Power, Purity, Meekness and God. The Ugly Reality of Rape Culture.

The problem you are addressing is not connected to religion, but is connected to the impact of liberal secularism on religion. Doesn't liberalism teach relative morality? The behavior you are condemning is relative, to the needs of one person, and not based on traditional global teachings. Once the closet was opened for some, using the relative standard, all the rest are now looking to get out of the closet, with this topic about another closet dweller that seeks to be liberal-ated.

If you look at sexual reassignment, for example, this is not natural. It is not natural in the sense, that humans cannot spontaneously change into another sex, no matter how much they think or wish this. To think this way, in nature, the mind is disconnected from it own natural limits. Sexual reassignment is possible, but only because of science, not because of nature. One has to add an artificial additive, since it not natural.

Because liberalism does not see this cause and effect, and will still call sexual reassignment natural, to spare feelings, as this irrational mindset begins to permeate culture, any unnatural fantasy, will want to assume it too is relative and natural, and wish to be accepted by culture; leave the closet.

If we apply science to the damage done to the children, they can be fixed by therapy, so this is natural like sexual reassignment, since both are possible with artificial propping up by science before or after. To me both are unnatural because natural is not relative.

 

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Do you ever get tired of being full of shit?

 

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This and That

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Given that we're dealing with a cultural outlook that deliberately creates hypersensitivity toward sexuality as part of its exploitation, one can only wonder why you're defending rape culture.

This is sickness. Get healthy.

• • •​

In the conservative vernacular, teaching about moral relativity equals teaching moral relativity. This is a rhetorical sleight that remains common among conservatives for two reasons: (A) Conservatives practice moral relativity, and (B) aren't smart enough to recognize reality.

This outcome under these circumstances―a sexual purity cult resulting in sexual abuse of its members―only surprises those who aren't paying attention.

You can't wish this away as some sin of liberalism. It's not like the phenomenon would go away without liberalism. We would just hear about it less. Of course, that's kind of the purpose, isn't it?

Rape empowerment is ugly, but maybe you don't really care about political aesthetics since ugliness is your chosen medium. Still, it is also very, very dangerous, and it is pretty clear you don't really care about that.

Get your head out, put it on straight.

Seek help, if necessary.

When your political aesthetics require justification of rape, you're already out of control. Get a handle on yourself.

 

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It turns out we were both wrong about the trauma expressed by the children in the police report. This addition less redacted report gives the surprising source of those crying and upset children.

http://imgur.com/a/uePgT#1

And then I read some excerpts from the Duggars recent Fox interview and realized we were also wrong about the counseling given the children.

“All of our children received professional counseling” after the confession, “including Josh, who paid for his own counseling himself,” Michelle Duggar told Kelly.

Jim Bob Duggar said that after counseling, his son was "a changed person." He said the family trusted Josh but retained some safeguards, including rules against people being alone together and prohibiting their daughters from sitting in boys’ laps.

By the time the family agreed to be the center of a reality show, “we had nothing to hide,” he said. “We had taken care of that [touching problem] years before.”

http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...-19-kids-and-counting-fox-20150603-story.html

 

Yet you have no problem with adding "artificial additives" to people who lack limbs, or who can't walk, or who are nearsighted, or who are deaf, or who are morbidly obese, or who require medications just to live or to feel normal. It's simply disingenuous to hold up nature as some unquestionable arbiter of person's physical or mental state denying any sort of changes to their body, in the case of transgender people, but then concede the necessity of doing so in other cases. There is no moral imperative for a person to accept their born condition as some sort of inviolable decree of fate. We now have the ability to override nature where it has been deficient in its provisions, and in all cases, as it is a huge quality of life issue, such options should always remain available.

 

So, let's just look at what we have here: A person invested in an ideology, protecting that ideology, protecting a television show and its revenue, making excuses for child molestation, and you naïvely believe everything they say.

