Josh, Anna, the M' kids Part 20: Girl Needs Some Serious Therapy

[Angelface]

I’ve always suspected that Josh would prefer a smaller family.  Anna, however, has made no secret of the fact that she wants “as many as God sends”. I wonder if Josh might have drawn the line at four but then all the scandals came to light.  The joyous time after the birth of a healthy baby was spoilt for Anna when Josh’s past behaviour and then current Ashley Madison affair was discovered and publicised. I can understand Anna’s desire to have another baby after Meredith and after Josh’s return from “rehab”, she was cheated out of the joy of a new baby by Josh’s behaviour and had to be a single parent whilst he was reforming himself. Perhaps part of their “deal” is that Josh had to agree to more children in order for Anna to forgive him. She appears to be a good mother and homemaker and to genuinely love and want her children. I hope that at the very most they stop at eight rather than keep adding to their brood. Josh needs to find some business venture that he can throw himself into and be challenged and develop and grow. His past behaviour was atrocious. His future just seems so mundane and boring. He needs to find some dreams. 

[SassyPants]

1 minute ago, Angelface said:

I’ve always suspected that Josh would prefer a smaller family.  Anna, however, has made no secret of the fact that she wants “as many as God sends”. I wonder if Josh might have drawn the line at four but then all the scandals came to light.  The joyous time after the birth of a healthy baby was spoilt for Anna when Josh’s past behaviour and then current Ashley Madison affair was discovered and publicised. I can understand Anna’s desire to have another baby after Meredith and after Josh’s return from “rehab”, she was cheated out of the joy of a new baby by Josh’s behaviour and had to be a single parent whilst he was reforming himself. Perhaps part of their “deal” is that Josh had to agree to more children in order for Anna to forgive him. She appears to be a good mother and homemaker and to genuinely love and want her children. I hope that at the very most they stop at eight rather than keep adding to their brood. Josh needs to find some business venture that he can throw himself into and be challenged and develop and grow. His past behaviour was atrocious. His future just seems so mundane and boring. He needs to find some dreams. 

The  2G Duggars really can’t have dreams or aspirations. Their parents trained that notion out of those kids. JB pretty much guaranteed that his kids would not succeed outside of his clutches or independent of him. I think he keeps many of them inline by dangling items: homes, property, business positions, planes, cars...

[PurpleCats]

I hope they stop having babies after this one... and send their kids to public school. 

[Hisey]

On 5/13/2019 at 1:36 PM, neurogirl said:

It's hard to think about this one. The big question is would he still feel as entitled to sex had he not been raised fundie?

It's such a difficult question. It's really hard to say, and probably impossible for us to know. If Josh had been raised by secular, normal parents, his life would have been so different when he was 14 or 15.

He'd be attending regular school, involved in sports, allowed to have friends from different backgrounds, taught about sex in a healthy manner, taught respect for women, encouraged to explore different academic fields, able to look forward to college, etc. It's indisputable that he would have lived in a totally different world. Would he have acted the exact same way in such a home? Who knows?

Certainly there are predators who grow up in normal homes. OTOH, the Duggar compound is clearly an unhealthy place and one that taught Josh many negative things. With that said, we know nothing evil about his brothers. If such an environment "creates" predators, how did the other Duggar boys escape this fate?

It's a very complicated question.

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Hisey

[Anna Bolinas]

1 hour ago, Hisey said:

He'd be attending regular school, involved in sports, allowed to have friends from different backgrounds, taught about sex in a healthy manner, taught respect for women, encouraged to explore different academic fields, able to look forward to college, etc.

Secular, "normal" parents do not necessarily allow friends from different cultures or teach about sex in a healthy manner or teach respect for women. And even those who do all of those things can't always combat the messages society sends to their children, like how so many movies have the female character be a "prize" for the male character.

