The Duggars and Their World: Fashion, Food, Finance, Schoolin’ and Child Rearin'

[Wishing Well]

2 hours ago, Fostersmom said:

I can't remember it it was a Little House book or some other random book about past times, but I remember reading something where the characters were eating bread soaked in milk. That was it, just milk soaked bread. My grandfather was born in 1920 and died when he was 97. He was still living by himself when he was 94 or so and my mom mentioned to me once, she didn't know what he was doing, she was pretty sure he was just eating bowls of bread and milk. I told here might have been, it was probably something he ate during his childhood. 

Boxcar Children!  I think it was book 2 or 3.  I was in elementary school and decided that I wanted to eat it too, since it was depicted as being so delicious.

It was not.

[Aethera]

The Boxcar Children do in fact eat milk-soaked bread, in the very first book, because that's what Henry is able to get for them to eat. However, this has nothing at all to do with the Duggars. Take discussion of our favorite childhood books to the Small Talk thread, please! :)

[EAG46]

This study came out today, and I'm pretty sure it relates to Duggars somehow: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/america-most-sexist-states-women-earnings-arkansas-utah-alabama-study-a8503366.html   Their home state of Arkansas is the MOST sexist!  Anyone surprised?  The backwards sexist mindset is probably what allows them to get away with all of the crap they're doing.

[awaken]

On 8/17/2018 at 11:12 PM, Sew Sumi said:

One of Marcus Samuellson's American travelogue/epicurean episodes lands him smack dab in the Ethiopian community of DC. Oh, how I thought of the Duggars trashing this beautiful culture.

I treasured this episode. ?

[Temperance]

I have many people speculate that it is unusual for fundies to marry off their children without being financially ready. I think it's more common than most of us think.  A good example of this was on FJ. This young woman keeps a blog and they shared one of her blog posts in the unmarried thread. She got married in her midtwenties and was head over heels for a guy she barely knew. (They're a bit like Jill and Derick.) About two years she's unhappy, because she's depressed, all the chores seem like a lot since she's alone most of the time, she's stressed because the house is unfinished and money since her husband makes a little less than minium wage. The moral of the story is she learns to let her husband be in charge and not try to be a man. Obviously women should never worry about money, since a man will take care of you. (Michelle Duggar seems to me to be the kind of person who took that to heart.)  

[floridamom]

Excepting Jeremy Vuolo, none of the Duggars were financially ready to marry, IMO.

[Rabbittron]

I remember in my development there was a three-bedroom mobile home a fundie family moved into it with 12 kids. There was a wedding they had in the park the girl was only 18 and the groom was probably about the same age and I am 100% sure that there was no way they could afford to be married.

[Nysha]

On paper, Austin seemed to be financially ready but I don't think he, or anyone else, took into consideration the difference between flipping houses as a single man with no extra expenses and a young family with a baby. He could easily toss a cot in a corner, rig up running water, and live in the houses he's flipping so it was cheap to flip. You can't do that with a baby and it's not going to feasible to continue living in an RV once Gideon starts walking, there's another baby about to crawl, and Joy is big pregnant again.

[Scarlett45]

5 hours ago, Nysha said:

On paper, Austin seemed to be financially ready but I don't think he, or anyone else, took into consideration the difference between flipping houses as a single man with no extra expenses and a young family with a baby. He could easily toss a cot in a corner, rig up running water, and live in the houses he's flipping so it was cheap to flip. You can't do that with a baby and it's not going to feasible to continue living in an RV once Gideon starts walking, there's another baby about to crawl, and Joy is big pregnant again.

I assumed Austin lived at home when he was single. His Dad made him finish 4 flips before he could even start courting- heathen me took that as being his nest egg to support a wife and family, so that he could maintain a residence and still do flips without being cash poor in between. So what happened?! Is he just cheap?

[BitterApple]

It probably depends on how much profit he made off the flips. 

I'm also assuming none of these people have decent health insurance, so there may have been big hospital bills from Joy's C-section.

[Churchhoney]

Over on "The Duggalos" Vaysh wrote:

"The operative word here being "graduation". According to that site one of the criteria to enlist is "Must possess a home-school diploma and submit transcripts at the time of enlistment. The course work must involve parental supervision, the transcript must reflect the normal credit hours per subject used in a traditional high school and the diploma must be issued in compliance with applicable state laws."

Based on what we've seen of the Duggars I don't think any of the kids, with the possible exception of a few of the oldest ones (though apparently not Jana or Jessa) would be qualified as they are all obviously and woefully behind their peers in regards to education. All the high school "diplomas" we've seen lately have been homespun, not official. I know some states have very lax rules when it comes to homeschooling, but I can't imagine that most potential employers would accept a home printed piece of paper with the words Duggar Academy on it as evidence of an applicant's qualifications. Surely homeschoolers must pass some kind of official exam in order to count as high school graduates?"

To which I verbosely replied: 

In a general sense, no. 

Beginning about the mid 80s and continuing today, homeschool advocates and lobbyists have pressured all state governments to back off essentially any and all regulation of homeschooling.  And since the lobbyists have spoken pretty much entirely on behalf of white conservative Christians, hardly any state legislatures have had the stomach to oppose much, if any,  of what's been asked. 

