It’s the Duggar interview!
Things I learned from it:
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It’s not such a big deal for a girl if she’s fondled while she’s asleep.
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The girls didn’t even know about it! Nope, never. Their brother was groping them, but they were somehow completely oblivious.
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The victims didn’t know about it, the parents didn’t know about it, but apparently they have perfect knowledge of the times that he molested their children.
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They held off for years after multiple incidents before sending their son off to some guy.
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They tried for the sake of the children to pretend that no big problems were going on. For years.
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It wasn’t like Josh was a child molester or pedophile…he was just molesting little people who were under 10 years old.
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They talked to other Christian families, and this was really a common problem.
All right, I’ve had my full dose of creepiness and hypocrisy tonight. I’m done.
Ugh, no desire to watch that, I’ll take your word on it.
Comment from Sara Lang on Twitter: This is from the family where they aren’t allowed to hold hands until they’re engaged, right?” with the quote from Jim Bob “He touched them under their clothes, but it was like for a few seconds”
Ugh is right.
Jim Bob and Michelle said that Josh’s actions were “nothing like rape”. Umm, excuse me?! He sexually assaulted his sisters. No, that’s not rape, but it is not that far from rape. It’s still a violation of their bodily autonomy. It’s still non-consensual. There just wasn’t any sex.
God they disgust me.
“They talked to other Christian families, and this was really a common problem.”
Well, maybe if you live in a culture where ‘consensual extramartial sex between adults’ has the same moral weight as ‘sexually assaulting a child’, education about sex and consent and other important matters is non-existent, and boys in general are taught that women exist to provide things for them, then it’s a common problem.
That just means instead of a single set of parents screwing up big time, you have a whole subculture screwing up big time.
Wow. Privilege and apologetics all at once. I can’t watch it, but I hope those in the media who care about integrity will jump on this and expose the interview for what it really is.
Notice it came out conveniently *after* the statute of limitations ran out.
That was pretty much what I was expecting, and I still threw up in my mouth a little.
These people want to believe that keeping all knowledge of any kind of sexuality from children equals innocence so of course they also want to believe that the girls didn’t really know what was going on. And somehow to them that makes it less of a crime???? If some pickpocket lifts your wallet and you don’t realize it until later does that make it less serious of a crime?
Anyway, I don’t believe the girls were unaware for a second. I’d sure wake up quickly if I felt something or someone touching me.
Oh, it was just inappropriate touching! Well, good to know it was only inappropriate touching of minors, many so far below the age of maturity anywhere on this planet that it’s disgusting to even consider the idea of touching them inappropriately. I mean, everybody wants to touch Jesus, and Jesus was once a baby, so molesting small children while they sleep really isn’t any different. It’s basically the same exact thing.
I, personally, am rather comfortable with the idea of just smothering him and his ilk with a pillow. It is, after all, only a little inappropriate asphyxiation, and I’m sure victims of pedophiles often think about snuffing out their abusers lives much like I do. I mean some people enjoy it, so really, it’s just like giving a warm, friendly hug. Through a pillow. Over their face. Its just bringing him closer to God!
With the incandescent rage out of the way, I’m really not surprised, and I sincerely hope the worst thing that can possibly happen to them under their fucked up belief system occurs, and hope somehow the victims get the help and understanding they need tenfold to make up for them being denied everything just to protect their precious son. Just screw them all.
My fiance (who is Christian, and has had an interaction with a quiverfull family with similar issues) has always wondered when the hell Jesus said anything about overpopulating and trying to make your children ideological clones of yourself with no room to experience life or express emotion. JimBob talks about speaking with other Christian families, but they only talk to other families like theirs.
One of the most telling lines she told me she caught on a commercial was when he said that Michelle had “baggage” because she had kissed a guy before they were married.
Plus there was an episode where the parents chaperoned their adult daughter’s date, did not allow any physical contact, and taunted the young couple. They did this by being affectionate in front of them and jeering.
That is just what we saw in the commercials: JimBob sexually shamed his wife, the two of them still control the romantic life of a daughter they have groomed never to be independent, and they taunted her and her date with implicit affection and sexuality.
“…none of the girls were aware…”
I stopped the video.
They are Christians®.
Whatever happened to that ‘sparing the rod’ stuff?
a8mew
Comfortable?
