PBS reports on forced marriages in the US (former fundamentalist Christian testimony)

[solacetea]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/uncovering-problem-forced-marriage-u-s/

I got this link in my facebook feed a few days ago. It was harrowing to watch. Ms. Van Harn mentions growing up in a fundie sect in Michigan, but the name of it is never mentioned. Anyone know what particular branch it is? It also mentions ultra-orthodox Jews.

[Leftitinmysnood]

Ms. Van Harm is not Orthodox Jewish, the second lady interviewed is. Eagle-eyed viewers spotted ATI wisdom books in one of the pictures, so Gothard followers.

[Bethella]

@solacetea Nina Van Harn seems to be from the Grand Rapids area of Michigan which has a lot of Dutch/Christian Reform type churches.

[Grimalkin]

      I would be interested in hearing a male side to this. I am sure they feel the same pressures. You could have a descent guy trapped because he is responsible for someone who can't take care of themselves.

Thank you for the read.

[RosaLuxcyborg]

24 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

      I would be interested in hearing a male side to this. I am sure they feel the same pressures. You could have a descent guy trapped because he is responsible for someone who can't take care of themselves.

Thank you for the read.

Absolutely. I mean, consider how barely legal Bin and Smuggar were for their weddings. Even if they weren't legally children, the Gothard definition of adulthood, and the scientifically supported view of developmental adulthood are about a decade apart.

And how many gay kids have been manipulated into hetero relationships by their families? I tend to feel that our frequent speculation on DW's orientation is homophobic, but I'd be lying if I said I'd never entertained the idea that he only married Priscilla to shut people up.

[solacetea]

1 hour ago, Grimalkin said:

      I would be interested in hearing a male side to this. I am sure they feel the same pressures. You could have a descent guy trapped because he is responsible for someone who can't take care of themselves.

Thank you for the read.

I would be interested as well, but I can't imagine a man in this culture would be forthcoming, or trapped.

[Grimalkin]

14 hours ago, solacetea said:

I would be interested as well, but I can't imagine a man in this culture would be forthcoming, or trapped.

      Definitely not trapped the same as the women, but these guys have crappy schooling, extremely shelterd, told how smart they are, and don't have a clue to how much they don't know. The Pennington boy has a 'Law Degree' from a non accredited school, gets a job at Dad's office, and no doubt thinks he is just as good as a real lawyer. I think the parents pulled a fast one on him. Even his EO business is piggybacked off his mom. He will be expected to marry and support a million kids. The Pennington boy is a bad example because he is quite smug.

          I think the responsibility of financially providing for an army of kids, and having a wife who  has been raised to not make descisions has to be enormously stressful. Different people handle stress differently. I am not justifying abuse, or saying it's okay but I think the situation facilitates abuse and resentment.

 

[nastyhobbitses]

10 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

      Definitely not trapped the same as the women, but these guys have crappy schooling, extremely shelterd, told how smart they are, and don't have a clue to how much they don't know. The Pennington boy has a 'Law Degree' from a non accredited school, gets a job at Dad's office, and no doubt thinks he is just as good as a real lawyer. I think the parents pulled a fast one on him. Even his EO business is piggybacked off his mom. He will be expected to marry and support a million kids. The Pennington boy is a bad example because he is quite smug.

          I think the responsibility of financially providing for an army of kids, and having a wife who  has been raised to not make descisions has to be enormously stressful. Different people handle stress differently. I am not justifying abuse, or saying it's okay but I think the situation facilitates abuse and resentment.

 

In this system, there's really no shit end of the stick. The whole stick is covered in shit. Both men and women receive minimal or essentially fraudulent education, emotional maturity is stunted, and women are taught to be passive broodmares with zero aspirations beyond pumping out kids, while men are expected to magically have enough money to provide for a mentally twelve-year-old wife (while being mentally twelve himself) and multiple children close in age. It's an utterly unsustainable system that will certainly breed abuse (if you give a mentally twelve-year-old man a wife and tell him that he's allowed to do whatever he wants with her and his authority over her and their children is second only to God himself...), poverty (look at the Ultra-Orthodox communities where men refuse to work and women are now more and more restricted for what education, if any, that they can receive), and resentment. Men like Gil Bates and Jim Bob Duggar, who chose this lifestyle when they had/took other options I do not consider victims, but I consider their sons, whom they denied education and options (and proper psychiatric help), victims. And remember that victims can be abusers at the same time, or become abusers later on.

[RosaLuxcyborg]

Here is a link to a reddit thread I saw last year. Insight into the male side of what happens when Gothardism doesn't work out. Had forgotten about it until just now.

Not sure how it turned out, but I hope things improved somehow. I'll include the original post, and you can follow the link above if you want to read the discussion that follows.

