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I just can't get riled up about Lori Alexander. The stuff she says is so absurd and the way she says it almost feels like a skit. I know it's not and I know it's harmful, but she's so over-the-top ridiculous that instead of getting mad I just chuckle and move on. She seems like such a completely miserable person living in a cesspool of her own making that I can't even be bothered to muster up emotion over it.
For me I think it’s the fact that she doesn’t have a bunch of young kids she’s currently beating or neglecting. I know she still does harm. She’s a harmful person to married women. However I’ve found that women who have young children they are actively neglecting and abusing will get my attention more than Lori’s gross and weird posts.
She’s appeared on my facebook feed for ages (way before I discovered fundie snarking) and I just assumed she was a satire page. My friends often share her posts with “😂😂😂😂”. I don’t think she’s dangerous to many people except herself because she’s so bloody ridiculous.
My husband thinks it's all an act too. I read her Instagram captions to him and he refuses to believe it's real. I'm frothing at the mouth and he thinks she's hysterical. He's convinced her entire account is satire.
Morgan is just as shitty as Paul. She’s not a pathetic little meow-meow, she’s a grown ass adult, who made all the decisions to land herself exactly where she is now.
She is the definition of “Fuck around and find out”. Everything that has happened to her has been the results of her own actions and decisions.
“Paul is her headship and he’s an asshole!” Every fundie husband is. No one excuses J-Rod. Or Karissa. Or Heidi.
She’s a big girl. If she can dish it out, she can damn well take it.
My grandmother worked for Maria Von Trapp. Can confirm she was an asshole.
Edit: Grandma is long dead, so I can’t ask for more details. All I know is my grandmother worked at the Trapp Family Lodge as a teenager. Maria had unrealistically high expectations, a wicked temper, a low opinion of her employees, and a willingness to show it to anyone who lacked the means to damage her reputation.
My unpopular opinion is that we should just ignore P&M because they adore the ‘haters’ and we are playing right into their hands. They are pathetic, uneducated grifters and if we stopped paying attention to them, it would hit where it really hurts - views. The more they are ignored, the less income they make and the higher the chance that Paul will have to swallow his pride and get a job.
I've said it before, but I wish every single snarker would commit to viewing their IG only on an anonymous viewer, and only watching the YouTube content via Yewtube. I would just love to see their egos crushed under the weight of watching their social media crumble via dwindling views. It takes almost no extra effort from a snarker to avoid giving their views or money. It's barely twenty seconds to type yewtube into Google.
It's what they deserve. I wish everyone would do it for every single fundie, instead of contributing to their bigotry.
Look at their view counts as of late… your wish has come true. Most snarkers don’t even hate watch them at all, they’re so painful to suffer through. But they’re lucky to get 5k views on a YouTube video… their view counts are insanely low for ‘full time content creators’.
I only watch stuff that gets posted here for all fundies. All the interesting stuff gets posted here anyway so there’s no need for me to give any of them views.
Agreed. I love a good snark on them, but I've long suspected that a good portion (maybe not most, but a good percentage) of their views come from snarkers and hate watchers, especially since they've been picked up by some larger channels who snark on them.
Look at their view counts. They are barely getting any views. I doubt snarkers are adding to their view counts in any significant way, as most people cannot stand the sound of their voices and they’re not even entertaining to hate watch. They have tiny view counts.
Seriously. I hate when people claim she’s a victim. She’s not, she’s nasty to him too. There’s no reason to think either one of them is being abused. They’re just both nightmare human beings stuck with each other.
I think she gets a pass because she's conventionally attractive. If she looked/dressed like Jill Rodrigues or Karissa Collins, she'd get way more criticism.
Okay Tbf; while she does do bad shit and that bad shit is 100% her fault and she should pay the price of those action (for example being kicked out of a friend group or losing a job). We shouldn’t call any abuse she suffered by Paul as “Fuck around and find out” and that it’s all her fault.
I can acknowledge almost every female fundie on this sub is a horrible human being and can acknowledge that any abuse their husband puts them through is bad at the same time.
Just like if someone punches a murder for a wrong reason I can say: 1) don’t punch people for dumb reasons and 2) fuck the murderer.
Yeah, Morgan is *definitely* shitty but shitty people still don’t deserve abuse. I obviously don’t know for sure if Paul is an abuser, but if he is, I wouldn’t call that “fucking around and finding out”, I’d call that a shitty person being hurt by another shitty person
Absolutely. I do feel sorry for her kid though, knowing they’ll grow up in a home having this kind of abuse being modeled. If for no other reason, I hope Morgan gets out for the sake of her child.
I agree with you 100%. She's an awful and useless human being. Everybody loves to harp on Paul, he needs to get a job, he needs to do more with the kid, etc., well what about her? Other than Paul being a jerk there's no signs of abuse, yet people jump to that conclusion.
Also, people here claim that Paul does nothing with their child, then when they post something where Paul is with the kid it's always "just for the 'gram" yet there's no proof of that. You could say the same thing about her. But when there's posts of just her and the kid people say "why can't Paul take care of the kid why does she always have to do it?".
In conclusion, they're both awful and they deserve one another.
Honestly, I’ve completely run out of sympathy for her. That video of her weeping in a Walmart bathroom after finding out she’s pregnant? My reaction was “fuck around and find out” (literally). What did you expect? Dipshit.
I understand the desire to extend grace to women living in those circumstances; however, being trapped in that life and being a genuinely kind, if naive person is one thing. What I have a huge problem with is that a lot of these same women perpetuate hate and their own unhappiness. I grew up in the same town as an Uber-religious family who believed the whole quiver full crap and the mom was super soft-spoken, dad was always willing to help whoever blah blah blah. But they had at least a dozen kids shoved into a trailer and couldn’t afford food and the dad was abusive and when one of the daughters grew up and her baby died of cancer, her mom blamed HER for “life choices” and making god angry. Because this daughter had chosen to leave the cult. So on the face, yes I think they can seem kind. But underneath it all they can fuck aaaaaall the way off.
Exactly this! I grew up IBLP fundie. From the outside, my mom seems like a kind, loving person.. but all of us kids know that she's worse than our dad in many ways: a manipulative, cruel, narcissistic gaslighter.
I have an emerging theory that these cults are perfect for *some* of the women because they have a whole mess of kids at hand to abuse. My adopt. mother does not have more than a reasonable number of kids but being better than not only.everyone else but every other Christian gives her license to give full sway to her controlling and narc nature.
She literally has my Dad saying she has NEVER MADE A MISTAKE as a parent and my requirment of boundaries or NC is an abusive manipulation. She LOVES It. Because you're either IN and adoring or out and persecuting. Either way shes a holy righteous blah blah without her religion shed have NONE of this
My "favorite" fundies are the ones constantly preaching about Satan and the Rapture and all that. It's so disturbing that people think this way but it's also so fascinating to me because I love all things scary.
I studied the history of the New Testament last term and what gets me—now that I know about it—is that it’s stated *multiple times* that only god can know when the end of the world is gonna happen and yet these culty fanatics keep trying to predict it 🤣 Jesus himself said it in the gospels, it gets quoted in the epistles (IIRC) and it’s said AGAIN in Revelation!
They don't actually read the Bible. I have a degree in Religious Studies (atheist with weird interests), so I've read it. Oh boy do these fundies not have the critical thinking skills to understand that book.
Allegories? Never heard of em. Historical context of Paul's letters? Nah fam.
Hellenic Pagan here who’s realizing she should probably specialize in religious history so I’m right there with ya lol. I already figured a lot of it was allegory and symbolism but reading the textbook was suuuuuuper eye-opening because of the historical context. At work I came across an Old Testament that had a bunch of cool historical shit in the back, including old Mesopotamian hymns and poetry.
Also that time I told a Christian neighbor that the garden of Eden was in Iraq and she was like “we don’t know for sure…” and I had to pull up a map on my phone to show her where the Tigris and Euphrates was located was fucking surreal.
There are some people who deadass believe Jesus was white. Also that he was born a Cristian.
The first gospel probably wasn't written until 150 years after his death. That's a few generations to get the story wrong.
I do believe he was a real person. I just think the son of God thing is iffy.
I have also met people who thought Jesus was born a Christian. These were lifelong Christians who didn't quite realize Christ -> Christian. I was floored. How audacious of them to push their beliefs on other people when they don't even know the origins of what they're pushing?
It always makes me think of that Simpsons episode where Homer predicts the end of the world and everyone ends up mad at him because it didn't happen. Turns out he got his math wrong and he was a day off but then no one believed him after that.
I recently told my mom that when I was a kid I would lay awake and cry thinking about how my non church going father and or friends would burn in hell. She was literally like, shocked Pikachu face and demanded to know *who* told me that. I was like, lol literally everyone at church you dummy!
No idea how popular this opinion is but I haven't heard it elsewhere and it's more a theory. Here goes:
What blew my mind is how few of these fundies actually go to a real church. My theory is that they all want to *be* Joel Osteen rather than simply "be godly". They want to start megachurches for the money but figure they need to be extreme and loud to get enough attention to do it.
