"I Kissed Dating Goodbye" author is crowdfunding a documentary on the impact of his book

[calvinball]

I know they eventually took the survey down, and I do believe that one of the girls responsible for spearheading/organizing (?) the survey did apologize afterward (I read her blog post about it, but I can't find it now), but I don't believe that Alex and Brett did, unless it was more recently.

ETA: This is the closest thing I found to anything where they addressed the criticisms they received.

Oh, I also managed to find the blog post for the girl who helped organize the survey. 

[formergothardite]

They also have this:

http://therebelution.com/blog/2007/01/misinterpreting-the-modesty-survey/

[Tangy Bee]

Wow...he was only 21? Life is just starting for most people at that point. Yes there are mature 20 somethings out there, but trust me when I say I WAS NOT ONE OF THEM. I really thought I had a good grasp of the world around me at the time. Looking back, I would call myself naive and shallow. Clinton was the 1st president I was old enough to vote for.  He played his sax on MTV and I thought he was cool...and that's why I voted for him. I wanted to convert to Catholic after I found out mass was only 1hr. I broke up with a straight A guy because of his hygiene, and well....he's a Dr living in the Bahamas. All this and more happened when I was just 21. Don't get me wrong, I had plenty of good times. It just would have been a really BAD idea for me to be anyone's wife or mom at the time. I certainly did not have enough experience to write a book on how everyone should meet and get married.

[FundieFarmer]

I'm actually interested to see this. In my circles, it was packaged with The Silver Ring Thing and that Nancy Leigh DeMoss book and packaged as a good idea. My mom committed to purity before marriage for me- I sure didn't think that would be sustainable, even as a 13 year old. So if Harris wants to ask people how it messed with their perspectives because it got out of hand, that's fine with me. He can't walk it back, but maybe this'll get through to some more moderate parents that it's not a reasonable ask of their kids.

I also think that if spouting off knowledge at a young age and then regretting it is chronic in this family, then at least some of the blame rests on the parents for not saying, "You're young. Hang on. Let this marinate and then publish this if you still like the idea in several years." At 19, I thought Gossip Girl was aspirational, that I'd be a clinical psychiatrist and live in NYC. None of that applies to my life now. I think a good parent would have advised the kidult to wait. I think we may see this with Marjorie and the Duggars with their books in a few years too.

[Grimalkin]

@formergothardite I think your right. I did see that flaw in my thinking. I understand the idea of courtship and see the attraction for parents. I can't imagine having that much power and control over my older teens and adult children.  

[adidas]

That jerk can come and interview my 20 year old, who was told as a 17 year old by his (now ex) girlfriend that they were kissing dating goodbye, after a fundie got in her ear. They'd been together for years by that stage.

I grew up with that shit and I didn't want my kids being exposed to it. My poor son was heartbroken when she started spouting fundie garbage at him. It totally ruined his self esteem and it has taken some heavy therapy to help him feel good about himself again.

Heck, that jerk can come and interview ME and I'll tell him exactly what I think. 

Someone hold my earrings. 

[CyborgKin]

Though I think I read - or at least skimmed - the books, I don't really remember the specifics (I was a little too young and too isolated as a homeschool kid to care about the subject at the time), but I know they were fuel for my parents' dating-is-bad fire (though there were and still are plenty more sources for that), and I'm fairly sure they've contributed to me being single over 30

(I don't want to be in any documentary though)

[Palimpsest]

12 hours ago, calvinball said:

Oh, I also managed to find the blog post for the girl who helped organize the survey. 

Now that is the right way to express regrets.  A clear statement about what was wrong with the survey.

12 hours ago, formergothardite said:

They also have this:

http://therebelution.com/blog/2007/01/misinterpreting-the-modesty-survey/

This is not.  "Please refrain from misinterpreting" this crappy survey.  It's not our fault that our methodology sucked and it became a platform for right little sexist assholes to air their misogynist views on modesty.

12 hours ago, FundieFarmer said:

So if Harris wants to ask people how it messed with their perspectives because it got out of hand, that's fine with me. He can't walk it back, but maybe this'll get through to some more moderate parents that it's not a reasonable ask of their kids.

I agree with this.  However, I'm not very optimistic about the whole thing.  His attitude so far has been disingenuous and victim blaming.  Gee, he was just a 21 year old kid with silly ideas.  If people took his book seriously then they must have been really stupid.  