A handful of states do examine test scores and transcripts for homeschoolers to give some degree of certification to their diplomas. But even in those states the perusal isn't usually very intense.

The whopping majority of states do what Arkansas does -- State laws declare that homeschoolers (like MeChelle Duggar and Jill Rodriguez!!!) are empowered to declare their students "graduates" of their home schools and issue "high school diplomas" to them. The state laws then stipulate that the state in no way "issues" or backs those diplomas in any way (which they can't, obviously, because in many states, such as Arkansas, the state's never even collected potentially bogus transcripts or the like over the years).

A homeschool is basically declared an entirely independent entity, and the state washes its hands of any results. Because if you can't trust fabulous Christians like MeChelle and Jill, then who CAN you trust, right? 

Essentially, employers, tech schools, colleges, and so on are responsible for checking the validity of each homeschooled student's educational achievements. 

ETA: The idea behind this, from the advocates' standpoint, is that EVERYTHING that happens to minor children is at the parents' discretion, and parental rights must absolutely NOT be stealthily slipped to the state instead.... It's the same argument used to say that parents have the right to keep their kid from getting medical care that they say their faith forbids.....It hasn't become the same kind of issue because no medical care can mean death -- and thus you get headlines -- while bad education doesn't bring headlines.

A few kids have famously tried to sue or bring regulatory actions against their parents so they could attend schools outside the home -- on the argument that their parents weren't equipped to teach them enough to ensure they could attend post-secondary education or make a living in the future -- but so far as I know state lawmakers and schoolboards have slapped down all such cases. In the conservative Christian rules, minor children don't have rights beyond what their parents permit them, because Jesus, as longtime homeschool advocate Mike Farris always says. 

Edited September 25, 2018 by Churchhoney

[libgirl2]

On 8/19/2018 at 8:49 AM, Scarlett45 said:

Yes! 

I remember when I was little my parents talked about how they wanted my world to be so much bigger than theirs; it wasn’t until I got to be an adult I realized how many people lived in insular worlds with no openness or curiosity about people who were not exactly like them. (I recall a poster who said Indian food was too spicy and not healthy for babies/kids, ignoring the 100s of millions of children that are Indian, living in India and were just fine?). Sometimes people cannot help being uneducated about xyz, but a wise person knows what they don’t know. The Duggars aren’t just uneducated but happy to be ignorant. Some of the older kids are trying, like Jinger and Jessa, but hot damn I’m just amazed you can raise children to have no intellectual curiosity what so ever!

But I suppose that’s a part of the cult. You’ve got to keep people ignorant so they don’t question. 

I was picky as a child but grew up being served both Dominican and German foods. I love to try everything now and will eat everything but red peppers and sweet potatoes. I am dying to try Ethiopian food. My son grew up eating everything too. He taught me how to eat sushi when he was 8. 

[Scarlett45]

4 hours ago, libgirl2 said:

I was picky as a child but grew up being served both Dominican and German foods. I love to try everything now and will eat everything but red peppers and sweet potatoes. I am dying to try Ethiopian food. My son grew up eating everything too. He taught me how to eat sushi when he was 8. 

Come visit me. I live near some of the best Ethiopian in Chicago. ?

[floridamom]

Everyone can have their own opinions about homeschooling's validity and all that....but it comes down to applying for a J.O.B. I don't think an employer will interview, much less hire an applicant who's 'graduating diploma" was printed off their own computer from their own invented home school...like the Duggar Academy diploma was.

[lookeyloo]

3 hours ago, floridamom said:

Everyone can have their own opinions about homeschooling's validity and all that....but it comes down to applying for a J.O.B. I don't think an employer will interview, much less hire an applicant who's 'graduating diploma" was printed off their own computer from their own invented home school...like the Duggar Academy diploma was.

I will add that I think it depends on the employer/business, etc.

[Ohiopirate02]

For small businesses especially if the owner is of the same religious bent as the Duggars, one of them probably would be able to get a job.  Now for larger corporations that use online applications with filtering software, none of the Duggars without a GED would make it through the first filter.  Of course, with none of the Duggar kids except Josh having a real work history their education probably does not matter.  Who would hire a person over the age of 22 who has never held a job in their life?  The amount of time that it would take for an employer to train a Duggar to understand basic work etiquette not including the actual job skills would be so immense that it would not be cost effective for any employer to undertake this.  JB and Michelle have really done a disservice to their children in this regard.  Work history is important, and JB should have been able to hire out his kids to like minded small business owners for the kids to pick up some skills.  

[libgirl2]

12 hours ago, Scarlett45 said:

Come visit me. I live near some of the best Ethiopian in Chicago. ?

I live near Chicago! I know there is one restaurant that was on Check Please, but we never get into the city. 

[Churchhoney]

4 hours ago, floridamom said:

Everyone can have their own opinions about homeschooling's validity and all that....but it comes down to applying for a J.O.B. I don't think an employer will interview, much less hire an applicant who's 'graduating diploma" was printed off their own computer from their own invented home school...like the Duggar Academy diploma was.

Well, I think it really depends on both the nature of that homeschool and the level of sophistication of the business owner when it comes to homeschooling. 

