Sophie Anna Platt wrote the following piece in response to Jim Bob Duggar’s quote from Wednesday’s interview on The Kelly File. Sophie is a homeschool alumna who grew up in a conservative Christian homeschooling family with many of the same teachings as the Duggars. She’s given me permission to republish her thoughts here. (Also by Sophie: Which one of you have we wronged?)
Nooo… Really? And not once did it occur to you that maybe the way you and these other people were raising your children had ANYTHING at all to do with it? Oh, wait, you were too busy becoming the poster family for that cult (so you could get rich off your gazillion kids instead of having to think about being responsible parents who have to plan on feeding the children they pop out) to be bothered to use your brain to think about becoming responsible parents.
It is a recipe for disaster, and it goes something like this:
5 cups of teaching everyone that women belong to men
They are born their father’s property, and are given as a gift to whomever their father sees as worthy. Should they at any time become free humans, they must immediately seek to become the property of whatever man is available or risk living in sin and going to hell. Usually their brothers are the first choice presented as an authority figure – particularly the oldest son of the family.
3 cups of girl’s bodies don’t belong to themselves
It pairs well with the previous ingredient, but it adds some thoughts. Most notably are the ideas that a woman has to have sex with her husband anytime he wants to. Even as a daughter she must not leave the house without her father’s permission (even if she is an adult). Any touching of her body or allowing someone else to touch her body is a grave sin robbing her future husband of what is rightfully his, and she must take great care to dress and act “modestly” so as not to give any guys so much as a thought about her sexually.
She must follow these rules perfectly regardless of her age (Yes, even as a toddler and small child all the way up through young adulthood and adulthood.) or she is just as guilty as anyone who may “commit a sin with her” – even if it is just in the other person’s head.
6 cups of shame on women for being female in the first place
See, women are more easily duped than men, and they have some mysterious power to convince men to do evil – even when they don’t realize it or are trying not to. Females of any age are seductive by virtue of their existence. Since they are too dumb to know “how men think” or realize when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes, they also don’t know when they are pulling the wool over someone else’ eyes or seducing a man. They are therefore at fault for not only their own actions, but their thoughts, the actions of men, and the very thoughts of the men around them. Again, age is not a factor.
2 cups more shame upon anyone for ever having a sexual thought or experimenting
It doesn’t matter if it is with a peer, in your own head, or perpetrated against someone much younger than yourself. It is all shameful, and “sin is sin”.
-10 cups of education
Knowing how bodies work might lead to who knows what. The less they know, the less dangerous stuff they will try. (Actually the exact opposite of what happens with sex education.) All anyone really needs to know is the Bible, after all, stories of concubines being offered up to be gang raped and murdered to protect the men from savages, then cut up and sent to all the good tribes as a warning – especially in the absence of any real sex ed – those won’t mess you up at all.
4 more cups of male privilege – because we don’t have enough of that
Only men should be allowed to hold any leadership position whatsoever – unless there are absolutely no men in the group. Women may only be over women and children. Anything else is an abomination. In fact, to be on the safe side, women should try not to speak in the presence of men unless specifically invited by a man to do so.
13 cups of fear of the outside world
Everyone “out there” is dangerous and scary. Anyone disagreeing with the brainwashing listed above or below is out to molest you and destroy not only your innocence, but the whole of society. Disagreeing can be on as tiny a point as the length of skirt a woman should be allowed to wear. It makes the person dangerous to the entire planet. Anyone allowed to interact with the children who isn’t part of the cult is prayed over and viewed as a project.
If you are going to be polite to an outsider, you must at least look down upon them as needing work. Anything that may happen to you inside the group is way, way better than what WILL for sure happen outside. Don’t step outside. Stay inside as if your life depends on it – because it DOES!
Add a dash of hate and a pinch of extra ignorance
Mix well and let sit for about twenty years. Throw in a bit of each ingredient each day, and mix again. Just like friendship bread, it only works if you keep it fed and keep adding to it. Ironic that it is like friendship bread, since you aren’t allowed to have friends – only projects.
All in all, nobody is seen as a human being with their own thoughts, bodies, or agency. Everyone is simply an object. An object you own, or an object to be owned. An object of hate, or an object of smothering “love”. And with all of that, you are surprised that your kid might get the wrong idea about whose bodies belong to him and what he should do with his sexual feelings?
I’m not condoning Josh’s actions at all. What I am saying is that the parents participated in a cult where this kind of thing is rampant; even their own words that twist the truth back that up. And there is a reason why they know so many other families who have had similar things happen.