Reformed Whore Syndrome

[AnnieC 305]

Is it just me or do the vast majority of the "fundies" we discuss all seem to have had their first one or two before marriage, and either right out of high school or even before that? And ever since they they have never been able to scrape their mud into a ball? If you look beyond the foofy blog background their children are usually a sickly, filthy mess, they're living in crucial poverty, they married the first loser who came along and who is not supporting them financially really at all so they're living off handouts and they have no hope for a future for them or their children. But they are the first ones to stand up and tell everyone who doesn't live exactly like they do that they're going to hell.

Anyone else notice this?

I'm thinking of calling it Reformed Whore Syndrome. It obviously doesn't apply to everyone who had a child out of wedlock or young, only the ones who are now playing the Holier Than Thou card.

A classic example currently under discussion, Joanne from Narrow Is The Way.

fewtherebethatfindit.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html

She had #1 at 16, so still in high school, #2 at 18 by my math, married #2's father when #2 was 9 months, and then had #3 in marriage. Since then she's been divorced twice and looks to be living in a church basement off of handouts and the support of her sons ages 18 and 14 and eating bug-filled flour and slop. She is now busily telling everyone that they are going to hell and her life is just peachy wonderful perfect and we should all live just like her.

:roll:

Anyone have any other examples?

(Mods, feel free to move, merge or delete if inappropriate)

[fluttershies]

Michelle Duggar seems like the obvious example - she may not actually have been promiscuous but Jim Boob brainwashed her into thinking she was.

[emmiedahl]

Wendy Jeub, of course. Two daughters in high school (were there 2 different dads? did she even finish high school?) and then she religioned up with Chris.

Disclaimer: I was a teen mom, no judgment here, just sayin'. I guess I am a reformed whore as well. :roll:

[AnnieC 305]

Wendy Jeub, of course. Two daughters in high school (were there 2 different dads? did she even finish high school?) and then she religioned up with Chris.

Disclaimer: I was a teen mom, no judgment here, just sayin'. I guess I am a reformed whore as well. :roll:

I'm not sitting judgement on teen moms, it can happen to anybody. It's the Holier Than Thou nonsense that I'm picking on.

[Marian the Librarian]

Kelly Crawford and Stacy McDonald.

[Guest Anonymous]

Kelly Crawford and Stacy McDonald.

Oh yes. Kelly Crawford has it bad.

**ETA: Also, this very much fits my mother. Married and had kids very young, divorced, went wild, partied, remarried, and went fundie.

[LucySnowe]

No kids, but Josh Harris discusses in Boy Meets Girl that Shannon (who he married) lost her virginity at 14 and was pretty much never without a boyfriend after that. And she was a hard-partying girl in college. The phrase 'she was careless, even reckless' sticks in my mind, as does the advice of Josh's dad, which was that he should never use Shannon's past a weapon against her. Ugh. (Josh was a virgin when he married but he'd done other stuff.)

They definitely did the whole 'only chaste side-hugs' thing during courtship because they wanted to 'save kissing for marriage' and at some point they decided that they'd only masturbate when the two of them were together.

I am disappointed in my brain at how much of this it's regurgitating.

[Dinaberries]

No kids, but Josh Harris discusses in Boy Meets Girl that Shannon (who he married) lost her virginity at 14 and was pretty much never without a boyfriend after that. And she was a hard-partying girl in college. The phrase 'she was careless, even reckless' sticks in my mind, as does the advice of Josh's dad, which was that he should never use Shannon's past a weapon against her. Ugh. (Josh was a virgin when he married but he'd done other stuff.)

They definitely did the whole 'only chaste side-hugs' thing during courtship because they wanted to 'save kissing for marriage' and at some point they decided that they'd only masturbate when the two of them were together.

I am disappointed in my brain at how much of this it's regurgitating.

Whoa, Josh Harris admitted to that?

Anyway, while I don't think my mom was a whore, I do think she had Reformed Whore Syndrome for a long time. Mom lost her virginity to a stranger when she was 14, had about a dozen or so partners, an abortion at 19, had me out of wedlock, and had a shotgun wedding when she was pregnant with my sister. When my sister and I were really little, she became extremely religious and I think she felt very guilty for her past, and she manifested her guilt by being incredibly judgmental of everybody else, and was extremely paranoid of my sister and I having sex (she even cried when I, at about 11, told her that I had known where babies come from since I was six years old). These days, she has chilled out a lot, though. But yeah, when I think of "Reformed Whore Syndrome", my mom is the first person/thing/thought that comes to mind.