The best homeschoolers -- and there are many -- usually help their kids either pursue individual passion projects and/or help them get out in community doing jobs and volunteer work and such....And then the kids have substantial resumes showing things they've done and in most cases are able to talk about those things enthusiastically and knowledgeably. So of course you WOULD want to hire kids like that. The ones like the Duggars and the Rodriguezes whose main experience is robotically memorizing half-assed crap put forth by idiots and lunatics -- all they've got is the printout diploma...so...not so much! But as an employer or a post-secondary school, you could tell that pretty easily.

I've done pretty much work on this topic, and as far as I can tell, just as in regular schools, the vast majority of homeschooled kids get an okay, at least halfway decent education. Like other teachers, most homeschooling parents truly WANT to give their kids good schooling (according to their own lights, of course), and they try to. So it ends up okay for most of the kids (again, just like in schools -- kids with special difficulties are always going to miss out when things are just okay, of course, no matter who's doing the teaching...) .... Then you've got those "best" homeschoolers, and their kids get great educations.

So if an employer has knowledge of the homeschooling community, then they're going to know that those two groups actually do make up most of that community, so they'll know there are homeschooled kids that they CAN hire..... If an employer doesn't know much about homeschoolers, though, then I think you're completely right about them just not accepting any homeschool diplomas -- although we'd probably all make exceptions for kids who could document their achievements in other ways, though, right? 

The tragedy of the regulation climate, of course, is that, while it's not huge, there IS a significant clump of terrible terrible homeschooling out there. And lots of responsible homeschoolers are among those who'd like to fix that with some kind of rules or certifications. ... But people like the Duggars and the Rodriguezes shield themselves from laws by arguing freedom of religion. And of course in the process they shield people who are far far worse than they -- including the ones who are flat-out child abusers and even child murderers....or parents who aren't bad people but ARE insane or addicted or suffer some other problem and end up being inadvertently abusive for that reason. 

I do wonder whether Gothard didn't push the "work only for yourselves" thing partly because he actually KNEW how bad the "education" was that he encouraged people to provide and didn't want that exposed. ....And I'm sure that's at least a small part of JB's motivation, although I think most of it is because he doesn't want his kids either showing him up or wriggling out from under his thumb. 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Churchhoney

[crazycatlady58]

Also remember, while some homeschooled children/adults may be under educated so are some public school educated people. I was talking with an employee and she said she was watching a war movie that referenced pearl harbor and she said she had never heard of it. I said,But that's what brought us into WWW 2, and from the looks she gave me I am not sure if she was aware of WWW 2.

[Vaysh]

20 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

The idea behind this, from the advocates' standpoint, is that EVERYTHING that happens to minor children is at the parents' discretion, and parental rights must absolutely NOT be stealthily slipped to the state instead...

That's such a... bizarre, for lack of a better word, view of children. Here, once you pop out of the womb you're a citizen. With rights protected by law. And no one, not even your parents, have the right to deny you those rights. (Hence hitting children is illegal because it violates their right to not be assaulted, just like adults have the right to not be assaulted). Of course, it doesn't always work out that way in the real world, but legally speaking the individual has rights from the moment they are born that supercedes the wishes and wants of the parents and if those rights are violated the state has an obligation to step in and protect them. It's not so much that the state has rights over the child but rather that the child has its own rights as an individual, independent of the parents.

Getting a proper education is considered an essential right (as well as an obligation) so while homeschooling is not illegal in Sweden it is very rare since the child's right to an education trumps the parents' wish to homeschool. If you can prove that you are capable and trained enough to give your child an equally good education as a certified school would, by all means go ahead, but you have to prove it before you start to homeschool. I think there would also be issues with any kind of religious homeschooling because while schools here can be religious they must follow a secular, fact-based core curriculum and tend to get into deep shit when they fail to do so.

Delving into Fundieland is always fascinating because everything they do and believe feels all topsy-turvy to me, especially how they treat their children. It's like they view their kids as property rather than people in their own right.

[Nysha]

6 hours ago, floridamom said:

Everyone can have their own opinions about homeschooling's validity and all that....but it comes down to applying for a J.O.B. I don't think an employer will interview, much less hire an applicant who's 'graduating diploma" was printed off their own computer from their own invented home school...like the Duggar Academy diploma was.

How many entry-level jobs require showing your actual high school diploma? The only time I've ever had to prove I graduated from high school was when I started college, even my grad school accepted my under-grad transcripts and assumed if I could prove those 4 degrees, chances were pretty good that I did, in fact, complete high school. I had to have a bachelor's degree for my current position, but HR took my word that I have one and hired me without any actual proof. My daughter took a few bogus on-line tests from a diploma mill and got her high school diploma. She was able to use it to get her CNA certificate through the nursing home she was working at at the time.. Since that required a high school diploma, none of the home health care jobs she's had since then have asked for her diploma. 

Edited September 26, 2018 by Nysha

[DkNNy79]

I work for an IT staffing agency.  When I started 14 years ago they didn't run background checks just asked for outside references and used my resume for reference.

Flash forward to 2018 and we run complete background checks on all our employees, even trainees and admin.  99% of our clients also require us to run background checks/drug test on any employees/consultants that we place with them.  Education is almost always verified and we are required to verify the highest level of education obtained.  For some of our lower level positions, this means verifying their high school graduation.