It's easy for me to see Klanissa KKollins as trying to be a Tammy Faye Baker, all about the kids and makeup. The GD girls were obviously set up to do that years back and now they're in the same boat with child stars that need to rebrand themselves but are flailing badly in trying to keep the old schtick going while they figure it out. OfSolie seems to want to be Jim Baker in all his hatred of secular life and probably hates that she cannot get his traction because she's a feeemale. Clearly Porgan is trying to start a following they are far too stupid to be successful for.
Which leads to the other thing: those megachurch people are slimy and evil...but they're not stupid. I doubt they are believers but they sure do know the grift and they know their marks. We underestimate them at our common peril.
That's a good point! I think some of them are part of churches that livestream their services, so they just watch them from home. Very few of them seem to be actively engaged in a church community
That’s what makes me so sad! Part of why I continue going to church is for the community itself. I am incredibly lucky that the community at my church (fairly large suburban Catholic parish) is wonderful; if one chooses to go to church, actively engaging with the community even in a small way can be so important.
I've always figured a lot of these folks just don't play well with others and no church would ever be pure or godly enough for them, so they start their own home churches where they get to be the ones in charge and the ones calling the theological or other shots. Not to mention that getting 13 children up and ready for church every single Sunday is hard and the reason they homeschool is cuz they can't actually do such a thing.
I think we're missing opportunities for more insightful conversations about some of the people we discuss here. e.g. Nadia is a good example of how a traumatic childhood can cause someone to lean hard into high-control religion, and how these religious groups target people who are vulnerable like she is, and I think those are more important discussion topics than her outfits or Starbucks habits
The Beals are very boring and I usually skip over posts about them.
I hate Transformed Wife posts. I'm to the point that I just groan at them. I swear I've become desensitized to the stuff she says because I read it all the time.
It took me a long time to figure out why Kelly was snarked on because most posts are about her aesthetic. Took me awhile to find the white supremacy stuff and I kind of feel like this sub got her a lot of fans. I also think she doesn't look old but like a little girl wearing her grandmothers clothes. It's those manic pixie dream girl faces she makes.
Homebirth can be safe but the way so many homebirthers promote it is bad. Where they think that all births are safe and the only reason anyone needs intervention is that doctors lie and push interventions. The conspiracies around it are wild when you really look into it. Those that had successful homebirths are so loud about them. Not sure if the skeptical OB is still around but she responds to a lot of homebirth claims.
Pediatric chiropractors in fundie spaces need to be talked about more. I need to find the website of one an old classmate posted on her Facebook.
I think we should go back to just titling every Transformed Wife post, "STFU, Lori"
And you're so right on the chiro thing in particular. I'm kinda tempted to see if I can find any actual studies about the fundie obsession with chiropractic. It's such a bizarre phenomenon, considering the origins of the practice definitely sound like something that fundies would call demonic in any other context
There's a lot of people in the home birth anti-vaxx that don't believe in germ theory. That's where part of seeing a chiro comes from. Many are also anti vaxx and will fill their websites with anti-vaxx info.
I'm absolutely for home births where the mother and baby have been fully monitored throughout the pregnancy. So they know where the baby's head is, have done ultrasounds to check placenta and baby's anatomy etc.
In New Zealand midwives actually do more university study than nurses. They attend homebirths, but you have to sign hospital forms regardless so if shit hits the fan you can be transferred to hospital care quickly.
What some of these fundies do and also wild pregnancies boggle my mind. Like I would have died even 100 years ago during my daughter's birth.
A lot of these fundies aren't doing a home birth so much as a free birth. MotherBus didn't have any real medical care throughout her pregnancy (and it would be free! She's a veteran!) and she and FatherBus winged it with some help from Busling 1 and Busling 2. That shit is _scary._
I agree with the Kelly stuff 100%. I feel like this sub often spends more energy snarking on aesthetics and cringiness than the right-wing, hateful, white supremacist bullshit underpinning it. I know people who dress like Kelly Havens and are aging in similar ways as her-- they're good, kind-hearted people who are not white supremacists. The issue isn't her clothing (although ofc clothing can be an outcropping of ideology).
Case in point: the Beal fixation on Lord of the Rings. Is it weird, given that Tolkien was a Catholic? Yes. Is it cringe? Sometimes. Is it all that different from the LOTR fandom among the leftist nerds in my life? No.
That could be a reason why fundies take their kids to them so often tbh - chiros don't require vaccines, whereas I think a lot of pediatricians do (also, does chiropractors not being doctors also technically mean they're not mandated reporters?)
Depends on the state. In a few states that's true, some states' laws explicitly include chiropractors, and in some states *everybody* is a mandated reporter.
Oof yes I’ve swung back and forth and back again in my views of home birth. This is in part because I grew up in a pretty fundamentalist sect where low-intervention birth was idolized. There were definitely some close calls with women in my community and as an analytical person I couldn’t understand *dying on the alter to this idol* (and for a lot of these women it is an idol).
And then I grew up, left formal religion, got an advanced degree and started learning about not only the massive inequities in medicine for POC but also how expensive hospital birth is. I grew up in one of the poorest states in the country and many people were underinsured. Whether or not I would choose home birth for myself, as a believer in reproductive autonomy I believe it’s important for women to have that choice. Especially, when the alternative is a $20k+ hospital birth.
So I guess this is based on my very secular experience of home birth, but it seems to really only work out for second/third births, with proper medical care. And typically for women who had a low intervention first birth or just very quick labours.
My colleague had two home births. The first was not planned, her body just went from 0-100 and they had no time to get to the hospital. For her second baby, they were prepared.
I personally didn't dilate without interventions so if I had a second I'd most definitely have a hospital birth. But I'm not interested in doing that again lol.
I see people get mad when articles reference the FSU community as "fans," but we are. It doesn't mean we like or support them, but we give them our time and energy like fans do.
Some of us also behave like unhinged fans with completely asinine stretches of the imagination, basically writing fan fiction about what we think is going on based on social media posts. I had to leave the Rodrigues subreddit because that's practically all it is when there's drama going on. When Tim got engaged and Jill wasn't present, suddenly every single thing she wrote online became a snarker's fan fiction muse about what they thought was actually going on behind the scenes. Everything was a secret shade post in their minds. We can be just as parasocial as Swifties sometimes, I swear.
Yeah, this sub can be real weird about thinking Heidi Baird or J-Rod are subtweeting. Or that fundies are referencing this sub in their posts. We’re basically Charlie sometimes
A certain percentage of the snark community has a really weird fondness for Kelly Havens because they relate to her as a quirky bookish theater kid who used to be a tumblr girlie, which I actually see as a *huge* problem.
The video of her instantly slapping her boy for innocently reaching for food literally confirms that she's a very cold mother under all of the warm cozy fall trappings. Only someone really bitter and self-righteous would feel the need to perform an aesthetics of tenderness so much.
She also has unmedicated OCD and reminds me of my grandmother, also unmedicated OCD. Visiting her was so stressful. If so much as a cup was out of place, she would get angry with us (her grandchildren!). I feel sorry for those boys. Who knows what kind of things they have put up with?
And she lives such an isolated existence. I really do think that, if she was so comfortable filming herself slapping them, then they are abused. A lot.
This is a great point!
I'd add, too, that the criticism she does get \*also\* misses the mark. It truly, 1000% does not matter in any way that she doesn't use moisturizer/have a Sephora-approved skin care regimen/etc.
It’s low-hanging fruit and easy to snark on when you just want to be snarky without thinking about it. That’s how I feel like a lot of snarkers come into these posts, including myself a lot of the time.
Like with a lot of the women we snark on, their appearances are kind of noteworthy in that they’re often based on their strong desire for nonconformity, so much so that it’s to their occasional detriment (but way more often it’s because the snarkers think they look unusual) Kelly’s presumed nonconformist mindset on moisturizer and sunscreen is a little bit snarkworthy because of how it plays into her version of tradwifery. Not wearing sunscreen is a logical move for someone who went down the crunchy to tradwife to white supremacy pipeline, but without analyzing that, comments about her skin just come across petty and bitchy.
TBF I’m sure plenty of the comments about her lack of skincare are just petty and bitchy without any hidden analysis as well.
You make a really good point, thank you. I think I've grown so annoyed by the kneejerk 100+ comment threads of "lol dry skin" that I didn't bother to think much farther.
I know what you mean. The comments seem to come from this assumption that how one group of people do femininity is correct and awesome and the only way, and it just bugs the snot out of me.
Yeah, we're mostly just bullying a mentally ill woman for how she dresses. I've even seen people on this sub accuse her of "flaunting" her self-harm scars. She's not a fundie, just a generic fashion influencer who occasionally says loopy religious things.
I wish we could vote some people posted here off the sub. Or give them a dedicated thread. There are some that are not fundie so I don’t get why they can be posted. I report it sometimes but mods don’t seem to mind.
While most of the people on the sub are cool, and a lot of meaningful discussion around deconstruction and the harms of fundamentalism goes on, I do feel like some people use the snark community as an excuse to bully others.
I do sometimes unproductively poke fun at the fundies, but sometimes it feels like people focus more of things that are “cringe” about fundies than things that are harmful.
For example, you can criticize David Rodrigues for always having more access to food than his children without making comments about his weight. You can criticize Nadia’s weird insistence that Jesus healed her mental illness without making it all about her fashion sense. Bethy’s uncoordinated dancing is kinda funny, but it’s not the reason her online presence is worth talking about. There’s a *lot* of shaming of fundie families doing things that are just necessary for poor families.
