YLCF gives Margaret Atwood shout-out

[bea]

YLCF used to be interesting, at least. Now it's just...as you said. Vapid, inane, and consists mostly of blog posts from other people.

I mean, in Gretchen's defense, she's got three kids under the age of (I think) 4, she's living out in the country working as a farmer's wife, they seem to be barely making ends meet, and she's got herself hired out as a blog designer to a lot of the fundie girl and women's blogs. So she's obviously - dun dun dunnnnnn - working, as well as parenting full-time.

Which is why I think the time has come for YLCF (my gateway fundies!) to fold up their tents and bid a fond farewell to the "girls," most of whom are pushing 30 at least. They're just scrambling for content and most of it is awful. The design is unappealing, the pictures are stupid, and these little quote boxes are just so amateurish.

Not to totally change topics here - well, it's sort of on topic, with the courtship stuff - but how many of the fundie and quasi-fundie girls have ended up divorced? YLCF would do well to include a section on broken courtships and failed marriages that result from courtships, if they want to give the whole picture....

[Fundiefoodie]

I don't know where Chantel got her quotes, but I wouldn't be surprised if YLCF is slowly becoming a lighter and lighter version of the fundie strain, which explains the more recent posts about emotional purity. I think Gretchen herself is not quite as extreme in her fundiness as she used to be. But that's just my perception. I've never been into YLCF myself, but just from what I hear from friends who are more connected, that's the vibe I'm getting.

[bea]

I also get the feeling that Gretchen, while still very devout, is not quite the "my way or the high way" fundie she used to be. Which isn't surprising - I'm so glad that nothing I wrote about how other people should live their lives when I was 16 or 19 or 20 is floating around out there on a website. People evolve, they learn, their lives change. Remember her "Moms On Call" book and how she was training her first baby to sleep through the night and doing diaperless elimination communication and yadda yadda yadda? Notice how after Kid #1 didn't nurse and didn't gain weight the way she should (JUST AS COMMENTERS WARNED HER WOULD HAPPEN, with not feeding the baby at night) and her milk supply was waning, the "Moms on Call" stopped being the be-all and end-all of parenting advice? She's nursing on demand, she's babywearing (I have to say, that little boy of theirs is just adorable, and the girls are too), she's doing a lot of things that I think she never imagined doing - mostly because thinking about what you'll do with a baby, or doing it with only one baby, is considerably different than actually DOING it, or doing it with multiple kids who all need help and attention and love.

But what gets me - as it always does with YLCF - is that there's no effort to follow up on those earlier sweeping statements. No update to say "Hey, remember how I was so into that one book and convinced that this was the key to everything? Well, it turned out to be not such a great idea and my milk supply was compromised and then the second kid came and then the goal became just to get through the day, not worry about teaching a 6 month old to use the toilet, and the third kid came and WOW this is hard and I'm tired."

I was half-joking about adding a subsite about broken courtships and divorces, but only halfway, because I feel like YLCF is promoting a lifestyle and standard of living that even the CONTRIBUTORS don't live. Natalie's had two marriages crash and burn (through no fault of her own, it seems) and is a single parent who's left evangelical Christianity, Lanier is a childless, moneyed housewife, Gretchen has three kids under either 4 or 5 and from her personal blog, seems to be still having a really hard time managing a preschooler, toddler, and infant - and she's also WORKING, because I doubt her husband's farming income is enough to support them. Chantal is (I believe) childless and married, Ashleigh appears to have left the fundie fold pretty much behind, and it just seems intellectually dishonest for them to promote this idealized version of "young womanhood" that none of them appear to be able to achieve.

Tangent Alert!! Prompted by some really sad blog posts from a number of sources, from women going through painful times, and a dose of pain medication.....

I don't know. Some of the crowd that Ashleigh hangs around with (the Deeper story people) appear to be getting not just smacked by real life, but punched hard in the face by it. It makes me kind of sad - all these women who believe that their husband and their kids are their WHOLE WORLD and nothing else matters, and kapow, something happens and they're flying back to Africa to close their ministry their because their husband cheated on them and filed for divorce or whatever. The whole crowd of people working so hard to be real and true and authentic (albeit in exactly the same way and writing in the same style, but whatever) seem to be going through a kind of sudden demonstration that real life is often messy and downright horrible. But apparently being real and authentic and true doesn't involve telling people what's going on, and some of them are just *poof* disappearing their blogs and are never referred to again on sites where they used to regularly contribute.