Color me unsurprised that this is a common problem among Fundamentalist Christian families for the reasons Becca Stareyes lists. Also, isn’t inappropriate touching one of things that is supposed to be covered in the dreaded sex education that they oppose so vehemently? I think I know why they oppose it – it might encourage the victims to tell an adult outside of the family about being molested.
Why the fuck haven’t these monsters been brought up on child abuse/neglect/endangering charges yet?! There has to be some legal words somewhere to cover a situation where parents knowingly keep their children in a dangerous situation with a child molester.
gmacs
Not in the sense I would go out and do it myself, but in the sense that if it were to happen I would probably throw a party over it. I know it’s not morally or ethically just, but if the opposite end of the spectrum is a coverup with a stern talking-to and accolades for “spiritual growth” with no legal consequences for anybody whatsoever, at least my words are inactionable and come from having been sexually abused as a child with no justice for me either, whereas theirs come from nothing short of being utterly reprehensible people.
Given the disparity, I’m standing with my choice of words even if they are a little vague.
Thankyou for watching it so we don’t have to.
I have one question. Megyn Kelly is a former lawyer, and whilst a fox news lackey she is definately no idiot. Did she ask any hard attourney like questions at all? Did she have to vomit half way through?
a8mew
Don’t do that.
.
Makes me think that you are not a
victimsurvivor.Do NOT try to speak for those who are.
a8mew,
I certainly wouldn’t judge you for your own thoughts about your abuser.
Fox really missed an opportunity to have Megyn expose all the kinky fuckery that goes on in the Duggar household: brother on daughter, father on son, dog on mom in increasingly shocking horror until Megyn’s eyeballs are shooting out of her head and she’s vomiting and the Duggar’s jump into the vomit to conceive another Duggarite, and at the end of it all a near suicidal, crazed Megyn exclaims, “Oh my fucking God, what in the name of Hell do you call this sick fuck family of yours?”
And the Duggars look fondly at each other and shout in unison, “The Aristocrats!!”
I understand the urge to other these assholes by calling them monsters.
But they are not monsters. They are human beings. Call them ethically and morally deficient, repugnant assholes. But they aren’t monsters. They are human beings. Referring to them as monsters distances them from humans. They are vile, yes. But they are still humans and for all that their actions are reprehensible, they are still human actions that can be understood. That understanding is important in working to ensure this shit doesn’t happen again (or happens less).
I also understand the urge to wish violence on them. It’s hard to beat down that urge. But I think it’s important to recognize that more violence in the world isn’t going to make it a better place. Would violence against the Duggar parents change the past and prevent Josh from sexually assaulting his sisters? No. Aside from violating their human rights, such violence is nothing more than vengeance. As a Humanist, I want less violence in the world and I want a system of justice that does not deny people-even the most repulsive people out there-their human rights.
And I really, earnestly respect that opinion and think its the right stance to hold, Tony. I really do. But I’m not quite that good a person and really can’t say I’m cozy with turning away vengeance when everything else has failed- even in the face of all responsibility and ethics- and it’s considered too late to do anything else about what happened. And given these things tend to not just go away or be one-off events (I mean the parenting manual they support has a freakin’ guide for it, for crying out loud) I’m willing to say there’s probably a whole lot more going on behind the scenes we don’t know about, and unless something is done I’ll even go so far to say as even more will happen.
I can at the least enthusiastically get behind not calling them monsters however. Stripping away the fact they’re human only makes it easier for it to happen again with someone else when everyone is on the hunt for the boogeyman and doesn’t think it could be their neighbor because he lent someone a hammer once and is generally a nice guy until he closes the front door.
@Tony!
I’d say that the worst part is that they aren’t monsters. They’re not card-carrying villains with Snidley Whiplash mustaches , they’re not Always Chaotic Evil, they’re not demons in human form. They’re normal humans. Who did something completely horrifying to most of us.
And the rest of us have to deal with the fact that we’re evolved from a species whose anger response was to jump on the offender and maul them.
No matter how much his parents try to gee him up, young Josh knows he committed a serious crime. That’s why he is out of a job and saying goodbye to any chance of a career in politics. Most of the people he has ever known in his adult life will never speak to him again and they certainly won’t pose for photographs with him like they did in the old days. Even the Christians who pretend to forgive him will send their children out of the room whenever he walks in.
@Tony – I wholeheartedly agree with you, after I blew some steam off.