Perhaps he's really examining the damage the book did.  But Josh Harris has burned his boats with his former church and I think he is quite cynically reinventing himself.  And using his best selling book to do so.

[formergothardite]

He doesn't need a documentary showing him gazing off into the distance and riding a skate board to examine the damage his books did, he could do it in his pajamas using Google. If he really wanted to know, it would be pretty easy to find out. This just looks like another way for him to reinvent himself to start a new ministry and most likely write another book. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

From what I've seen and read about fundie teens, I've come to a conclusion about these books. I remember being a teen. I remember I could be rather obsessive about boys. I would write their names all over things, talk about them in my diary, and think about them. So since these fundie girls aren't really allowed the normal teen crushes and calling or texting boys, I have always assumed they turn that energy to these types of books. 

When you watch the Duggar girls talking about courtship and dating before they started courting, they all said the exact same things. I think it's likely they've all read these courtship books multiple times as an outlet for their frustrations and energy that they would like to use getting to know the opposite sex. 

Therefore I do think these books have an impact on the more restricted and sheltered fundies (especially girls) as I bet they cling to these books hoping that what they say is absolute truth and they will be rewarded for their patience by having a perfect godly marriage. Which sets them up for disappointment. 

[EowynW]

These teachings along with the shit boundless spews almost destroyed any chance of shy,  inexperienced Mr. EW and I ending up together and I still don't have a lot of happy memories from our early years because I was terrified he was leading me along, and horrified that he was such a poor leader. I'm also deeply upset with myself that I even thought such garbage. But it's hard not to when you grow up steeped in it.  

[erunerune]

21 minutes ago, EowynW said:

These teachings along with the shit boundless spews almost destroyed any chance of shy,  inexperienced Mr. EW and I ending up together and I still don't have a lot of happy memories from our early years because I was terrified he was leading me along, and horrified that he was such a poor leader. I'm also deeply upset with myself that I even thought such garbage. But it's hard not to when you grow up steeped in it.  

Omg Boundless -- I miss the golden days of the "Boundless Blog'" when it was much more of a shitshow than it is now. Today's Boundless Blog is positively restrained and dull as dirt in comparison. I'm always surprised when one of their staffers marries (after writing approximately one million bravely wistful articles about longing for marriage while soldiering on as a pariah fundie single). I've clearly never moved in that circle.

[EowynW]

52 minutes ago, erunerune said:

Omg Boundless -- I miss the golden days of the "Boundless Blog'" when it was much more of a shitshow than it is now. Today's Boundless Blog is positively restrained and dull as dirt in comparison. I'm always surprised when one of their staffers marries (after writing approximately one million bravely wistful articles about longing for marriage while soldiering on as a pariah fundie single). I've clearly never moved in that circle.

I was reading it through the 2010-13 years which I think were still pretty shitty. 

[L1o2u3]

I got I kissed Dating Goodbye used for 1$  (the same way I found Boy Meets Girl. Afterwards, it was used in a theater production where they needed lots of books to create a library on stage so it even did something useful!). But if that documentary gets funded, I might wait and read it when/if I can watch that movie. 

Young fundies writing books with (almost) zero life experience is funny when you're not expected to follow these rules, in my opinion. I had the chance to get Devoted by Marjorie Jackson for free and it was weird having a 19-year old telling me how to live my life. And Josh Harris was my age when he wrote that book. But I know better than to write a book about relationships right now

[Marian the Librarian]

Josh pings my gaydar. Am I alone in this???

[Jellybean]

11 hours ago, EowynW said:

(Snipped)

I'm also deeply upset with myself that I even thought such garbage. But it's hard not to when you grow up steeped in it.  

This is so true. I was still attending a fundie-lite church for several years of dating Mr Jellybean. He isn't a practising Christian but was very supportive of me in every way, including my faith, and was much better than my church at accepting my disability (I lost count of the number of times people prayed for my healing and then later asked me if I had some unconfessed sin in my life). 

Like you, @EowynW, I'm pretty ashamed of some of the things I said and/or believed about my precious husband and devastated to think how easy it would have been for him to just walk away from all the uncomfortable stuff. I'm so glad he didn't, and that I veered off that narrow path. 

