Fundie flashbacks: We want to tell you what to wear edition

Joshua Harris, can't you leave a girl alone?

As a child, a hobby of mine was reading and picking apart Christian lifestyle books of all types, particularly the ones that purported to tell me, specifically, how to live my life. Or ones that told other people how to tell me how to live my life. In my tween years, I started out with some classic James Dobson. I think my parents had the good sense to keep this gem somewhere other than my dad's office bookshelf, but you'd better believe I got my hands on some other ones. I would read, and then methodically report back to my parents with my criticisms of books such as Dare to Discipline, and a couple years later, when I was compelled to read it in school, Preparing for Adolescence.

In case you haven't had the pleasure of reading some of Dr. Dobson's finer work, The Strong-Willed Child could be renamed "How to Crush Dissent and Original Thought in Persons Under the Age of 18." Dare to Discipline is how to hit your kids without getting reported to Child Protective Services. And Preparing for Adolescence teaches girls to slut-shame themselves in case there isn't someone else there to do it for them, along with other misinformation about teens' emerging sexuality, which would be entertaining if it wasn't so dangerous.

You have to find little things like this to amuse yourself and keep yourself sane when you're growing up in fundie-land. But a book came out when I was the tender age of 16 that was anything but funny. And it became a raging sensation with fundamentalist fathers everywhere. The book was I Kissed Dating Goodbye by a man named Joshua Harris. The basic premise of this book is that dating as an institution is flawed, and good Christians should forgo romantic love of all types until they're ready to wed, and which time they should begin pursuing "courtships," which will eventually lead to marriage.

Now, being out of that scene for so long, and beginning to be more involved feminist issues, I see even more fundamental problems with the book than I did at the time, such as the fact that he presupposes that everyone ought to aspire to the fundamental institution of the patriarchy - heterosexual marriage. But even at the time, I could see how a catchy introduction fell into a string of logical fallacies, in everything from his core arguments to his use of supporting evidence. Unfortunately, this time, my critical examination of this latest fundie-festo was less a precocious pastime, and was more rooted in the deep fear that he was right, and I was somehow inherently bad for dating.

If Joshua himself, or one of his minions, was reading this blog right now, he would probably say, "See, Shells, that fear you feel is your heart telling you that dating is in fact wrong." And adult Shells would tell him, "No, Josh, that fear is the result of sixteen consecutive years of brainwashing to believe the sexual fearmongering that spews forth from the pens of creeps like you." Of course, when I was sixteen, I didn't know that. Ever since I can remember, I've been cursed with being the perfectionistic, type-A person that I am. When you have that type of temperament, and you're raised in a fundamentalist Christian environment, and books like this come up, you're put in a difficult position. You know everyone will think better of you and admire you if you follow its prescriptions. But you also know it's bullshit.

So I compromised. I kept my boyfriend, but had a very publicly non-sexual relationship with him. I literally had parents coming up to me and telling me they wished their kids would behave more like my boyfriend and I, and that we were a wonderful example. At the time, I felt like I was having my cake, and eating it too. But now, I see how this strand of Christian philosphy, and many like it over the years, have continued to warp the way I approach relationships and sex, even though I've long since abandoned them.

Which is why it all came flooding painfully back when I saw this. It turns out Harris's little brothers have picked up the torch, and created a survey that helps Christian men dictate what women should wear so that they don't "stumble," titled The Modesty Survey. (Sound familiar? Maybe because stuff like that is written into the laws in places like, oh, Saudi Arabia.) I don't have the energy to pick it apart right now, but there's some great feminist analysis by Jill at Feministe, and by The Happy Feminist, who I love because she's a feminist and a lawyer. There's also a hilarious parody at Pandagon that definitely raised the depressed spirits of a recovering surf of fundamentalism.

Now off to bed so I can dream about tying Joshua Harris to a front row seat of any given catwalk at Fashion Week...