Ugh. They are still talking as if the problem here is unmarried sexual contact, with the added “ugh” factor of the other party being his sister. No concept of the fact that the major issue here is the lack of consent.
Really? In a sub-culture which devalues women and consent, and forbids adolescents from having natural, consensual sexual contact*, sexual assault is a problem? Well, fuck me. Who could of guessed?
*This is not to excuse his actions. He made the choice to deal with his sexual frustration through sexual assault, and that’s on him. But I can’t help thinking that had he been allowed normal contact with people he was attracted to then there’s a fairly decent chance that motivation wouldn’t have existed, and that’s due to the sub-culture he was raised in.
Agree completely with @Tony! The Queer Shoop #21.
Not only that, but by considering a flawed someone so fundamentally different from ourselves we implicitly create the delusion that we are somehow immune to those same flaws, we become complacent in our “superiority” and we let our guard down…
In the end, we create exactly the context where this kind of abuse can happen.
@24 grumpyoldfart
Unfortunately that won’t always be true, as his parents seem to prove…
It’s not “just” the fact that they didn’t do anything, that they obstructed justice, that they protected their abuser and did nothing for those girls….it’s also the fact that they are so happy to throw all those girls under the bus in order to try and save face for their ridiculous and inmoral believes and lifestyle. It’s the catholic church on the paedophilia cases…fuck the victims, what matters is that their image is salvaged as much as possible, because who cares if a few little girls were abussed, what matters is that christianity must look as good as posible, even in the face of criminal failure.
It makes it that much more disgusting….
It’S all about them, how horrible this was for poor Michelle and JIm Bob, it’s all about Josh, how troubling this was for him. It’s never about his victims.
And honestly, when i see Michelle look at this sick bastard with such devotion, I want to shake her and yell at her to wake up, but I know better.
Libby Ann covered this extremely well, by saying that when you only have two categories for sex, “premarital not allowed” and “marital anything goes”, there is zero way to separate consent-based and nonconsent-based sex within that bad “premarital not allowed box”, which is why people in that mindset have such a problem with understanding why everyone else thinks consent is important.
The best result that can come of this is that people understand how toxic the Quiverful movement and everything that comes out of the mouths of people like Bill Gothard and Michael Pearl are, and consign them to the irrelevance they so deserve.
“I understand the urge to other these assholes by calling them monsters. Etc. Etc. reminder to not call them monsters due to the false distance it puts between them and us etc.”
Thank you muchly for missing my point. Why isn’t law enforcement dropping on these *flawed, flawed but still human individuals* like a ton of bricks for their horrible parenting?
the last holdout @32.
At this point, the answer is ‘statute of limitations’. Back when they had a friend who was a cop talk to him… well, I guess he was being more of a friend to the parents than a cop.
1. Is the statute of limitations on child molestation really so pathetic that Josh is free and clear after 5 years? I thought for a while we were prosecuting preists who’d molested kids 20 years prior.
2. Doesn’t Josh to this day have contact with and access to his victims since he’s a family member and was part of the show until it was cancelled a week or so ago? Wouldn’t that constitute a pretty recent/current definition of child endangerment/neglect/abuse?
Tony! The Queer Shoop @4:
But to believe that, you’d have to first believe that a woman (or girl) has a right to her own body. If, on the other hand, you believe that women are essentially a form of sexual convenience for men – a sort of animate fleshlight – then the only thing you’d be upset about is that this was done with girls who hadn’t been given to him to use.
Given the sexual mores sects like this espouse, wasn’t he just practicing for adulthood?
It is my understanding that abusers were often the victims of abuse themselves. So, has anyone even bothered to ask what may have transpired between Jim Bob and Josh?
The Deaprtment of Human Services did get involved, but Arkansas lets you sue them to make whatever they’re investigating stop. Josh did so in 2007, when he was 19 (and when the cameras were rolling for the birth of one of the kids, but somehow TLC managed to miss that the family was going to court?) and won, so that he could remain living in the same house with his sisters. I’m surprised that part isn’t being highlighted more – that isn’t about “we did what we thought was best”, that was literally rejecting safeguards being put in place for the girls.
“The Deaprtment of Human Services did get involved, but Arkansas lets you sue them to make whatever they’re investigating stop. Josh did so in 2007, when he was 19 (and when the cameras were rolling for the birth of one of the kids, but somehow TLC managed to miss that the family was going to court?) and won, so that he could remain living in the same house with his sisters. I’m surprised that part isn’t being highlighted more – that isn’t about “we did what we thought was best”, that was literally rejecting safeguards being put in place for the girls.”
