mynextmistake

Yeah, but Jill comes across as — there’s no nice way to put this — dumb. She might grind away at her studies, but I doubt she’d be able to manage to get through much more than a minimally challenging high school curriculum. She seems to have no innate sense of intellectual curiosity or ability to think critically, both of which would be necessary to get through college-level coursework even at a pseudo college like Crown. At least I hope they would. Jessa has shown decent reflective thinking skills, like when she commented that she would raise her kids differently than she was raised. She’s the most articulate, both in writing and speaking, of the adult Duggars. She’s also determined when something matters to her... she managed to goad Jim Bob into letting her marry Ben, after all. I’m not saying she’d be a member of Mensa, but I think she could have gone to college, gotten a degree, and had some kind of satisfying career.

Jessa needed someone who would put up a facade of being a headship (to preserve the ideological brand) while letting her run the show behind the scenes. I’m not sure Lawson would have gone along with that. She and Ben are a really good match, actually, possibly the best match of the Duggar couples (although Jinger/Jeremy and Kendra/Joe also seem well suited). He’s easygoing enough that he seems happy to let her make most of the family decisions and when he does insist on something it seems to be something that’s beneficial (such as eating fruit and vegetables). I think Jessa has the most raw intelligence of the Duggar kids. It’s a shame that any of them were raised to be incurious and uneducated, but I think it’s especially sad in her case. In another environment I think she could really have done something with her life. I think you’re spot on when you say that the Bates kids outgrew them intellectually. Their homeschooling seems to have been a lot better and even Clown College is better than what the Duggars got.

I wonder why we’ve never had a Duggar/Bates wedding? There have been plenty of marriageable kids of similar ages over the years. The Bates girls are all stunners, if you don’t mind the heavily-made-up look, and it seems like they’ve all managed to find guys who are superior (in looks at least) to the Duggar boys, but i’m surprised that none of the Duggar girls have ever courted a Bates boy. They are attractive, reasonably self-supporting, and from acceptable fundie stock. Maybe the Bates are steering clear of the Duggars?

Interpretive dance!

I don’t think it was Roe v. Wade that posed a threat to Sam’s survival, but I guess “I Survived Me v. My Mom Who Thinks She is a Midwife but is Actually Dumber Than Our Coffee Grinder” would be hard to fit on a onesie.

I feel like people are misinterpreting what I said in my OP. I didn’t say Kate was a useless human being with nothing to recommend her, or that she is in any way inferior to Jinger. My point was that she’s only well-known because she married a prince who could give her an easy, stylish life with few responsibilities. She didn’t attain fame because she invented something that helped millions of people or excelled in her profession or for any reason having to do with her own accomplishments. As to whether graduating from a well-regarded college makes you admirable, we will have to agree to disagree. I know a lot of women who didn’t go to college due to financial or personal circumstances, and I consider them extremely admirable. YMMV.

My point was that I wouldn’t pick either.

If that’s your preference, that’s great. The point I was trying to make is that I want my daughter to look up to women who have bettered their own lives and the lives of people around them through the exercise of positive character traits, not through marrying the right guy. I’m sure Kate Middleton does do some charity work; what else does she have to do all day? However, let’s not kid ourselves, she’s not Eliza Doolittle. She went from a very upper middle-class family to a prestigious college back to a very upper-middle-class family and then married into royalty. Good for her, but I don’t find that particularly laudable.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what has Kate Middleton done that makes her a role model? She seems like a nice enough woman and a good mom, at least as far as I can tell from People magazine interviews, but all she really *did* was land Prince William and therefore a clothing budget that allows her to dress more classily than any average woman. I would prefer my daughter look up to accomplished women who have done more than marry well rather than to either Jinger or Kate.

Damn kids. In my day, we would have slept in a drainage ditch if it meant that our mom would be there to provide Godly counsel 24/7.

Or, God forbid, those of us who are still married and work anyway because our kids are super into this new thing called “eating.”

Yeah. I can’t specifically speak to cross church, but at my cousin’s fundie-lite church any trips organized for the youth or college groups include a male and a female chaperone. The church would think it was improper to have young women supervised by a single man. They also prefer that the chaperones be a married couple if possible, to eliminate any possibility of hanky panky between them. As much as I hate to give this couple the benefit of the doubt, it is possible Jill is going along at the request of the church, and since she is still breastfeeding Sam taking him along too isn’t unreasonable.