In the interview that aired Wednesday, Jim Bob Duggar said Josh came to him at age 14 and said he had "improperly touched some of our daughters" while they were sleeping.

“Safeguards” were put in place, but then Josh started to touch the girls in a different room, he said. Sometimes the girls were awake, he said.

"This was not rape or anything like that," Jim Bob Duggar said. "There were a couple of instances where he touched them under their clothes, but it was like a few seconds. And then he came to us and was crying and told us what happened."

He said that after Josh's third such confession, the couple decided they could not handle the situation on their own. When Josh was 15, they said, they sent him to a "training center" in Little Rock run by a man who mentored young men who had made "unwise choices."

(Parker and Hamedy)​

This is from the link you provided, and we see a few things going on just in that excerpt. We see incredibly naïve "safeguards"; I mean, just read that sentence: "'Safeguards' were put in place, but then Josh started to touch the girls in a different room."

Okay, let's just be clear: If it's that easy to work around, it isn't a safeguard.

And that sentence: "He said that after Josh's third such confession, the couple decided they could not handle the situation on their own."

So here's the deal:

• You find out your son is molesting children, so you put "safeguards" in place ... in only one room in the house.

• You take the boy to a child pornographer with a badge for a strict talkin' to. And what doesn't actually matter is Jim Bob's excuse that he didn't know. The Duggars enlisted a cop to break the law and protect a child abuser.

• Josh tried blaming his mother because she just doesn't understand men, but I think more people are starting to blame her because, well, she's doing everything she can to protect a child molester.​

Even your own source makes it clear that the "professional counseling" Josh received and "paid for ... himself" was nonstandard counseling: "When Josh was 15, they said, they sent him to a 'training center' in Little Rock run by a man who mentored young men who had made 'unwise choices.'"

And there's that great line in there about how Michell Duggar focused on her son's behavior and intent", by talking about her daughters.

But in the end, here's the thing: Faced with this situation, the Duggars did everything exactly wrongly.

When people are committing crimes in order to hide sexual abuse of children, there is exactly no defending them.

There's a reason this is called "rape culture".

But, hey, why not go ahead and have another try at making excuses for it, Capracus?

Give that sickness all the chances you can afford.
____________________

Notes:

Parker, Ryan and Saba Hamedy. "Josh Duggar scandal: He 'was a child preying on a child,' his father says". Los Angeles Times. 3 June 2015. LATimes.com. 4 Jun. 2015. http://lat.ms/1MpmcdS

 

A note on selective cynicism, as there is some market overlap here:

• After the slaying of Trayvon Martin, President Obama said something countless politicians have said of a tragic outcome, that this could have been his child. The right wing exploded, accusing him of racist self-interest and politicizing the tragedy. Such cynicism.

Yet here we have a family with (A) political, and (B) financial stakes on the line, and look at how many people are swallowing every vile drop the Duggars offer up despite everything they say being observably and exactly harmful.

When I was in sixth grade, a classmate's mother called in a rage, once, because her daughter arrived home with the insides of her jacket pockets soaked with some sort of ink. She had gotten some ink on the outside of her jacket in class, and ... really, I don't know what happened from there, but from the mother's angry description, the jacket was thoroughly destroyed with some large quantity of ink, as if someone had dumped an inkwell in each pocket. So I explained what I saw, which apparently ... again, I don't know. As an adult, I can style this memory to make perfect sense, because I've seen the behavior again in the years since. But at the time, I don't know, I probably didn't recognize the mother's internal conflict as, well, given the stories before her, one was plausible and the other wasn't.

So she said, "Well, _____ is a Christian, and she doesn't lie."

I've heard that line again over the years. It only comes up once in a while, and I don't think I've heard it for over a decade. But there seems to be some version of that going on. There seems to be some effect in play whereby the Duggars are representative of something claimed to be virtuous and therefore must be afforded all presumption of virtue despite observable circumstances.

This family is defending a political and financial stake, as well as the fame that comes with such stakes, is apparently to be regarded as irrelevant.