This is still sounding like a massive failure of the legal system. And of course it sounds even worse for the Duggars now.
Since it’s a reality show, why not make this a part of it? They could show the family sitting around the table talking about what it’s like to have a pedophile in the family; the girls could talk about having been abused. This is a part of their reality, so let’s have a complete picture.
“Since it’s a reality show, why not make this a part of it? They could show the family sitting around the table talking about what it’s like to have a pedophile in the family; the girls could talk about having been abused. This is a part of their reality, so let’s have a complete picture.”
Please don’t give TLC any more ideas for repugnant reality shows.
It’s difficult to believe anything they say, since they are obviously determined to minimise the abuse as much as they can, keeping silent about facts until they are directly questioned about them.
But if they are telling the truth about that part, their son came to them repeatedly , confessing to his abuse… and they kept hoping a talking to would be enough?! Yeah, it really shows how much they care for their daughters. The son grew up to be the same lying piece of shit as the parents, but for that boy in the past I have more sympathy than for his parents. If only they’d helped him when he’d asked them to he wouldn’ t have comitted even more abuse. The girls would have been safe.
Also, they basically confessed that sexual abuse of girls by male family members runs rampant in their circles…. and they use that as a sort of defense?!
THat sentence alone should prompt thorough investigations of their little cult.
“Also, they basically confessed that sexual abuse of girls by male family members runs rampant in their circles…. and they use that as a sort of defense?!
THat sentence alone should prompt thorough investigations of their little cult.”
Nail, meet head. Now hit it as hard as you can.
Tony @#21 you said it perfectly.
Other-ing people is a lazy trick we often do when we can’t understand their behaviour or don’t accept their ideology. The less othering that occurs, the better place we’ll be in.
@42 Beatrice
But they are supermoral people, unlike those godless heathens that think that little girls are human beings and shit…
Being able to ignore, dismiss or justify outrageously inmoral behaviours has always been a hallmark of christianity…
Libby Anne deduces that “some guy” was Bill Gothard, who resigned from his headship of the “Institute in Basic Life Principles” when it emerged that: “he had sexually harassed and molested over thirty teenage and young women working at his facilities”. The Duggars probably did not know this at the time (although apparently there were already rumours), but why are they now so squeamish about naming him? Could be because the trooper they eventually reported Josh Duggar’s offences to, and who failed in his legal duty to report the matter further, is now serving 56 years for child sexual abuse. “To take the case of your sexually abusing adolescent son to one adult abuser may be regarded as a misfortune; to take him to two looks like carelessness.”
@42 Beatrice
That’s true, I wonder if law enforcement has come in asking them more detailed questions about who they were referring to.
The family’s lack of focus on the victims is appalling and sick, but of course that’s because they simply don’t give a damn about the victims. That’s how the victims became victims in the first place.
Is there no one here who’s behaved in similar manners at similar ages? Would such a person, now old and gray, have any pithy insights regarding similar behavior? #1 Probably not. #2 Probably not.
“Is there no one here who’s behaved in similar manners at similar ages? Would such a person, now old and gray, have any pithy insights regarding similar behavior? #1 Probably not. #2 Probably not.”
Lolwut?
It looks like they will also interview two of the molested sisters. Journalistic integrity for the win *blech*
@Beatrice 50:
And you know that they’re probably interviewing the two sisters who did the best in auditions for “agreeing that the librul media victimized them more than their dear big brother ever has.”
I, too, am guilty of often declaring people who perpetuate horrific actions as “monsters”. (but I do it the right way, of course). It’s not just to “other” them, but to hold them as examples of what NOT to do it, for myself. I’ll use them often to compare my actions with, “will doing this make me a monster too?” I’ll ask myself before doing something that I’ve never done before. Not that I’m ever tempted to do something horrific, but I’ll still question myself thusly. While I agree that often people will call someone a ‘monster’, to “other” them, it is often self-righteously. A justification that anything they do is GOOD and the monster does is BAD. A form of denial.
So. The “monster” label can be useful, when used as a mirror for self-reflection. To just paint someone with that label, to exclude them, is not useful.
