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I'm starting to come to the realization that my family and I have never fit into conservative church culture very well because my dad is a very "live and let live" sort of guy. While he has strong faith, he's just never been the churchgoing sort, and he admitted to me recently that he's never been able to interact with other Christians very much, even on the Internet. He allowed me to marry an unbeliever (because my dad believes people can be saved after they die -- a belief you pretty much NEVER find among other conservative Christians), I never was given super strict gender roles growing up (my dad was never against women working or anything like that -- in fact, after my mom died in 2018, his girlfriend since then is a very business-oriented sort who has lots of successful ventures herself), and is basically the opposite of the authoritarian, rules and regulations sort that are found more often in conservative Christian ranks. I mean, my dad liked Trump unfortunately because Trump was a businessman, but that's about the extent of his "conservativeness." He NEVER posts moral or theological screeds on social media, he thinks Super Bowl halftime shows are great and has no concept of modesty culture for women, and is basically just an easygoing, fun-loving sort who never likes to worry about or judge anything. Growing up in that kind of environment, it's been challenging trying to fit into any sort of conservative church culture. I think women especially are judged largely by their father's and husband's influence, and when you have a dad like I have, and an unbelieving husband like I do, it seems the best that can be done is just sort of blend quietly into the church, because most people there are going to find my family situation very weird and atypical. It wasn't even just the Niednagels who found out my family and I weren't like theirs; often in even more moderate conservative church cultures, I find my situation is still very much the exception to the norm. Have any of you seen men like my dad among your circles? Do they and their families get largely ignored or shunned as well?

Long time lurker, coming out on this blog because I don't know where else to talk about this. Last Friday, I called the Southern Baptist Church in which I grew up, to ask them to NOT hold a memorial service for my mother. I spoke to the senior pastor, and can I just how much I truly hate that condescending, pastoral tone? I voiced my opinion because my father requested this memorial, and my siblings support this. Problem? My parents have been divorced for over 30 years. My father remarried, a widow in the church who also raised her children in that church. So my father has attended this church for forty years, and it's pretty well "his" church, the last 25 or so married to another lady from the church. Before the divorce, my mother stopped attending. After the divorce, she felt very uncomfortable, judged, and unwelcome. It wasn't so much that people supported my father over her, it was a lot more about my mother had a weak, submissive personality and my father bulls right over people. He made sure she felt uncomfortable. The church in general doesn't do well with divorced people, dead people are so much easier. Topic for another day. My sisters are going to take my mother's ashes into my father's home. This was the home my parents bought when we first moved to the community, when I was going into high school. My father kept the home in the divorce and his second wife moved into it, and now it is legally his/her home. My father pushed for the four children to chose him over Mom. For the most part, my three siblings went along with it and for years and years would visit my father, stay in his home, drive his car, eat his food, etc. Next to nothing for Mom, not even when she had TIA's and then a stroke. Now my father is acting like a grieving widower. My mother refused to acknowledge her imminent death, and the only request she made was to be cremated. Because she did not specify anything, they have taken as this carte blanche to do what they want. Not what my mom would have wanted, which was definitely not that church and absolutely most definitely not to spend a weekend in her ex-husband's house. My mother lived with me, I was divorced single mom, for almost 20 years. She went to live with my sister in another state, across the country, five years ago because my sister signed her out of the nursing home. She lived in my sister's house for about six months, developed new health issues, and suffered a major stroke when meant she ended up in a nursing home far from home, with only the one sister around. This is not about my mother coming home. She chose to stay away from that church for over 30 years. This is not about my father respecting or honoring the mother of his children. This is about my father, who abused my mother all their married life, pulling the upper hand to show my mom is still really all about him. I can't express the rage I feel that they are yet again marginalizing my mother. That ex-husband has no place at her memorial. I can't even imagine how my father's wife must really feel about this. My father never had nice or kind word to say about my mother, and I don't know if the wife understands he doesn't have any good words for her either. My father is a misogynist, to the core. He is also rascist and abusive and other unpleasant things. I refuse to attend. I don't want to make it about me and how I'm not there because my father is. I want my mother to be honored and respected, because she deserves that. She was a teacher for many years, she loved her children and grandchildren to the best of her ability, and I believe with all my heart that my mother really tried to be the best person she could. She was fragile, I now believe she was in major depression for many years, and my father was a jerk to her. My siblings continually chase after my father for his approval. They don't like because I won't bend the knee and beg daddy to love me. I had actually developed a healthy distance between me and their toxicity, but my mother's death forced open the door to my siblings and it has been pure hell ever since. So the reason I have developed this hate-on for the SBC minister is that I kept emphasizing they are divorced, it's inappropriate, my mother's toleration of necessary interaction with my father should not be construed as forgiving and forgetting how he abused her and mistreated her for the 20-something years of their marriage. I said my mother did not request it and would not have wanted it, that this was about doing it for my father and completely disregarding my mother. That jerk kept giving me this song and dance about how they would open their doors for anyone who asked for a funeral or memorial, like it's so holy they wouldn't turn anyone away. Guess what? If this was a gay man, you better believe they would not agree to it. But because this is a white man who has attended church there for years, it doesn't matter how, the oldest daughter, feels about it. You know, the wimmenz who are not good at submission should be talked to like a small, stupid child. I pointed out that the deceased had not requested it, and in fact had demonstrated by living out her last 30 years by never attending that church again, had made it clear she did not want anything to do with the church. But, you know, she's dead, and the only person who matters is the male, so his wishes prevail. It is nothing more than a way for my father to assert, yet again, that he's the person who matters, and that mother doesn't count for jack squat. This is why abusive men love conservative churches, because the very nature of it is to NOT VALUE the female. My sisters want to have the memorial on a Sat and inter the ashes on the following Monday - and to keep Mom's ashes at his house. I feel disgusted, sick, appalled, enraged. All the work I've done to balance myself and find a life outside their bullshit is gone. The only way I can find my way back to center to completely shut myself off from the process. I've apologized to Mom over and over. I have confronted everyone I can think of to stand up for Mom and have been shouted down at every turn. People are not too fond of those who grow up churched and then chose to leave it and refuse to play the church culture games. My Mom should not be in that church or in my father's house. I feel defeated and depressed. How can my siblings be so thick? How can they dishonor and disrespect her like this? I cannot explore it or try to understand. I have to step away from it. If you read this, thank you.

