Purdah in Texas
We’ve seen all this before. It’s the stay-at-home-daughters movement.
The stay-at-home-daughters movement, which is promoted by Vision Forum, encourages young girls and single women to forgo college and outside employment in favor of training as “keepers at home” until they marry. Young women pursuing their own ambitions and goals are viewed as selfish and antifamily; marriage is not a choice or one piece of a larger life plan, but the ultimate goal. Stay-at-home daughters spend their days learning “advanced homemaking” skills, such as cooking and sewing, and other skills that at one time were a necessity — knitting, crocheting, soap- and candle-making. A father is considered his daughter’s authority until he transfers control to her husband.
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that the CPM shares much of its philosophy with the Quiverfull movement, which holds that good Christians must eschew birth control — even natural family planning — in order to implement biblical principles and, in the process, outbreed unbelievers. Although the CPM has been around for the past several decades, with its roots in the founding of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and the teachings of religious leaders like Bill Gothard and Rousas J. Rushdoony, the stay-at-home-daughters movement seems to have gained traction in the last decade…
Vision Forum, for its part, is fully dedicated to turning back the clock on gender equality. Its website offers a cornucopia of sex-segregated books and products designed to conform children to rigid gender stereotypes starting from an early age. The All-American Boy’s Adventure Catalog shills an extensive selection of toy weapons (bow-and-arrow sets, guns, swords, and tomahawks), survival gear, and books and DVDs on war, the outdoors, and science. The Beautiful Girlhood Collection features dolls, cooking and sewing play sets, and costumes.
It certainly does.
The Beautiful Girlhood Collection aspires, by the grace of God, to encourage the rebuilding of a culture of virtuous womanhood. In a world that frowns on femininity, that minimizes motherhood, and that belittles the beauty of being a true woman of God, we dare to believe that the biblical vision for girlhood is a glorious vision.
You bet. The biblical vision is and always has been one of little white girls with long hair in ribbons and long pastel dresses with lace and ribbons and poofy sleeves, crowding around a pretty suburban mommy in a blue shirt and a long navy skirt (or could those possibly be trousers? no of course not, stupid question). Biblical; totes biblical; nothing to do with Victorian illustrations or Little House on the Prairie or nostalgia or anything like that; it’s all right smack straight out of the biblical bible.
Some of them seem to have permission to blog though. Is that biblical?
Ah, fuck, now I find out I could have purchased The Monstrous Regiment of Women in a package with IndoctriNation and Shaky Town.
Even the *language* is medieval: “by the grace of God” their catalogue of toys and books will help you raise your child as if we were living in the 17th century. Or any vaguely medieval era, I spupose, but having spent yesterday at a re-enactment of a battle of the English Civil War, the 17th C sprang to mind. And the leaders of each side yesterday, as is historically correct, claimed that they were fighting on the side of God–not unlike Republican presidential candidates today. That medievalism is everywhere.
And ooh, aren’t they DARING? They “dare” to believe in the “glorious vision” of girls playing with dolls. I’m SO impressed.
I know “his eye is on the sparrow” and a’ that, but good grief these people are self-aggrandizing.
Why are they even bothering to teach their daughters to read? If they are illiterate, their job options are reduced even more. Also, this will keep the pure women from going on line and finding blogs like this one. This will also keep them from reading secular and feminist books.
Saudi Texas!
I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, where they argue that the “Biblical vision for girlhood” also includes being a concubine, or being a slave who gets forcibly impregnated when one’s owner’s wife is barren, or being a victim of genocide, or being a spoil of war who is raped and “married” after your father, mother, and brothers are murdered, or being pimped out to a mob. I mean, those “visions” are in the Bible too, right?
Does the “Beautiful Girlhood Collection” come with the burqha, or is that a separate purchase?
I take it everyone here has read Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? It includes the immortal line: ‘next time, we won’t make the mistake of teaching them to read’.
Referring to women, of course.
