousness) and so, in a fit of anger, her parents removed all of her access to the outside world, taking away the power cord to her computer and her cell phone charger. She managed to get a few calls out, begging for help, with the battery power left on her phone.

She called her sister, and asked her to come get her out.

Her sister called me. “What should I do?”

But we knew there was really only one option, and so she and her husband put in 28 hours of driving in three days and went to rescue Jennifer. They got her out after a confrontation with her parents that required police backup, and cost Jennifer her three pets, her graduation gift iPad, her computer, her art supplies, her summer clothes, and her life savings of nearly $3,000.

Jennifer plans to become a concept artist for computer games, and wants to start college classes in the fall in order to pursue her art, but she will need a computer and art supplies and a number of other essentials to start life over in a new state with little to her name.

So, dear readers, I’ve never done this before, but I think this is a worthwhile cause. Would you be willing to chip in $10-15 to help raise money for Jennifer to get back on her feet and start school in the fall?

*****

To donate to Jennifer’s fund: Please go to Hännah Ettinger’s original post and click on the PayPal button at the bottom.