Secular patriarchy isn't that much of a difference from religious patriarchy. The words change, but the song remains the same. Who knows what Josh would've been like had he been born into a different family? It's something we can never answer definitively. But the idea that being born outside the Duggar compound would have automatically made him a smart, kind progressive doesn't hold water for me.

[Iamtheway]

Josh always seemed smug and entitled and that is obviously personality traits that might not have been so prominent if he had not been the golden first born son in a huge family run by patriarchy and misogyno, but I think they would still have been there. 

If he had had an upbringing with friends and dating and a chance to explore sexuality in a place where abuse and mastrubation is not basically seen as equally sinful he probably wouldn’t have abused his sisters though. He could have dated a girl his own age and had akward make out sessions at parties like the rest of us. 

JB and Michelle ruined Josh’s chances of a normal life and fed the worst parts of his personality with their cultish upbringing. They then made it worse by not getting him the proper help when they discovered the first abuse. And now Anna and their kids have to pay for that. I think the whole situation is really sad. 

EDIT: That the situation is sad does not mean Josh (or anyone else) has a free ride to behave like an asshole. He’s an adult now and responsible for his own choices. 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Iamtheway

[Smee]

Personality, and Josh’s many flaws, are a nature v nurture thing that no one could ever know. Would society have convinced Josh that he was entitled to everything (including women’s bodies) if he hadn’t spent his whole life seeing his mother simper at his father and being treated as more important than his sisters? Take the same parents & family, minus the younger 15 or so siblings, living a bit less fundie in the real world and sending him to school around other girls - I could still see him ending up with Kavanaugh-like entitlement, where he’d take advantage of a drunk girl at a party without it even being a blip in his memory because it wasn’t violent and all the other entitled guys were doing it to her too. But a TOTALLY different upbringing, with female role models who demonstrate autonomy and a father who talked to him about safe sex and consent without shying away from the possibility that he’d explore his sexuality prior to marriage? I do hope it would have meant a very different Josh, because I like to believe we can raise decent boys no matter what’s in their DNA when they arrive.

I know it’s not the most popular opinion because of the horrors of imagining a child victim, but in a way I think the Ashley Madison stuff revealed Josh’s true colours more than the molestations. He was an adult when that happened, so nothing can be said about immature impulsive decisions, he had a wife who was “joyfully available” so there can be no claims that he needed an “outlet” for his sexual urges. A teenager who did what Josh did isn’t necessarily a lost hope and I do believe he could have truly repented and grown and changed. But a father of three who left his pregnant wife at home to secretly screw around with anyone he could find confirms a pattern of entitlement and sex-obsession and total disregard for how his behaviour continues to impact his family.

[nausicaa]

3 hours ago, Smee said:

But a father of three who left his pregnant wife at home to secretly screw around with anyone he could find confirms a pattern of entitlement and sex-obsession and total disregard for how his behaviour continues to impact his family.

Eh...a lot of men cheat on their wives. I realize this is a touchy subject on a female dominated forum, but somewhere around one in four men have an affair during the course of a marriage.

I wouldn't say they all have a sex obsession, any more than guys who go to strip clubs or watch a lot of cam girls necessarily have a sex addiction. Some want some variety; some want to do things their wives aren't interested in. Some just don't like their wives all that much (like two people who barely know each other pushed into a marriage at age twenty...). 

And we don't actually know if Josh engaged in sex with anyone else. The Ashley Madison hack showed that it was basically a scam with a bunch of dudes talking to fake accounts. We don't know that he was willing to screw around with anyone he could find. 

All that being said, I do agree that Josh Duggar is an entitled sleaze. I also agree he doesn't give a crap about how anything impacts his family. He may very well currently have issues with sexual boundaries. I just don't know if the Ashley Madison thing is definitive proof of that. 

Edited May 22, 2019 by nausicaa

[nausicaa]

12 hours ago, Angelface said:

I’ve always suspected that Josh would prefer a smaller family.  Anna, however, has made no secret of the fact that she wants “as many as God sends”. I wonder if Josh might have drawn the line at four but then all the scandals came to light.  