I mean, look at how wide-eyed and naïve ... no, let's call it by its name: Look at how stupid their supporters have to be in order to keep this up.

And there is market overlap for this contrast: A black guy speaks a customary platitude and we must receive it with all the cynicism and outrage we can muster because, you know, black guy! A Christian family protecting celebrity, political influence, and revenue says observably outrageous things, and we must give them all the credit in the world, because ... well, why?

Is it really because they call themselves Christian?

Or maybe this is bigger than that. Maybe this really is about putting women in their places. Imagine that. Even what progress women have enjoyed in our society over the last decades being nothing more than self-victimizing, grudging concession as people wait to smack the bitches back into their proper places.

But seriously, why are people willing to denigrate and humiliate themselves like this just to support a fucking rape cult?​

 

It is natural - and is, in fact, "God Sanctioned" after all, if it weren't, surely He would not have allowed it to occur - if it were not natural, our bodies would reject it outright.

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The only sources for any information regarding the incidents that took place in the Duggar household were Josh, Michelle and Jim Bob. Without their recollections none of this becomes known to the daughters, the babysitter or anyone else. So I guess we all must be naïve to give credence to any part of their accounting.

If my son hits my daughter, I tell him to stop, and I explain to him why he shouldn’t. If he continues, he gets sent to his room along with additional consequences. That’s typically how parents progressively apply correction and consequences to an ongoing behavior problem, I see the Duggars acting pretty much along the same lines.

No, the article didn’t imply that the professional counseling came from the mentor, that was your misinterpretation. This is how it was actually stated:
“All of our children received professional counseling” after the confession, “including Josh, who paid for his own counseling himself,” Michelle Duggar told Kelly.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...-19-kids-and-counting-fox-20150603-story.html

Here’s another take on the interview:
The parents then sent Josh to receive Christian-based counseling from a mentor in Little Rock, they said. Michelle also told Kelly that “all of our children received professional counseling, including Josh.” Jim Bob Duggar said the counseling came from “accredited professional counselor.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...fox-news-interview-with-josh-duggars-parents/

And yet we consider it understandable when parents commonly don’t report their children’s crimes of physical violence, vandalism, or drug abuse. But for some reason the combination of sex + offense + hypersensitivity = break out the torches and pitchforks. No double standard there.

 

Here's a funny bit from history and philosophy: Under the Cogito and the Circle, you are exactly correct.

Even funnier is that the Circle exists because Descartes panicked.

Here, let's take a trip back in time; how about eleven years↗?

But before Abramism attempted to stomp out homosexuality, it seems the feminine side of men and the masculine side of women were accepted, even celebrated. The coming together of a single gender in some occasions held mystical significance. We must remember that gays are not bucking tradition, but demanding the respect that is historically and anthropologically recognized in history and beyond.

We Americans find ourselves at a new threshold. Traditionalists in the United States must choose between traditions. Will they choose the American tradition that has served so many so well, or throw it away because somebody else's gender offends them?​

Here we are, eleven years later, and as our neighbor reminds, the traditionalists are still pretending they're smart.

Not that they're fooling anyone, but, you know how it goes.

 

This is actually something worth watching, because there is a device in play that really does beg consideration.

If I were to ask you what this situation had to do with Jeb Bush, you might wonder why I was asking.

Do we all remember Mr. Bush's really bad week↗ that involved trying five different answers↱ to what should have been a softball question? There was something strange about how they just kept pouring answers out. Well, okay, we can digress and point out that his father and brother both did the same thing trying to explain their Iraqi adventures, but somewhere around day three with Jeb it started seeming like they were just polling, as if they might figure out which answer got the best response and then stand on that and pretend the rest never existed. Yes, don't know, won't answer, no (the correct answer for this ritual), and then dodge the question entirely.

The Duggars seem to be grasping after similar straws.

But here's the thing: They're formulating for minimum passage.