I always enjoyed reading "Love, Sara Sophia," (lovesarasophia.com) aka "Tout Es Des Roses," a semi-fundie friend of Ashleigh's (the one she went to Paris with and ran/runs the Lovely guide with), who in the last month appears to have had her marriage totally explode, from the sad and mysterious postings on her blog and Twitter. She went to Blissdom, got home, and then made this really cryptic post alluding to (I think) the end of her marriage. Four little kids that she homeschools, no income that I can see other than blog affiliates and such. And I'm left thinking.....what comes next, for these women?

And in a lot of cases, like Natalie, they just.....disappear. They fall off the radar because their story didn't turn out with a happy ending. That's what makes me so angry about YLCF, a lot of the time, and some of these other fundie womens blogs. Women who are going through, or who have gone through, really truly terrible emotional pain just getting erased. They're not OBLIGATED to write about their experiences, obviously, but how do any of these sites and owners and editors justify quietly [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity]retconning[/link] these women's stories and eliminating them from the narrative so that everything remains sparkly perfect for a whole new crop of credulous fundie girls?

The fairy tale doesn't always end with the prince riding off with the princess to the castle. Sometimes the prince turns out to be a jackass, or the horse throws a shoe, or the castle has holes in the roof, or maybe after six months the prince and princess realize this was a mistake. Or after ten years and six kids, the prince/ss is so miserable that s/he can't do it anymore and leaves. That's real life, that's what happens sometimes, and that's what's happening right nowto some of the contributors to these fundie women's sites and there's not a word about it. For a group of people working so hard (they say) at being real and authentic and true, I think they're sweeping a lot of stuff under the rug.

(Tangent ends here, promise.)

[LucySnowe]

Bea, clearly your pain medication is good stuff. This is absolutely spot on.

I dare you to send it to Gretchen! Double dare ya!

[samurai_sarah]

Bea, clearly your pain medication is good stuff. This is absolutely spot on.

I dare you to send it to Gretchen! Double dare ya!

Seconded! That was a great read, and definitely something those fundie girls should think about.

[sassycupcake]

How about if someone comments saying they were so happy to see the M Atwood quote, and that her book The Handmaid's Tale is a must-read for aspiring helpmeets?

Did it. :whistle:

[silvia]

Amen, Bea. I would love to see Gretchen et al. address what you have to say, but sadly, I don't see it happening. I think Gretchen, especially, may be looking over her shoulder at what's happened in the lives of her former and non-former friends and trying to convince herself it couldn't possibly happen to her. Acknowledging that divorce, broken courtships, ruined lives, and serious faith questioning can happen to anyone, no matter how devout or well-intentioned or what set of guidelines they follow, might be too uncomfortable for her. (Plus, it might compel her to advise women to--wait for it--educate themselves, as Natalie is now doing, so they could adequately support themselves and their children if need be!)

One of the biggest draws of the SAHD lifestyle YLCF promotes is that it seems to offer the promise of contentedness, everlasting romance, and God's favor as a reward for following the rules. That's what lures girls in. If that promise is revoked, what else is left?

[silvia]

Also, I do wonder if part of the reason why former YLCF contributors like Lanier and Ashleigh left was because they felt uncomfortable, consciously or unconsciously, with the disconnect between the idealized version of reality the site promotes and real life. We know from Ashleigh's writings elsewhere that she's been through some tough times and that she's also renounced much of what the SAHD/homeschooling culture has to offer (heck, I think she's even started sending her kids to ordinary school).

[LucySnowe]

Yep, she posted about sending her kids to school instead of homeschooling:

http://heart.ashleighbaker.net/2011/09/on-school/

And she had kid #3 not long ago; there isn't much other than the baby in this photo, but I'm pretty impressed that there isn't a BLUE OR PINK thing going on:

Dreamer. Ten days old.

A photo posted by Ashleigh Ferguson Baker (@heartandhome) on May 4, 2012 at 6:22am PDT

Meanwhile, back to Gretchen - she posted a piece at FTLPH about her maternal grandfather’s birthday and writes 'It seemed a fitting time to share this piece I wrote ten years ago for a college writing class.' Did she go to college?? Even a little? I thought she spent all her pre-married time sending Merritt Hallmark cards and learning to keep her hair out of the shower drain....

