A Botkin cousin's thoughtful blog post

[Marian the Librarian]

kbotkin.com/2012/01/05/it-might-be-a-little-bit-complicated/

Wow. Just - wow.

[emmiedahl]

I have a relative who attends the university where she works and I am always asking if he has taken anything from her. She seems very sweet and intelligent, everythign AS and E try unsuccessfully to be.

[PBrooke]

Oooh. Fascinating.

[bekkah]

Interesting read. I think its telling when family start to debunk your book. It shows you how small the movement actually is and that they have normal, sane relatives.

[failsafe]

I sometimes feel like Katie must feel the way I do when I visit my fundamentalist Catholic relatives (7 homeschool children, no evolution, blah blah blah). My family is Christian, but nowhere near as fundamentalist as my dad's brother's family. I love my cousins dearly, but the entire trip I am slightly on edge - if I say X, will I expose them to something their parents wouldn't agree with? If I watch Y, will that be inappropriate for them?

They're a bit younger than AS&E, so maybe Katie is more comfortable actively debating with her cousins. As for me personally, I tend not bring up sensitive subjects - but I also don't lie when directly asked (such as this time when the 14 year old asked "Do you like Obama?" "Yes, actually I do" "But Rick Santorum is so much better!!!! He doesn't kill babies!" or when they say things like "Do you believe in evolution?" "Yes, I do.") But it is quite difficult when you do love someone - a cousin you've grown up with - but disagree with them on such fundamental issues. I imagine Katie struggles with the same things my sisters and I do - is it all right to even tell them my viewpoints? Is there any way to let them know that this one specific mode is not necessarily the ONLY right one? How can I make it known that if they need help or support, or don't feel like they fit into that mold, whether its coming out as gay, needing help accessing birth control, or wanting to read a secular magazine, I will be there for them? I think they're so wrong about X - should I keep my mouth shut or speak up? These are tricky waters to navigate.

[emmiedahl]

I have Mormon relatives-in-law that we are very close to, and also a crazy holy-roller Pentecostal aunt who attends Redding's infamous Bethel Church and starts weeping whenever abortion is brought up. You can never be yourself around them. I had to have a discussion on a recent family trip with one relative-in-law about how I am *really* Jewish. Like, if you don't follow every law and attend shul religiously, you aren't *really* Jewish according to some? I tried to explain that it is not like LDS where you have to earn a temple recommend, but the person was not really following me and seemed to shut down.

Part of me does not want to spend a week of vacation with people who disagree with me to the point that I have to either hide my reality or cause uncomfortable silences. And yet I love these people and respect them for who they are and I just want the same in return... I imagine this is how Katie Botkin feels. I want to be around their fun quirky selves, I want my kids to grow up with family traditions that involve actual family, but it is indeed a difficult thing to navigate.

[bea]

They dedicated the book to her......and she's shooting them down. Beautiful.

Maybe there's some brains on the family tree. Reading the blog, it sounds like she might be divorced, too. The harlot.

[synchroswimr]

An excellent read.

[Wolfie]

They dedicated the book to her......and she's shooting them down. Beautiful.

Huh? I see where she writes that they wrote in the front for her. I have several books from family members that have notes to me written inside the front cover.

ETA- have we discussed this one before? kbotkin.com/2011/08/02/sociopaths-and-authoritarian-lifestyles/

She has several under the tag "Patriarchy."

[Lewis]

Katie rocks.

[wallfly]

Huh? I see where she writes that they wrote in the front for her. I have several books from family members that have notes to me written inside the front cover.

ETA- have we discussed this one before? kbotkin.com/2011/08/02/sociopaths-and-authoritarian-lifestyles/

She has several under the tag "Patriarchy."

Interesting post about sociopaths and how courtship might not weed them out. Perhaps that's why AS and E are still single, Geoff can recognize a sociopath when he sees one. Ever look in the mirror Geoff!

[finleeport]

I didn't know the Botkins had a cousin, she sounds more worldly than her Stepford cousins are.

[Austin]

It just goes to show that daddy's "logic" doesn't bear up to scrutiny by someone with an actual eduation, relative or not.

Excellent post.

[aubrietta]

Her thoughts on AS & E's views on women attending college are really great too

kbotkin.com/2007/11/02/on-daughters-college-and-nouveau-patriarchy/

[Eclipse]

Thanks to her, I will no longer automatically associate the name "Botkin" with uneducated, ignorant, festering idiots.