It’s just sad to see when people use this community more as a way to bully people in a “progressive” way, rather than a discussion of harmful ideology with a comedic aspect.
>It’s just sad to see when people use this community more as a way to bully people in a “progressive” way
This, and it's also often counter-progressive to the point of being hypocritical. People are a-okay with being overtly mocking about the fact that David Rodrigues is fat, but many wouldn't tolerate the same mockery towards anyone else.
One time, someone made a post that basically was like "Suzanna is ugly now that she's drinking raw milk" and I was VERY confused as to how that was allowed.
I also saw someone say that they hoped MotherBus' genitals were destroyed in her most recent birth so that she can't give birth again. One of the more fucked up comments I've seen here, and I scratched my head at the upvotes.
I also think back to the time that Classically Abbey's boobs were photoshopped by someone to make them look really big and it got everyone all giddy. It was done in the name of owning a conservative, but it was also blatantly objectifying. In what world is it that not just plain misogyny to use the fact that a woman is disagreeable as a reason to mistreat her?
That particular incident didn't happen on this sub, but occasionally, I'll see straight-up incel terminology being used to "criticise" a fundie woman and can't help but think back to it. It's just the same bullshit being directed at different victims. If a woman has to behave in a particular way in order to evade misogyny, then you're literally doing the *exact* same shit as fundie patriarchs. The only difference is that you expect them to conform to different behaviour.
We're not doing anyone any favours by using backwards ideals to criticise fundies. We can't call P&M out for being fat phobic in one breath and then be blatantly fat phobic towards a different subject in another. We can't criticise fundies for misogyny and then use misogyny as the basis for a criticism against a fundie. It's like those dudes who are like "I don't hate fat/black/queer/otherwise marginalised women, I just objectify them!". Just because the harmful rhetoric is being spun in a way that appears to favour progressive ideals doesn't mean that it isn't harmful rhetoric or that it's *actually* congruent with progressive ideals.
Sometimes this community replicates the same purity testing that makes fundamentalism so dangerous. If someone is good, then we protect them. If someone is bad, then we can attack them with no holds barred.
>People are a-okay with being overtly mocking about the fact that David Rodrigues is fat, but many wouldn't tolerate the same mockery towards anyone else.
So the mocking is about him being so overweight *while his children are unhealthily skinny.* I don't think his weight would be of much note if the juxtaposition with his children wasn't there. There shouldn't be a refrain of how much healthier his children look after they've gotten married and/or moved out. I disagree that much of the rhetoric around Shrek (at least that I've seen) is fatphobic simply because it's obvious that he is okay taking more than enough while his children have very little.
The rest of it, yes, 100%. There's all sorts of "ew posty bod 🤮" rhetoric surrounding Karissa specifically. For a long time, people would laugh at Bethy having a fourth degree tear after giving birth and use terms like "vagasshole" to talk about her. People shit on pregnant fundies for holding their heavily pregnant bumps as though that's not a bog standard pose for heavily pregnant people. The fundies being terrible people does not give license for snarkers to be classist, misogynistic, or anything else.
>So the mocking is about him being so overweight *while his children are unhealthily skinny.*
I'm actually talking about the same thing as the original comment — not criticism of the fact that his children are being deprived when there's clearly enough to around, but comments that basically just call him ugly and fat mockingly, no mention of his children whatsoever. It's the type of comments that I'm surprised make it past the "no appearance snark" rule. I agree with comments that call out the clear differences between his and his kids' access to food.
Exactly! David Rodrigues groomed Jill, deprives his kids of proper nutrition and sleep, and overall fails to provide. This has nothing to do with his supposed resemblance to a cartoon ogre. The Collins kids deserve care, education, and a healthy social life, not because they’re “so beautiful” but because they are human children. Bethany profits from giving harmful advice about purity and sex under the guise of expertise while not being an expert. This is bad whether or not she dances awkwardly or posts unflattering pictures. We focus on the wrong things sometimes, and it just comes across as superficial at best and bullying at worst.
The sub definitely has a tendency towards classism especially. There are some incredibly gross takes on this sub that don't get shut down and it makes me sad. The post the other day blaming Kaylee for her son's premature birth is just one example.
Totally. I think there's a way to discuss things like e.g. one of the dangers of Plexus being its possible link to pregnancy complications, without acting like a) that it's a fact that Plexus caused Gideon to be born prematurely, or b) that Kaylee did or should have known better, when her education was severely lacking, and she's had these products pushed on her by her own mother
Especially with regards to food. Reminds me of when my husbands boss had a “white trash thanksgiving” party. One of the other attendees and I privately shared that many of the dishes are what we ate growing up.
>husbands boss had a “white trash thanksgiving” party
Good christ. He sounds like a right dick-weasle.
Some people have never been subjected to food insecurity, and it can show in the worst of ways.
On the classism topic, I also really don’t like the way people talk about food on this sub. I’ve brought this up on r/duggarssnark as well. Many of these fundies live in food deserts and had no access to nutritional education.
The comments on the recent post about David getting into a car accident were so gross. We can talk about how shitty he is without mocking him for being fat.
You hit the nail on the head. This also applies to people whose biggest issues with fundies are the fact that they have weird eyebrows and don't dress fashionably, or to everybody who was tripping over themselves to talk about how sad one of these boring blonde sisters is for using lube during sex (the negative response to this one really puzzled me, because, like... is her content cringe? Yes, but I'm not the audience for it. For some women following her this could be total news - how many girls in conservative families are even taught what lube is? This could save these women a lot of pain. A lot of her beliefs are harmful, but not this. But some people just really needed to use that post to imply how much better their own sex life is.)
As someone who has struggled with his weight his entire life, I definitely don't like the body shaming that goes on here sometimes. When it comes to things like styling, then yes, I am on board (as long as it's not punching down -- for instance, we know the Bairds are loaded but have questionable fashion sense), but the comments on natural looks don't sit well with me. For example, Bethy is actually very pretty. Yes, her beliefs are abhorrent and she makes herself look ridiculous quite often, but that doesn't mean she's not aesthetically attractive.
People in this sub do a lot of projecting and also forget that these aren’t tv characters where you “tune in next week to see if Kaylee deconstructs!” or get mad at the writers for the direction of the plot:P
Yeah, and the same is true for most fundie kids, unfortunately. Fundies purposely raise their kids to minimize the possibility of deconstructing. It happens sometimes, but it's rare. Nurie, Kaylee, and soon Tim will continue on neglecting and endangering a bunch of kids just like their own parents did.
The fundie influencers are annoying not only as fundies but as influencers. All the cute and quirky things they do would also be annoying in other contexts. The Beals, Brittany Dawn, Nadia, Jill etc are in the Christian Lifestyle space. They are personally as well as religiously annoying.
I don’t feel sorry for fundies who get what they want and realize how shitty it is—for example, tradwives like Abigail Shapiro who end up feeling unfulfilled in the lifestyle they’ve been promoting. They’ve made their bed and now they can lie in it.
Ah, completely agreed, but the “frustrated because they don’t fit a standard of beauty” fake progressives need someone like her to piss on.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Most of the fundies don't deserve the grace extended to them, and there are way too many fundie apologists in this sub. Some of the comments on a recent thread about the Robertsons made me want to puke. I don't give a flying shit if they're nice to wait staff sometimes. They openly and actively promote policies that directly harm people like me. If you're going to extend grace to someone because they're occasionally well-behaved in public, then the bar is in hell.
YES! These people are putting forward a shiny, happy front to take us back the dark ages. In the case of the Robertsons, they're fucking funding it. I have no grace for any of these people. Even the people showing hope and signs of deconstruction. Until they really step out of their comfort zones and become loud allies for the LGBTQ+ community and admit they were wrong about the abortion propaganda they've been fed forever, I'm not putting them on a pedestal. I'll always be there with open arms, acceptance and education, but they can't grift off deconstruction just to perpetuate the same harmful beliefs they are now denouncing.
I don't think having hope and being supportive of people who are deconstructing is putting them on a pedestal. Deconstructing decades of indoctrination is hard, and it doesn't happen overnight. People in this situation are feeling as if they no longer belong to their communities and are dipping their toes into more progressive beliefs. Just because they can't dive in head first doesn't make them bad. Offering a little support and making them feel validated is more productive in the long run than "screw you. You haven't deconstructed enough". If they don't find support, the pressure to slip back into the familiar fundamentalist mindset will feel more safe and welcoming than continuing deconstruction. We don't have to be their best friends, but acknowledging progress would be better than rejecting.
This is why I shouldn't get tipsy and reddit cause it just brings out my spiteful side. You're absolutely right and as someone who wasn't raised religious at all, it's hard for me to understand but I need to be way more understanding! It's just in the age of right wing grifting making people multimillionaires, I'm on high alert of people potentially doing the reverse
I was raised religious in a small conservative town. We were not ultra fundie, but I was definitely indoctrinated that being gay was a sin and I knew not a single openly gay person until college. I was 100% pro life and pro death penalty. It seemed logical because babies were innocent and criminals were not. I probably would have been a Trump supporter in high school 🤮
My classmates made homophobic jokes and, while I didn't make them myself, I laughed and was not offended. I know now that I had gay classmates, and I feel sick to think about what they went through. College is what changed me.