So... Lori linked to this facebook page and I came across one of the usual diatribes against porn. But this analogy takes the cake. Today I learned I'm a pervert for having that tiramisu before my spaghetti last night.

I scrolled across a public post in my Facebook feed today that I had to share: Their website is nuts. Their t-shirts have the slogan "man leads." I haven't had time to dig too deep, but I knew you all would want to see this. www.rootsofroyals.com

Just saw this interesting posting You can boil the reasons down to it basically being that men who buy into the patriarchy bullshit don't have fulfilling lives and relationships with others, especially their spouses.

Has anyone else been watching Israel Wayne whine about how he feels like he doesn't belong because he hasn't rejected fundamentalism? Apparently he's getting all judgey on twitter. "Never judge a system by its abuses. Judge it by its tenets and core values." One wonders why his is protesting so much now. . . http://www.familyrenewal.org/i-apologize/

I was inspired to start this thread after reading this article on the progressive double standard on Bill Clinton versus Harvey Weinstein or Donald Trump from Jacobin, a democratic socialist magazine: https://jacobinmag.com/2017/10/bill-clinton-harvey-weinstein-sexual-assault However, this is a subject that I have been thinking about ever since Monicagate in the 1990s when I was in high school. I was never comfortable with how mainstream feminists threw Monica Lewinsky under the bus (see the NYT op-ed piece by Gloria Steinem references in the link). I get that from a political perspective, the idea was probably that it was better that sacrifice Lewinsky to prevent Republicans from enacting anti-woman policies, but i hate the idea that some women are considered disposable while others are to be pushed into prominence. In any case, the question that the article raises is very valid: would liberals and progressives be as sanguine about the allegations against Bill Clinton if the subject of these rumors was some other guy (eg Clarence Thomas, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Josh Duggar, Donald Trump)? If we claim to take sexual harassment seriously, shouldn’t that mean doing so even when it may politically hurt us to do so? To me, the underlying problem is patriarchy. It doesn’t matter how one identifies politically or how much money one give to charity or political causes. If a man thinks that women only exist as objects for his gratification and knows he can get away with assault and harassment because of his position, he’ll do it. And the overarching societal system is structured in such a way that discourages people, whether male or female, from standing up to men in authority. I know that talking about patriarchy in public is even less popular than talking about white supremacy, but unless we deal with the underlying causes of these serial abusers, these scandals will just keep happening.