I very much doubt that any of those girls would look at Derick with anything other than pity or loathing. He’s unattractive and poor and boring. They have to tolerate him because he’s “supervising” their church group, but I doubt any of them have any strong urges to make him a sandwich, if you know what I mean. That said, of course Jill’s insecure. She was raised to be insecure; that’s part of how Jim Bob and Michelle train the kids to toe the line, by pitting them against each other in battles over who can be be godly and obedient enough to win some parental love and attention. Plus, she’s not unattractive, but she looks really plain and dumpy next to all the girls with clean hair and shorts on. And she might be as dumb as a stump, but she must have picked up on Derick’s unhappiness by now. Add that to what she has to look forward to if he dumps her — raising however many kids they have by then alone in the TTH because she’s incapable of being self-sufficient and Derick won’t be earning enough to be on the hook for much child support — and you have a recipe for insecurity. She puts on a brave face on social media, but I have no doubt that behind the scenes she’s a miserable mess.

I think you mean the First Amendment? (Not being a jerk, honestly asking. I kinda have hysterical amnesia about the constitution after being forced to recite the preamble over and over again in front of my entire class in grade six. We had to recite it until we got it right and I kept messing up that damn last sentence. Ordain, establish, who cares what order you say them in?) Yeah. I don’t really know what to say about these two at this point. They’re horrible people but I can’t really work up much anger against them because I find them so pathetic. They’re both so clearly disappointed and/or bitter about the sad life they lead. I think Derick honestly pictured himself living in a foreign country saving the teeming masses from a Christ-free life and instead he’s stuck in Arkansas trying to keep college kids from partying and having sex. Jill probably imagined that by now she’d have had at least three kids via picture-perfect homebirths while also finding the time to attend births in remote wilderness areas that can only be reached by helicopter or whatever, and instead she’s had two complex c-sections and one kid in the NICU because she’s dumber than a sack of hammers and can’t figure out that after FORTY HOURS you should GO TO THE FUCKING HOSPITAL. Okay, I can work up some anger about that. Have kids, don’t have kids, you do you, none of my business, but I do think that once you’ve decided to have a child you have an obligation to do what is necessary to make sure it SURVIVES BIRTH OMFG JILL YOU CALL YOURSELF A MIDWIFE I’D RATHER HAVE MY DOG DELIVER MY BABY BECAUSE SHE’S A SHEPHERD AND AT SOME POINT INSTINCT WOULD KICK IN AND SHE’D START HERDING ME TOWARD THE HOSPITAL WHILE YOU WOULD JUST GIVE ME SOME CASTOR OIL AND TELL ME TO PRAY HARDER. Sorry. I’m going to be in the prayer closet with a bottle of Michelle’s Xanax if anybody needs me.

I remember that! At the time I thought it was sad because Anna’s parents were supposedly taking her out for a “special birthday dinner” but it was blatantly obvious that they were at a Denny’s. I mean, I get money being an object, but why not just cook her favorite meal at home and use the restaurant money for a small gift? I feel bad for Anna in general. She had a taste of the good life — nice restaurants, new clothes, a nice place to live — and then Josh’s penis ruined the whole thing. Now she’s back to thrift stores, a fixer-upper house provided by JB, and date night with Domino’s.

Respectfully, though, that’s not true either. And repeating it both adds to the stigma associated with mental illness and provides a convenient scapegoat for people looking to rationalize or excuse the bad behavior of others. For example, without getting political, every time we have a mass shooting in the US the talking heads come out to say we need to do a better job of keeping “the mentally ill” from getting handguns. On the face of it, that’s completely reasonable. But I have depression, so I am mentally ill, and I would never commit a mass shooting. Conversely, many mass shooters do not have mental health issues. They commit mass shootings because they are trying to advance an ideology, or get revenge on others, or just because their lives are crap and they’re pissed off about it. But when we link mass shootings to mental illness, we both reinforce the idea that the mentally ill are dangerous and do nothing to stop the many mass shootings that are committed by people who aren’t mentally ill. I’ve been up all night, so i’m sorry if i’m being unclear. My point is that’s the idea that people who do bad things must be mentally ill can be just as dangerous as the idea that mentally ill people must do bad things. As a mentally ill person, I would like to see these two ideas (mental illness and dangerousness) separated in the public consciousness. We need systems to deal with offenders who are mentally ill, but I think we can have those without having to make sweeping generalizations about the mental health of the criminal population.