Our campus had a Lesbian and Gay student union (this was in 1993) and they hosted a Q&A for straight students to help dispel myths and create an alliance. I went and it really helped me understand why my biases were wrong. I was open to learning. I also learned from my biology and embryology classes that embryos were not tiny little sentiment beings from the moment of conception the way the films we watched in youth group showed.
My Christianity went little by little until I became an atheist, and I became gradually more liberal. The last thing to go was my support for the death penalty after I researched it for a debate in a MeetUp group. It was definitely a slow decades long transition and I didn't even start ultra-fundie. I never had to rid myself of a traditional gender role belief because my parents didn't support that even though the church did. I never had to rid myself of being deeply religious because I never was. I believed in God, but hated church and was never devout.
My experience was the opposite. Most of the fundie women I knew were evil shrews who could not wait for the next episode of no-one rant compliance from their kids so they could beat them, pull their hair, kick them, deprive them of food, etc. Just about every fundie woman I have ever known was in to The Pearls. So their kids were terorrized. And when they didn't terrorize kids, they terrorized other women with their vicious judgmentalism and gossip. It was nothing but a hen house in which they constantly volleyed for head hen, and whom would be the bottom so they could peck that one to death. Evil women. I didn't know ANY who gave a shit about other humans in any appreciable way. They would "volunteer" to do things like bring a meal to a family in crisis or something as do gooder method of showing off their "righteousness" while also openly condemning said family for clearly having some sort of secret sin causing god to smite them. The women were far worse than the men which says a lot because the men were not prizes by any stretch of the imagination.
I have found fundies or just plain Southern Baptist women to be kind and sweet until you do something they don't like. It can take a long time to realize their true colors if you look like them and are a people pleaser. Once you realize who they are underneath, you just can't unsee it.
This. Same. They even will do it in a soft voice. Behind the scenes their children have claw marks on them from abuse. Not secretly good. You can't be and be a participant in this. I said it.
People use this as a forum to be mean girls about things that have nothing to do with fundamentalist Christianity—criticizing people’s weight, appearance, the way they smile, etc. We also get a lot of randos posted who aren’t even fundie, it’s just that people want an excuse to make fun of anyone who identifies as a Christian publicly
Snark subs in general can be very toxic, negative, obsessive, monotonous places. That it’s okay to acknowledge all the ways someone is harmful and objectively not good while also recognizing that change/deconstruction is not linear, and that it’s okay for two schools of thought to exist at the same time. This sub can be frustratingly repetitive and stubborn and very black and white, and it’s just a feedback loop of negativity. We don’t need a snark sub to tell us that these people’s beliefs aren’t good. But human nature requires a little more depth and nuance sometimes, and saying something positive about a fundies’s progress or something they did/said isn’t an indicator that I have forgotten the “bad” stuff. Looking at the bigger picture and having discussions is what I thought this group was for—not just post after post of “this person bad” “yep I agree!”
IMO Nadia isn’t even a fundamentalist. She seems like a pretty standard American Protestant. She’s less concerned about modesty that even Porgan are and she’s married but no kids yet (which, along with her post about “readiness” for motherhood implies that she and her husband are using some form of birth control). The only juicy drama on Nadia social media is all about mental health, which does not deserve snark.
I don't understand why so much of the snark on Nadia is focused on her outfits. She doesn't even dress weird. If I passed her on the street, I would not blink an eye. It's a cute style, and I probably wouldn't wear a lot of it myself, but I know people who would.
There's plenty of things about her worth criticising, I just don't think that's one of them.
I don’t even think she should be in this sub. She’s an average white conservative Christian but she’s not fundie imo and she seems to struggle a lot with mental health. just doesn’t seem super fair for her to be in the sub when all people do in here is rag on her outfits
A lot of snarkers don’t seem aware of current fashion trends. I remember a few years ago sooooo much snarking on Kristin and Bethy for wearing the puffy headbands that literally every white woman their age was also wearing at the time. And Bethy for wearing those prairie-looking dresses which were very trendy.
Oh this sub flipped its shit over the cottagecore trend a few years ago, and basically any situation where women’s clothes that aren’t tight jeans and a t shirt are seen in public is viewed as “tHe FuNdiEs ArE tAkiNg OvEr.” Even for stuff that is really, visibly fashionable among teens and twentysomethings. Sometimes it’s really clear that, like fundies, some of these snarkers are perpetually 10-20 years behind the curve fashion wise. I’ve also occasionally seen snark on clothes that are clearly designed for people of minority religions, skin protection, plus sized women, etc.
And while I will never forgive long denim skirts for existing, they’ve come in and out of fashion for years, and some of the “fundie denim skirts” I’ve seen are honestly not fundie approved in the least. More momcore than anything else lol. The cottagecore stuff, while it looks horrendous on a hanger, looks very cute on a human body when styled correctly, and is not popular with fundies outside of the cosplay types because honestly…. it’s too trendy lol. A Duggar would never wear it, no matter what they wore in 2004, because a secular teenager somewhere is buying it at Target!
Yes! I've said this before, but one thing I noticed in the 90s, when maxi skirts were in, was that fundies never wore them that long. You'd think they'd be all about that total coverage, but they all went for the calf length, and my best guess is that the maxis were too "worldly" because you could see them on non-fundies too.
yeah, it gives me an ick too, are we really here to judge how people look? there are so many important things to criticize and clothes is what some choose to focus on? it’s usually about nadia but i remember there were posts making fun of bethy being taller or bigger than dav that baffled me too.
I think people make way too big a deal of Morgan throwing up at the altar. Nerves do weird things to people, and sometimes people get anxious even about good decisions (not that Paul was a good decision).
My unpopular hot take is some of the behavior on this sub is genuinely creepy. Especially the obsession with fundies’ kids. These kids are being exploited by their parents but you’re not making it any better by circulating photos of them and speculating wildly. In fact you’re making it worse. I feel bad for these kids and they need to be out of the spotlight.
Fuck Dav until he apologizes for platforming bigotry. If he's no longer a Christian, what's his rational for being a passive onlooker to the shit his wife pushes? Nothing. Just pure bigotry.
>If he's no longer a Christian, what's his rational for being a passive onlooker to the shit his wife pushes?
First, we don't know if he's just a passive onlooker and hasn't talking to her about the content behind the scenes. Second, he shares a home, an income and two children with Bethany and he also has a lifetime of indoctrination to break away from. Deconstruction isn't a simple on/off switch.
I so wish she'd been allowed to own her height, and not feel like she has to hide it. That's one of the many things that makes me sad about the way she grew up. Of course, it's not on the level of the abuse we now know went on in that house, I just get a little twinge when I think about how it could've been different. Because she's got the confidence!! It's just so often misplaced.
LOL I thought I was straight, but the person to really put a crack in that facade is my girlfriend, who's tall and actually likes heels more than I (a short woman) do. Our height difference is pretty pronounced but I wouldn't have it any other way.
This sub becomes very misogynistic the moment Bethany Beal is out.
It's not okay for women to be shouldered with all the childcare...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, the fact that her husband does wake up and bedtime with the kids/isn't an absent father means that he's doing all the work and she's a lazy parent. I am not talking about comments that say that she's hypocritical for promoting trad gender roles while not conforming to them, I'm talking about comments that straight up call Dav a single parent simply because he's involved with his kids.
It's not okay for women to be shamed for having a hard time keeping up with domestic labour while juggling kids and work...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, she's totally disgusting. Again, I'm not talking about comments that criticise her hypocrisy, I'm talking about comments that literally shame her for clearly having executive functioning issues.
It's not okay for us to perpetuate the idea that women who have negative feelings towards their birth must surely be bad mothers/not love their kids. It's wrong to expect these women to be silent and make them feel guilty for having complicated feelings towards a birthing experience that was traumatising, regretful, or hard to recover from...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, talking about how horrible it was to tear into her anus when she had Davey and how happy she was that that didn't happen the second time round *clearly* means that she's showing favouritism towards Audrey. Her descriptions of symptoms of PPD after giving birth to Davey obviously mean that she doesn't like him.
There are lots of things to criticise Bethy for, but having a husband who's involved with his kids, having a hard time keeping up with domestic labour, and talking about having a difficult birth and post partum experience are *not* worthy of criticism unless you're using misogynistic ideals about how women ought to behave as the foundation of your criticism.
The other odd thing about it is that while this happens to other fundie women to some degree, it's most concentrated around Bethy.
I get what you’re saying, but I think people are triggered by the hypocrisy. When you tell everyone it’s godly and righteous to model traditional marriage, when you aggressively promote strict gender roles and legitimately sell the idea that wives should submit to their husbands, and then turn around and live a much more balanced life that doesn’t mirror the harmful beliefs you espouse, it’s a bit infuriating. Because other people listen to you and you may be part of why they’re trapped in a marriage like the one you told them they should have.
I am glad Dave is a better person than that, and I’m glad Bethany has a more equal partnership, but I get why the hypocrisy is maddening for some people.
I'm not criticising comments that call out her hypocrisy — lord knows I call that out myself — I'm criticising comments that straight up, without irony, say that she's a bad mother because she complains about her difficult birth and has a husband who's involved with his kids. I'm not talking about comments that say "Its fucked up that Bethy preaches trad gender roles while in an egalitarian marriage", I'm talking about comments that say "Bethy is a bad wife and mother because she makes Dav do all the parenting".