Edited September 26, 2018 by DkNNy79

[Churchhoney]

30 minutes ago, Vaysh said:

That's such a... bizarre, for lack of a better word, view of children. Here, once you pop out of the womb you're a citizen. With rights protected by law. And no one, not even your parents, have the right to deny you those rights. (Hence hitting children is illegal because it violates their right to not be assaulted, just like adults have the right to not be assaulted). Of course, it doesn't always work out that way in the real world, but legally speaking the individual has rights from the moment they are born that supercedes the wishes and wants of the parents and if those rights are violated the state has an obligation to step in and protect them. It's not so much that the state has rights over the child but rather that the child has its own rights as an individual, independent of the parents.

Getting a proper education is considered an essential right (as well as an obligation) so while homeschooling is not illegal in Sweden it is very rare since the child's right to an education trumps the parents' wish to homeschool. If you can prove that you are capable and trained enough to give your child an equally good education as a certified school would, by all means go ahead, but you have to prove it before you start to homeschool. I think there would also be issues with any kind of religious homeschooling because while schools here can be religious they must follow a secular, fact-based core curriculum and tend to get into deep shit when they fail to do so.

Delving into Fundieland is always fascinating because everything they do and believe feels all topsy-turvy to me, especially how they treat their children. It's like they view their kids as property rather than people in their own right.

Topsy turvy indeed. .... This is the U.S. -- we crazy.     Seriously.

[Ohiopirate02]

1 hour ago, Nysha said:

How many entry-level jobs require showing your actual high school diploma? The only time I've ever had to prove I graduated from high school was when I started college, even my grad school accepted my under-grad transcripts and assumed if I could prove those 4 degrees, chances were pretty good that I did, in fact, complete high school. I had to have a bachelor's degree for my current position, but HR took my word that I have one and hired me without any actual proof. My daughter took a few bogus on-line tests from a diploma mill and got her high school diploma. She was able to use it to get her CNA certificate through the nursing home she was working at at the time.. Since that required a high school diploma, none of the home health care jobs she's had since then have asked for her diploma. 

I spend a good amount of my workweek helping people apply for jobs online.  Most employers have gone to an online application and this usually includes filtering software.  This filtering software can be the devil for both the applicant and the hiring manager.  People now have to carefully fill out numerous forms and if they make one too many mistakes, then the application will never make it to the hiring manager.  Now you have to rework your resume for each job to reflect the exact language used in the position announcement or again your application never makes it out of limbo.  Hiring managers can have open positions with no applicants to call for an interview because of this software.  It would be very easy for a company to filter out all homeschool graduates because the software does not know how to address it.  Applicants now have to game the software just to be able to get an interview.  And this is not even taking into account the ways that companies will filter out applicants that would be illegal in most states if anyone could prove it like age discrimination. 

[DangerousMinds]

4 hours ago, Nysha said:

How many entry-level jobs require showing your actual high school diploma? The only time I've ever had to prove I graduated from high school was when I started college, even my grad school accepted my under-grad transcripts and assumed if I could prove those 4 degrees, chances were pretty good that I did, in fact, complete high school. I had to have a bachelor's degree for my current position, but HR took my word that I have one and hired me without any actual proof. My daughter took a few bogus on-line tests from a diploma mill and got her high school diploma. She was able to use it to get her CNA certificate through the nursing home she was working at at the time.. Since that required a high school diploma, none of the home health care jobs she's had since then have asked for her diploma. 

Agree. I had several jobs before i’d graduated from high school. They could be doing work of some kind.

[Vaysh]

16 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

Topsy turvy indeed. .... This is the U.S. -- we crazy.     Seriously.

More like there's a certain subset with severe batshit tendencies and for some reason they're getting away with it because Jesus. Most of you appear to be on the same level of crazy as the rest of us. ;)

[Russian Bolero]

I homeschooled my son and he has a job in a restaurant and is finishing up his second year of college.  No problems getting into either of them.  Of course I gave him a better education than our county would have. 

[Churchhoney]

Happened to read this this morning. One of the best descriptions I've read of the things women and girls do that must be squelched because they unfairly tempt good Christian boys and men. And of how great and virtuous -- and how aware that NOTHING is THEIR FAULT because it's ALL WOMEN's FAULT -- those men and boys are. Yeesh: 

"When I was 14, I was lying on my belly reading the Bible on the church floor before youth group. A youth leader told me to sit up. If a girl is horizontal around boys, it forces them to picture you naked, she said. It causes them to stumble.

We were taught that women who have sex before marriage are like a trampled rose. Damaged goods. Undesirable. Unworthy of love. Sometimes the metaphor used in sermon illustrations was a chewed piece of gum. The pastor would chew a piece of gum and then pass it around the room, asking if anyone else wanted to chew it after him.
When I was 15, I was violently assaulted on a mission trip. In response, my team leader literally asked me, “What were you wearing?”...

When I was 18, in college, a guy at my Christian school lectured my friend and me for stretching in the student union. He said it caused him to picture us in the positions we could maintain in bed and that we should work harder to protect his thoughts....

When I was 19, another girlfriend of mine went to visit a guy who was housesitting off campus. She kissed him on the sofa after a movie, and then gathered her keys to leave. He forced himself on her. She came back to the dorms in tears. She didn’t report it because we knew that girls who had sex were expelled from school....