I think Josh is a short-term thinker who gets bored and horny and sleeps with his accessible wife who was taught to always be "willfully available." Anna is a true believer and won't use birth control and would balk if he put a condom on. She's reliably fertile. At the end of the day, Josh knows there won't be real consequences because Anna will do the bulk of the child rearing and J.B. will rescue him financially. Result: six kids.

I am kind of surprised he didn't get a secret vasectomy, since he doesn't appear to be a true believer and has no qualms about dishonesty in his marriage. Then again, long term planning has never been Numnuts'  forte either. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

10 hours ago, Smee said:

I know it’s not the most popular opinion because of the horrors of imagining a child victim, but in a way I think the Ashley Madison stuff revealed Josh’s true colours more than the molestations.

I couldn't disagree more.  

What he did to little girls were things decent people recoil from the thought of....and are would be completely incapable of doing those things.  He was not only capable of doing it, he sought it out.  Again.  And again.  Multiple victims.

He craved what he did to those little ones.  We know this because he tried to stop and couldn't.  Longing for prepubescent girls is evil and that is who he is.  I will never be convinced otherwise.

The cheating makes him an asshole.  The child molesting makes him a monster.

[JordynDarby5]

 

4 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I couldn't disagree more.  

What he did to little girls were things decent people recoil from the thought of....and are would be completely incapable of doing those things.  He was not only capable of doing it, he sought it out.  Again.  And again.  Multiple victims.

He craved what he did to those little ones.  We know this because he tried to stop and couldn't.  Longing for prepubescent girls is evil and that is who he is.  I will never be convinced otherwise.

The cheating makes him an asshole.  The child molesting makes him a monster.

If I could like this a million times I would. Yes! He's monster. What he did was horrible and despicable. He molested 5 girls which was 5 girls too many. He wasn't curious, his upbringing didn't make him do it. He did it. He knew it was wrong and he did it anyways. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

10 hours ago, Smee said:

A teenager who did what Josh did isn’t necessarily a lost hope and I do believe he could have truly repented and grown and changed.

I disagree with this also.  I remember very well being a teenager and I had very, very poor impulse control ...but I never harmed anyone sexually because it never occurred to me.  That it not only occurred to him but his urges were so strong he has a trail of victims in his wake makes him inherently dangerous, IMO. 

[RosyDaisy]

One of Josh's victims was 5 years old. That's not curiosity. Nope, no way in hell. It was a deliberate act of an evil, sick twisted mind. A boy playing doctor with similarly aged, non-related, willing, girls is curiosity. Molesting his sisters and unwilling girls is not. The fact that this is being debated is very disturbing and disgusting to me.

 

 

[Glasgowghirl]

We will never know for certain if he would have abused anyone as a teen or not if he was raised diffently. I do think that if he had shown some of the behaviour's he did as a teen then chances are he would have gotten treatment sooner and maybe been punished. 

One thing I do know that he would not have gotten married at 20. I'm sure he loves Anna and maybe even thought himself when they got married that he would stay faithful to her but it was never going to be enough for him and I still think he will cheat again, if he hasn't already. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

42 minutes ago, Glasgowghirl said:

chances are he would have gotten treatment sooner and maybe been punished. 

Maybe, maybe not.  This is a terrible secret people keep swept under the rug in non-fundy circles as well.

 

43 minutes ago, Glasgowghirl said:

I'm sure he loves Anna

People keep saying this and no snark, just curiosity....where does this idea come from?  What has he ever done to indicate he loves her at all?  

[nausicaa]

2 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

The cheating makes him an asshole.  The child molesting makes him a monster.

Yep. I'm really not trying to minimize cheating in my posts, but having an affair with another consenting adult (whether a sex worker or not) is worlds away ethically from molesting your very young sisters.