I'll confess I grew up in the 1970s and 80s, and so I have found the recent skittering from low-cut jeans that show more panty than line to a sort of puritanical view of fashion I see lately to be exhausting and annoying. By the standards of the people we discuss here, I am not a moderate dresser. I wear spaghetti strap sundresses all summer long, and don't go in much for sleeves in the winter. When I was a teen and young adult, I loved loved low cut backs, or back cut-outs, and now as a middle-aged person, I'm a little disappointed cleavage is not currently in style. It's my main asset these days. ;-) However, I really don't care how anyone else dresses—aside from jeans that always looked on the verge of leaving their owner—as long as they make some effort to clean their shoes, and recognize that some situations call for a bit more effort than others. Extreme reasons for their choices, though, tend to bum me out. https://medium.com/@joelherbert/modest-is-hottest-is-not-in-the-bible-49b58ed1fdf6 I just realized that my sort of wishing for cleavage baring could be seen as a specific desire to look, well, desirable. And then I realized it was ridiculous of me to worry about whether someone else thought that. I just like certain kinds of clothing balance, both formal and informal in the artistic sense, and also I am uncomfortable being too covered up for too long. I'd never enjoy being a nudist, but would fit happily in the land of short, light, loose freedom of dress all year round. I would do well on an island that Joel McCrea found himself stranded on after a boat accident.

Having had it up to HERE with the bloviations of the PEOTUS, Geoff Boykin The Duck Scientist, and so many of the Big Important Men we discuss on this forum, I've been self-soothing lately with tales of ordinary women who get by Just Fine in the company of other women: Broadway musicals: The Color Purple, Beautiful, Waitress, The Spitfire Grill (about an abused woman released from prison for manslaughter and finds redemption in a small-town diner) Memoir: The Mighty Queens of Freeville, by Amy Dickinson (about two generations of women who prospered without men in their lives) Novel: The All-Girls' Filling Station's Last Reunion, by Fannie Flagg (about sisters running a gas station and then joining the WASPs--corps of female military aviators--during WWII) And I also take tremendous comfort in the fact that Lourdes Torres is pursuing a university degree in the STEM field! Take THAT, Geoff, you obnoxious gasbag.

I generally have that fascinated-horror, looking at Fundy women, but I've been wondering about the whole "women shouldn't work, but be SAHMs" thing - and how massively hypocritical the average Fundy shilling this is. I know there are the ones who believe it's ok for women to work inside the home under their headship's stewarding, BUT I wanted to collect a list of jobs that "non-working" women are allowed to do - can you help? And for FJers who've got experience in the Fundy lifestyle, how is this justified? So, jobs "non working women" can do. Teaching other women - public speaking at conferences and such, running courses etc (for filthy lucre) - eg the Duggar women Writing for money - eg Lori Alexander, the Duggar girls, Sarah Maxwell, Marjorie etc Blogging for money - Sweet Modesty etc - with cash for adverts, product placement etc Appearing on TV (even though TV is sinful) - Bateseseses, Duggars, everyone else aspires to this Singing in public for cash - the Boyers, Rodriguii etc Selling CDS - and presumably concerts too? How does Erin Bates sell her stuff? Photography - so many of them Illustration, graphic design (presumably they have to meet clients??) Web design and media work - the Smiths etc Working as a tutor for families that believe women shouldn't work (Tabitha Paine) Un-licensed midwifery (Jill Duggar), Doula etc Selling fashion items on Etsy - and other online shops (thinking of Fresh Modesty and others) Flipping houses and selling cars in a car lot - Duggars - can't work out if doing it or pretending to do it is more hypocritical The weird "live like us" lifestyle promotion for money Working in one's father's business What am I missing? And what's the difference between, eg, web-building at home and, I don't know, copy-editing?