[and speaking of monster mirrors, I’m being monstrous by justifying the occasional use of the M~ word. excuse me please]
to extract from that ‘pology, perhaps the use of “monster” should be replaced with the word “monstrous”. Focus on the actions, not the person. Perhaps. Maybe, maybe not. IDK. just sharin my thoughts. YMMV
thelastholdout ,
Yes, I don’t doubt it. They’ll do anything to protect their image, even trot abuse victims in front of the media to sign praises for their brother and parents.
I feel so sorry for those young women. I can’t claim to know how they really feel, and they could really be largely unaffected (everyone reacts to abuse differently), but the thing is that they were never given a chance to sort it out for themselves! They never even got a reprieve from their abuser, let alone some satisfaction in knowing he can’t hurt anyone else. They just had to keep smiling and pretending nothing happened in front of freaking TV cameras.
I just… can’t even form a coherent comment to express my loathing for that pair of sorry excuse for parents and what they have done to their children.
@Beatrice 53:
For me, the terrifying thought is that clearly abuse is going on in these families, as evidenced by the admission by Michelle and Jim Bob that they were told that this behavior happened in some of their friends’ families. And the way they dealt with it-not reinforcing the fact that what happened to the girls was abuse and wrong, protecting Josh, etc.-is creating an effect of normalization, which could lead to the young womens’ own children befalling the same fate in turn. And so the cycle of abuse will continue with nothing to stop it, since clearly it’s being hidden from law enforcement officers who will actually DO SOMETHING about it.
And now that it’s not even hidden any more but out in the open… still nothing.
This “scandal” will blow over and, besides brave escapees from that subculture doing their best to help, nothing will happen. Confession of widespread abuse? What confessio?
@Beatrice 55:
I sadly have to agree with you. How many people keep in mind that “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” was cancelled because Mama June kept dating/keeping in contact with a child molester who may or may not have abused some of her kids?
I have never, not even as a young teenager, fondled or otherwise molested a sleeping girl. Or anyone who didn’t (or was unable to) give consent. I hope that most people haven’t.
As for pithy insights: Jesus, that’s creepy and illegal. Don’t do it.
@54 thelastholdout
“Boys will be boys” comes to mind….one of the most disgusting phrases in history and a prime example of how utterly misandric patriarchal sexism can be aswell.
Weirdly, if a pr0n producer came out with a clever title, and a satire of this family, with lots of re-enactments and thoroughly exploitative and disgusting scenes… it’d be less disgusting than this family.
@31, carlie
I sure hope that the media coverage will turn public opinion against this barbarian cult and set them on course for oblivion. Worked for Scientology so far.
There are no non-human monsters. Never have been. All monsters are human.
What’s really disgusting are their defenders. I saw some tweets on RawStory. Some blamed Clinton. Some blamed poor African Americans. It really was disturbing. A popular theme seemed to be “Liberals did something bad ergo they have no place to talk when one of us does something worse!”
@Alverant- it worked for Newt Gingrich.
Except for those who really believe that God forgave him and his sins are thus undone.
There really are such people.
While I’m already doing remote psychology, these people also believe 1) in the devil and 2) that the devil can in principle tempt anyone to do anything. To them, there probably is no such thing as a pedophile; there’s just someone whose vigilance slipped for a second when the devil planted the Deadly Sin of Lust into his heart, < sentiment actually expressed, in these words even, in various Facebook comments and suchlike.
Such authoritarian belief systems are fractally fucked up.
Oh yes.
There’s good coverage of Bill Gothard’s approach to sexual abuse here.
A page from Gothard’s Advanced Training Institute for homeschooling is presented. The page is titled “Counseling Sexual Abuse.” It is, basically, a road map for blaming the victim and forgiving the abuser. “Immodest dress” and “Being out from protection of our parents” are mentioned. How much we damage our “Spirit” by harboring bitterness or guilt is mentioned.
If your body is damaged, Gothard advises that you dedicate your body to God.
Failure to report is very bad, is disobedient. So, what do you do? Confess the guilt to God.
Forgive the offender and “turn over to God for His discipline or ask God to pardon.”
Various “cleansing” techniques are recommended.
Especially egregious: “If you had to choose … No physical abuse or might in Spirit, what would you choose?”
Sounds to me like, according to Bill Gothard, Josh Duggar’s sisters should be thanking him for making them mighty in Spirit.
What a bunch of sickening garbage.
Not quite – a few dolphins have been just as cruel.