Adultery is wrong, and the other partner has every right to feel hurt and betrayed by it. But I could be friends with an adulterer. I could never be friends with someone who sexually assaulted their siblings. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by nausicaa

[Smee]

2 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I disagree with this also.  I remember very well being a teenager and I had very, very poor impulse control ...but I never harmed anyone sexually because it never occurred to me.  That it not only occurred to him but his urges were so strong he has a trail of victims in his wake makes him inherently dangerous, IMO. 

Well, yes, it’s true that sexually abusing someone doesn’t cross the mind of most people- most women, at least. We actually don’t know how many men thought about it but didn’t act on it in their teens. Who would admit to something like that, especially if they DIDN’T do anything beyond thinking? There are lots of things that never occurred to or appealed to me that other teens did, but I don’t think the fact that *I* never struggled with them indicates that they’re something no one else could possibly overcome and change about themselves as they grew and matured.

What Josh did was despicable and monstrous, there is absolutely no argument there. And the lack of consequences he faced for it is also outrageous. My only hesitation is with the idea that it’s an accurate indicator of who he (or anyone else who did something like that at that age) is as an adult. Maybe I expressed myself poorly in saying that the Ashley Madison stuff shows who is MORE; I think what I actually mean is that to me, the Ashley Madison stuff and the stripper/prostitute who made claims about violent sex with him (my memory is fuzzy on that one) is an indicator that even if he could have changed, he didn’t. He still thinks his sexual urges are more important than anyone around him, and he’s still willing to do things that he knows to be morally wrong (in modern society’s worldview and/or the quiverfull worldview). 

I suppose my hesitation to label teen-Josh an irredeemable monster comes from wanting to believe that if a young guy came to me and told me he was struggling with inappropriate thoughts about his little sister or cousin or neighbour, there would be something we could do to prevent those thoughts from turning into actions and help him to become a healthy functioning adult. Maybe that’s naive and some people are just evil. But I hope not.

[Hisey]

14 hours ago, Smee said:

I know it’s not the most popular opinion because of the horrors of imagining a child victim, but in a way I think the Ashley Madison stuff revealed Josh’s true colours more than the molestations. He was an adult when that happened, so nothing can be said about immature impulsive decisions, he had a wife who was “joyfully available” so there can be no claims that he needed an “outlet” for his sexual urges. A teenager who did what Josh did isn’t necessarily a lost hope and I do believe he could have truly repented and grown and changed. But a father of three who left his pregnant wife at home to secretly screw around with anyone he could find confirms a pattern of entitlement and sex-obsession and total disregard for how his behaviour continues to impact his family.

I know. This is my feeling, too. The things he did as an adult were despicable, and really cruel to a young woman who seemed to love him and trying hard to follow the "good wife" rules. The things he did at 14 and 15 were despicable too, but I think his parents were partly responsible for creating that toxic environment.  That's why we have different laws for teenagers (usually) than adults. 15 is not 27, especially not in terms of brain development. At 15, he still needed parenting, and unfortunately he did not get it. He didn't have the freedoms of an adult (like the freedom to get in the car, drive away and find a girlfriend) so the law doesn't apply the same penalties.

Quote

if a young guy came to me and told me he was struggling with inappropriate thoughts about his little sister or cousin or neighbour, 

You certainly wouldn't advise him to spend 24/7 in a tiny, crowded house with those innocent little girls while they all were being "homeschooled". And if he was being forced to do so by his parents, you might call CPS.

Edited May 23, 2019 by Hisey

[Smee]

8 minutes ago, Hisey said:

I know. This is my feeling, too. The things he did as an adult were despicable, and really cruel to a young woman who seemed to love him and trying hard to follow the "good wife" rules. The things he did at 14 and 15 were despicable too, but I think his parents were partly responsible for creating that toxic environment.  So I hold him far more accountable for his actions as an adult--even though child molestation is far worse than infidelity. That's why we have different laws for teenagers (usually) than adults. 15 is not 27, especially not in terms of brain development. At 15, he still needed parenting, and unfortunately he did not get it.