This new release documents the lives of a fundie family who lives in total isolation in NYC projects. The children are homeschooled, and their only exposure to the outside world is through secular movies. The father forbids the wife & children to leave the tiny apartment. The Patriarch's form of rebellion against the government is to not work.

So a while back, while watching movie trailers, I stumbled across a movie called Princess Cut. The movie immediately screamed to me that it was a Christian film (cue Goodnight Kevin's gag) it is by I believe Watchmen pictures. Unlike GND 1or 2 it stars nobody big named. A girl named Grace (real f-ing original there movie) who believes that this is going to be the night that she gets engaged and a man will give her a princess cut diamond engagement ring thus the title of it. Grace Anderson then finds out her boyfriend is getting engaged but to...dun...dun...DUUUN! Another woman. * to be honest they aren't really clear what the nature of the relationship between grace and this man is so I'm not sure if feel sorry for her or not because we really don't established they went on romantic dates more so that they were just hanging out together. Broken hearted she rushes in a tizzy home and proclaims to her mom and pop "I don't think God wants me to get married!!" Waaah, poor first-world problems me! So, her worldly friend, btw they make this girl act completely horrible compared to Gracey-poo, has her meet for coffee only for Grace to run into the man who was working in a jewlery store we briefly see at the beginning of the movie named (I am not kidding) Jared. Jared, the galleria of jewlery, is a guy who seems genuinely interested in Grace and convinces her to sit and talk with him while on his break as he is now working at that very coffee shop. Overtime, he begins to persue being in a relationship with Grace but.. he wants to...KISS HER!! The horror, the ungodly horror!! I mean that's what you get when you go out with a non church going, raised by a single mom, and then living on his own guy!! I'm serious though, later on Grace confesses to her parents that they kissed at his house as if he took advantage of her. It was more like a scene out of SVU the way they played this. So farmer Joe/her daddy, forgot to mention this whole movie is a huge jerking off to farmers, farming, country-living ect. He gives her a bag of soybean seeds, but in it are words of wisdom and then he says he will lovingly guide her to a guy for marriage through him. Then the next scene, Grace breaks up with Jared and checks out a lot of books (the Botkinettes one gets a huge plug in the montage) before she gets on the 'right' path. A week later, worldly friend is out and about at the coffee shop and texts Grace to get her ass down there there is a a hot man and Grace responds: You can have him. (To which the friend flips out once she finds out Grace is courting him and unfriends her) Through wacky shenanigans, that is the man who will meet the test to begin a courtship with. He's Mr. Christian right. He also moved back to the area and knows how to fix a tractor, (which daddy needed done), saves her little bratty brother (which he really didn't save him and the kid wasn't in real danger), oh and wants to merely start a courtship and only under her parents rules. Isn't he dreamy? Then they have a fall festival to celebrate them being able to harvest their soybeans thanks to Mr. Perfect fixing the tractor, only for Mr. Perfects crazy stalker ex to show up and try to win him back AND Jared to go full supervillian and try to get Grace back by sending Perfect's ex after him and leaving Grace alone in the barn with him where he tries to force her to accept earrings he bought her. Oh and did I mention Jared straight up tries to murder Mr. Perfect? Yeah, with a shovel from the barn they are in. I didn't even mention the stupid shenanigans that her little bother tries to pull throughout the movie, one is a personal ad where he advertises his sister as "Really pretty and cooks amazing Mac and cheese". The directors really must have thought it a laugh riot because the scene goes on for so long of stereotype guy after guy coming to the door. In the end of course, Grace and Mr. P get married, have a little girl, and live happily ever after on their farm. These movies are just so damn funny due to they live in more of a fantasy than Disney Channel movies do like HSM. The acting isn't horrid, except for Grace she overacts pretty hard core in certain scenes. Glad I could sit there through this for free, ahh Youtube gotta love people uploading these. I also saw Old Fashioned and October baby for free too.