I’m going to start using Derick’s strategy to manage all the difficult conversations I have in my own life. Boss: Do you understand that everyone hates you and we’re only keeping you around because we’re chronically understaffed? Me: I like butter. MIL: When will you give up this career girl nonsense and produce another 57 grandchildren for me to terrorize? Me: Raccoons carry rabies. Seriously, I think this could work.

When I was a little girl, my grandfather said something that has stuck with me for my entire life. He said that at the end of every day, the world could be either a better or a worse place because of the things that I did that day, and that the choice was mine to make. I chose better. I’m not sure that could be said by any of the adult Duggars.

They weren’t bragging about going to Sonic. They could not have gone to Sonic, because there are no Sonics in New Zealand or Australia, although Arkansas has 164 locations. Laura was saying that she and her friends love Jana as much as they love the wings from Sonic. I think it was an affectionate in joke, not a swipe at the cuisine of New Zealand or Australia.

The post was written by Jana’s friend Laura, not Josiah’s fiance Lauren. As Laura is an unmarried fundie, I don’t think she’s going to need Jana for child care anytime soon.

Jeremy: “Hey, man, I hear you went to college too! Wasn’t it great doing nothing but playing sports and getting laid?” Derick: ”...I didn’t play sports or get laid.” Jeremy: ”No way, bro. What did you do then?” Derick: ”Cavorted around the basketball court at halftime wearing a giant plastic head.” Jeremy: ”... huh. Okay then. Sucks to be you, dude.” Derick: ”By the way, do you really think that suit is appropriate for a pastor? Those pants are kind of... well, let’s just say that if they were any tighter, i’d feel defrauded, even though I am over 100% straight.” Jeremy: “Haha. Oh, speaking of pants, i’ve been meaning to congratulate you on letting Jill expand her wardrobe. She looks good. But aren’t you afraid she’s gonna go totally mainstream now and dump you for a guy whose front teeth are actually in the front of his mouth?” Derick: “Listen, you dic...” Jill and Jinger, from across the room: “JESUS!!!!” Derick: Oh, yeah. Worship that guy!” Jeremy: “That’s right man! Gimme some Christian love!” (FIST BUMP)

Maybe she’ll go with names that express how fundies are supposed to feel about kids. Miracle. Blessing. Gift. Promise. Joy. Or maybe she’ll go with names that express how fundies actually feel about kids. Miracle. Blessing. (Fast forward to #15) MenopausePleaseHurryTheHellUp.

I don’t know. I’m willing to bet that Nurie Rodriguez, for instance, would snap up a Duggar boy in a heartbeat. He might be a simplistic, chauvinist asshole, but I imagine he’d at least feed her.

Josiah gives me the creeps. I can’t quite figure out why. He just seems like the type who would express his affection for a girl by leaving a dead mouse on her doorstep because that’s what cats do and he once heard that girls love cats. Sigh. All these girls are so young. It’s not hard to figure out why; a grown woman with actual life experience or ambition would run screaming from a Duggar boy just like Marjorie did. They have nothing to offer except life under JimBob’s thumb and an occasional appearance on “Counting On.” Of course, life experience and ambition don’t seem like strong points of the fundie set, so maybe their age doesn’t matter as much as I thought.

I don’t think Josh gives two shits about how he’s affecting Anna and the kids because I don’t think he really wants Anna and the kids. Marriage and unlimited sex were probably novel at first, and maybe he did initially care for Anna, but I don’t think he ever wanted children as anything other than convenient props for his planned career in conservative politics and even then I think he’d have been happy stopping at two or three. It must have been pretty unsettling when it dawned on him (slowly, because he’s none too bright) that Anna’s only real ambition in life was to have as many children as possible and it was very likely he was going to end up as the father of a horde numbering in the double-digits. I mean, he did what he did because he’s an asshole, but part of me wonders if he wasn’t unconsciously hoping Anna would discover his “affairs” and either leave him or stop sleeping with him, putting an end to the baby train.