"Authority Figures & Girls Who Learned Obedience" by Kari Kraakevik

We were at recess when Kevin told me that after lunch we were going to learn about “adult things.” Babies. Sex.
I told him he was wrong.
He wasn’t.

On a random Wednesday in fifth grade, the boys and girls were separated and sent to different classrooms. We were shown diagrams of pad placement. Stick-figure drawings of how babies are made. The projector hummed. It felt like too much and not enough at the same time.

Then the teachers switched rooms.
The boys’ teacher entered ours.

We had just learned that adult men had bodies that could make babies. Now an adult man stood at the front of the room.

He said something that has stayed with me far longer than the diagrams.

“Girls, now that we understand our bodies, we can understand how important it is to keep them pure. And that also means keeping the boys’ thoughts pure with how we present ourselves. It’s important to conduct yourselves modestly at all times to help your brothers in Christ.”

I raised my hand.

“So we bleed every month,” I said, glancing at the pad still glowing on the projector screen, “and we have to give birth. And during all of that we have to make sure we don’t tempt our brothers in Christ?”

He paused.

“But someday we’re supposed to get married,” I continued. “And have babies. So we have to stay attractive enough for our future husbands to want to marry us and make babies… but not tempt the boys now?”

The room went quiet.

“How is that fair?”

He ended class early.

That was the first time I remember realizing responsibility was not evenly distributed. I didn’t yet have the language for theology or patriarchy. I only knew the arithmetic felt wrong.

I would come to understand that in the version of Christianity I was raised in, obedience wasn’t just encouraged. It was a virtue.

The next year, teachers pulled each girl into the utility closet to measure the length of her banquet dress, because we weren’t allowed to have a dance. The hem for the “banquet” had to fall below the knee.

I didn’t understand why knees were dangerous.

We were told this was protection. That modesty kept boys from stumbling. That obedience kept everyone safe.

The rules were framed as care.

No one asked who was responsible for caring for us.

By eighth grade, I felt suffocated. I asked to attend public high school. “Asked” is generous. I fought for it. My parents were afraid.

What if the “Heathens” influence you?

I left anyway.

It didn’t take long to realize the problem wasn’t the “Heathens.” It wasn’t the Christians either.

In high school, my running back boyfriend was failing geometry.
The coach didn’t call him into his office. He called me.

“Kari, can you help John? He needs to pass to play varsity.”

Responsibility, again.

It had already been assigned. Quietly. Early.

I went to “Small Group” on Wednesdays because that’s what good girls did.
And I wanted to be one.

Because that was what we were told was pure, correct, and agreeable.

We were taught that boys were vulnerable to temptation.
We were taught that girls were responsible for preventing it.

Responsibility became our virtue.
Obedience became our maturity.
Authority remained unquestioned.

So what happened when that authority proved fallible?

When the men tasked with guarding purity failed to guard their own?

The answer, in many communities, is familiar.

The men are prayed for.
The women are scrutinized.

She must have tempted him.
She must have misled him.
She must have been careless.

Because if purity is our responsibility, then impurity must be our fault.

That logic shaped silence.
It shaped loyalty.
It shaped who apologized.

But it never quite fit.

I learned, slowly, that another person’s choices are not mine to absorb. Accountability does not transfer through proximity. Guarding someone else’s morality does not make me moral.

Responsibility, it turns out, is not contagious.

It belongs to the person who acts.

And yet, the old arithmetic lingers.
We still measure hems.
We still parse tone.
We still ask what she did to invite it.
The language has changed.
The arithmetic stayed the same.

The question I raised in fifth grade was never really about modesty.
It was about distribution of responsibility.

Who is responsible for whom?

I didn’t raise my hand again.
Not that day. Not in that room.

I learned when to stop asking.

Compliance can look like maturity.
Silence can look like respect.
Sometimes they are simply training.

I learned how obedience is formed.
I am still learning where it belongs.

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