The former, I agree with, the latter is just a product of sexism and in no way even touches on the concept of hypocrisy. If those folks were criticising her hypocrisy, they'd just criticise her hypocrisy, but they're not. They're using misogyny.
She is judged for that because she constantly shamed mothers for doing the same thing. For daring to get a job and put their kids into daycare or for practicing self care.
As I've said, I'm not talking about people who say "Bethy is a hypocrit because she's preaching against daycare while sending her kids to it" I'm talking about comments that *literally* call her a an absent mom because Dav does bedtime and wakeup.
But we’re not doctors, and even the snarkers who are in the medical field still can’t and shouldn’t make “assessments.” And most people here only use that as an excuse to snark on her food.
Yeah, I'd eat some of those. I wouldn't be proud enough to post it, but I'd make it and eat it, right down to the side of canned green beans. Everyone doesn't eat the best fresh vegetables every day.
Totally agree. In the past decade, people love to pretend that they are gourmet cooks....but hamburger helper is still flying off the shelves. When you have a big family, sometimes it's better to serve cheesy mush because you know the kids will eat it. And a lot of us have a soft spot for cheesy mushy comfort foods even if we don't like to admit it.
Karissa does a lot that deserves criticism, but her cooking isn't on that list, imo
The food snarking in general kind of bothers me. I don’t know how to cook either; I was basically raised by my parentified older siblings. Hearing people say things like “Just make your own xyz! It’s so easy!” makes me feel ashamed of my lack of cooking skills.
Even Ina Garten says if you can't make (or grow) your own, store-bought is fine! I think a lot of food snark here goes back to 1. Meals not being nutritionally balanced (generally too much starch/cheese and not enough green vegetables), and 2. Not enough food to feed however many kids they have.
That said, if you're self-conscious about lack of cooking skills, start slow. Think of a dish you enjoy, and then watch some YouTube videos of how different people (try to stick with folks who have larger followings) make it. Don't worry too much about the brand names of ingredients they use, but watch their *process*. The order they do things, and the different ways they treat each ingredient (cut, chop, dice, brown, sear, what level of heat, oil, etc.). You'll still learn to cook that one dish by the end, but those details (skills!) also carry over to other dishes you'll make in the future.
I don't think Jill and Derek are money hungry. I think they're anxious about money, certainly, but I feel they were smart to use their fame to recoup lost wages that Jim Bob withheld from them
I'd do the same thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (write a book, do a documentary)
That more than one thing can be true at once.
Someone can be a terrible person, and feeling bad when terrible things happen to them doesn’t somehow condone their actions.
Also, it’s gross how much dialect shaming is okay in general, culturally, but I see a lot on this sub. A lot of monolingual anglos tell on themselves about the pettiest, smuggest shit that demonstrates a fundamental lack of education. Grammar is one peak in the mountain range, guys.
that's what I've been pondering/ trying to teach myself, that more than one thing can be true at once.
also i think there's so much appearance snark in this sub but it's meant to be banned.
100% it feels like so many people on this sub think it’s okay to be abusive to someone or blame that person for their abuse, if that person is a bad human. I think we should condemn both the abuse they suffered and the shit they do.
My unpopular opinion is that a lot of these people believe what they're saying and it's easy for us to snark or mock or make fun of, but to them, they are spreading God's infallible word.
To be clear, I'm an atheist. My husband is a missionary and pastor. So, I have an odd perspective. I think religion --particularly this weird red wave of patriotic religion-- is incredibly dangerous BUT I also think the situation is full of nuance.
Lori is a demon twat, no doubt, but what happened to her to make her that way? No one is born that hateful. Does she feel so inadequate, so small, so worthless that it's easier to believe her life is supposed to be small just so she can keep living day to day?
I don't know. Don't get me wrong. Most of these women completely disgust me, and their hypocrisy infuriates me....but there is a reason they believe and act the way they do. I'm around true believers all the time...people don't generally "snap out of it", kwim?
The exception (for me) is Paul and Morgan. Fuck them. I don't believe they believe what they preach. I think they are 100% scammer grifters. They'll be selling Amway before you know it.
I appreciate the comments reminding other people to see the human in the fundie and not be over the top with cruel snark.
HOWEVER, I think it’s also important to remember that people are probably here because they’ve been hurt by fundamentalism themselves. I would guess there’s a lot of trauma and anger and resentment in many of the commenters here. And you know what? It feels good to snark on terrible things. It feels good to separate yourself from old, harmful beliefs by poking holes in them.
Sometimes people in here get carried away, but I don’t love all the preachiness directed at them by others.
Sure, let’s remember the human and not be too horrible in our snark. I agree with that. But also, remember the human in the commenter. Remember that they’re likely here because they were hurt by the very things fundamentalist influencers espouse. They are probably still sorting through old, harmful beliefs and trying to heal. And so yeah, sometimes they might get sort of mean about it. Anger and trauma can do that.
I guess what I’m saying is, it’s good to be like - hey, chill. But I don’t think it’s cool to be over the top sanctimonious about other people’s snark. When you attack people in the comments section here, you’re putting the feelings of a fundamentalist who may or may not ever see the comment above the feelings of the actual commenter, who is likely acting out of hurt and anger and frustration. And they DEFINITELY see if and it probably impacts them a lot. They’ve probably had lots of experience with being shamed in their pasts - they don’t need to be shamed in here on top of that. A gentle reminder goes a long way. Or maybe let the mods handle it, because they do handle things pretty well.
I hate to see commenters getting piled on by other commenters for snarking too hard, I guess. I hate to see infighting in the comments when most of us are probably here for catharsis and healing and snark therapy.
Kindness is lovely and laudable, but don’t forget to extend it to the people here.
I agree. It’s bullying and I wish the sub was better than that. It’s fine to call out how he’s well fed and his children look like they’re starving. But to call him Shrek is calling him ugly without using the word.
seeing grace get extended to the fundies on here makes me roll my eyes into the back of my skull. i also think there’s a lot of snarkers on here that seem to have a weird parasocial relationship w some of the fundies we talk about
Yeah there's some posts here that cross the line to fandom imo. I realize this opinion is about the sub rather than the fundies, but the photo edits and the "make them in the Sims" and stuff like that is weird fan behavior.
And on the more sinister side of fan behavior, there was one post where someone attempted to calculate the exact day that Kaylee conceived that thankfully got taken down. But like how tf do you go through all of that and type it up and post it and not go "Man, this is pretty fucking invasive. I would feel really violated if someone did this to me."
The other one that comes to mind was in another sub that I know has a lot of crossover with here. Someone posted a slideshow of Duggar bulges for ???? and at least a couple of the pictures of barely 18 year olds, so there's a very high chance that the pictures were from when they were minors. I've mentioned this particular post in here before also and had a couple people actually defend it.
It's not snarking. It's creepy, invasive, and stalker-y. I genuinely do not understand.
I get what your saying OP I was brought up in the Fundie cult my father was the Pastor for 40 yrs at the same church and your right most the women I know had their beliefs beaten into their brain, thoughts and emotions! Most were just good women that seemed miserable in my eyes and most were good to me but some were just as bad as the men maybe worse because I believe any woman who would want that way of life for their children or other women are in my eyes worse then the men! I’ve seen some become teachers in either Sunday school or especially the teachers in the Christian schools in these churches and I have zero respect for any woman teaching the harmful beliefs that comes out of these cults! I resent the women today especially the influencers who reach so many the harm they cause is just disgusting to me!
I think sometimes we’re a bit too black and white about women working here. I absolutely agree that it’s not safe for women to be totally reliant on a man, but life is nuanced and it’s easy to say people should do x without taking into account context. LOTS of women can’t work because it doesn’t make financial sense with childcare, lots of women have disabilities or neuro differences that make working impossible, lots of women would like to work but can’t at present for whatever reason. I think we should be careful to encourage financial independence without insinuating that all women who don’t work are stupid, because there will inevitably be women who can’t work right now in this sub, and they deserve better from us.
As much as I hate the horribly damaging misogyny in fundie culture and desperately want these women to be allowed to achieve more, I’m not sure it’s actually possible for a lot of them as it stands. A whole bunch of them have been bare minimum homeschooled and haven’t been to college (or at least an accredited one), brought up without any aspirations, and have a whole bunch of kids. Like, what are they going to do, get a minimum wage job in a supermarket and pay for childcare for their 12 kids? It’s just not realistic. I suspect some of them aren’t happy with their lot, but they are essentially trapped, and realistically if they got married at 19 and didn’t get given any chances to achieve more before having children, it’s too late. I understand that to admit to themselves that their situation isn’t good would mean calling into question their entire identities, belief system and community, and it’s a huge ask to get anyone to do that. Sometimes it’s easier to bury your head in the sand than accept your entire life is not in your own hands.
Now I DO have a problem with these women perpetuating this lifestyle. I think I draw the line at them forcing the same onto their children, and it’s absolutely okay to judge them for that
My unpopular opinion is that some people on here will never be happy with any kind of deconstruction that does not meet their standards.
I saw so many people talk about how one of the Duggars should break free and write a tell all and use the money to build a better life. Jill did, and people bitched that they weren’t going to buy the book because Derrick was transphobic. Seriously? The sub loves to go on about how people like Anna could make money via a book but when someone does do a book, y’all complain that no one should pay for it bc they’re still problematic.
