So Much More by Anna Sofia Botkin

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This book is the mother of all purity culture books. It really digs in and spells out exactly what many other books kind of dance around. It’s not just about “not having sex (and avoiding real consequences of teenage pregnancy, stds etc)”, it’s really about “obeying authority, which God has ordained on Earth, and you, as a woman, are not ever the authority nor do you own your own body.”

Like a couple of other people who wrote reviews for this book, I don’t have a reason for writing this, except that I think I am finally at the end and am finally moving past an era that started with this stupid book.

The Botkin sisters started the SAHD movement, and now they have a little MP3 correcting that statement called “It’s not about staying at home.” They giggle and tell Veggie Tale jokes about how people have misinterpreted this book to mean daughters should stay at home, when rreealllyy they meant that a woman should work under the protection of wise older people (preferably your father) until she is married (and her home and children become the 1 and only) and somewhere in the middle, she can work at the family business.

And look, I get it. Women should definitely have mentors and cultivate relationships with older, guiding, Godly adults, especially and hopefully our parents. We all (women and men) as Christians, should strive to create homes that are places of hospitality, welcoming, warm, comfortably furnished and adorned, and full of the love of Christ and the love we have for each other. And yeah, college isn’t for everyone and if you go, it’s definitely important to not just take what your professors say at face value, but instead, to actually read the material and read material beyond that, and you know, evaluate it and articulate your own conclusions. And for sure, Y2K fashion wasn’t always the best. Many Christians and atheists alike will agree, no more low-rise jeans, thanks.

But to get this sort of loving, intelligent, family life the sisters describe, there is absolutely no need to paint everyone who does not follow their exact family-business path with the brush of “Marxist”, “abortionist”, “disobedient,” etc. As Christians, even and especially as Christian women, still need to face the messiness of justice in wage labor, business laws, opportunities for businesses, the ~course of history~ etc (and not just with books our dads give us), and we need to be able to recognize women as literally made in the image of God, not created “from man and for man,” as the Botkin sisters say. We need to recognize nuance, and quite frankly, grow up.

I admire them for writing and publishing this book at such a young age, but perhaps, as their still unmarried selves have lightly alluded to, their age was not actually a strength. I first read this book when I was about 14, they were 17 and 19 when they wrote this book and belittled and condemned those who did not agree with them. A lot of 14, 17 and 19 year olds are like that (Onward Christian soliders! I’ve been there too), so perhaps in a way, this book is just an overgrown and slickly marketed case of teenage bullying.

And yet, I hesitate to write it off so lightly. Let’s do some literary analysis and look at a few quotes (perhaps a little out of context, but the authors probably won’t mind):

“You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers visitors and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women” – Osama bin Laden

After taking a ‘Biblical’ look at Western culture, the Botkin sisters concluded “…we saw that women for the most part are not respected; they are viewed as prey, as objects to exploit and discard…Because this is just one of the ways God pressed his lawsuit against an entire nation-or in this case-several nations of rebels.”

Like the nerd I was in high school, I read Osama bin Laden’s letter to America in 2011 near the 10th anniversary of 9/11, because I was curious, and I saw those similarities between what he said about women and degraded Western culture and what the Botkin sisters were ulitmately saying about women and degraded Western culture. I wish I would have thrown the book out then, and forgot about it, and I wouldn’t be here today, 10 years later, dissecting the earlier stages of my life for the Internet. But I was scared of the Hell the Botkin sisters insisted I would go to if I didn’t obey their version of a life based on their interpretation of the Bible, and so, the road has been long.

I’m now at a stage in my life where I’m rediscovering my faith, God, Jesus, and how God created the world, and the world that God created, and love, and what it means to be married and walk side by side with another human, through every day, just as God walked side by side with Israel and Christ walked side by side with the church, and neither left each other. And really, that type of love is more powerful than fitting into nice, obedient, gendered roles.

And really, I think they probably know that. It just would have been nice if they could have said that without, you know, writing this book to begin with. In the end, there is nothing to do but forgive, forget, and move on. Aaanndd maybe save the book, since it doesn’t look like they sell it on their website anymore ;). Maybe they’ve found better things to do, since after all, they’re not the “daughters who don’t do anything” (from their MP3, giggle giggle, don’t do anything except sell ideas equivalent to extremism, lol, free market). Okay, okay, enough enough. Anna-Sofia and Elizabeth – if you somehow read this, send me an email, we should get coffee sometime, I’m really curious how all these ideas get phrased when they aren’t packaged in a book or a speech or something. When you really dig deep, what do you, as individuals, as women, as children of God and not just your father, think? If you had been born somewhere else in the world, and brought up in another religion, what would your life look like?

anyways, have a great day goodreads reviewers, go forth and do great things



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