How nice. Their website has a big section on Homeschooling. Featuring a flat earth where you can learn geography, and a book about economics for girls called “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”
My God, it’s an attempt to recreate the Edwardian years, the long drawn out autumn of the Empire — the Recessional! All those books with dashing, romantic covers, pressed right into the boards, about Bonnie Prince Charlie, or authors like G.A. Henty, some of which I read as a boy and dreamed of deering do. The whole thing is a nostalgia trip for the wealthy. It was the last common culture that we had in the West, and so you can understand why they might want to recreate it; but wouldn’t it be better to try to do something that is more up to date than dreams of Empire, and wars with fuzzy-wuzzies?! But A Jacobite Rebel, At Agincourt, The Young Fur Traders. Oh, they’ll teach them to read all right, and just lock them up in the wrong century. It’s as good as not teaching them at all. It does show one thing though. They know that Christianity is not consistent with the age we live in. You’ve got to recreate a century or five in order to practice it.
OK. I made those other two up, but this was under “Science”:
Plus, it has the added bonus that the christian author was ridiculed and persecuted for his views. Go figure.
You are all among the Lost. You know that, right?
From the vision forum website:
Eugh.
*gags* Hack! Cough! Onomatopoeia!
And the delicious irony cherry on top of it all is that these people have the gall to call themselves counter-cultural.
it’s all right smack straight out of the biblical bible.
But the only woman who was created perfect is Eve, atleast to begin with. So the biblical perspective of a perfect woman should be someone who has a live in relationship with her mate, has no problem with family planning (two kids only) and does the same work as Adam!
S’not our fault. Have you seen the roadmap they gave us? Thinking can lead you astray.
The trophy wife won’t stop chanting:
“Ugly boys who can’t cook!”
Well, they’re certainly against any culture I’d want to be a part of.
That’s exactly it. They’re counter our culture.
Oddly enough, the “underemployed helpmeet” wife was my mother’s aspiration for me, though she was Catholic and didn’t read the bible. With no education beyond high school, she worked some damned ugly waitressing jobs (for some really evil employers) before meeting my dad. They married, and her life (even if she still had to work) was better. It got even better when Dad got his degree in accounting, and bought a partnership in a business. She got to meet and greet clients and generally be an (excellent) admin, proud of her job, and the boss was really mellow. (Dad really was an amazingly mellow guy.)But, even after they adopted me and Mom discovered how hard it was to raise a kid, she always held out that homebody mother as the Ultimate Ideal. She was going to have at least four grandchildren through me. We butted heads over it repeatedly when I was growing up. There were sewing and typewriting classes taught at my high school and I didn’t sign up for them! (They interfered with the college track classes.) The day I enrolled at university in an engineering college deflated her more than anything else I’d done in the previous four years of high school. The day, some five years later, when I called her to tell her I’d gotten a raise, I said “guess what?” and she said, “you’re pregnant!” Well, no, I was never to be pregnant. She died a sorely disappointed non-grandmother.
Lesson learned: sometimes the urge to see your daughter as an Uber-Houseparent isn’t about the bible, it’s about living vicariously through your child.
I am finding this series thoroughly depressing, though I discovered a moment of amusement in the notes referring to some books on constructing toy weapons:
I keep hoping to find some sign revealing that it’s all really just a subsidiary of Landover Baptist.
But there are zombies in the Bible! Ezekiel 37:1-14, Zechariah 14:12-13, and at a pinch Revelation 11:6-11.
OK, I get the problem with zombies, but aliens? Does the Bible say that there isn’t life on other worlds? (Or is it that there aren’t other worlds, with the sky being a dome and all?)
Once when I was growing up, I asked my mother what she thought of the idea of aliens. I don’t recall the exact words, but she basically said that the Bible didn’t say anything about it, so no, there weren’t any aliens.