There are a limited number of reasons by which we might explain their oddly insufficient intervention, and one of the most apparent is that a proper response would have endangered their fantasy. Normally I refer to epistemic closure, we're discussing the head-banging stupidity of American political echo chambers, but here we see an example of its living consequences. Quite simply, if the offender is not pathological, reconciling the issues driving the impulses would in this case require exposure to and education by countervailing influences. The sex offender would find himself obligated to address rape culture, the very ideology he is educated by. The Duggars chose nonstandard, insufficient intervention in order to protect the fantasy empowering and encouraging the abuse. The line that tells us more about their insufficiency than any other comes from the L.A. Times↱ article our neighbor offered in defense of the Duggars: "'Safeguards' were put in place, but then Josh started to touch the girls in a different room, [Jim Bob] said."

A ... a ... different room?

Okay, right there. Competence. Full stop. If we take Jim Bob and Michelle at their word, they are incompetent and should not be raising any children.

However, I digress.

It seems like the Duggars are after the sort of do-overs Jeb Bush wants, and instead of saying and doing the right things, they hope to continue as they are and merely concede the absolute minimum to be somehow satisfactory, and then stand on that as their real, final, and only answer.

And remember, in these political circles, you can be ninety-nine percent wrong yet still find vociferous support on that one percent. Kind of like the bit about how one has black friends and therefore can't be racist; if you do one thing that isn't racist, your supporters will hold it up as the only thing.

More important than the fact of sex crimes, or sex crime survivors, or potential recidivism, or any of those human considerations, Jim Bob and Michelle are protecting a family and partisan brand. The way to do this is concede as little as possible. Notice how after the bit about getting their son help blew up for the whole remodeling thing, among other aspects, they went with down-home Americana. Not only did they get him "professional counseling" (political point: reiteration despite facts in order to reinforce narrative), but he also paid for it himself (you know, like a good boy who wants a new bike, and works hard on neighbors lawns and scrimps and saves until he can afford that new bike that hasn't been ridden by some nasty kid from down the block). They're just trying to re-establish a favorable political narrative, so they need as many do-overs as possible.

And as I always say, if you let people talk long enough, they will eventually tell you the truth. Then again, it sounds like they could do this for years before coming 'round that bend. But, you know, let them talk. And then watch them try to pretend that the last thing on the list is the only thing they ever said. And then, hopefully, American society will get around to calling out the device instead of the individual application.

I don't know how you introduce kids to cricket, but in the States we start them down the baseball path with a game called T-ball. It is what it sounds like, baseball with the ball teed up for the hitter. And, yet, these are young children, so, you know, even with the ball sitting on the tee, there is a specific rule that nobody strikes out.

When Jeb Bush needs T-ball rules, we all laugh.

When the Duggars need T-ball rules? Well, isn't this just a bit dangerous?

I get that people are imperfect, but as long as we're all clear that these do-overs don't mean they didn't say the things they said before, that whatever final answer they come up with doesn't stand in a vacuum as if it was the only one, we're in good shape to simply let them talk.

Well, yeah. It's a horror show, but still, at some point they will accidentally tell us the truth.

If we let them keep talking.
____________________

Notes:

Parker, Ryan and Saba Hamedy. "Josh Duggar scandal: He 'was a child preying on a child,' his father says". Los Angeles Times. 3 June 2015. LATimes.com. 5 Jun. 2015. http://lat.ms/1MpmcdS

 

Family Values

And that's the trick. This rising do-over phenomenon―we see a lot of it in our politics, but the GOP Clown Car has been pushing the boundaries lately, and I've learned to pay attention when the idiocy concentration among Republicans surges like this; Jeb Bush is the obvious pandering do-over moron, but Scott Walker has been on a quiet tear, most famously his evolution gaffe and the twitastic followup when he still flubbed the question ... and we might also note Rand Paul, Marco Rubio's floundering foreign policy, and the undeclared Chris Christie―doesn't track what is said from occasion to occasion. It does not matter if line two exactly contradicts line one if by the time you get to line six you finally find something to stand on; then you draw all the lightning there and pretend indignance that everyone is focusing on everything else you might have tried saying, because, you know, you're thinking about the past, why you always thinking about the past?