When I was 20, my Christian boyfriend dumped me. “I want a pure woman,” he told me after one of our kissing sessions. We hadn’t even had sex. “Maybe if your cleavage wasn’t always out I could have controlled myself,” he suggested. I promised him we could stop making out. That wasn’t enough. We already had. I was damaged goods."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-evangelical-women_us_5bb3a28de4b0ba8bb211985b

[Jynnan tonnix]

17 minutes ago, Churchhoney said:

Happened to read this this morning. One of the best descriptions I've read of the things women and girls do that must be squelched because they unfairly tempt good Christian boys and men. And of how great and virtuous -- and how aware that NOTHING is THEIR FAULT because it's ALL WOMEN's FAULT -- those men and boys are. Yeesh: 

"When I was 14, I was lying on my belly reading the Bible on the church floor before youth group. A youth leader told me to sit up. If a girl is horizontal around boys, it forces them to picture you naked, she said. It causes them to stumble.

We were taught that women who have sex before marriage are like a trampled rose. Damaged goods. Undesirable. Unworthy of love. Sometimes the metaphor used in sermon illustrations was a chewed piece of gum. The pastor would chew a piece of gum and then pass it around the room, asking if anyone else wanted to chew it after him.
When I was 15, I was violently assaulted on a mission trip. In response, my team leader literally asked me, “What were you wearing?”...

When I was 18, in college, a guy at my Christian school lectured my friend and me for stretching in the student union. He said it caused him to picture us in the positions we could maintain in bed and that we should work harder to protect his thoughts....

When I was 19, another girlfriend of mine went to visit a guy who was housesitting off campus. She kissed him on the sofa after a movie, and then gathered her keys to leave. He forced himself on her. She came back to the dorms in tears. She didn’t report it because we knew that girls who had sex were expelled from school....

When I was 20, my Christian boyfriend dumped me. “I want a pure woman,” he told me after one of our kissing sessions. We hadn’t even had sex. “Maybe if your cleavage wasn’t always out I could have controlled myself,” he suggested. I promised him we could stop making out. That wasn’t enough. We already had. I was damaged goods."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-evangelical-women_us_5bb3a28de4b0ba8bb211985b

I'm actually learning so much from all this lately. For whatever reason, I was spared pretty much any semblance of sexual impropriety throughout my life, even when it literally would not have been out of place to suggest that I might be seeking it. So it's been really eye-opening to learn that there are so many men out there who are so very far removed from the particular ones I had any dealings with. 

I was actually quite pretty back in the day, but extremely shy, so never dated in high school, or even college, really. So by the time I got into my 20's, I was a pretty frustrated virgin LOL. There was an incident in college (I went to an all-girls school) when I got drunk before a mixer and apparently showed up in a low-cut top proclaiming, "I want a man!" (I remember none of this). The worst that happened is that a cop escorted me back to the dorms when I went looking in the men's restrooms. 

There were a couple of other incidents a few years after that where a couple of makeout sessions which I was getting pretty enthusiastic about were curtailed by the guy who realized that this was new territory for me and backed off. 

There seems to be something about me that makes guys want to protect me rather than otherwise, which I guess I'm thankful for in retrospect, but will admit that I wasn't always 100% happy about at the time. 

It wasn't until Mr Jyn came along with an even shorter dating history than mine that things ever progressed any further, and he didn't even kiss me until our 5th date.

At any rate, even though I believe and understand the failure to report of the women out there who who have been victims, I still can't help but think that there are way more good guys out there than some would have us believe. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've just been lucky, but I still think most guys are fundamentally decent.

[Churchhoney]

57 minutes ago, Jynnan tonnix said:

I'm actually learning so much from all this lately. For whatever reason, I was spared pretty much any semblance of sexual impropriety throughout my life, even when it literally would not have been out of place to suggest that I might be seeking it. So it's been really eye-opening to learn that there are so many men out there who are so very far removed from the particular ones I had any dealings with. 

I was actually quite pretty back in the day, but extremely shy, so never dated in high school, or even college, really. So by the time I got into my 20's, I was a pretty frustrated virgin LOL. There was an incident in college (I went to an all-girls school) when I got drunk before a mixer and apparently showed up in a low-cut top proclaiming, "I want a man!" (I remember none of this). The worst that happened is that a cop escorted me back to the dorms when I went looking in the men's restrooms. 

There were a couple of other incidents a few years after that where a couple of makeout sessions which I was getting pretty enthusiastic about were curtailed by the guy who realized that this was new territory for me and backed off. 

There seems to be something about me that makes guys want to protect me rather than otherwise, which I guess I'm thankful for in retrospect, but will admit that I wasn't always 100% happy about at the time. 

It wasn't until Mr Jyn came along with an even shorter dating history than mine that things ever progressed any further, and he didn't even kiss me until our 5th date.

At any rate, even though I believe and understand the failure to report of the women out there who who have been victims, I still can't help but think that there are way more good guys out there than some would have us believe. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've just been lucky, but I still think most guys are fundamentally decent.

Yeah, I completely agree that most guys are decent ....

