Katie Botkin, on courtship

[Marian the Librarian]

She's a cousin of Anna-Sofia and Elizabeth. Read it, and be amazed.

kbotkin.com/2013/07/01/emotionlogic-sexpurity/

[Hane]

Oh, she's got it ALL OVER her cousins in the logic department. Go, Katie!

[Just Not Good]

But... she makes such good sense! And she seems to be independent of thought!

[Just Not Good]

Actually- reading through her blog- thanks for introducing her! She's pretty much the antithesis of her cousins, eh?

[silvia]

I would love to be friends with Katie. It sounds like her experience (divorced following a courtship-to-marriage situation) has given her a keener awareness of the groundless woman-belittling, -devaluing, and -shaming attitudes that are so prevalent in many of today's Christian communities. I don't know all the details of what she's been through, but she seems to have come out of it poised and with a razor-sharp wit--not to mention the critical thinking skills cousins AS&E so sorely lack.

[ILoveJellybeans]

Katie is very intelligent and her cousins should spend way more time with her.

[debrand]

Wonderful. She makes some excellent points

While my male newsroom colleagues were prone to throwing things across the room in frustration over a misplaced modifier or a missed deadline, I stayed in the corner, calmly fixing similar errors, filling the gaps when the cartoonist, photographer or writer didn’t show up. While my male friends spent their money on treats for themselves, I managed mine like an ascetic. While many of my male classmates were out partying and making excuses for their late assignments, I studied and then got a good night’s sleep, beating them at biology, law, statistics, German, Anglo-Saxon, history, pagination, advertising, and, of course, French and ballet. I never pulled an all-nighter; I never broke down crying or froze up over the workload. I never called up my parents asking them for money because I had spent all of mine. Intellectualism, consistency and studiousness were in large part the definition of who I was. That was my personality, and it was also what I had fostered in myself.

One myth that never fails to amuse me is that men are less emotional than women. It simply is not true.

[wtylcf]

Wonderful. She makes some excellent points

One myth that never fails to amuse me is that men are less emotional than women. It simply is not true.

I loved this anecdote of hers. In my time working in a large professional office, we were mandated to use a certain piece of extremely powerful but very difficult-to-master software, which was also very prone to clashes and glitches. While the team was working on a deadline, one of my more hot-headed male colleagues experienced yet another software crash and subsequently spent a good 30 minutes pacing, freaking out and whimpering to another colleague that "this software is driving me nuts" and "I can't handle it anymore." He was actually extremely competent, if very high-strung, so it's not like he couldn't handle it; he just let his frustration get the better of him. I felt that if I had acted like this as a woman, it would have reflected badly on me as a woman in this historically male-dominated industry, so there was no room for indulgence of this sort. Yet no one would have ever entertained the thought that this dude's freak-out would reflect badly on all MEN in the office. This just goes to show that while women have made huge strides in the professional world, we still have a ways to go until we do not consider one professional woman the ambassador of all other professional women.

Back on-topic, I had no idea K. Botkin had been previously married, and her article points out so many deep problems with Christian marriage-conformist culture. I could point to my personal Exhibit A in this defense: my own ex-fiancee, with whom I was deeply incompatible. But any thoughts about this fact had to be swept under the rug of, "Christianity is the only true compatibility" and "it's just your own sinful nature making you question things." Thankfully I woke up before we actually did get married.

I wonder if Katie's experience has made the Botkin sisters extra gun-shy, though there seems to have been no prospective suitors knocking on Geoff Botkin's door for many many years now.

[nokidsmom]

I wonder if Katie's experience has made the Botkin sisters extra gun-shy, though there seems to have been no prospective suitors knocking on Geoff Botkin's door for many many years now.

That's an interesting point. The sisters have a very good example of how courtship doesn't work, right there in their own family and in spite of all the courtship blathering that goes in their circles.

[Hane]

Her anecdote about being less emotional than her male colleagues reminds me of the truism that all women talk more than all men. Linguists have learned that it's almost always situational: women talk more than men inside the home; men talk more than women outside the home.

I also remembered this saying by an extremely bohemian (male) college professor of mine in the early '70s: "A man is a walking penis that talks a lot." --while women are working behind the scenes to get things done.

[OnceModestTwiceShy]

I guess I was the only one who thought her anecdote was smug - an example of "You can take the girl out of Calvinism, but you can't take the Calvinism out of the girl". She reminded me of her cousins there, just the flipside. Oh well, just my two cents.

[Brittany15]

I love how she points out that dating someone and having your heartbroken is much better than being married to someone you don't love.

[Olive Plant]

That's an interesting point. The sisters have a very good example of how courtship doesn't work, right there in their own family and in spite of all the courtship blathering that goes in their circles.

It sounds from the blog post like Katie didn't do courtship, at least the way the Botkin sisters would. She mentions pastors influincing her decision and having her own list of what she wanted in a spouse and growing up in a "homeschooling/courtship/purity" atmosphere. She went to college and it doesn't sound like she lived with her parents. If anything, her cousins would probably take her as a cautionary tale of what happens when you don't involve your magical and all-knowing pater familias in a sufficient manner or if you go away to a heathen university, even when you have been taught all the right stuff. But that could be true, maybe in some way it's made them more gun-shy. Interesting idea! Especially if they're looking at her and thinking that she used to be so morally upright and conservative, and now look at her, being a feminist because her marriage failed. A failed marriage is a death sentence in those circles unless you're a man and your wife cheated on you. So better make sure you marry someone you can at least tolerate, or you're going to have to be cast out of the community and turn into a libertine prostitute to support yourself!