The usual suspects at the "Council on Biblical manhood and Womanhood" (can we say self parody?) have scheduled 2 days and 27 speakers to explain to the unenlightened why women are inferior. It seems like they have rounded up a new crop of submission fetishists, I only recognize a few of the speakers. http://cbmw.org/2016-preconference The topics include such gems as: "Jackie Hill-Perry Testimony: My Journey Out of Lesbianism to Complementarianism" Also check out the twitter hashtag #CBMW16 for pictures and some hilarious smack downs of the speakers. Rachel Held Evens is having a field day with this.

Lori and Ken still can not quit the internet and continue to babble about nothing. They have however, scrubbed the internets of their praise of Josh Dugger. Too bad FJ never forgets... Continue you discussion and while you are at it, don't forget to employ some GoogleTactics[tm][/tm]. Part 1: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26285 Part 2: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26285 Part 3: http://www.freejinger.org/topic/24215-lori-alexander-still-not-learning-a-thing-part-3/?page=1

I was out at the Reconstructionist Theonomists Facebook page (Nathaniel Darnell's group) and ran across Vaughn Ohlman berating Michael Pearl... and why? Because, apparently, in the world of patriarchal marriage and betrothals, Michael Pearl is a wuss and a liberal apostate and probably hell bent because he allowed his 26 year old daughter input into who she would marry. Not at all Biblical, according to this guy. http://letthemmarry.org/articles/general-biblical-issues/the-authority-of-the-father/to-betroth-or-not-to-betroth-a-response-to-michael-pearl-part-i What was charming, to me, is this guy is all over the idea of two fathers liking one another and their children being betrothed with no way to say no from the time the father's say "Let's have them get married." His own son apparently had not seen the girl he was going to marry until after the fathers and he agreed he would be marrying. The comments on this are horrifying and great. Some of it is ssdd . Fewer divorces in arranged marriages than in self selected marriages... yeah, because the subgroups that arrange marriages don't allow for divorce without all kinds of penalties, such as being tossed out of the family, tossed out of your church (aka only social outlet) etc. Women have no say in who they have sex with , their sexuality belongs to their father and then their husband.... The comments section also gave me some serious nuggets of wtf. But the last couple of comments give a basic overview of this conversation. The more I read this, the more I see why the patriarch hates women so much. They don't view them as wholly human, certainly not equal to men on any level. But these attitudes lead to is 1) men are not expected to only have one woman/wife, so having affairs, sexually abusing the help or the choir members, etc is AOK. This is why an inlaw told another inlaw years ago that men could divorce for adultery , but women could not, and why the polygamy group is always on the sidelines of these types of believers. Interestingly enough, this marriage specialist didn't pick up the bits about Michael Pearls rapey honeymoon to preach on, just how he sinned in letting his daughter have a say. This was only part one on Michael Pearl, and I've not read part 2, but these people (the Reconstructionist Theonomists and political patriarchists) scare the crap out of me. As a woman, I can't figure out why any woman would willingly join them, unless brainwashed since birth.

Lori and Ken still can not quit the internet and continue to babble about nothing. They have however, scrubbed the internets of their praise of Josh Dugger. Too bad FJ never forgets... Continue you discussion and while you are at it, don't forget to employ some GoogleTactics[tm][/tm]. Part 1: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26285 Part 2: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26285

To those who know Kevin Swanson from his many many books such as upgrade the 10 best secrets to homeschooling and the second Mayflower. Apparently on his show today which I listen to ,just snark on every day, he has been having to put his own money and his friends money (Dave) into his radio show. He said he has one year before he's going to have to give up on this endeavor because it's putting him into debt (remember he's just like the Duggars in the whole Debt free living). Seems like just yesterday he was bragging about how his radio show was supported only by donations. Maybe it was his hate for Frozen that caused his donations to drop like flies, either way looks like it might be time for him to Let it go..

