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Actually a matriarchy?


isarhenne

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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?

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I wish.

Actually, they seem a bit like a gorilla troupe. The ladies support the head silver-backed gorilla. As long as he doesn't anger them excessively, he gets to be in control. If they no longer like him, the ladies band together and run him off. Sadly, I doubt the Duggarlings will ever run JB off. The best they can hope for is wheeling him around in an office chair once he's near death.

I suspect Jill and Jessa are still learning from and being mentored by J'Chelle. Remember how Jessa was learning to be nicer to Bin? I think something similar is occurring. They at least have to learn to play submissive for the cameras. And I strongly suspect that any major decisions are still handled by the men, and only by the men.

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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?

You hit the nail on the head with what I've bolded above. In other words, the Duggars aren't a matriarchy; they're a "Duggar-chy" with JB at the helm. Derick and Ben are both pretty submerged in the Kool-aid, if you ask me. They both might as well have changed their last names instead of their respective wives becoming Mrs. Dillard and Mrs. Seewald.

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I would have to say different. Everything the women do is geared to make their men happy for example Daddy like long hair or daddy owns your heart until he allows another man to have it.

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You can have a patriarchy and still have strong willed women.

I doubt any of these women, especially with all the brainwashing they've been subjected to, would do anything that was truly against the wishes of the man; but I also don't think that the men completely discount the women and their opinions. Doesn't ATI teach that women are allowed a say but the men are allowed the final say?

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It's an interesting idea, since people have long speculated that Michelle is the one who really wears the (figurative) pants in the relationship. From what I've learned, they teach that men are the head, but women are the neck, meaning that the woman has quite a bit of influence, but the man has the ultimate word (like DuggarsTheEndIsNear said).

It looks to me that the Duggar women have probably become quite skilled at manipulating their menfolk without them realizing it, using Michelle as an example.

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It's an interesting idea, since people have long speculated that Michelle is the one who really wears the (figurative) pants in the relationship. From what I've learned, they teach that men are the head, but women are the neck, meaning that the woman has quite a bit of influence, but the man has the ultimate word (like DuggarsTheEndIsNear said).

It looks to me that the Duggar women have probably become quite skilled at manipulating their menfolk without them realizing it, using Michelle as an example.

The manipulation. That's what I zero'd in on a long while back. The way Moochelle acts towards her man, her verbiage, it all reminds me of the older women I know who have told their daughters they must "train" their husbands. It harkens back to the scene in Mona Lisa Smile where the rich mom tells her daughter she must find a way to "put the idea in his head" in reference to a poem at their wedding. Good manipulators have a knack for making a person believe it was their notion from the get go. Go back to the farm episodes, or cleaning out the storage building... She's doing the gaze but you can see the "you're a dumbass JB" written all over her face. Maybe she started out sweet & meek, but 19 babies & 20+ years of marriage have shown her the tricks of the trade.

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This is the Duggar hierarchy as I see it...

I. Michelle. Everything revolves around her the same way everything in an alcoholic's family revolves around the alcoholic. She is literally the queen bee of the hive. She holds all the power.

II. Jim Bob. Yes, it's a patriarchy and he is the patriarch. But deep down, he is still a poor hillbilly boy with a bad haircut who can't believe he actually got a cheerleader to marry him. He will do anything to please her, whether it's enabling her baby addiction or finding someone else to do the laundry. Since Michelle mentally checked out years ago, all the decisions involving child rearing fall on him. He is also in charge of all business/money decisions.

III. Grandma. She's the one with the business savvy, which she passed along to Jim Bob. IIRC, she was the one who suggested doing a TV show. Although Grandma gets stuck with laundry and other drudgery, she owns property and also has the freedom to come and go as she pleases.

IV. The married Duggar kids. Jill got the big house, which tells us a lot about the pecking order here.

V. Jana. She's the real mom. She holds a lot of power within the Duggar household. But it's like The Hotel California-- she can never leave.

VI. The rest of the older Duggar kids. The pecking order appears to be John David (he's got an airplane), Joseph (he got to go to college), Joy (who seems to be second-in-command at home behind Jana), Josiah (now that he is courting; before that he was in exile at Alert camp), and Jinger (I don't know what's going on with that poor girl, but she just seems lost).

VII. Derick, Anna, and Ben. In that order.

VIII. Jed-on-down. I'm sure there is a hierarchy here, which depends on age, gender role, personality, and skill level.

IX. The grandchildren. They're just babies, so there's not much to say about them.

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I was just watching Mackynzie comment that Jill's baby will be a Duggar but be called Dillard.

This.

I didn't read anything into that comment. Something was said about it being her first cousin or first Duggar cousin. (I can't remember the exact wording.) The way I heard it, Mack was just clarifying that it was her first cousin on the Duggar side (she has many already on the Keller side), but that his name won't be Duggar.

When MrMiggy talks about his cousins he always talks about them as his "x" (mothers maiden name) cousins and his "y" (fathers name) cousins, even though he doesn't have a single cousin bearing the surname x or y. In the same way, I would expect all the Ms to grow up referring to their maternal cousins as Keller-cousins, be they Shraders, McDonalds, Wallers or Kellers, and their paternal cousins as Duggar-cousins, be they Dillards, Seewalds or Duggars.

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I didn't read anything into that comment. Something was said about it being her first cousin or first Duggar cousin. (I can't remember the exact wording.) The way I heard it, Mack was just clarifying that it was her first cousin on the Duggar side (she has many already on the Keller side), but that his name won't be Duggar.

