So Much More, p. 95-105 – Part 4: American Girls

“A&E” refers to Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, authors of So Much More. I chose the abbreviation to save space and time.

At the end of chapter 8, A&E have a go at history:

When the first brave wives came with their husbands to the shores of Plymouth in 1620, they brought character and the customs of Christendom with them. Unfortunately, most modern history books give inaccurate depictions of women from this time, and often focus entirely on the “feminists before their time” who did little or nothing to build up their society, and often had little cultural significance.

I can’t help but nitpick here and point out that the Pilgrim wives on board the Mayflower were not the first married English women to reach North America. They were preceded (by nearly 40 years) by Eleanor White Dare, mother of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in North America and a member of the famous “Lost Colony” of Roanoke. This doesn’t affect any arguments about Christendom, of course, since we’re still talking about English women from the same general time period; but I still find it annoying, even though it’s only obliquely relevant to the actual issue here: A&E glossing over things about history and portraying early American women as pretty darn close to perfect and/or superhuman:

The Creepiest Christian Sex Metaphor Ever?

Due to growing up homeschooled, I am still friends with many Christian homeschoolers on Facebook. Some of them are…well, let’s just say, goldmines of bloggable material (well-intentioned though they may be). Except, since I usually have enough to do critiquing patriocentric material, I don’t actually blog about most of the stuff they post.

Until today, when something especially…interesting…showed up on my timeline.

Let’s just start at the beginning of the item in question. I think the problems will become clear enough on their own.

So Much More, p. 95-105 – Part 3: Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

“A&E” refers to Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin, authors of So Much More. I chose the abbreviation to save space and time.

For this post, I will take as my starting point a passing remark by Rebekah (and thus by extension, A&E since they endorsed it by printing it in their book):

My quest to become “one of the guys” led me to yield to my sinful nature and develop a competitive and independent spirit, causing me to lose one of the sweetest traits of girlhood – that of gentle trustfulness.

Rebekah doesn’t elaborate here on what she means by a “competitive spirit.” She seems to contrast it with “gentle trustfulness,” but gives little detail other than that. Had nothing more been said on the subject, my discussion of competitiveness would have ended at that. However, as I kept reading I realized that competition was a bit of a minor (though subtle) theme in chapter 8.