[pixydust]

Oooh, I think that my mom had this! My mom didn't loose her virginity until 18 or 19, had my brother and I at 21 and 23 (while living with our father long term). To me, this doesn't sound bad at all, but my mom had a lot of guilt over it, and when she was fundie the guilt was awful! She soooo wanted me to stay a virgin that she ignored all of the signs that I was having sex as a teen (my brother, too.....I think that she had a bad case of head-in-the-sand).

[LucySnowe]

Whoa, Josh Harris admitted to that?

As far as I remember, though I suspect it was in the book about lust.

It just all seems to be about regulating sexuality.

[ThisOlGirl]

Sarah the ZsuZsu groupie @ Hate's Desire.

[koolmom]

In a way, my own step-mom answered to this call. She'd had her son (my step-brother) in her early twenties', was unwed, then later meets my bio dad, (who already had three of his own kids), married him, and from what I can ascertain, didn't seem to have much S-E-X with him one or two years into their marriage. They had a bizarre arrangement where she slept on the living room sofa as if she were hired help, and that's pretty much where she wound up until she left him over ten years later (he was an abusive asshole who abused her and us kids). She used to occasionally talk about actors she'd have crushes on, but didn't seem to have much interest in having a sex life, with my dad or anyone else, for that matter. Even after she left, she never re-married or had any other close male companions.

[debrand]

Warning. Rant coming up

Because many of these women are close to my age, they probably grew up with the same influences that I did. Nice girls did not have sex or only had sex when they were in love. Men had different sexual needs than women so were supposed to be obsessed with sex. If a woman had the same needs as a man, she was a nymphomaic, meaning she has something mentally wrong with her, or she was a whore. That sounds a lot like fundamentalist thinking.

Fundamentalist women don't get angry at the society that produced their guilt. For some reason, they absorb that guilt and believe that they are worthless. Religious conversion is an excuse to change their life. Except they become part of the same problem that created their guilt and pass that unhealthy view of women's sexuality on to their children.

The world is changing and I am overjoyed about it. Hopefully, my daughters will be judged by their intelligence, kindness, creativity etc and not how many sexual partners that they have had or not had.I don't know why fundamentalist women would not want that for their children. Why burdern your kids with the unhealthy hangups you have?

Rant over.

It has always stuck me as weird that Christians put so much emphasis on purity. The bible does mention waiting until marriage but it has far more verses about helping the poor, not lying, not gossiping, answering rude answers with kindness, etc. I've yet to see anyone give their child a 'feed the poor' ring.

edited lieing into lying

[deelaem]

Although I get what you're saying, I have a huge problem calling it "Reformed Whore Syndrome". First of all, there's little evidence that any of these women were actual prostitutes. And the word "whore" has so many negative and sexist connotations. While they might have been what society calls promiscuous, let's remember that men are never held to that same standard.

[debrand]

No kids, but Josh Harris discusses in Boy Meets Girl that Shannon (who he married) lost her virginity at 14 and was pretty much never without a boyfriend after that. And she was a hard-partying girl in college. The phrase 'she was careless, even reckless' sticks in my mind, as does the advice of Josh's dad, which was that he should never use Shannon's past a weapon against her. Ugh. (Josh was a virgin when he married but he'd done other stuff.)

They definitely did the whole 'only chaste side-hugs' thing during courtship because they wanted to 'save kissing for marriage' and at some point they decided that they'd only masturbate when the two of them were together.

I am disappointed in my brain at how much of this it's regurgitating.

What is sad is that they don't understand why the dad's advice was wrong. First, why did Josh go to his father with information about his wife's personal life? That seems to cross a line in the first place. Second, there was nothing to forgive her for or to punish her with. Fundies don't understand that what a woman does with her vagina is NONE of their business.

Most fundies and even a lot of conservative Christians would view Father Harris' advice as progressive and compassionate. It is not.

[gezykah]

This could also describe many politicians and their families such as the Santorums. How does his wife go from living with the OB/GYN that delivered her to marrying Rick? Maybe the doctor wasn't the best man for her but she had to have internalized some condemnation to live the life she does now.

[TinyDancer87]

I've noticed this trend amongst fundy women as well. But it's a faulty way of thinking for them! Take Michelle Duggar for example. She and JimBob kissed before marriage, maybe even more :snooty: So they do their best to live their lives so that their children don't make the same "mistakes". But what I've never understood is if their sins led them to God, wouldn't they want the same for their children? If a Duggar girl says to herself "Hm, I really want a husband like my dad. What should I do to prepare myself?" Well, shouldn't she be kissing a boy behind an icecream shop (rather than reading about purity), because THOSE series of events led to the holy marriage that they have now! Does this make sense?