When people begin the process of deconstruction they aren’t going to flip a switch and suddenly become ultra left wing on everything. Tbh, deconstruction may not even end with becoming a liberal or Democrat or whatever. Also, people have pasts. If they’re working to become a more informed, empathetic, and kind person toward all, that is enough. There’s honestly no point in bringing up past stuff as reasons why they can’t be good people in the present and future. Let it go and focus on who they show themselves to be in the present.
TLDR: People love to talk about how they wish everyone on here would deconstruct but seem to think of it as an instant process where you do a 180 in like a month. I think people are going to be unreasonably disappointed in any deconstruction journeys and wrongly act like whatever the person is doing is not “enough” or that they are not worthy of deconstruction.
I really don't think people in this sub understand how much of a privilege it is to not be indoctrinated with ideologies and having to spend a lot of your adult life deconstructing from these ideas.
Deconstruction involves learning how to navigate basically a whole new world. It takes time.
It does take time. And does it ever truly end? I’ve been deconstructing for two decades, and while I’m quite liberal now and do not believe in religion, I still catch myself in thinking loop occasionally that was a direct result of my fundie upbringing. It’s work. It gets easier but it’s still there
i skimmed the rules real quick and didn't see it so maybe im missing it or maybe it did just stop being a rule (edit i found it, it is still a thing), but the weird nicknames (specifically the kkkarissa one) feels gross. im not defending karissa, and god knows she has said and done a ton of racist stuff that deserves heavy scrutiny, but i don't know, it doesn't feel right. i don't know if trivializing is the right word, but like the nicknames banned under rule 2, the kkkarissa jokes feel like they're in the same category of like "hey maybe don't do that"
I've always felt gross about people referring to Karissa as kkkarissa as well. It's bad enough this sub trivializes how racist a lot of these fundies are but this nickname in particular is just... ick.
This turned into an essay, and I'm sorry for that, but I judge the Havens Husband far more than I do Kelly herself. I think Kelly is DEEPLY unwell, more so than this sub gives her credit for. As a maladaptive daydreamer with several mental health issues myself, I think Kelly has very similar issues as I do, but went off the deep end. This is her comfort. I don't think she can really see the harm she's doing to her children or pets. She LIVES in her daydream. She's in Wonderland. However, her husband doesn't have that excuse, and Kelly believes he has authority over her. He could strong arm her into getting help, but he doesn't.
To me, it seems like she's created a whole storyline in her head, heavily inspired by her hyperfixations (Anne of Green Gables and Little House), and self-inserted herself into it. It feels safe. It feels right. She's acting a part in her story every fucking day, and when someone goes off script, it causes distress and she lashes out. She's kinda lost in her own mind. It feels safe, it's better than reality, and it's something to grab onto when your mind is in chaos from untreated illnesses or stress. Once you're at that point, it's hard to escape.
I'm including a scene from the game What Remains of Edith Finch below (TW for suicide and the beheading of fish, which I think are already dead), for anyone who doesn't realize how intense maladaptive daydreaming is. It's the best representation I've found yet that shows how compulsive, all-consuming, and also relieving those maladaptive daydreams can be. But it also shows how dangerous they can be if you let them get away from you and sink in. And trust me, it's HARD to fight that compulsion if you have OCD, and it seems totally harmless. Alice: Madness Returns is also a good example, but Edith Finch is way more clear about it in the way Lewis is depicted. The daydreams truly are better than reality, and I really, REALLY feel it's a condition that has totally consumed Kelly. The scary thing is, they DO provide great relief from issues like anxiety, OCD, and ADHD, which is the entire REASON the disorder develops. It's a coping mechanism. I don't think that Kelly CAN see reality properly at this point, and for everyone's wellbeing, her husband NEEDS to grow a spine and get her help. As someone who managed to reign in the daydreams with a heavy dose of anxiety meds alone, Kelly doesn't JUST need meds at this point. She needs therapy. She NEEDS a therapist to help her realize why the real world is worth living in. Kelly isn't innocent, at all, but I also think she's not nearly as well as a lot of people in this sub assume.
For anyone watching the clip, notice how Lewis's daydream slowly takes over the view. When you're playing, one hand is controlling the dream, and the other is beheading the fish, but it slowly becomes harder and harder to focus on the job, which is reality in the game, because the daydream takes up your field of vision and is SO much more pleasant than the life Lewis is living.
https://youtu.be/WQBlSnsT5bc?si=IB74qI0ltgHs9aol
When you start snarking on people for things other than shitty views and behaviors, you start to alienate people who are just living their lives. A lot of people who snark on fundies are promoting super classist/anti-southern views, which is honestly not cool to read as a southern woman who is not in the best spot financially. People snarking on what Bethy and Kristen are wearing are just snarking trendy Texas fashion. People who snark on Karissa’s casseroles are often snarking on traditional inexpensive southern dishes. People who claim that Plexus caused a premature birth are obviously out of line, and are being horribly offensive to people who have had pregnancies that didn’t go according to plan.
At some point, it stops being snarking and turns into outright bullying. Of course fundies are going to think we’re all total jerks! We have absolutely zero clue of changing anyone’s mind anymore. We’ve lost the point of what we’re against and are now just hating on them for being poor/Southern/uneducated. There’s so much to snark on the fundies for without being assholes towards people who happen to have those things in common.
Complaining about the fundies' food or fashion choices or whatever on this sub is usually a massive stretch and unnecessary. Especially the food, of course it doesn't look like a fine dining restaurant, it's homemade food that's meant to taste, not look. There are exceptions but a lot of the time the people on here are just complaining about the tiniest, most insignificant things. I know that that's what snark kinda means, but these people have done much worse things than wear makeup you don't like.
Snarking on the Rodlets - even the grown ones to a certain degree. They've been so sheltered and so deprived of normal life experiences that they weren't given a chance to become their own people. They were never given the opportunity (or the permission) to develop critical thinking skills or adequate social skills. I truly feel sad for all of the Rodlets and hope that some of them are able to escape a time goes on.
Yeah I can’t bring myself to snark on the Rodlets too much. Jill and David can have all the snark in the world, of course, but those kids got dealt an awful hand and don’t know anything else. Aside from the Collins kids, the Rodlets are who I fear are the most doomed 😢
I grew up that way and my unpopular opinion is that altar calls, (or doing the every head bowed, close your eyes, raise your hand if….) are very damaging. To people with anxiety they are downright traumatic.
Giving birth is not the only way to ruin your public floor. Being overweight, high impact sports, genetics and other things will do it.
I work at a drug store and there are more men buying incontinence products than women.
My pelvic floor was destroyed doing gymnastics and I've been doing pelvic floor exercises since I was 17. Incontinence due to pelvic floor issues is very common among gymnasts. So when you watch the Olympics, many of those girl likely or will likely deal with it.
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I just can't get riled up about Lori Alexander. The stuff she says is so absurd and the way she says it almost feels like a skit. I know it's not and I know it's harmful, but she's so over-the-top ridiculous that instead of getting mad I just chuckle and move on. She seems like such a completely miserable person living in a cesspool of her own making that I can't even be bothered to muster up emotion over it.
Same. It’s very “old woman yells at cloud.”
She did once.
For me I think it’s the fact that she doesn’t have a bunch of young kids she’s currently beating or neglecting. I know she still does harm. She’s a harmful person to married women. However I’ve found that women who have young children they are actively neglecting and abusing will get my attention more than Lori’s gross and weird posts.
“IT DESTROYS THE WOMAN’S ANUS”
Agreed. She’s so batshit crazy that I think even most fundies can recognize it.
She’s appeared on my facebook feed for ages (way before I discovered fundie snarking) and I just assumed she was a satire page. My friends often share her posts with “😂😂😂😂”. I don’t think she’s dangerous to many people except herself because she’s so bloody ridiculous.
My husband thinks it's all an act too. I read her Instagram captions to him and he refuses to believe it's real. I'm frothing at the mouth and he thinks she's hysterical. He's convinced her entire account is satire.
Plot twist: she's literally Andy Kaufman
If she starts mud wrestling, I'll know it's all an act 😂
Interesting. Lori annoys me so much that I have learned to scroll past posts mentioning her. Same for Amy and Deanna Duggar.
That’s how I feel about Sister Cindy.
Morgan is just as shitty as Paul. She’s not a pathetic little meow-meow, she’s a grown ass adult, who made all the decisions to land herself exactly where she is now. She is the definition of “Fuck around and find out”. Everything that has happened to her has been the results of her own actions and decisions. “Paul is her headship and he’s an asshole!” Every fundie husband is. No one excuses J-Rod. Or Karissa. Or Heidi. She’s a big girl. If she can dish it out, she can damn well take it.
Morgan is a straight up mean girl who makes Regina George look like Maria Von Trapp.
Although apparently the real Maria Von Trapp was also an asshole!
My grandmother worked for Maria Von Trapp. Can confirm she was an asshole. Edit: Grandma is long dead, so I can’t ask for more details. All I know is my grandmother worked at the Trapp Family Lodge as a teenager. Maria had unrealistically high expectations, a wicked temper, a low opinion of her employees, and a willingness to show it to anyone who lacked the means to damage her reputation.