What the article I quoted is about, though, is specifically this patriarchy-centered purity-culture Duggar stuff. Where 12-year-old girls have to wear leggings under long skirts and long-sleeved shirts in 95-degree weather because otherwise it'd force some guy to picture them naked and then Nelly bar the door, and it'd be ALL THE GIRL's FAULT>

Whole different thing from your average culture! I was trying to point out how bizarre it is. Not say that this is what most people are like. 

On the other hand, I do think you may be slightly underestimating the amount of harassment and attack that's out there. ...

My mom worked in offices all her life, starting in the 1930s. And knowing her, and knowing a lot of other women of that generation who also worked outside the home for many years, my strong impression is that pretty much every one of them got hit on and pressured and propositioned by married bosses, harassed and assaulted or near-assaulted by drunken or just aggressive colleagues, etc. etc. etc., in many cases repeatedly, over the years. And the women who were my mother's friends were NOT "asking for it" in any way, shape or form. They simply happened to be in a situation where men utterly dominated -- in power and numbers -- and therefore (apparently) assumed that it was their right. (I would add that very few people ever heard these women's stories -- probably no one heard them at the times when they happened, and only a handful heard them decades later. I happened to be one of that handful.)

That sort of thing has definitely subsided in more recent decades, I think, as women have become a larger presence in the working world and in high schools and colleges and such. But the tales I heard from my mom and her friends suggest to me that for most of history this is what a lot of men behaved like because they simply believed that they had all the rights -- and taking, demanding or even violently taking whatever they could get from a woman who wasn't at that moment being protected by another guy -- was one of the things they had a right to, in their minds......

I think the patriarchal purity culture is to some extent just an extension of the ancient historical ways of men with women in male-dominated cultures, and that's part of why it looks so weird to us in the modern world, where we've moved on a bit. We're lucky to have been born when we were and not earlier.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Churchhoney

[madpsych78]

16 minutes ago, Jynnan tonnix said:

I'm actually learning so much from all this lately. For whatever reason, I was spared pretty much any semblance of sexual impropriety throughout my life, even when it literally would not have been out of place to suggest that I might be seeking it. So it's been really eye-opening to learn that there are so many men out there who are so very far removed from the particular ones I had any dealings with. 

I was actually quite pretty back in the day, but extremely shy, so never dated in high school, or even college, really. So by the time I got into my 20's, I was a pretty frustrated virgin LOL. There was an incident in college (I went to an all-girls school) when I got drunk before a mixer and apparently showed up in a low-cut top proclaiming, "I want a man!" (I remember none of this). The worst that happened is that a cop escorted me back to the dorms when I went looking in the men's restrooms. 

There were a couple of other incidents a few years after that where a couple of makeout sessions which I was getting pretty enthusiastic about were curtailed by the guy who realized that this was new territory for me and backed off. 

There seems to be something about me that makes guys want to protect me rather than otherwise, which I guess I'm thankful for in retrospect, but will admit that I wasn't always 100% happy about at the time. 

It wasn't until Mr Jyn came along with an even shorter dating history than mine that things ever progressed any further, and he didn't even kiss me until our 5th date.

At any rate, even though I believe and understand the failure to report of the women out there who who have been victims, I still can't help but think that there are way more good guys out there than some would have us believe. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I've just been lucky, but I still think most guys are fundamentally decent.

Same with me. I have always been spared from any "me too" situations and tended to be friends with more men than women anyway. Now don't get me wrong, I fundamentally understand the purpose of the "me too" movement and the stress that harassment and unwelcome advances can bring onto women. But, to be honest, when the "me too" movement first came to fruition, and many of my female friends spoke out on Facebook and elsewhere, there was a part of me that wondered why I was "spared" and whether there was something undesirable about me that turned guys off from making a move on me. It's silly because ultimately I had relationships with good men.

Taking this back to the Duggars, I honestly think that some, maybe most of the Duggar men are fundamentally decent in how they treat women, even while holding traditional values. JD and Joe come to mind. The main Duggar that has proven to be indecent with women has been Josh.

[xwordfanatik]

1 hour ago, Churchhoney said:

Happened to read this this morning. One of the best descriptions I've read of the things women and girls do that must be squelched because they unfairly tempt good Christian boys and men. And of how great and virtuous -- and how aware that NOTHING is THEIR FAULT because it's ALL WOMEN's FAULT -- those men and boys are. Yeesh: 

"When I was 14, I was lying on my belly reading the Bible on the church floor before youth group. A youth leader told me to sit up. If a girl is horizontal around boys, it forces them to picture you naked, she said. It causes them to stumble.

We were taught that women who have sex before marriage are like a trampled rose. Damaged goods. Undesirable. Unworthy of love. Sometimes the metaphor used in sermon illustrations was a chewed piece of gum. The pastor would chew a piece of gum and then pass it around the room, asking if anyone else wanted to chew it after him.
When I was 15, I was violently assaulted on a mission trip. In response, my team leader literally asked me, “What were you wearing?”...

When I was 18, in college, a guy at my Christian school lectured my friend and me for stretching in the student union. He said it caused him to picture us in the positions we could maintain in bed and that we should work harder to protect his thoughts....

When I was 19, another girlfriend of mine went to visit a guy who was housesitting off campus. She kissed him on the sofa after a movie, and then gathered her keys to leave. He forced himself on her. She came back to the dorms in tears. She didn’t report it because we knew that girls who had sex were expelled from school....