[silvia]

Lucy, yes, I think Gretchen did take a couple of college courses while living at home with her parents (and waiting impatiently to marry Merritt). She never seemed to have any ambitions to finish an actual degree, though, despite her obvious natural intelligence. Check out this post from 2006: ylcf.org/2006/04/i-want-john-doe-on-john-deere/ . She says, "I have learned some interesting things in my college classes, but I wouldn’t want to be attending college full time: I’m learning that a true education will never be shown by a diploma." Great example she sets for the girls who read YLCF...

[bea]

It appears I can still write while totally bombed on Vicodin. Who knew?

Silvia, I never thought about the possibility of Ashleigh and Lanier leaving because of not wanting to just "go along" with Gretchen's vision for YLCF. I always just assumed that with Ashleigh's husband home and a new baby arriving (again, adorable baby, I want to squish the little cheeks), she didn't have time, and Lanier's bookstore/bookbinding business (which, HELLO, is a job), she also didn't have the time.

Does anyone else read Deeper Story? Some of the posts are actually interesting and thought-provoking, but over time all the authors start to sound the same and my GOD that Lauren Dubinsky and her Good Woman project (she thinks women who've had sex before marriage were victims of sex trafficking and were prostitutes) makes me crazy. She's all of 24, married a guy who quit his job to drive across the US and blog about it (because that's never been done before, apparently), and wants to tell everyone how to be a Good Woman.

Honey, you're barely out of puberty, don't tell ME how to be a good woman. It's like the newlyweds giving marriage advice - totally ridiculous to anyone who's not drinking the Kool-Aide.

[fundiefan2012]

Bea, great thoughts! ITA and could not have said it as eloquently, perhaps because I'm not on pain medication. ;)

I agree that instead of just disappearing (I'm not sure Ashleigh and Lanier's infrequent-at-best posts/tweets count as bein active online anymore), or instead of just subtly deleting posts/changing direction of a few posts (read: broken heart post on YLCF recently), these girls need to man up and admit they didn't know it all.

Someone should contact them....Gretchen, Natalie, Ashleigh, Lanier. See if they would write something to help warn the next generation of fundie girls. Because whether they want to be associated with such or not, they are. And (thanks for places like Free Jinger) always will be. Unless they publicly say otherwise. Silence is not enough.

Just my three cents from a ylcf lurker.

[silvia]

I agree that instead of just disappearing (I'm not sure Ashleigh and Lanier's infrequent-at-best posts/tweets count as bein active online anymore), or instead of just subtly deleting posts/changing direction of a few posts (read: broken heart post on YLCF recently), these girls need to man up and admit they didn't know it all.

Someone should contact them....Gretchen, Natalie, Ashleigh, Lanier. See if they would write something to help warn the next generation of fundie girls. Because whether they want to be associated with such or not, they are. And (thanks for places like Free Jinger) always will be. Unless they publicly say otherwise. Silence is not enough. .

Are you volunteering? ;) Seriously, I think it would be interesting to see whether you'd get a response from them, and if so, what kind. Natalie and Ashleigh are the furthest away from fundamentalism (that I know of) and both have posted on FJ in the past, so they might be the best bets. Both may have reservations about speaking out, however--Natalie because her father is the president of Moody Bible Institute and she may not want to embarrass him, and Ashleigh because she may not want to jeopardize her friendship with Gretchen, who seems to have retained her fundamentalist views for the most part.

It wouldn't be easy for any of these women to come forward publicly and tell the full story of how their views have evolved re. the legalistic environment in which they were raised. But I hope someday at least a couple will find the courage to do so, since, as you mentioned, their honesty could really help younger generations of women who are now being raised in a similar environment.

[fundiefan2012]

I might just do that, silvia.

Interesting....both Ashleigh and Natalie updated their blogs last night for the first time in eons. (I have a whole lotta fundie blogs on my rss reader.) Ashleigh's is a birth announcement and about being in "baby bliss." Natalie's on the other hand...

"I’m working on a piece about when courtship fails. Not just courtship, but life. What do you do when people look on you as a failure? When you are ostracized and categorized and written off and…and…?"

pursuethebeauty.com/2012/05/13/when-courtship-fails-article-preview/

Thoughts? You think both these ladies might already be reading here?

[silvia]

I might just do that, silvia.

Interesting....both Ashleigh and Natalie updated their blogs last night for the first time in eons. (I have a whole lotta fundie blogs on my rss reader.) Ashleigh's is a birth announcement and about being in "baby bliss." Natalie's on the other hand...