[acheronbeach]

What I wonder is what kind of parents Gregg and Sono Harris were to have created so many publicly, obliviously misogynistic sons? 

[L1o2u3]

13 hours ago, Marian the Librarian said:

Josh pings my gaydar. Am I alone in this???

I do't know if I possess such a thing as a gaydar, but to me, he looks like a shy bible nerd  (or better looked, because I'm basing this on the foto in the book)

[Jasmar]

2 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

What I wonder is what kind of parents Gregg and Sono Harris were to have created so many publicly, obliviously misogynistic sons? 

I previously traveled in homeschooling circles where I was only one step removed from them, and briefly served on the coffee-serving team with Gregg and a son at the hipster church we were attending at the time.

These folks don't just accept misogyny, it's interwoven into their theology, philosophies, family cultures. It's part and parcel of who they are.

Gregg's generation so despised the advances made by the women's movement in the 60s-70s that they didn't just pull away, they consciously formed the shape of Evangelical Christianity, starting in the mid-80s. Gregg went more extreme, pulling away from the Evangelical church they attended when Josh was a teen and helping form the Family Integrated Church movement, called "Houeshold of Faith" in these parts.

They were fairly straightforward evangelicals until sometime in the 90s. They got heavily into the Nourishing Traditions lifestyle around the same time.

[hoipolloi]

2 hours ago, acheronbeach said:

What I wonder is what kind of parents Gregg and Sono Harris were to have created so many publicly, obliviously misogynistic sons? 

Sono Harris died of cancer in 2010 but appears to have been fully in step with the fundie, patriarchal culture promoted by Gregg Harris.

Not sure if Gregg is still with this church but the indefatigable WW folks have done posts on Josh and Gregg's church. 

[Lurky]

I think the fact they were published books, in paper, probably gave them gravitas, back then, too.  Nowadays, when self-publishing is this huge thing (with exploitative companies out there taking advantage) "I published a book" doesn't mean so much - but I can totally see how someone who was given this book by their youth pastor or parents might have had misgivings, but especially in these legalistic churches, think the authors must know more about them, they've been published!

Now, there are some serious flaws in a 21 year old giving romantic advice, especially about getting married, and I'd love to know the story of how it got published and passed round in the first place - but it's pretty sickening that Harris' argument seems to be "people shouldn't have taken what I wrote literally, it's not my fault it turned out I knew pretty much nothing".

[Palimpsest]

2 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Sono Harris died of cancer in 2010 but appears to have been fully in step with the fundie, patriarchal culture promoted by Gregg Harris.

Gregg was huge in the early homeschooling movement with all that Delight-Directed learning stuff.  There is no doubt in my mind that the twins and Josh were pushed academically and Josh was pushed to publish so Gregg could bask in their reflected glory.

2 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

indefatigable WW folks have done posts on Josh and Gregg's church. 

That article on Josh was written prior to the shit hitting the fan over the Covenant Life sexual abuse scandal (we should put that in the Hall of Shame if it isn't there already).  Josh Harris was up to his neck in that cover-up, deny it all he wants.  

And then he disclosed in 2014 that he himself has been sexually abused as a child and of course it should be reported to the police.

[seraaa]

17 hours ago, Jellybean said:

(I lost count of the number of times people prayed for my healing and then later asked me if I had some unconfessed sin in my life).

What?!

I'm not sure why this surprises me, but that is awful. I'm sorry.

[Jasmar]

7 hours ago, hoipolloi said:

Not sure if Gregg is still with this church but the indefatigable WW folks have done posts on Josh and Gregg's church. 

No, that one folded several years ago. As of sometime last year, he and a son were at the hipster church in Portland that I mentioned above. They'd just shown up as we were evolving away.

ETA, Josh attended public high school, and was active in the youth group at the very large evangelical church they attended then. He's the same age as a very close friend who knew him there, went to high school together, etc. she graduated in the mid-90s.

[Anonymousguest]

3 hours ago, Jasmar said:

No, that one folded several years ago. As of sometime last year, he and a son were at the hipster church in Portland that I mentioned above. They'd just shown up as we were evolving away.

ETA, Josh attended public high school, and was active in the youth group at the very large evangelical church they attended then. He's the same age as a very close friend who knew him there, went to high school together, etc. she graduated in the mid-90s.

Last I heard Gregg was attending Hinson Baptist Church.