When I was 20, my Christian boyfriend dumped me. “I want a pure woman,” he told me after one of our kissing sessions. We hadn’t even had sex. “Maybe if your cleavage wasn’t always out I could have controlled myself,” he suggested. I promised him we could stop making out. That wasn’t enough. We already had. I was damaged goods."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-evangelical-women_us_5bb3a28de4b0ba8bb211985b

How utterly fucked-up.  That's all I've got.

[Ohiopirate02]

1 hour ago, Churchhoney said:

Happened to read this this morning. One of the best descriptions I've read of the things women and girls do that must be squelched because they unfairly tempt good Christian boys and men. And of how great and virtuous -- and how aware that NOTHING is THEIR FAULT because it's ALL WOMEN's FAULT -- those men and boys are. Yeesh: 

"When I was 14, I was lying on my belly reading the Bible on the church floor before youth group. A youth leader told me to sit up. If a girl is horizontal around boys, it forces them to picture you naked, she said. It causes them to stumble.

We were taught that women who have sex before marriage are like a trampled rose. Damaged goods. Undesirable. Unworthy of love. Sometimes the metaphor used in sermon illustrations was a chewed piece of gum. The pastor would chew a piece of gum and then pass it around the room, asking if anyone else wanted to chew it after him.
When I was 15, I was violently assaulted on a mission trip. In response, my team leader literally asked me, “What were you wearing?”...

When I was 18, in college, a guy at my Christian school lectured my friend and me for stretching in the student union. He said it caused him to picture us in the positions we could maintain in bed and that we should work harder to protect his thoughts....

When I was 19, another girlfriend of mine went to visit a guy who was housesitting off campus. She kissed him on the sofa after a movie, and then gathered her keys to leave. He forced himself on her. She came back to the dorms in tears. She didn’t report it because we knew that girls who had sex were expelled from school....

When I was 20, my Christian boyfriend dumped me. “I want a pure woman,” he told me after one of our kissing sessions. We hadn’t even had sex. “Maybe if your cleavage wasn’t always out I could have controlled myself,” he suggested. I promised him we could stop making out. That wasn’t enough. We already had. I was damaged goods."

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/brett-kavanaugh-evangelical-women_us_5bb3a28de4b0ba8bb211985b

Reading this, I am reminded that this purity culture was not only found in evangelical churches.  I had to sit through many lectures in my Catholic youth group about saving myself for marriage, but at least my leaders did not blame us girls for what we were wearing.  We were just forced to listen to the story of Saint Maria Goretti all the time.  Nothing like telling teenage girls that it is better to be stabbed to death than to survive a rape.  To this day, I judge Catholics on how they view her. 

[jennblevins]

39 minutes ago, madpsych78 said:

But, to be honest, when the "me too" movement first came to fruition, and many of my female friends spoke out on Facebook and elsewhere, there was a part of me that wondered why I was "spared" and whether there was something undesirable about me that turned guys off from making a move on me.

This is me, essentially, except that I don’t have to wonder — thanks, “helpful” people.  When I read things about the #MeToo movement that imply (or come straight out and say) that this is something every woman has gone through, it makes me wonder about the writer’s critical thinking skills — how much of the rest of the article is guesswork and conjecture as well?  

 

2 hours ago, Churchhoney said:

“If a girl is horizontal around boys, it forces them to picture you naked, she said. It causes them to stumble.“

Well, standing might cause them to picture you dancing.  Sitting could cause them to think about your rear end on the chair.  And heaven help anyone who kneels in church, how could anyone not think of depraved sexual acts?  Best to keep boys and girls 100% separated, really ...

(Sorry about the bold, I can apparently either select text or scroll up to the controls, but not both.)

[MonicaM]

Some of this stuff reads like a parody of a guide for young women from the Victorian Era.  I would have a good laugh reading it if I didn't know these people are earnestly serious.  

It's frustrating, though, because society as a whole, not just fundies, usually puts the blame for sexual misconduct on the woman.  A million years ago when I was a teen, a woman who claimed rape needed to have sufficient bruises and battle wounds to prove her case.  And heaven help her if she wasn't wearing modest clothing or if she was alone in a dangerous area when it happened.  Her character would be called into question, and I personally know of an instance where charges were dropped because the victim wasn't married but was taking birth control pills.  (And this wasn't date rape, it was a complete stranger who left hand print bruises around her neck.)  

And of course the woman is always damaged goods.  Never the guy.  

[floridamom]

These girls were so full of it in their book about how their fashion style (modern modest) was their own agreement on how to dress. If this were so, none of them would have changed their fashion choices after marriage regardless of what their husbands gave them permission to do.  With the exception of Joy who is still frump-fundie in her dress.

Any unmarried Duggar girl wouldn't have been caught dead wearing those early-on board shorts that Jessa wore to the pool as photographed with Ben. She would have worn that silly modest bathing costume, if that.

Thanks for listening guys.

[Marshmallow Mollie]

If it goes through, this will be my first successful picture posting!

ETA: yay! I did it!! Anywho, this is not completely the point I wanted to make, but kinda. Being on tv isn’t a ministry of itself. It drives me insane how little these so godly people do for others.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Marshmallow Mollie

[satrunrose]

On 10/3/2018 at 11:10 AM, Churchhoney said:

Yeah, I completely agree that most guys are decent ....

