To do:
_X_ Create more children than it is possible to supervise.
_X_ Remind them often that boys can’t control themselves and their sexuality, and it is a girl’s responsibility to not tempt them by wearing tight-ish clothes, being pretty, or being a girl. Any feelings of temptation in behalf of a boy is a) uncontrollable and b) a girl’s fault.
_X_ Keep children isolated so that they literally have no way of understanding normal human development outside of what you tell them.
_X_ Emphasize that all touching before marriage is equally bad: a front-hug with your fiancée is Absolutely Forbidden, and just as bad as group anal sexual assault on an altar. Remember: all touch is bad. No reason to think fondling your sleeping barely-out-of-toddlerhood sister is any more or less bad than, say, making out with a peer.
_X_ Always set an example for your children that once you ARE married, sex is something that happens all the time (don’t forget, ladies, “be available!”) — so much that you have a billion kids — and so it’s sort of the ultimate forbidden fruit.
_X_ Act surprised when a boy child takes these messages — all of the messages you have been shoving down his throat — and fondles his sisters. After all, his sisters are girls, boys can’t control themselves, and it’s not like incestual assault is any worse than finding a girlfriend on the sly (not possible anyway because of the isolation).
_X_ Act surprised when he does it again, and “implement safeguards,” like not letting boys hold little girls in their laps, because what is really important is that you normalize the assault — again, it’s not HIS fault, he was a boy. The best you can do is separate all of the rest of the almost-certainly-molesters (boys) from the harlots-because-they-exist (girls).
_X_ Go on the campaign trail and try to make incest punishable by death. Chuckle to yourself at your inside joke.
_X_ Act surprised when he does it again. Send him away, because at this point, your family is starting to get famous, and his actions might seriously impede your fame.
_X_ Emphasize that the girls must forgive him, because Jesus forgives (except for if you’re gay), and anyway he’s a boy and can’t help it, they shouldn’t have tempted him by being born.
_X_ Make some robocalls about how transgender people are bad for children. Look, another inside joke!
_X_ Remember, God’s only use for girls is as props in the lives of boys. Sometimes props get molested, but hey, can’t argue with God.
_X_ Don’t let your girls forget that they are now disgusting and impure, used up cups of other people’s spit.
_X_ Remind your oldest and best son, the one who preyed on your don’t-matter-anyway daughters, to condemn others for being sinners and dangers to children (another inside joke moment, life is hysterical!)
_X_ Act outraged when the story comes to light. Who will protect the former predators?!?
_X_ Blame the media, whom you invited into your home and who made you very, very rich, and who had given you platform after platform to advertise your lifestyle, who is only a part of your life because that’s how you orchestrated it, for ruining your life.
_X_ Point out that the boy molester was only a child (even though the Duggars are a-okay with 17-year-olds, just a couple of years older than the 15-year-old predator, to be on their way to marriage), that he got counseling (well, he worked on roofs or something, which is totally the same), that the touching was no big deal because it was mostly over clothes and on kids who were asleep (even though… no wait, there are a lot of hypocrisies here, but let’s just imagine being a 10-year-old or say just old enough to be in school and knowing that it’s your responsibility to keep your uncontrollable savage oversexualized brother tame by somehow not being a girl, and that if he touches you you are a cup full of other people’s spit, and knowing that every time you go to sleep you might just wake up with his vile man hands all over your child’s body, your formerly pure body that has now made you worthless because of his groping, let’s imagine trying to ever go to fucking sleep again with him down the hall). Whatever you do, do not worry about those disgusting impure girls in your house.
_X_ Figure out which of your daughters to pimp out to TV to minimize the problem. Choose the ones who are already married (now that they are already married, no need to worry about future husbands thinking they are damaged goods!). See, they didn’t know it was wrong (but front hugs from your fiancée are), they weren’t affected (but now they are being revictimized by the media), and really truly it was No Big Deal (but will not let their sons ever sit on a couch with their daughters).
_X_ Congratulate yourself on a brainwashing well done. And look, you created 10 new warriors for Christ! Wait, there are 19 of them? Naaaah, only the boys matter, those girls are troublesome temptresses from the very moment it’s clear they have a vagina.
___Wait for the next skeleton to come tumbling out of the closet. Because you set your life up this way, it worked out pretty much as could be expected, and since you weren’t willing to reconsider all of this patriarchal bullshit when literally one of the worst things that could ever happen to your daughters happened — if that’s not enough to make you think “we need to change our plans, not just adapt to the ideas that all boys are buckets of uncontrollable lust, all girls are evil temptresses, all touch is equally wrong, and sexual purity is the only way to determine worth” — you can’t expect any other outcome.
One reply on “Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar’s To-Do List”
Trigger warning: one of the saddest things a mother-to-be can experience.
When the show first started (fuck if I remember how many children they had back then), I already thought it was disgusting & vowed to not follow it. Circa 1950, my mother’s mother was told by her ob/gyn, “for the love of God, stop having kids!” So she went to her priest, who said, “for the love of God, keep having kids!”
From the early 1940s to the late 1950s, she was pregnant fifteen times, and five of those were miscarriages. My mother, the eldest, was almost out of high school when her youngest sibling was born. As far as I know, nothing disgusting happened within the family. (My mother is unfortunately the kind of person who casually talks about things that should not be talked about amongst sensitive people, so I expect she would have mentioned anything traumatizing or criminal.) But there was a terrible financial roller coaster in the households.
The bright side to this is: maybe some day those poor women who are actually people despite what they’ve been taught will have someone who genuinely cares about them (platonic or romantic, it doesn’t matter) assure them that they don’t have to feel like garbage, that they can develop their own personalities, and that they can form their own opinions and morals about things.
My mother saw her mother be pregnant fourteen times. In turn, my mother was pregnant twice. She was a Civil Rights activist, one of the last officers in the WAC, and frankly a whole bunch of other awesome things. Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar are horrible people. Some of their kids might someday truly understand that, and grow as sensible members of society.