Your words are so much better than mine! Thank you. I didn’t want to sound like I thought child molestation itself isn’t as big a deal as infidelity. 

[SilverBeach]

I don't think the Duggar parents were responsible for Josh molesting his siblings including a five-year old. Something is just wrong with him. I had two brothers and we were six people and a dog in a cramped two bedroom apartment with little privacy. I never even saw their private parts and they never saw mine or my sisters. That shit Josh did just ain't normal. Now how Jim Boob and Mechelle handled Josh's molestation after it came to light, that was totally fucked up. 

This is a repetitive topic also, it comes up from time to time. They may not quite be Josh apologetics, but some posts come close. I say to hell with them all, Josh and his parents.  And Anna is a stupid baby factory. Can you tell that I don't like the Duggars?

Edited May 23, 2019 by SilverBeach

[HerNameIsBuffy]

31 minutes ago, Hisey said:

15 is not 27

Do you think a 15 year old is less capable of understanding that it's wrong to touch prepubescent girls, including a 5 year old, than a 27 year old?  Or that sexual attraction to very young girls is more common in a teen than an adult?

 

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

51 minutes ago, Smee said:

Well, yes, it’s true that sexually abusing someone doesn’t cross the mind of most people- most women, at least. We actually don’t know how many men thought about it but didn’t act on it in their teens. Who would admit to something like that, especially if they DIDN’T do anything beyond thinking?

I think it's pretty harmful to put out there that who knows how many teenage boys think of molesting 5 year old girls as if this is a normal part of sexual development.

It's not.  And any attempt to normalize it is dangerous.  It empowers predators (""everyone feels it, they just don't admit it") and it minimizes how very sick the are.

 

[tabitha2]

But it was not just being a 15 year old But a 15 year old raised in healthy family dynamic by a long shot. He was stunted by his culture and his parents like they all have been in varying ways. He was not a irredeemable  monster. He needed proper therapy and supervision and to be the hell out of that house. And no that’s being an apologist but we can agree on things like this. 

[nausicaa]

1 hour ago, Smee said:

 if a young guy came to me and told me he was struggling with inappropriate thoughts about his little sister or cousin or neighbour, there would be something we could do to prevent those thoughts from turning into actions and help him to become a healthy functioning adult. 

I agree that his parents handled this terribly. I guess my question is, is it that common for a teenager to struggle with inappropriate thoughts about very young siblings and/or cousins and then grow up to *not* be a pedophile? Or is the argument that early intervention can more effectively help those with an inappropriate attraction to young children?

These aren't hypothetical or leading questions on my part. I don't have any background in this and really don't know.

I always assumed a heterosexual young man undergoing the hormonal surge of adolescence is attracted to post-pubescent girls' and women's bodies. This is always so weird to talk about, but I *suppose* I can understand a very sexually repressed young man with boundary issues trying to catch a look at his similarly aged sisters in the shower (which, to be clear, is NOT okay) and then growing out of it and having a healthy sexuality as an adult. But two of the victims were much younger than him and his actions really are bizarre and beyond idle curiosity as written up in the report.

I do appreciate the distinction when FJers point out that we don't know that Josh is a pedophile, only a child molester. At the same time, we don't actually know he isn't a pedophile either. 

Edited May 23, 2019 by nausicaa

[HerNameIsBuffy]

2 minutes ago, tabitha2 said:

He was not a irredeemable  monster. 

You can't possibly know that.  Any more than I can know that he is, but to me his actions indicate that he is.

4 minutes ago, tabitha2 said:

He needed proper therapy and supervision and to be the hell out of that house

That I agree with 100%  But giving him a pass based on his dysfunctional family isn't something I'm going do.  Plenty of people have extremely dysfunctional families and don't sexually assault 5 year olds.