Quote

Raised hardcore fundy. Large family, Bill Gothard, homeschooled. Street evangelist/preacher for 5 years. 10 years of leading evangelism groups, house-church, accountability groups, bible studies, prayer groups. Purity culture, married young, had kid at 24. Having my daughter was my undoing. I was excited to have the opportunity to 'experience the love of God for his children' offered by becoming a father. Fuck. 3am, child throwing tantrums, work at 5 am, exhausted & exasperated. In a sick way I could sympathize with my friend who was jailed for shaken baby syndrome. In that moment I asked myself: under what circumstance would it be justified to drive a nail into my child's spine and twist it around for 30 seconds? None. None. None. NONE. What the hell, god? Hell? What the hell? God's O.T. genocides bothered me, I took refuge in Jesus, that god's gotta be as nice as he and I must have him all wrong right? But then I realized that god's genocides pale in comparison to Jesus' hell. Fuck. And so began my three year undoing. Allowing one question led to another. And another. And a couple years later the energy it took to try hold it all together... my strength. I couldn't hold much longer. Just try... hold... hold! Hold! The cracks, the cuts, the cognitive dissonance. Every day it required exponentially more energy. Eventually I let go. And it all vaporized into dust. It's gone. Thank God. I was blind but now I see. I have a peace that passes all understanding, I've been born again. After a minute under water without breathing, the desperation for air, the mind screaming, screaming for air, every second an eternity... 10 more seconds. 10 more seconds. Hoooold. Resist the devil! Don't giiv SpwooshGAAAAAAASP

AIR!

AIR! Air. What the fuck just happened? Where am I? Where have I been? What is everything around me? Is it real? I've been born again. I know nothing. I'm waking up, waking up and it's all so surreal. I go to church with my wife, but it's changed from sweet communion to a bizarre canibalistic celebration of human sacrifice to appease the wrath of an angry god by ritualistic eating of flesh and blood. What the fuck? I keep going for my wife but now it's anthropological, the great people I respect and love, they're not different because I changed, but I can't unsee it. They're good people. Smart people. They're not dumb or evil. Behold the power of religion... marvel, be in awe... don't worship. Please don't.

So I married young... what you're taught to admire when you're in the faith is those who have the strongest faith. I had strong faith. I was a spiritual leader, I did evangelism, I didn't look at porn and I mostly didn't masturbate. People looked up to me. I had alot of spiritual clout. So I got to marry way out of my league. Fortunately my hot wife was taught to value these traits I had, so I got her. We married young because we didn't want to fall, and she's so fucking hot. But we didn't fall thank god, till our wedding night. Two years later we have a daughter. She's incredibly beautiful and sweet. And then I find myself at 4am, she's throwing a fit, I'm exhausted & exasperated, and wonder to myself when it'd be ok to torture her.

What followed is 3 years of hellish internal struggle and my faith is gone. There was a huge sense of relief you all know, but then the implications. Every exciting thought, every book I read, every new discovery. They're evil, they make her upset, she cries. They're an affront to her faith. I'm not the man of faith she married. I've changed not you I tell her I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry. But I don't know if we can live this way. You married me cause I was pleasing to god, I married you cause you were pleasing to me. Now I'm not pleasing to god, but you're still hot, and kind, and loving, and beautiful, but you're religious and I'm destroying your life. I'm destroying your faith. You're now suicidal, you've left the house in tears & I've wondered if I'd see you alive again. I know you married a strong religious man, and now I'm not and that's icky. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't want to throw away such a good thing. You're a beautiful person. But I don't know if we can keep up this way. I'm a threat to your world, every thought I have is scary, I'm what you've always been taught is evil, I'm evil I guess. I'm sorry. I don't think I can live this way. I've only one life, lets not both hate it, waste it. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. It's 4am and I'm drunk trying to drown my mind cause I don't know what to do. Fuck.

 

[JMO]

@RosaLuxcyborg, wow.  That poor man.  That's a whole effed up situation.  I hope he and his wife were able to work through and find a solution for both of them.  Which sounds like it would probably be divorce.  

[RosaLuxcyborg]

14 hours ago, JMO said:

@RosaLuxcyborg, wow.  That poor man.  That's a whole effed up situation.  I hope he and his wife were able to work through and find a solution for both of them.  Which sounds like it would probably be divorce.  

@JMO here's his reddit profile, if you want to read more about him. Hasn't been active in a while, but he has a few more posts that give insight. 

It's so easy to think of women as the vitims and men as the abusers, but like most things it's so not that simple

 

[RosaLuxcyborg]

Hey, so I've been going through old link in by "Gothard" bookmarks folder and I found another Redditor. This guy did an AMA. You can find it here. And here's the intro:

Quote

My short bio: I posted a bit about my experiences here in this thread, and on further encouragement, I'm doing an AMA.