I'm glad that E and AS have contact with her and they will hopefully see another life is possible and get out. Its not too late!

I liked her blog, especially because she posted about her own cousins "important" book.

[Doomed Harlottt]

I think Katie is a fascinating. I am dying to ask her all sorts of questions about her family, but I think she is too much of a class act to dish the dirt. She does a great job of criticizing the ideas her cousins are promoting while still expressing her respect for them as people.

The second comment on the post -- by someone expressing wonder at what it would be like to be so beautiful but never kissed -- is a little tacky. I am hoping the comments so far don't make Katie think twice about posting these kinds of things about her cousins.

[YPestis]

I perused her other blog posts (slow day at the hospital....) and it's pretty interesting. She's a good writer and a deep thinker. She also seems very well traveled and, dare I say, the stereotypical feminist liberal working women that fundies hate. I can't believe she is first cousin to the other Botkins. What happened?!

Interesting note, she's married and she's only a few years older than the Botkin girls. I wonder how this makes them feel. Even their college-educated, feminist, worldly cousin is married before them!

[Doomed Harlottt]

I think she's divorced. She mentions an ex-husband. Also mentioned a couple months ago that she's dating a guy called Louis.

Anyway, the more I read of her stuff, the more I admire her. She seems like a really neat person.

[amydamy]

Her thoughts on AS & E's views on women attending college are really great too

kbotkin.com/2007/11/02/on-daughters-college-and-nouveau-patriarchy/

I particularly like this point.

f you require the security of a family’s rules to be good, your goodness is definitively based only on environment, and, likely, there’s a lot of error boiling already under your skin. Pride, for example, or lack of love for your enemy; two cherished Christian sins, damned in scripture more than drunkenness or sleeping around.

[Witsec7]

Holy shit I know her father!!

I really enjoy her blog. Her brain actually works. In one older post she talks about teaching at an ebil public university and her cousins being stuck in a time warp.

[Wolfie]

Holy shit I know her father!!

I really enjoy her blog. Her brain actually works. In one older post she talks about teaching at an ebil public university and her cousins being stuck in a time warp.

Geoff's brother?

[Witsec7]

Geoff's brother?

Yes, I almost plotzed, I was reading some of her earlier posts and she mentioned her father was a Dr. in Boregonia. I'm thinkin' hmmm Botkin is an old Oregon family from this area. She mentions her fathers specialty and I'm going WTF. We have a mutual interest in Pioneer Cemeteries. I never met the mother. Then we found we had another mutual friend (Quaker) and actually met up (with groups) to see the Jesus scholars a few times. He doesn't sound fundy, more deist with a Buddhist edge. He practices here in Oregon and in ID. He mentioned he had a vacation home in Sandpoint.

[Olive Plant]

I have a relative who attends the university where she works and I am always asking if he has taken anything from her. She seems very sweet and intelligent, everythign AS and E try unsuccessfully to be.

I think she works as an editor/journalist now. That's what her "Journalism" link says. Looks like she recently migrated a lot of this content from her old blog to her own domain, so maybe she's getting more serious about her career. The writing gene must run in the family.

[Olive Plant]

Yes, I almost plotzed, I was reading some of her earlier posts and she mentioned her father was a Dr. in Boregonia. I'm thinkin' hmmm Botkin is an old Oregon family from this area. She mentions her fathers specialty and I'm going WTF. We have a mutual interest in Pioneer Cemeteries. I never met the mother. Then we found we had another mutual friend (Quaker) and actually met up (with groups) to see the Jesus scholars a few times. He doesn't sound fundy, more deist with a Buddhist edge. He practices here in Oregon and in ID. He mentioned he had a vacation home in Sandpoint.

Are you sure? I thought her family lived in Moscow, Idaho. Did he say he was Geoff's brother? And what are the Jesus scholars?

[Witsec7]

Are you sure? I thought her family lived in Moscow, Idaho. Did he say he was Geoff's brother? And what are the Jesus scholars?

I never talked fundy to him, as I said in reading her blog I realized I knew a Dr. here in Oregon (20 miles up the road) with the SLN. He did mention he grew up in OK. Im guessing based on her information about growing up in Boregonia and her father being in the specialty he's in, its the same guy.

The Jesus Scholars/Seminars include:Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Robert Funk, Stephen L. Harris, and Burton Mack. I got interested in them because Marcus Borg was local and was a pretty progressive xtian.Crossan, Borg, and Kate Schori did a mini Jesus Seminar at my UU many years before Kate became the lady with the big hat.