When MrMiggy talks about his cousins he always talks about them as his "x" (mothers maiden name) cousins and his "y" (fathers name) cousins, even though he doesn't have a single cousin bearing the surname x or y. In the same way, I would expect all the Ms to grow up referring to their maternal cousins as Keller-cousins, be they Shraders, McDonalds, Wallers or Kellers, and their paternal cousins as Duggar-cousins, be they Dillards, Seewalds or Duggars.

Yea it didn't strike me as weird either. I have 11 cousins on my dad side and only 3 share my last name, but I refer to all of them as the "*last name* cousins"

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I was just watching Mackynzie comment that Jill's baby will be a Duggar but be called Dillard.

This.

What needs to be added to the rest of Kynzie's statement is ...and Derick better not forget it.

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Yea it didn't strike me as weird either. I have 11 cousins on my dad side and only 3 share my last name, but I refer to all of them as the "*last name* cousins"

And...MacKynzie is FIVE. The average kindergartner wouldn't see anything wrong with her statement.

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I thought it was pretty good for a five year old. I remember arguing with two girls at school who claimed they were cousins but I wouldn't believe them because they had different surnames. (All my cousins have the same name as me.) I was a lot older than Mack.

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I don't really follow the Diggers per-se, but I do think there's a lot of closet matriarchy in the "patriarchy" circles. I think I'd run out of fingers pretty quickly if I started listing their last names. I'm up to 8 at or formerly at BCA in just two minutes.

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Call it whatever you want, but it's still a system that oppresses women in many more ways than it does men. Maybe it's a little second-wave of me, but I'd call that a patriarchy.

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Call it whatever you want, but it's still a system that oppresses women in many more ways than it does men. Maybe it's a little second-wave of me, but I'd call that a patriarchy.

I'm not judging one way or the other. Just saying that some of the so-called patriarchal families in actuality have rather wimpy men who are heavily manipulated by their wives and daughters.

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Mack's statement doesn't seem that odd to me. Granted I haven't heard it myself.

I was chatting to my dad and mentioned my cousin. I used her married name. Cue the huh, who? from my dad. Used her maiden name. Nope. I then had to specifically mention my maternal grandparents for him to know which kid and what side of the family.

It doesn't help we have numerous relatives with the same first name.

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This is the Duggar hierarchy as I see it...

I. Michelle. Everything revolves around her the same way everything in an alcoholic's family revolves around the alcoholic. She is literally the queen bee of the hive. She holds all the power.

That's a very interesting theory - although I do think Michelle and JimBob have mutual intertwined addictions surrounding conception, pregnancy and birth. I'm quite surprised they have been able to make this transition now that there are no more children, but then I remember that we are only seeing what is on camera. Off camera, they might be a mess.

So are they are matriarchy, a patriarchy, or something else? I have to agree it's more likely akin to the typical "alcoholic family" We could spend all day debating the roles each of the children play. I would say Jana is the "hero" while we have quite a few "lost children" roaming around there.

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I dated someone for three years who was raised in a household like this. The mother consistently claimed that the father was the Prayer Warrior of the household with the last word, but at every given opportunity she belittled and manipulated him. In fact, she manipulated the whole family. The father would read the Bible at the table after dinner out of genuine interest in sharing and she would hurry him along with a sweet smile because it was derailing her tightly run schedule. I think a lot of women in this vein of religion believe manipulation is their only way of having any sort of control.

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I'm not judging one way or the other. Just saying that some of the so-called patriarchal families in actuality have rather wimpy men who are heavily manipulated by their wives and daughters.

Like The Stepford Wives, the 2004 one with Nicole Kidman. The head matriarch has a robotic HUSBAND and the whole thing is made up by her. Except in that version, the people aren't actually robots, just re-wired. It's a weird movie. But anyway...

ITA a lot of economically stable fundies of the VF extraction are run by wives and guys go along with the show getting their egos stroked.

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I haven't read the whole thread- just want to chime in that I do know the whole skirts-at-all-times was all Michelle's idea. Now it's this "thing".

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Personal anecdata, but I've known dozens of families over the years who claim to have practiced some form of Biblical Patriarchy or other, and there are only three families I can think of where the man was actually pushing for the lifestyle. In every other instance, it was always the wife that wanted this particular lifestyle. The guys just went along with it to keep the wives happy.

On a personal note, I think all of the families I've known would have been much better off if they had simply worked out their domination/submission kinks in some other constructive way, like in the bedroom, instead of letting such a mentality infect their families to the degree that the parents model harmful behaviors and lifestyle choices for the children involved.

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Personal anecdata, but I've known dozens of families over the years who claim to have practiced some form of Biblical Patriarchy or other, and there are only three families I can think of where the man was actually pushing for the lifestyle. In every other instance, it was always the wife that wanted this particular lifestyle. The guys just went along with it to keep the wives happy.

On a personal note, I think all of the families I've known would have been much better off if they had simply worked out their domination/submission kinks in some other constructive way, like in the bedroom, instead of letting such a mentality infect their families to the degree that the parents model harmful behaviors and lifestyle choices for the children involved.

I totally agree. Neither of them came from a particularly fundamental family, and yet here they are with the whole kit and caboodle. I think it was Michelle's idea, and JB went along with it because he gets all the sex he wants, and a bunch of children who look up to him like he's their own benevolent dictator. Now JB thinks he runs the show, but I bet it's a bit of a "Don't you think it would be nice if..." *two days later JB says* "I think we should [whatever Michelle thought would be nice]" to which he receives, "Oh, JB, what a wonderful idea! Oh you're so smart."

I think we see it with the way she suggested to Josie that they give her old crib to the Dillards.

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