Katie Botkin: "No need to drink the emperor's Kool-Aid"

[Marian the Librarian]

From the comments thread on Katie's latest blog post. Read it, and rejoice in the sanity! :D

Hey Katie,

I have just began to read your blog and wondered if you consider yourself a “conservative Christian� From some of the posts I’ve read I’m aware of your upbringing and the effect of patriarchy on a few of your relatives but wondered if you were steeped in the whole patriarchy, homeschooling, dresses only type of lifestyle and then began to question or just changed directions…?

The reason I ask is because I’m at the edge of throwing a lot of what I’ve come to believe away and either starting over or walking completely away. I wasn’t raised in church but in a dysfunctional home so legalism is very appealing. Of course Vision Forum seemed awesome and well midway through college I began the whole dress wearing, homeschooling type mentality (all before marriage at 28 and becoming a parent).

Fast forward to now and I’m a 35 yr old wife and mom who is now asking myself what in the world do I really believe? Have I started homeschooling because I think it’s the best educational choice or because I’m scared if my child goes to kindergarten then she’ll get knocked up? Are skirts/dresses the only way to go? Of course there are a lot more questions but these are a few.

You see I married a wonderful, thinking, highly skeptical preacher’s son who isn’t down with the whole Calvinist FIC stuff and I’m feeling out of place being a married woman of 7 yrs with only 1 child (infertility sucks!) in a church full of Duggars.

The fear of stepping out and doing something new is overwhelming but I just don’t think I can slap a smile on anymore and play the role of a Vision Forum woman. I’m beginning to think there is something definitely wrong with the Kool-Aid……any thoughts?

REPLY

Katie Botkin said: February 2, 2014 at 9:07 am

Thanks so much for sharing this. I’ve always hoped than in writing about all this stuff I would help other people sort some of it out; help create the idea of a larger, though obviously disparate, community so that they would know, at least, that they are not alone in it. The emperor has no clothes, so there is no need to drink his Kool-Aid.

I was homeschooled until age 18, and the rural homeschooling-ish community I spent most of my formative years in trended towards the whole Bill Gothard/courtship thing… almost nothing I grew up with was quite as blatant as the stuff Vision Forum preaches (there was the occasional flyer in the mail, of course, telling women they e.g. needed to wear button-up shirts and long skirts at all times in an effort to hide their figures) but I still absorbed a lot of the same messages, partly because of my own personality, I think. I’ve written about it, and my journey of processing all of it, at greater length about it here: kbotkin.com/2013/07/01/emotionlogic-sexpurity/ and under the Homeschooling and patriarchy tags generally.

To answer your first question, I am certainly not as conservative as I was once, although I hope that what I write about will appeal to a wide variety of people.

kbotkin.com

[SamuraiKatz]

Awesome! Maybe Anna Sophia and Elizabeth will have an epiphany. There is help if they decide to question the koolaid's off flavor.

[Olive Plant]

Is the emperor Dougie or Geoff?

Someone has replied saying hang on now, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. I'm not sure what she's getting at. Other than being a SAHM who only wears skirts is cool?