"I’m working on a piece about when courtship fails. Not just courtship, but life. What do you do when people look on you as a failure? When you are ostracized and categorized and written off and…and…?"

pursuethebeauty.com/2012/05/13/when-courtship-fails-article-preview/

Thoughts? You think both these ladies might already be reading here?

Absolutely, I believe they are! :) Thanks for the update--I hadn't been keeping up with Natalie's blog recently. I look forward to reading the "when courtship fails" piece.

[fundiefan2012]

Done! I commented on Ashleigh's blog post and also commented to Gretchen, Natalie, and Lanier, challenging them to read this thread and respond. I'm a bit nervous wondering what will happen.

ETA: How much you want to bet none of them let the comment come through moderation onto their blog? Except Ashleigh, who apparently doesn't moderate her comments as I already see it. We'll see if it stays up.

[silvia]

Wow, fundiefan! Thanks for taking the time. It'll be interesting to see if you get any responses.

[fundiefan2012]

Ashleigh removed my comment.

[hoipolloi]

Too bad for Ashleigh. I'd hoped for better from her but perhaps she just doesn't want this stuff distracting from the baby post & will write something, on her own or over at the Deeper Story.

I hope that Natalie follows through on her plans to write about courtship fail but I think that she's the most likely of them all to allow your comment to stand.

I'll be amazed if Gretchen or Lanier allowed your comment through let alone actually address the issues you raised. Intellectual honesty is not their long suit.

@Bea - meant to say earlier that your analysis (whether it was you or the meds talking!) is spot on. YLCF was one of my gateway sites, and part of its fascination for me was/is the perfection it portrays, even when its (former) portrayers have had such imperfect things happen in spite of following YLCF's formulae.

[AtroposHeart]

They also qouted Mark Twain at the top, Twain was extrmely critical of religion and the values of his time.

[LucySnowe]

Natalie's had two marriages crash and burn (through no fault of her own, it seems) and is a single parent who's left evangelical Christianity, Lanier is a childless, moneyed housewife, Gretchen has three kids under either 4 or 5 and from her personal blog, seems to be still having a really hard time managing a preschooler, toddler, and infant - and she's also WORKING, because I doubt her husband's farming income is enough to support them. Chantal is (I believe) childless and married, Ashleigh appears to have left the fundie fold pretty much behind, and it just seems intellectually dishonest for them to promote this idealized version of "young womanhood" that none of them appear to be able to achieve.

Whatever Ashleigh's actual current stance on fundie-ism, it struck me the other day that the way her marriage is structured isn't quite the fundie ideal, either. Three kids at a young age, yes, but her husband's in the military and has been deployed at least once for over a year, iirc. She's got to have been effectively solo parenting for months at a time, making decisions about herself and the boys without being able to consult her husband, which seems to fly in the face of the sort of Obey Your Headship vibe.

(Side note: I can't imagine how difficult such a marriage would be, whatever one's religious beliefs. My husband and I had to consider a commuter marriage about five months after the wedding and I was breaking out in hives. And it isn't as though he would have been in danger of being shot at or blown up....)

Gretchen's oldest kid is roundabout 4 and a half now. Wow. I'm tired just thinking about it.

[silvia]

Whatever Ashleigh's actual current stance on fundie-ism, it struck me the other day that the way her marriage is structured isn't quite the fundie ideal, either. Three kids at a young age, yes, but her husband's in the military and has been deployed at least once for over a year, iirc. She's got to have been effectively solo parenting for months at a time, making decisions about herself and the boys without being able to consult her husband, which seems to fly in the face of the sort of Obey Your Headship vibe.

(Side note: I can't imagine how difficult such a marriage would be, whatever one's religious beliefs. My husband and I had to consider a commuter marriage about five months after the wedding and I was breaking out in hives. And it isn't as though he would have been in danger of being shot at or blown up....)

Gretchen's oldest kid is roundabout 4 and a half now. Wow. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Good point, Lucy. Being a young military wife (with three kids now) would be really rough! You have to know what you're getting into when you marry into that lifestyle. In fact, Ashleigh has alluded to having experienced significant difficulties in her marriage--in this post, for example: heart.ashleighbaker.net/2011/02/the-melody-and-the-roses-a-love-story/ .

And fundiefan, last I checked, your comment was still up at Natalie's site. :)

[bea]

I think Natalie has been burned hard enough by the whole SAHD/courtship/marriage-as-idol thing that she may well address it.

I commented over there responding to someone who seemed to be saying (I'm not sure) that even if the marriage was awful, oh well, you were married, that was it.