OK, that’s objectively funny. I’m not laughing, but I really feel like I should.
With bleach?
Oops, sorry, wrong cult… I think.
At the link provided in comment 65, there’s more information on the idea that females “defraud” males in various way. Michelle Duggar buys into this “visual element that might defraud someone.”
I don’t believe in hell or capital punishment but after struggling through the whole interview…
Oh FFS! More campaign finance corruption:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/06/republican-national-committee-megadonors-2016
Whoops, my bad. I posted comment 70 in the wrong thread.
My play by play e-mailed to a friend.
I haven’t gotten up the stomach to watch the recent interview of them yet. I’m kind of hungover, not puking is hard enough as it is.
Against by better judgement I’m trying. 1:35 in I’m at 5 pauses in disgust, 2 blatant contradictions of the police report and one bout of yelling at the screen.
8 pauses and 3 yellings at 2:59
3:10 apparently molesting children is what it takes to get personal attention from the Duggar parents.
5:00 9 pauses, 4 yelling at the screen instances, and they are doing a terrible job of hiding the way they are trying to frame the story and produce good sounding soundbites. The interviewer is helping too but it’s FoxNews and they probably wouldn’t have agreed to an interview without assurance they were to be lobbed a bunch of softballs.
5:08 Minimize, minimize, minimize it’s fucking obvious and disgusting. (+1 pause obviously)
5:34 So the third time he confessed to molesting children we felt like we couldn’t handle this in-house, so we brought in some family friends. Fuck.
6:39 I made it a whole minute without pausing it! There was even a real remotely hard question from the “reporter” unfortunately the answer made me yell at the screen again.
6:58 “As parents you aren’t mandatory reporters” holy fuck, could you be more obvious in trying to hand-wash your inexcusable behavior?
7:49 I should stop, I want to murder Jim Bob Duggar with my bare hands because he is an awful person who clearly takes no responsibility the mistakes he made and his so transparently trying to excuse himself.
@ thelastholdout
IANAL, but yes, the statute of limitations is that pathetic for criminal charges. Very few priests have actually been prosecuted, most cases against priests were in civil court (hence settlements instead of jail terms). I would imagine the victims would have a pretty strong case if they opted to sue… but for at least some of them, this would require suing their brother and parents, ostracism from their community, and so forth. Pretty steep barriers there.
Seems like it to me. I would love to have an actual lawyer weigh in. But really, families like this should have had HHS/CPS on them like a hawk prior to these revelations, but y’know, religious freedom and tyranny and all that. :P
Like most fundies, they’re all about “mistakes” & “forgiveness” when the perp is a member of their cult. When it’s someone outside the fold, they’re all “YOU’RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL!” & “LOCK ‘EM UP & THROW AWAY THE KEY!”
a8mew @ 10:
Victim here, and I’ll thank you not to speak for me, ever.
Obligatory song reference link. (with possibly the cutest video ever)
@65 Lynna
*vomits*
I know there are people who actually think that would be excellent, christian advice…they would even consider it compasionate…It just makes me want to cry…
It’s not just this cultish example that demonstrates an environment for easy abuse of children. I grew up in a blue-collar catholic neighborhood where the sexual repression was heavy and the silence was deafening. To those who attempt to minimize the impact of sexual abuse on children let me just say a hearty fuck you, assholes.
One component of the experience of being raped as a kid is the immediate violation. Another is the family and social context for attempting to understand and process what has happened. Conservative religious sexual shame based family and social systems give an individual no tools with which to comprehend the event. Without a basic vocabulary of understanding of what happened one has a difficult time even knowing one has been violated.
I will set out my own example as that of one who, in spite of many bouts of therapy, retains a significantly warped view of my own value and worth to myself, my family and community. it is like a parallel set of values which do not respond to reason, evidence or the love of my family. I can hold an intellectual position as to my self worth, but I cannot alter my visceral self-loathing and it’s destructive consequences in relationships or the decades lost to despair and unproductivity.
Among my elementary school classmates and family I can count at least a dozen who went through something like I did, attacked by adults who were never taken to account for their actions, aided and abetted by the culture of silence and sexual ignorance of our homes, parochial school and church. It is an evil system and the evil begins with religion.
thelastholdout @32:
I didn’t miss your point. That wasn’t what I was addressing in my comment.
shakeb @69:
So, as judge and jury, you’ve reached the verdict-execution for the Duggars. Is that it? The moral revulsion of civilians ought to be sufficient to put people to death? No trial by a jury of your peers? Is that what you call justice? Human rights be damned?