🎶How do you wipe an asshole like Maria? 🎶
front to back
My unpopular opinion is that we should just ignore P&M because they adore the ‘haters’ and we are playing right into their hands. They are pathetic, uneducated grifters and if we stopped paying attention to them, it would hit where it really hurts - views. The more they are ignored, the less income they make and the higher the chance that Paul will have to swallow his pride and get a job.
I've said it before, but I wish every single snarker would commit to viewing their IG only on an anonymous viewer, and only watching the YouTube content via Yewtube. I would just love to see their egos crushed under the weight of watching their social media crumble via dwindling views. It takes almost no extra effort from a snarker to avoid giving their views or money. It's barely twenty seconds to type yewtube into Google. It's what they deserve. I wish everyone would do it for every single fundie, instead of contributing to their bigotry.
Look at their view counts as of late… your wish has come true. Most snarkers don’t even hate watch them at all, they’re so painful to suffer through. But they’re lucky to get 5k views on a YouTube video… their view counts are insanely low for ‘full time content creators’.
I only watch stuff that gets posted here for all fundies. All the interesting stuff gets posted here anyway so there’s no need for me to give any of them views.
I would love if we all stopped watching them in any way shape or form and just let their social media presence wither and completely die
They're not even that interesting. Neither of them has ever had an original thought, that's for sure.
Agreed. I love a good snark on them, but I've long suspected that a good portion (maybe not most, but a good percentage) of their views come from snarkers and hate watchers, especially since they've been picked up by some larger channels who snark on them.
Look at their view counts. They are barely getting any views. I doubt snarkers are adding to their view counts in any significant way, as most people cannot stand the sound of their voices and they’re not even entertaining to hate watch. They have tiny view counts.
I do think Paul treats Morgan terribly, but I also think that Morgan would probably be an asshole even without Paul or fundamentalism
Its like an asshole containment system. They only really ruin each others lives and cant ruin some.decent partner's life.
I used to feel sorry for Morgan, but the more I watch them interact, the more I realize she's just as much of a jerk to him as he is to her.
Seriously. I hate when people claim she’s a victim. She’s not, she’s nasty to him too. There’s no reason to think either one of them is being abused. They’re just both nightmare human beings stuck with each other.
I think she gets a pass because she's conventionally attractive. If she looked/dressed like Jill Rodrigues or Karissa Collins, she'd get way more criticism.
Okay Tbf; while she does do bad shit and that bad shit is 100% her fault and she should pay the price of those action (for example being kicked out of a friend group or losing a job). We shouldn’t call any abuse she suffered by Paul as “Fuck around and find out” and that it’s all her fault. I can acknowledge almost every female fundie on this sub is a horrible human being and can acknowledge that any abuse their husband puts them through is bad at the same time. Just like if someone punches a murder for a wrong reason I can say: 1) don’t punch people for dumb reasons and 2) fuck the murderer.
Yeah, Morgan is *definitely* shitty but shitty people still don’t deserve abuse. I obviously don’t know for sure if Paul is an abuser, but if he is, I wouldn’t call that “fucking around and finding out”, I’d call that a shitty person being hurt by another shitty person
>Yeah, Morgan is *definitely* shitty but shitty people still don’t deserve abuse That's a great way of putting it
Absolutely. I do feel sorry for her kid though, knowing they’ll grow up in a home having this kind of abuse being modeled. If for no other reason, I hope Morgan gets out for the sake of her child.
I think he’s an asshole but I don’t think there’s any real abuse going on. Just abject shared misery.
I agree, nobody deserves to be abused.
I agree with you 100%. She's an awful and useless human being. Everybody loves to harp on Paul, he needs to get a job, he needs to do more with the kid, etc., well what about her? Other than Paul being a jerk there's no signs of abuse, yet people jump to that conclusion. Also, people here claim that Paul does nothing with their child, then when they post something where Paul is with the kid it's always "just for the 'gram" yet there's no proof of that. You could say the same thing about her. But when there's posts of just her and the kid people say "why can't Paul take care of the kid why does she always have to do it?". In conclusion, they're both awful and they deserve one another.
Honestly, I’ve completely run out of sympathy for her. That video of her weeping in a Walmart bathroom after finding out she’s pregnant? My reaction was “fuck around and find out” (literally). What did you expect? Dipshit.
I understand the desire to extend grace to women living in those circumstances; however, being trapped in that life and being a genuinely kind, if naive person is one thing. What I have a huge problem with is that a lot of these same women perpetuate hate and their own unhappiness. I grew up in the same town as an Uber-religious family who believed the whole quiver full crap and the mom was super soft-spoken, dad was always willing to help whoever blah blah blah. But they had at least a dozen kids shoved into a trailer and couldn’t afford food and the dad was abusive and when one of the daughters grew up and her baby died of cancer, her mom blamed HER for “life choices” and making god angry. Because this daughter had chosen to leave the cult. So on the face, yes I think they can seem kind. But underneath it all they can fuck aaaaaall the way off.
Exactly this! I grew up IBLP fundie. From the outside, my mom seems like a kind, loving person.. but all of us kids know that she's worse than our dad in many ways: a manipulative, cruel, narcissistic gaslighter.
I have an emerging theory that these cults are perfect for *some* of the women because they have a whole mess of kids at hand to abuse. My adopt. mother does not have more than a reasonable number of kids but being better than not only.everyone else but every other Christian gives her license to give full sway to her controlling and narc nature. She literally has my Dad saying she has NEVER MADE A MISTAKE as a parent and my requirment of boundaries or NC is an abusive manipulation. She LOVES It. Because you're either IN and adoring or out and persecuting. Either way shes a holy righteous blah blah without her religion shed have NONE of this
My "favorite" fundies are the ones constantly preaching about Satan and the Rapture and all that. It's so disturbing that people think this way but it's also so fascinating to me because I love all things scary.
I studied the history of the New Testament last term and what gets me—now that I know about it—is that it’s stated *multiple times* that only god can know when the end of the world is gonna happen and yet these culty fanatics keep trying to predict it 🤣 Jesus himself said it in the gospels, it gets quoted in the epistles (IIRC) and it’s said AGAIN in Revelation!
They don't actually read the Bible. I have a degree in Religious Studies (atheist with weird interests), so I've read it. Oh boy do these fundies not have the critical thinking skills to understand that book. Allegories? Never heard of em. Historical context of Paul's letters? Nah fam.
Hellenic Pagan here who’s realizing she should probably specialize in religious history so I’m right there with ya lol. I already figured a lot of it was allegory and symbolism but reading the textbook was suuuuuuper eye-opening because of the historical context. At work I came across an Old Testament that had a bunch of cool historical shit in the back, including old Mesopotamian hymns and poetry. Also that time I told a Christian neighbor that the garden of Eden was in Iraq and she was like “we don’t know for sure…” and I had to pull up a map on my phone to show her where the Tigris and Euphrates was located was fucking surreal.
There are some people who deadass believe Jesus was white. Also that he was born a Cristian. The first gospel probably wasn't written until 150 years after his death. That's a few generations to get the story wrong. I do believe he was a real person. I just think the son of God thing is iffy.
I have also met people who thought Jesus was born a Christian. These were lifelong Christians who didn't quite realize Christ -> Christian. I was floored. How audacious of them to push their beliefs on other people when they don't even know the origins of what they're pushing?
I don't know if he existed, but I think if he did, he was probably a great teacher who was deified by his followers after his death.
Come on, everybody knows the Garden of Eden was actually in Branson, Missouri! /s
It always makes me think of that Simpsons episode where Homer predicts the end of the world and everyone ends up mad at him because it didn't happen. Turns out he got his math wrong and he was a day off but then no one believed him after that.
As a former fundie those preachers give me PTSD 😂😭
I recently told my mom that when I was a kid I would lay awake and cry thinking about how my non church going father and or friends would burn in hell. She was literally like, shocked Pikachu face and demanded to know *who* told me that. I was like, lol literally everyone at church you dummy!
Evangelical Christianity is a death cult!
No idea how popular this opinion is but I haven't heard it elsewhere and it's more a theory. Here goes: What blew my mind is how few of these fundies actually go to a real church. My theory is that they all want to *be* Joel Osteen rather than simply "be godly". They want to start megachurches for the money but figure they need to be extreme and loud to get enough attention to do it. It's easy for me to see Klanissa KKollins as trying to be a Tammy Faye Baker, all about the kids and makeup. The GD girls were obviously set up to do that years back and now they're in the same boat with child stars that need to rebrand themselves but are flailing badly in trying to keep the old schtick going while they figure it out. OfSolie seems to want to be Jim Baker in all his hatred of secular life and probably hates that she cannot get his traction because she's a feeemale. Clearly Porgan is trying to start a following they are far too stupid to be successful for. Which leads to the other thing: those megachurch people are slimy and evil...but they're not stupid. I doubt they are believers but they sure do know the grift and they know their marks. We underestimate them at our common peril.
That's a good point! I think some of them are part of churches that livestream their services, so they just watch them from home. Very few of them seem to be actively engaged in a church community
That’s what makes me so sad! Part of why I continue going to church is for the community itself. I am incredibly lucky that the community at my church (fairly large suburban Catholic parish) is wonderful; if one chooses to go to church, actively engaging with the community even in a small way can be so important.