Which just makes me boggle, truly. Now, Mr. Beatrice and I have been together since I was 18 and he was 19. I was his first ever girlfriend. He was my third boyfriend. And we knew - even back then. That was it, we'd found "the one," and eventually we got married (though not before living together for a number of years, mostly because if we'd gotten married he'd have lost his financial aid and I'd have been on the hook to pay for him to go to law school) and had babies and, if I do say so myself, we have a happy marriage.

But we had/have friends who got married straight out of high school or college, mostly because they didn't know what else to do, and after the initial "whooee, we're married!" thrill wore off, it turned out they weren't very well suited to one another. One friend married a guy who was a classic narcissist - as an example, she has severe athsma and allergies and he wanted a dog. So he brought two dogs home and insisted that she'd just have to take massive doses of steroids in order to breathe in her own house and honestly, she was being so INFLEXIBLE about not letting them sleep on the bed. Also, why was she in graduate school when HE was in graduate school, because it was more important that he get a graduate degree than she get one and besides, she could be working so that he wouldn't have to take out loans. That marriage lasted under a year, and occurred mostly because both sets of parents bullied and blackmailed and forced her into it. What, she should have just stayed married and sick and miserable and put up with verbal and mental abuse....why, exactly? Because marriage is sacred?

Another friend of mine got married two weeks after I did, to an older guy who was very reserved. Turned out, he was a control freak. Her weight had to stay within a ten pound spread, or she suffered horrific mental abuse. He had rules about what to cook, what she could wear, how she should comport herself in public, what they (she) could spend money on, and so on and so forth. When she was driving a thirteen year old Saturn that regularly conked out on the side of the LA freeway, he bought himself a brand-new Ducati to go with his other brand-new car. He was an attorney, she was an elementary school teacher, and she not only had no access to his money, she had no access to HER OWN money, because "he handled the finances."

She left him, finally, and I flew her back here to Chicago to come see us. And she told us what her marriage was like, what had been going on, what it had been like to essentially live in a home with a jailer, not a husband.

We paid for her divorce lawyer. I have never been so glad to write a check in my whole life.

And these women should have stayed in horrible, soul-destroying marriages.....why, exactly? To make other people feel better about their own miserable marriages? To make other people secure in the knowledge that no matter how miserable you are or how miserable you make one another, you can't get a divorce?

What I really want to know is why other people's marriages matter so damn much to some of these fundies. What does it MATTER if someone is miserable and gets a divorce? How does that affect me, how does it affect my marriage? Not at all, unless (as with my friend) I'm paying for the damn divorce.

[silvia]

Bea, I saw your comment over at Pursue the Beauty -- good thoughts. I also saw that Natasha Metzler, a member of the current YLCF team of contributors, responded to Natalie's post (pursuethebeauty.com/2012/05/13/when-courtship-fails-article-preview/#comments) in a way that struck me as odd. First she points out the danger of using "ideal" stories to illustrate to young people how they should go about their relationships. I thought, fine, I agree, but if that's what you believe, why have you put your oar in with a website that proudly boasts the largest trove of idealized courtship stories on the Internet?

Then she says that whether a relationship is "courtship" or "dating" all depends on "how you paint it," which seems a bit disingenuous. As I understand it, there are very clear differences between courtship relationships and traditional dating relationships: the girl's parents (especially her father) have to give express blessing to a courtship relationship, and both parties must enter into a courtship with the intent of marriage--two conditions that do not apply to traditional dating. One of the reasons Natalie has changed her stance on courtship is that, as she says, it tends to lock you into "going with the first guy you've ever liked," but Natasha writes that courtship fails "when too much attention is focused on the painting [[ed. not exactly sure what she means here--maybe that the participants are trying too hard to conform to a 'perfect' courtship model?]] and not enough on what is truly happening." IMO, she doesn't address the issue Natalie is raising: that the courtship model can fail because participants are encouraged to enter into a serious, often binding relationship without getting to know each other's character fully beforehand.

[fundiefan2012]

Natalie posted her article on When Courtship Fails. I think this merits its own topic but I don't have enough brownie points yet to start a new topic. Someone want to do the honors?

Hebe. My stupid auto correct thought "honors " should be Gomorrah. Riiiiiiight.

The rest of the Ylcf team doesn't appear to be giving my plea on their blogs much thought. Anyone seen anything @ Ashleigh or Gretchen or Lanier's?

Eta stupid autocorrect.....