I am from the home of a pastor in the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church movement. The IFB is an ultra-conservative loose association of independent churches that believe in extreme isolationism or "separation" from the world, traditional gender roles, high-pressure evangelism, and a shunning of "modern" theology.

Around 1991, when I was age 6, my family met a person who encouraged them to quit using contraception and "let God open and shut the womb" of my mother. He gave my parents a copy of the book A Full Quiver. This was our introduction to the world of Quiverfull, which encourages families to have as many children as possible so they can fill their "quivers" with "arrows" to be shot out into a sin-cursed world and change it.

From there, we went deeper into the rabbit hole and started using a homeschooling curriculum called the Advanced Training Institute from the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which was run by a man named Bill Gothard. Both Quiverfull and Bill Gothard are very closely associated with the Duggar family, and we attended the same type of conferences they did in Knoxville, TN at the University of Tennessee campus back in the mid nineties.

Then, in the late nineties, my father decided to become a missionary to Belgium and The Netherlands due to the "lack of Bible-believing churches there." We moved there, established our residence in Belgium, and attempted to evangelize the heathen Belgians to our totally correct and little-known theology. It went about as well as one could expect from such a culturally deaf endeavor. I did learn fluent Flemish and got to see a lot of Western Europe, but mostly through the eyes of our "mission."

Several years and lots of counseling and therapy later, the biggest names of the IFB movement and the Quiverfull momenthave been publicly disgraced, Bill Gothard has resigned everything after being accused of sexual harrassment, and theDuggars, well, have a lot of issues.

As these radical movements collapse, more and more millennials who were caught up in the crazy are coming out of it and trying to find their way back into civilization. I don't speak for all of them, but I can share my story and hope to bring awareness to what has happened to a generation robbed of their childhood. Feel free to AMA.

 

[Geechee Girl]

The first guy linked was a scary read. He lost me at his description of murdering his infant. What kinda brain even comes with the thought of nails in spines?

[Taters]

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/uncovering-problem-forced-marriage-u-s/#.WDyQDsXgz0c.twitter

With interesting testimonies (also from a former Hassidic woman).

[Soulhuntress]

On 9/17/2016 at 6:13 PM, Bethella said:

@solacetea Nina Van Harn seems to be from the Grand Rapids area of Michigan which has a lot of Dutch/Christian Reform type churches.

Fundy baptist.  Rural area.  Can be anywhere.......

[Bethella]

4 hours ago, Soulhuntress said:

Fundy baptist.  Rural area.  Can be anywhere.......

She lives in the Grand Rapids area. Based on the area and a Dutch last name she's more likely to be Dutch/Christian Reform not fundy Baptist.

[Lurky]

I've always been baffled by the people who were disappointed about Josiah Duggar's courtship ending, because the idea that being married as a teenager, with no education, no job, no way to support a family without his father, and starting his own quiver as fast as possible.... How could anyone want that for anyone?

On 18/09/2016 at 4:31 PM, nastyhobbitses said:

In this system, there's really no shit end of the stick. The whole stick is covered in shit. Both men and women receive minimal or essentially fraudulent education, emotional maturity is stunted, and women are taught to be passive broodmares with zero aspirations beyond pumping out kids, while men are expected to magically have enough money to provide for a mentally twelve-year-old wife (while being mentally twelve himself) and multiple children close in age. It's an utterly unsustainable system that will certainly breed abuse (if you give a mentally twelve-year-old man a wife and tell him that he's allowed to do whatever he wants with her and his authority over her and their children is second only to God himself...), poverty (look at the Ultra-Orthodox communities where men refuse to work and women are now more and more restricted for what education, if any, that they can receive), and resentment.

(imagine a standing ovation emoticon!)

A standard marriage is about give and take, or should be - about teamwork, and complementary strengths, where each couple makes it work differently, depending on what each of the partners are good at etc (Ii know, ideally...) - but in these marriages, the man has to make every decision, and is responsible for his whole family's entire welfare - financial, emotional, spiritual. 

I can see why some people would love this, but damn, that's a whole world of pressure, I would crumble.

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 2/10/2016 at 1:21 AM, Geechee Girl said:

The first guy linked was a scary read. He lost me at his description of murdering his infant. What kinda brain even comes with the thought of nails in spines?

To me the whole piece sounds like exaggerated fanfiction. I know from experience that when a weeks old baby cries nonstop for hours and days the only thing you want is that she shuts up. You desperately need to hear silence again. The instinct would be to shake baby until she shuts up or cover baby's mouth to make her shut up. The difference between the sane parent and the murderous one is that the first goes for a walk/a shower/a chocolate bar/runs for help, the second one followes through. Fantasising about torturing your newborn with a nail in the spine is in an entirely different category,  it sounds more like the product of a wicked evil mind than of parenting exhaustion. 