Nope, just an outburst and rhetoric. They are terrible people but they are people. It’s a shame they escaped justice but even then the justice would’ve been far short of summary execution.
@Caine, No. 75:
I too was a victim of child sexual abuse. I don’t recall ever fantasizing about snuffing out my abuser, although when he died I did go to the funeral to make sure he was dead.
I’m sure different abuse victims cope in different ways. Some probably do fantasize about doing bad things to their abusers. There’s probably no “right” way; everyone just has to work through it on their own.
The capacity for empathy, I think, is the requirement for monster-hood. Any creature mentally sophisticated enough to be capable of entity is thus capable of being a monster by ignoring or overruling its own empathic tendencies.
Amphiox, maybe some people are just born without the capacity to feel empathy, just as some people are born without the ability to see or hear.
I don’t believe in free will, so I don’t hold Josh Duggar morally culpable for what he did. I think Josh Duggar is the product of his biology, his parenting, his circumstances and his past history; that those things combined to make him what he is, and what he was at the time he did the molesting.
That does not mean steps shouldn’t be taken to protect other people from him. There’s no moral culpability to being a venomous snake either, but that doesn’t mean we don’t protect ourselves from them.
eeyore # 84;
Do you not believe in moral culpability at all? If so, do you think morality is useful as a concept? ’cause it sounds like you don’t think anyone can be held morally culpable for anything, if the gateway is the free-will problem. If you don’t believe in moral culpability, what’s your take on the role of morality as a whole?
Feel free to answer or not – I don’t want to put you on the spot for the answers! I just find it an interesting position you’ve staked out for yourself.
I have no problem admitting to violent fantasies of revenge. During the period where I was amnesic about my experience the perp went on to do the same to many more kids, in his role as a child psychologist for a catholic group home. As my amnesia began to lift I began recalling individual events, becoming enraged and then processing these memories. This pattern continued for years in initial therapy. I had about 15 years of repressed emotion to process, and it took time. I am happy that I never acted on the rage, though it was close, and I am surprised no one else did either, given the numbers of targets.
The fact that people actually watch their show for any reason than the comedic value is frightening!
If TLC cancels the show, who supports this band of merry morons? You know those good christian folk won’t!
We’ll wind up with the tab, just like with Octomom.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk- wrote:
Indeed. I would love to actually hear from his victims instead of from everyone who is covering for Josh. I expect they were likely made to apologize for their brother into abusing them, and that deserves as much light shone on it as any of this. I wonder if they’re still experiencing sideways looks for or for
Sadly, due to the idea that religious freedom should also include the freedom from criticism, and the way the Duggars use this idea as a shield, I suspect there will be little appetite for most journalists to shine any light on this (and more children will suffer as a result).
Savant, No 85, I think the word “morality” has fallen victim to sloppy usage and subjective interpretation that at this point if it’s not a completely useless concept, it’s close. Like justice, freedom and other value-laden words, its definition is mostly in the eye of the beholder — what you think is just or moral, and what I think is just or moral, may or may not be the same thing, and it largely comes down to personal opinion.
So instead I prefer the utilitarian paradigm of simply saying that Behavior X produces Result Y. Decide what kind of results you want, and then engage in the behavior most likely to produce them.
As far as free will is concerned, I don’t see any evidence for it. I think there’s an illusion of free will, just like there is the illusion that the sun revolves around the earth, but upon closer examination both of those are just illusions. You are the product of a long chain of events over which you mostly had no control, and if you had been born somewhere else, or had different parents, or had a different set of emotional needs that did or did not get met, you would be a completely different person.
So in the case of someone like Hitler, or Ted Bundy, or Jack the Ripper, I don’t feel any need to sit in moral judgment of them even though they did despicable things. They were what they were, and had no more control over what they were than a butterfly can choose to be a cockroach or vice versa. Instead, I focus on the utilitarian question of how to prevent them from doing harm, and how to keep future Hitlers from achieving power, and maybe even how to change the conditions that created Hitler in the first place.
I think that someone who is sufficiently self aware may be able to change, but even having self awareness is something you either have or you don’t; you can’t choose to be self aware if you’re completely clueless. So even that isn’t a choice.