I don’t see theIr problem with zombies. There’s a zombie uprising in the gospel of Matthew. Maybe it’s because the undead are typically portrayed as walking, decaying corpses, but then again even Jesus is like that post-resurrection in John–he goes around with open wounds and demands brains for salvation and turns his followers into flesh eaters. Maybe it’s their malevolence, which shows that they are of the devil, or their origins in voodoo mythology. However, necromancy appears in 1 Samuel in the story of the Witch of Endor, so necromancy is in fact biblical. Based on their bible-thumping world-view they can only say black magic is frowned upon, not that it doesn’t exist, which perhaps explains why they take care to distance themselves from appearing to associate with even the concept of zombies. (ETs I think are ruled out by the world being a metal snow-globe inside a cosmic ocean.)
Any way you slice it, Christians just take fiction way too seriously.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t say anything about giraffes, either…
I asked about aliens a few times. The priest at the Catholic church I used to go to when I was young basically said he didn’t know but he liked to think there were aliens on other planets. A youth minister at a friend’s church (Church of Christ IIRC) said that aliens were actually demons trying to tempt people away from god and torturing people on earth (hence anal probes, I guess). Finally, a door- to door Jesus salesman told me that aliens didn’t exist but that all sci- fi was just another way for the devil to steal us away from Jesus.
Oh, and a pagan told me that aliens were just the modern guise of fairies.
Or America…
I’m extraordinarily tempted to assemble a cadre of people to write positive reviews talking about giving the products to the “wrong” gender.
Hence the Book of Mormon. If your nation isn’t featured in the world’s religious scriptures, invent some more scriptures! It’s been done before…
I’d be on board with that. My older son really liked Barbie when he was little. I couldn’t bring myself to buy him a Barbie of his own, but he did have lots of other dolls. (I would not have bought Barbie for my daughter if I had one, nor for any other girl for that matter.)
At the high school I work there is a family of 6 kids. (2 have graduated) The 2 boys are in the higher end English, science and math classes and very active in sports. The wear namebrand clothes, have ‘cool’ school gear and ‘fit in’ well. The girls all wear/wore homemade tops and skirts (ankle length) and their bookbags were homemade. Their hair is always worn up in a bun AND every one of them is in the lowest math and English classes (2 of them in remedial reading). I always wondered if the lower success of the girls was a coincidence or as a result of upbinging.
Ewww – that’s depressing, Nankay.
I guess that means giraffes are just long-necked demons trying to tempt us away from Jesus.
Don’t be ridiculous, ye of little faith. All of science is in the bible. Leopards are mentioned throughout the Old Testament prophets, in the Song of Solomon, and in Revelation. Camels are mentioned right through from Genesis to Matthew. The proper biblical name for the giraffe is cameleopard. Q.E.D.
Congratulation!
Ok, gorillas then! Where does the bible say about gorillas? Or llamas, or orang utans?
Ha. Ha, I say.
Possibly the wierdest thing I have ever encountered in the annals of Christian machismo: narco-traffickers inspired by an evangelical men’s ministry founded by a Focus on the Family Board member:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5009/when_religion_kills%3A_the_narco-traffickers_of_the_borderlands
A benevolent misogyny!
Oh, that’s a good one…………
Finally! Someone else realizes this!
I just love the “Cow Girls” section. Give me a pink Red Ryder BB Gun, and a whip and spurs any day! I’d show my lovin’ xtian cow boy how to respect and cherish his lady! Whee Haw!
In reference to Flora’s link: Wasn’t there a “muscular Chrisitanity” movement at the turn of the last century? I seem to recall that it rejected the effeminacy of the gentle Christ and that it was behind the founding of the YMCA. That is why they included gyms in their facilities.
Yes, here we go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscular_Christianity
I have never seen a “Noah’s Ark” illustration or toy set that did not have a pair of giraffes. Please tell me that I’ve not been living in apostasy and sin all my life!
here is an article from a woman who escape the quiverfull nightmare : http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/152208/how_i_escaped_the_%22biblical_family_values%22_nightmare_that_drives_perry%2C_bachmann%2C_and_tea_party_politics/?page=entire
Whoa, is it just me, or did that link from pittigemaki at #43 travel way outside the box? Pittigemaki, I suggest using the link button to bury the link words. It should help avoid issues like that.
…. and now to actually read the article linked.
Thanks for the article, lemur.