Anyways, my mother-in-law is completely a reformed bad-girl. Ran away at the age of 15, had my now-husband at 16, next one at 18, got married at 19, then had her third child at 21. Then she turned completely fundy. She would judge others SO much, even her own daughter. She told my sis-in-law "you don't deserve to wear white at your wedding because you are not a virgin". Then my sis replied "Well at least I didn't run away at 15 and get pregnant!" That shut her up pretty quick!

[Wickedwickedwitch]

Do as I say, not as I do?

[MadameX]

Although I get what you're saying, I have a huge problem calling it "Reformed Whore Syndrome". First of all, there's little evidence that any of these women were actual prostitutes. And the word "whore" has so many negative and sexist connotations. While they might have been what society calls promiscuous, let's remember that men are never held to that same standard.

I am totally on board with being critical of slut shaming, double standards, and the language thereof. But I think it's important to keep in mind that in this culture, for a lot of women their sexuality is a sort of currency. Not exactly like being an actual prostitute, to be sure, but I think it can be an apt metaphor when used carefully and with full awareness of its connotations (which are not exactly pleasant but not always inaccurate, either).

In this case, I would also argue, none of us are calling these women whores, but naming a phenomenon in their own community according to how it is construed by them. So the impact of the word "whore" in this context relies on the negative and sexist connotations to describe the phenomenon.

[Kitty]

If you're only talking about women and pre-marital childbearing here, then this probably doesn't apply, but there's a male version too. I know of one fundy here in NC who was reformed after serving time in prison for rape, and just about every "testimony" I've heard has involved the (male) testifier going on and on about how he tried to kill his liver with alcohol, smoked a ton of weed, had sex with anything that sat still long enough, and he may have even been an atheist until he hit rock bottom and found Jesus. Maybe it's just a fundie-lite thing, though, but with the fundies' obsession with sex I probably shouldn't be surprised over "Reformed Whore Syndrome" in women and not in men. Even in the fundie-lite realm I would expect women to go on about having kids out of wedlock and men to stick to other things like drugs or crime.

[Kitty]

I am totally on board with being critical of slut shaming, double standards, and the language thereof. But I think it's important to keep in mind that in this culture, for a lot of women their sexuality is a sort of currency. Not exactly like being an actual prostitute, to be sure, but I think it can be an apt metaphor when used carefully and with full awareness of its connotations (which are not exactly pleasant but not always inaccurate, either).

In this case, I would also argue, none of us are calling these women whores, but naming a phenomenon in their own community according to how it is construed by them. So the impact of the word "whore" in this context relies on the negative and sexist connotations to describe the phenomenon.

^This. Though it's probably not too far off-base to describe fundie marriage as "legalized prostitution," as Elizabeth Cady Stanton would probably put it.

[GolightlyGrrl]

Knock, knock. Barbara Curtis, your thread has arrived.

I don't like to slut shame, and there are plenty of women who had live wire sex lives, but don't become fundies. I think the difference is that some of the fundie reformed whores we discuss here are actually mean-spirited and hateful, and probably were in their younger years. They're were never "whores with a heart of gold" like Samantha from "Sex and the City."

I also have an inkling Alte from Traditional Christianity has a bit of a past. She puts way too much emphasis on getting married with your hymen intact, and she loves to call other women sluts for the simplest of reasons (wearing a bikini, living in her own apartment, etc.).

[MadameX]

Wow, I must be like the world's biggest slut according to this woman!

But I'm sorry, I would totally blow my husband if he'd buy me this bikini - http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/pro ... 837255.jsp

That's like some form of double-whoredom, no?

[StacyW]

Wow, I must be like the world's biggest slut according to this woman!

But I'm sorry, I would totally blow my husband if he'd buy me this bikini - http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/pro ... 837255.jsp

That's like some form of double-whoredom, no?

It is cute but I don't see any elastic around the leg openings. Wouldn't personal parts peek out?

[MadameX]

It is cute but I don't see any elastic around the leg openings. Wouldn't personal parts peek out?

Oh, that's all part of the deal for me, as an Extreme Slutty Whore. 8-)

In all seriousness, though, I'd like to think that a $138 pair of bikini bottoms is somewhat well made, although sometimes Anthro is hit or miss...