Humans may not have free will, but they do have brains capable of understanding abstract concepts like future consequences or how other people might feel. It just means that you have to consider what will or will not work as far as methods of stopping someone from sexually assaulting his sisters.
They didn’t know he groped them! So, what’s the problem, then? Similarly, if a woman is roofied and then groped or worse, it doesn’t count, either! Ah, good and proper Christian values.
eeyore @ 89:
Can I ask a quick question, based on what you said:
What is assuming free will and acting as if people have it is an effective method of producing your result?
Like the “Don’t Be That Guy” anti-rape campaign, which appeared to have measurable results?
To put it another way, if you find that presuming people don’t have free will, and acting thusly, tends to produce bad behavior in the folks you are interacting with, what do you do?
Well, yeah; they’re called sociopaths (name with a bad history) or psychopaths (plain bad name).
For the record, though, they’re not common enough to commit most cruelties, and I have no reason to think that Josh Duggar is one.
Anri, I don’t believe God exists, but I do think there are some people who are better people because of their religion than they would be otherwise. (Of course, there are lots of people who are worse because of their religion too.) Something can be useful without being true. And I do think people, like all other animals, can be re-programmed. You can get dogs to do all kinds of things with positive and negative reinforcement that they wouldn’t do otherwise. Children want approval from their parents and friends, and I think that can be used to encourage them to behave in certain ways.
So, I think the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign may have been a reinforcement that encouraged some men to be different than they would have been otherwise. Because it produced good results, it was a worthwhile thing to do. But it’s not free will at work; it’s reprogramming. Most people don’t want to be thought of as jerks.
Be very careful about psychopath, sociopaths and generalizations.
The role of nature and nurture is not clear and I have read more than one article on links between things like childhood neglect or other abuse and psychopathy. If a child is raised to feel that other humans are tools, threats and similar it’s not unreasonable to think that the conditions are a matter of biology doing sensible things. They should be pitied and helped as we necessarily deal with psychopathic behaviors.
The article you link to first says the opposite:
“This dual nature poses a challenge for society. It also clarifies a common confusion regarding the difference between sociopaths and psychopaths. While some use these words interchangeably, ‘sociopath’ is an ideological term that became fashionable in the 1970s, and which implies that this condition is mostly or even solely determined by dysfunctional social conditions [which is why I said “name with a bad history”]. In light of the evidence that psychopathy involves clearly specified neural systems, which suggests that the condition is biological at its core, there really might be no such thing as a sociopath. Psychopathy appears increasingly less as a character flaw and more like a brain defect.”
I called “psychopath” a “plain bad name” because, at a reasonably literal level, it simply means “mentally ill”, which is all kinds of wrong.
The next paragraph in that article goes (as a deliberate rhetoric device) back and forth between “mostly nature” and “mostly nurture” in each sentence, then appears to come down on “mostly, perhaps even entirely nature”, and then goes all “it’s complex” in the last sentence.
I thought I had an article bookmarked about a clearly psychopathic boy whose brother is entirely normal and who does not seem to have suffered any neglect; the father is not at all absent, and neither is the mother for that matter. But I don’t have it bookmarked, and it’s almost half past midnight…
Could that have been this?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html
@David Marjanović
If it helps I was trying to be general about who that comment was directed at. If it seemed like I was pointing it at you I apologize.
The paragraph you quote came from the section of the article devoted to the difference between a psychopath and a sociopath.
That’s a reasonable way to see things. Most people using the term in society would be better off talking about the behaviors associated with it. My reasons for my comment stem from how the way the word is used tends to ignore ways that society can affect people predisposed to be psychopaths.
That seems to describe something we don’t know very well to me. I get a little vague when referencing things I learn about brain science myself. It’s hard to get something complex across without being creative, especially when talking about brains and behavior. It’s a sensitive thing.
Not even neglect will explain all psychopaths. Maybe I could have worded things better but I wish we paid more attention to how people can become psychopaths. Maybe this situation with the Duggars will help with that, if I choose optimism.
Yes, thank you! I just read it again and recommend it again. :-)
eeyore @ 94:
Ok, then, in your experience, does declaring that people lack free will tend to produce better results, morality-wise?
Also, if someone isn’t making an effort to avoid being thought of as a jerk (because they can’t, because they lack free will), how does not wanting to be thought of as a jerk alter behavior?