What the article I quoted is about, though, is specifically this patriarchy-centered purity-culture Duggar stuff. Where 12-year-old girls have to wear leggings under long skirts and long-sleeved shirts in 95-degree weather because otherwise it'd force some guy to picture them naked and then Nelly bar the door, and it'd be ALL THE GIRL's FAULT>

Whole different thing from your average culture! I was trying to point out how bizarre it is. Not say that this is what most people are like. 

On the other hand, I do think you may be slightly underestimating the amount of harassment and attack that's out there. ...

My mom worked in offices all her life, starting in the 1930s. And knowing her, and knowing a lot of other women of that generation who also worked outside the home for many years, my strong impression is that pretty much every one of them got hit on and pressured and propositioned by married bosses, harassed and assaulted or near-assaulted by drunken or just aggressive colleagues, etc. etc. etc., in many cases repeatedly, over the years. And the women who were my mother's friends were NOT "asking for it" in any way, shape or form. They simply happened to be in a situation where men utterly dominated -- in power and numbers -- and therefore (apparently) assumed that it was their right. (I would add that very few people ever heard these women's stories -- probably no one heard them at the times when they happened, and only a handful heard them decades later. I happened to be one of that handful.)

That sort of thing has definitely subsided in more recent decades, I think, as women have become a larger presence in the working world and in high schools and colleges and such. But the tales I heard from my mom and her friends suggest to me that for most of history this is what a lot of men behaved like because they simply believed that they had all the rights -- and taking, demanding or even violently taking whatever they could get from a woman who wasn't at that moment being protected by another guy -- was one of the things they had a right to, in their minds......

I think the patriarchal purity culture is to some extent just an extension of the ancient historical ways of men with women in male-dominated cultures, and that's part of why it looks so weird to us in the modern world, where we've moved on a bit. We're lucky to have been born when we were and not earlier.

It's been my experience that those stories aren't told so much as mentioned in passing, like one would allude a mildly unpleasant and unavoidable fact of life like a traffic jam. I think it speaks to just how messed up and pervasive those 'boys will be boys' stories were and still are. 

[awaken]

Not sure exactly where this fits, but just read an awesome article about purity culture, and a woman who is going to melt down purity rings and make them into a Golden Vagina sculpture:  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nadia-bolz-weber-purity-ring-vagina-sculpture_us_5bfdac5ee4b0a46950dce000?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=women_fb&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&fbclid=IwAR1x52e9l_XcfZoL5jCWzFdMQF-QDvl5ARNA963nTeve3bRT_7Kks2qkd5I

[Churchhoney]

On 8/19/2018 at 3:47 PM, Fostersmom said:

I can't remember it it was a Little House book or some other random book about past times, but I remember reading something where the characters were eating bread soaked in milk. That was it, just milk soaked bread. My grandfather was born in 1920 and died when he was 97. He was still living by himself when he was 94 or so and my mom mentioned to me once, she didn't know what he was doing, she was pretty sure he was just eating bowls of bread and milk. I told here might have been, it was probably something he ate during his childhood. 

When I was a kid, we sometimes had stale bread soaked in milk with some sugar on top for dessert. That's not half bad, actually. And cheap -- a very meaningful concept for people who went through the depression! 

[doodlebug]

9 minutes ago, Churchhoney said:

When I was a kid, we sometimes had stale bread soaked in milk with some sugar on top for dessert. That's not half bad, actually. And cheap -- a very meaningful concept for people who went through the depression! 

My mother, a child of the depression, used to talk about eating 'coffee bread' for dinner.  Her mother would take a piece of bread and soak it in coffee, with cream and sugar if they happened to have any.  It seems this sort of eating was a 'thing' back then.

Edited December 4, 2018 by doodlebug

[Portia]

For my dad, who was born in 1921, the lunch pail often contained cornbread spread with lard.  And he always told me his family did all right during the Depression . . . meaning they never wanted for food. 

[Barb23]

Today's coverage of President Bush's  funeral would be a great civics/history lesson for the SOTDRT.  But I doubt that will happen.  

ETA:  I didn't realize the gang is out of the country on a missions trip when I originally posted this.  Even if they were home,  it probably wouldn't have struck them that the funeral & everything leading up to it would be  great teaching moments.  

Edited December 5, 2018 by Barb23

[Sew Sumi]

Duggars not in Honduras have an ugly Christmas sweater party. (7 pics)

[Scarlett45]

I like the picture of Jill and Sammy. 

So it looks like Jana, James, Justin, the Lost Girls, Jackson, J’Tyler, and the parents went to Honduras. So Jana and the under 18s....why couldn’t Jana have stayed home and enjoyed the party with her siblings? Oh wait because someone had to take care of the Littles. 

[cmr2014]

Who are the people in photo #6?

[doodlebug]

4 minutes ago, cmr2014 said:

Who are the people in photo #6?

Joy and Austin

[Scarlett45]

The Seewalds look really happy here. That’s a GOOD family picture. 

[louannems]

15 minutes ago, doodlebug said:

Joy and Austin

I do hope that's a pillow stuffed under Austin's sweater!

[lulu69]

Truth be told, I really don't see much difference between their 'ugly' clothes and their every day clothes.