Which, of course, is no comfort; this is pure, cynical politics. This is not simply a brand in crisis, but multiple brands:

• The Duggar Brand (television show in limbo at best; spinoff including some foremost family apologists now up in the air).

• The Quiverfull movement in particular.

• Ownership culture in general.

• Republican "family values" branding.

• Social conservative movement influence.​

Those are some heavy stakes. Traditional gender typing is also already under heavy scrutiny; yet another tragic intersection of moralism and immorality only further erodes generally, and given the influence of ownership gendertyping in this structure, those issues undertake especial significance. In truth, this is why a lot of people are focusing on the politics of Dennis Hastert. There is a viable argument that drawing more political attention to the silence of his predation, and how he was supposed to be the bland, uncontroversial, moral salvation of a political party that suddenly found itself leaping from the jaws of victory into a boiling cesspit of self-inflicted despair.

No, really. This is who Denny Hastert was: Republicans wanted to impeach President Clinton; the weight of moralism in this formula cannot be understated. The word games that got him impeached should never have occurred but for an activist judicial decision deviating from case precedent in order to compel deposition of the president in a sexual harassment suit. The reason for the deviation? The moral and personal gravity of sexual harassment. Now, you know that term we have, about the "optics" of a situation? Well, shit, the Speaker of the House was a known serial adulterer while the House is trying to build an impeachment case against the president for lying about adultery. House Republicans called in old debts; long-known behavior was called out and Speaker Gingrich was deposed for being corrupt. They settled on Congressman Livingston, of Louisiana, to replace him, but here's the thing: On the day of the vote to impeach President Clinton, Livingston stepped down, as headlines were about to reveal him as a serial adulterer. The House GOP fell into crisis. And that is how Rep. Denny Hastert of Illinois Fourteen↱ became Speaker of the House. He was supposedly an unspectacular, boring, moral bureaucrat, and thus exactly what the Party needed.

And right now the whole of ownership culture is under siege; the strange thing is that most Americans don't recognize it as what they're dealing with. But various groups, long neglected lest they be smacked down, have found footing and voice; furthermore, you're aware of my thesis that much of that empowerment comes about because conservative powers panic themselves to such excess that the problems become apparent, if even just for a moment. I think that's in play, too. The idea that we are putting down ownership culture is ... it's not even inchoate. This is a number of traditionally offended interests finally finding sympathy.

The Duggars can't lead. They're not in any position to. So they're toeing the line. They've circled their wagons because, in the first place, that's really all ownership soccons have left, and, to another, because that's all they, the Duggars, have left. They lose everything if they lose this.

Consider, please―just indulge me―my relief at finding there is no applicable conscience clause for homeschool educators, and then my mystification at the proposition that I should need to wonder in the first place↱.

They are going to lose everything, and in the face of dark temptation, they show themselves merely human.

They will hold the line to the bitter end; they have no other choice.

Update 5 June 2015/23.56 PDT: Oh, holy shit ....​

____________________

Notes:

Wikipedia. "Illinois's 14th congressional district". 14 May 2015. En.Wikipedia.org. 5 June 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois's_14th_congressional_district

Radar Staff. "Duggar TV Lies! Jim Bob & Michelle Duggar Claimed They Didn't Have To 'Mandatory Report' Molestation Because They’re Parents ― But Homeschool Teachers Do Under Arkansas Law!" Radar Online. 4 June 2015. RadarOnline.com. 5 June 2015. http://bit.ly/1cD6ZJ8

 

Vested interest.

 

If my son was molesting my daughter in the same limited manner as Josh, I would take graduated steps of correction in response to repeated incidents. At a point it appeared to represent a serious threat to my daughter’s or son’s well being, and I felt that a resolution was beyond my personal capability, I would seek outside assistance. That’s apparently the same strategy the Duggars employed.