[JermajestyDuggar]

36 minutes ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

To me the whole piece sounds like exaggerated fanfiction. I know from experience that when a weeks old baby cries nonstop for hours and days the only thing you want is that she shuts up. You desperately need to hear silence again. The instinct would be to shake baby until she shuts up or cover baby's mouth to make her shut up. The difference between the sane parent and the murderous one is that the first goes for a walk/a shower/a chocolate bar/runs for help, the second one followes through. Fantasising about torturing your newborn with a nail in the spine is in an entirely different category,  it sounds more like the product of a wicked evil mind than of parenting exhaustion. 

I wouldn't jump to a wicked evil mind. If he was a woman people would say she has PPD. Since he's male, that's unlikely but it's possible he has mental illness.

[jozina]

I'm not reading that post the same, and looking at his other posts convinces me.  He posted elsewhere on Reddit:

Quote

When I had my daughter I was excited to get a new perspective on gods love for his children by being a parent myself. when she was throwing a tantrum at 4am and I was exhausted I thought about how evil she'd have to be to justify me driving a nail into her spine and torturing her for a couple seconds. I could think of zero. Zero. Circumstances where that would ever be remotely justified. But hell as My religion taught me was eternal physical conscious torment for being born in sin. I pondered that and thinkin about my daughter going to hell was the beginning of the end. 

I'd guess it was more of an intrusive thought of what he was taught of hell.  Applying that to his daughter, even in the throes of exhaustion and frustration, it was barbaric.  It doesn't seem like fantasising about torturing his daughter so much as looking at his daughter even when she was difficult and he was struggling, thinking of how this supposed love God had for his children was so dissonant with the eternal torture of hell and loving his daughter too much to be able to wrap his head around it.

There are no winners in this for sure.

[Crocoduck]

Wow, interesting piece, and I guess it is forcing me to confront some of my own assumptions. I'm also from rural Michigan and knew a few skirts-only, head covering families. (They are Baptist, by the way. Plenty of Baptists in West MI although Dutch/Christian Reform is more visible.)

I never imagined those communities were engaging in these practices. I knew nothing of Godard until the Duggars and have no idea if his teachings were influential in my town, but I see now that it is possible.

[Soulhuntress]

17 hours ago, Bethella said:

She lives in the Grand Rapids area. Based on the area and a Dutch last name she's more likely to be Dutch/Christian Reform not fundy Baptist.

Watched the video and google said Baptist.  I am still leaning towards Allegan County somewhere.  Like Gamrat's district..... The most fundie Dutch churches frown on homeschooling.   Her diary clips showed ATI so I am more inclined towards IFB or Reformed Baptist.  Grand Rapids is the big city she moved to.   

[Peas n carrots]

I'm not super familiar with Dutch Reform - does anyone have a good source of info to share?

I had a couple friends back in the day that went to Calvin College, which they described as super conservative. But the gals I knew weren't fundie - they were Christian, but didn't buy into the anti gay/submissive female BS. The one has a biology degree from Calvin and is now scientist!

[Howl]

On 12/1/2016 at 6:16 AM, JermajestyDuggar said:

I wouldn't jump to a wicked evil mind. If he was a woman people would say she has PPD. Since he's male, that's unlikely but it's possible he has mental illness.

Keep in mind he was drunk-dialing Reddit at 4am.  That he's turned to alcohol to address his issues is definitely concerning.  He's also lucky (as is his wife and child) that there's only one kid involved and he came to his realization before there were 7 or 8 of them. Yeah, there are some things that can't be resolved through counseling, and this sounds like one of them, because he and his wife now have irreconcilable beliefs.  Guy #2 sounds saner.  

Quote

@speshulsnowflake There are no winners in this for sure.

And that's the entire tragedy, right there. 

I'd also like to say here that Doug Wilson is likely just a regular heterosexual male, who, when he acted out sexually, did it with a woman.  

 

[laPapessaGiovanna]

On 1/12/2016 at 3:17 PM, jozina said:

I'm not reading that post the same, and looking at his other posts convinces me.  He posted elsewhere on Reddit:

I'd guess it was more of an intrusive thought of what he was taught of hell.  Applying that to his daughter, even in the throes of exhaustion and frustration, it was barbaric.  It doesn't seem like fantasising about torturing his daughter so much as looking at his daughter even when she was difficult and he was struggling, thinking of how this supposed love God had for his children was so dissonant with the eternal torture of hell and loving his daughter too much to be able to wrap his head around it.

There are no winners in this for sure.

I can see what you mean and you may very well be right. I guess my problem is that I can't think of a fussy newborn as a deliberately evil being deserving hellfire and eternal torture. I don't need to imagine my actual baby being tortured in hell with nails in the spine to understand that there's something horribly wrong evil and wicked in this thought. To me it seemed too much even for fundies.