Part 1: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=25361 I haven't been following this thread lately, so if someone else would like to post a summary it would be appreciated.

Here's part 1: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24350

Here is a very weird question: Could it be that the Duggars are in fact a matriarchy? The daughters seem to run the household and seem to take part in the decision making. Without them there would have never been a show. the boys seem dull (except for Josiah who is being crushed right now). I have the feeling that JB does pretty much everything the girls want. Jill and Jessa both seem to be the dominant person in their relationships. Anna not so much but she is not a Duggar-Duggar. Michelle...I don't know, it could be both ways. She may have lost her mind to the extent that JB has to be the headship which he otherwise would not be?

Hey everyone! First time starting a thread. I'm going to try to turn my incoherent train of thought into a readable post. There are a lot of conflicting perceptions of the Duggar children, especially as they approach adulthood. I think we pretty unanimously view the elementary-aged through teenage children as victims of their parents' choices, and of the destructive fundamentalist culture in general. Seeing someone as a victim reduces the degree to which we seem them as an agent (i.e. capable of independent thoughts and decisions), so even though these kids have the same hateful views as their parents, we excuse them because they don't know better. However, as soon as a Duggar kid moves out of the house, in our eyes they immediately become responsible for their beliefs and actions. There is open criticism towards Josh, Jill, and Jessa about decisions they've made (e.g. no birth control, work for hate group, etc.) and things they've said on social media. There is such an abrupt shift in the way we perceive them, when in reality their maturation has been happening fluidly since they were born. We're angry with who they are now, when the people they are now have been in the making for the past 20+ years. They didn't suddenly gain insight when they got married, so why suddenly hold them accountable for beliefs they've had for years? I think part of what causes this is our victimization of the Duggar kids still living at home. We act as if every one of them is silently wishing they could escape, without realizing that the kids themselves buy into the culture just as much as their parents do. We feel sorry for them because they've never been exposed to a non-Gothard school of thought, but because of that isolation, they don't feel like they're missing out. I know I've always seen Jana as an overworked Cinderella-type character, but the fact is, she probably enthusiastically agrees with all the horrible things her parents stand for. My point is, if we insist that the kids at home are "blameless," then that shouldn't end when they leave the compound. They're still the exact same people with the exact same life experiences, who were taught that critical thinking is off limits. If we insist that they are responsible for their own decisions and opinions when they leave home, then it may be useful to remind ourselves that the kids we currently sympathize with--Josiah, Joy Anna, Jana, Hannie--are also bigoted, sexist, homophobes that swear we're doing the devil's work.

I never heard this version before. JB taking the credit for another marriage match for his daughters. Then again, since all men have to go through him anyway I guess he'll take the credit for all of them. http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/19-kids-and ... courtship/

We know that the Duggars are pretty involved in pro life campaigns. But what is pissing me off so much about this is that it is actually patriarchy and everything that belongs to it that is causing abortions. 200 years ago when our ancestors were living in the society the Quiverful folks deem perfect there were women that killed their babies after birth because they were unmarried. And some of these unwed mothers were raped, some of them had a sexual partner who promised them that he will marry them even though he never did, some were just so horny that they lost control. The less extreme patriarchal society is in my oppinion also a society where less women can fit a baby into the lives they want to live because they for example have a harder time to be a mom and to work at the same time. So more women decide against the baby they are pregnant with. The Duggars and their likes are living in their own little world where everything that is wrong (to them) can be easily solved by speaking out against it or by simply forbiding it when in fact the causes of a lot of social phenomenas are far more complex.

New business idea from Kenny. Women, and women only do not know how to live without the internet. Answer? Bootcamp. Learn to do housework for 2-3 hours a day- no less, no more. There are big bucks in this. And Everything, no exceptions, is always the females fault.

I don't have time to review Lori's foolishness today...Christmas cookies to bake and all that. I DO have time to chime in and point out that Aunt Genny has once again taken the Godly Mentor down a peg. Team Aunt Genny. That is all.