You must be referring to the traumatic experience the girls suffered of being touched over their clothing while asleep, the experience that was so brutally violent that they had no recollection of it. On the other hand you had a teenage boy who was so guilt ridden that he went crying to his parents to confess his offensive actions, actions that if not corrected might someday land him in an institution. So who was really in need of most of their attention?

I take it you didn’t bother to read the transcript of the Fox interview.

KELLY: We're getting into that. First I want to ask you about the counseling because the counseling Josh got in that treatment center was that the only counseling he ever received. What about your daughters?

J.B. DUGGAR: No. Josh actually went and had complete professional...

KELLY: The real licensed therapist counseling?

M. DUGGAR: All of our children received professional counseling, including Josh. After this, all of our children received professional counseling, including Josh, who paid for his own counseling himself.

J.B. DUGGAR: It was an accredited professional counselor.

http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2...-about-molestation-allegations-on-kelly-file/

I too know parents who have turned to law enforcement and professional help to deal with extreme behaviors, but not until a lot of time was first spent in the home attempting to deal with it.

I don’t assess abusive behavior based on sexual content, I asses abusive behavior on its degree of harm. To suggest as you do, that because an action that was no physical threat and possibly only a minor emotional threat, deserved to be addressed in such an aggressive manner demonstrates a hypersensitive reaction to this situation. Incest and molestation, like other forms of undesirable behavior must be judged by their degree and nature of engagement, which means that corrective action needs to be proportional to the offense.

I think its normal for human beings to attempt to satisfy their desires and curiosity, and in doing so test the limits of social acceptability. I think this is basis for Josh’s behavior, and that he was fortunate that his forays were halted before they developed into something more serious.

They allowed it? They were trying to deal with it, and when they felt they weren’t up to the task they got outside help. They didn’t assume the worst like you, and until they encountered additional incidents they reasonably assumed he wasn’t offending.

So any act that can legally be defined as sexual assault is to be considered worthy of aggressive legal and psychological intervention? Not all acts of criminal assault are equal, sexual or otherwise, and most people will have a standard, hopefully a reasonable one, that must be met before they are willing to take such aggressive action. I’m no different. That one doesn’t act aggressively in response to a given offense does not imply acceptance, it means one does not consider the given offense worthy of that degree of action. Should you call the cops every time one child slaps another? Or every time a wife slaps a husband, no matter how forcefully applied? Is their no room for discretion in your world?

Tell me why you try to maximize it? Why do you keep trying to turn what even the victims describe as a minimal act into something more that it actually is? Why can’t you accept that it’s normal for families to deal with their failings internally and to try to minimize their exposure?

It must be a bit frustrating when your designated victims refuse to go along with your hypersensitive narrative.

"Josh was a boy, a young boy in puberty, and a little too curious about girls," Jessa, who married Ben Seewald in November and is expecting her first child, told Kelly. "And that got him into some trouble. And he made some bad choices, but, really, the extent of it was mild -- inappropriate touching on fully clothed victims, most of it while [the] girls were sleeping."

Jill, who married Derek Dillard in 2014 and welcomed a son in April, echoed what their parents had told Kelly on Wednesday -- that they "didn't even know" about the molestation until Josh had confessed to their parents. "None of the victims were aware of what happened until Joshua confessed," she said. Jessa added, "My parents took [us] aside individually, and they said, 'Here's what happened,' and of course at this point, you're shocked."

While Jessa said she thinks that giving her brother the label "child molester or a pedophile or a rapist," is "so overboard and a lie." Jill admitted that she was "scared," and added that she was "sad" to learn of what Josh had done, "because this is my older brother, who I love a lot. It's conflicting."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/05/jill-jessa-duggar-fox-interview_n_7521552.html

How dare they interpret events that they were personally involved in differently than you.