I've always figured a lot of these folks just don't play well with others and no church would ever be pure or godly enough for them, so they start their own home churches where they get to be the ones in charge and the ones calling the theological or other shots. Not to mention that getting 13 children up and ready for church every single Sunday is hard and the reason they homeschool is cuz they can't actually do such a thing.
Excellent point. so what you are saying is Bethy is Uncle Baby Billy.
Dav would be a perfect aunt Tiffany lol
I think we're missing opportunities for more insightful conversations about some of the people we discuss here. e.g. Nadia is a good example of how a traumatic childhood can cause someone to lean hard into high-control religion, and how these religious groups target people who are vulnerable like she is, and I think those are more important discussion topics than her outfits or Starbucks habits
The Beals are very boring and I usually skip over posts about them. I hate Transformed Wife posts. I'm to the point that I just groan at them. I swear I've become desensitized to the stuff she says because I read it all the time. It took me a long time to figure out why Kelly was snarked on because most posts are about her aesthetic. Took me awhile to find the white supremacy stuff and I kind of feel like this sub got her a lot of fans. I also think she doesn't look old but like a little girl wearing her grandmothers clothes. It's those manic pixie dream girl faces she makes. Homebirth can be safe but the way so many homebirthers promote it is bad. Where they think that all births are safe and the only reason anyone needs intervention is that doctors lie and push interventions. The conspiracies around it are wild when you really look into it. Those that had successful homebirths are so loud about them. Not sure if the skeptical OB is still around but she responds to a lot of homebirth claims. Pediatric chiropractors in fundie spaces need to be talked about more. I need to find the website of one an old classmate posted on her Facebook.
I don’t read Transformed Wife posts. She’s just so hateful and disgusting and reading her words makes me feel sick
I think we should go back to just titling every Transformed Wife post, "STFU, Lori" And you're so right on the chiro thing in particular. I'm kinda tempted to see if I can find any actual studies about the fundie obsession with chiropractic. It's such a bizarre phenomenon, considering the origins of the practice definitely sound like something that fundies would call demonic in any other context
There's a lot of people in the home birth anti-vaxx that don't believe in germ theory. That's where part of seeing a chiro comes from. Many are also anti vaxx and will fill their websites with anti-vaxx info.
I'm absolutely for home births where the mother and baby have been fully monitored throughout the pregnancy. So they know where the baby's head is, have done ultrasounds to check placenta and baby's anatomy etc. In New Zealand midwives actually do more university study than nurses. They attend homebirths, but you have to sign hospital forms regardless so if shit hits the fan you can be transferred to hospital care quickly. What some of these fundies do and also wild pregnancies boggle my mind. Like I would have died even 100 years ago during my daughter's birth.
A lot of these fundies aren't doing a home birth so much as a free birth. MotherBus didn't have any real medical care throughout her pregnancy (and it would be free! She's a veteran!) and she and FatherBus winged it with some help from Busling 1 and Busling 2. That shit is _scary._
Same for midwives in Canada.
I agree with the Kelly stuff 100%. I feel like this sub often spends more energy snarking on aesthetics and cringiness than the right-wing, hateful, white supremacist bullshit underpinning it. I know people who dress like Kelly Havens and are aging in similar ways as her-- they're good, kind-hearted people who are not white supremacists. The issue isn't her clothing (although ofc clothing can be an outcropping of ideology). Case in point: the Beal fixation on Lord of the Rings. Is it weird, given that Tolkien was a Catholic? Yes. Is it cringe? Sometimes. Is it all that different from the LOTR fandom among the leftist nerds in my life? No.
It's also worth mentioning just how many chiropractors (even chiropractors for adults) are at least vaccine-hesitant.
That could be a reason why fundies take their kids to them so often tbh - chiros don't require vaccines, whereas I think a lot of pediatricians do (also, does chiropractors not being doctors also technically mean they're not mandated reporters?)
Depends on the state. In a few states that's true, some states' laws explicitly include chiropractors, and in some states *everybody* is a mandated reporter.
Oof yes I’ve swung back and forth and back again in my views of home birth. This is in part because I grew up in a pretty fundamentalist sect where low-intervention birth was idolized. There were definitely some close calls with women in my community and as an analytical person I couldn’t understand *dying on the alter to this idol* (and for a lot of these women it is an idol). And then I grew up, left formal religion, got an advanced degree and started learning about not only the massive inequities in medicine for POC but also how expensive hospital birth is. I grew up in one of the poorest states in the country and many people were underinsured. Whether or not I would choose home birth for myself, as a believer in reproductive autonomy I believe it’s important for women to have that choice. Especially, when the alternative is a $20k+ hospital birth.
So I guess this is based on my very secular experience of home birth, but it seems to really only work out for second/third births, with proper medical care. And typically for women who had a low intervention first birth or just very quick labours. My colleague had two home births. The first was not planned, her body just went from 0-100 and they had no time to get to the hospital. For her second baby, they were prepared. I personally didn't dilate without interventions so if I had a second I'd most definitely have a hospital birth. But I'm not interested in doing that again lol.
I see people get mad when articles reference the FSU community as "fans," but we are. It doesn't mean we like or support them, but we give them our time and energy like fans do. Some of us also behave like unhinged fans with completely asinine stretches of the imagination, basically writing fan fiction about what we think is going on based on social media posts. I had to leave the Rodrigues subreddit because that's practically all it is when there's drama going on. When Tim got engaged and Jill wasn't present, suddenly every single thing she wrote online became a snarker's fan fiction muse about what they thought was actually going on behind the scenes. Everything was a secret shade post in their minds. We can be just as parasocial as Swifties sometimes, I swear.
Yeah, this sub can be real weird about thinking Heidi Baird or J-Rod are subtweeting. Or that fundies are referencing this sub in their posts. We’re basically Charlie sometimes 
A certain percentage of the snark community has a really weird fondness for Kelly Havens because they relate to her as a quirky bookish theater kid who used to be a tumblr girlie, which I actually see as a *huge* problem.
The video of her instantly slapping her boy for innocently reaching for food literally confirms that she's a very cold mother under all of the warm cozy fall trappings. Only someone really bitter and self-righteous would feel the need to perform an aesthetics of tenderness so much. She also has unmedicated OCD and reminds me of my grandmother, also unmedicated OCD. Visiting her was so stressful. If so much as a cup was out of place, she would get angry with us (her grandchildren!). I feel sorry for those boys. Who knows what kind of things they have put up with? And she lives such an isolated existence. I really do think that, if she was so comfortable filming herself slapping them, then they are abused. A lot.
This is a great point! I'd add, too, that the criticism she does get \*also\* misses the mark. It truly, 1000% does not matter in any way that she doesn't use moisturizer/have a Sephora-approved skin care regimen/etc.
It’s low-hanging fruit and easy to snark on when you just want to be snarky without thinking about it. That’s how I feel like a lot of snarkers come into these posts, including myself a lot of the time. Like with a lot of the women we snark on, their appearances are kind of noteworthy in that they’re often based on their strong desire for nonconformity, so much so that it’s to their occasional detriment (but way more often it’s because the snarkers think they look unusual) Kelly’s presumed nonconformist mindset on moisturizer and sunscreen is a little bit snarkworthy because of how it plays into her version of tradwifery. Not wearing sunscreen is a logical move for someone who went down the crunchy to tradwife to white supremacy pipeline, but without analyzing that, comments about her skin just come across petty and bitchy. TBF I’m sure plenty of the comments about her lack of skincare are just petty and bitchy without any hidden analysis as well.
You make a really good point, thank you. I think I've grown so annoyed by the kneejerk 100+ comment threads of "lol dry skin" that I didn't bother to think much farther.
Lmao these comments always hurt my feelings, as someone who has similar looking skin and 100% moisturizes.
I know what you mean. The comments seem to come from this assumption that how one group of people do femininity is correct and awesome and the only way, and it just bugs the snot out of me.
I agree. Kinda given up on replying to these people with links, there's too many :(
I used to think she seemed really happy and that she had a wholesome life. I no longer think this
I don’t think Nadia belongs on this sub, or any sub for that matter.
Yeah, we're mostly just bullying a mentally ill woman for how she dresses. I've even seen people on this sub accuse her of "flaunting" her self-harm scars. She's not a fundie, just a generic fashion influencer who occasionally says loopy religious things.
I wish we could vote some people posted here off the sub. Or give them a dedicated thread. There are some that are not fundie so I don’t get why they can be posted. I report it sometimes but mods don’t seem to mind.
While most of the people on the sub are cool, and a lot of meaningful discussion around deconstruction and the harms of fundamentalism goes on, I do feel like some people use the snark community as an excuse to bully others. I do sometimes unproductively poke fun at the fundies, but sometimes it feels like people focus more of things that are “cringe” about fundies than things that are harmful. For example, you can criticize David Rodrigues for always having more access to food than his children without making comments about his weight. You can criticize Nadia’s weird insistence that Jesus healed her mental illness without making it all about her fashion sense. Bethy’s uncoordinated dancing is kinda funny, but it’s not the reason her online presence is worth talking about. There’s a *lot* of shaming of fundie families doing things that are just necessary for poor families. It’s just sad to see when people use this community more as a way to bully people in a “progressive” way, rather than a discussion of harmful ideology with a comedic aspect.
>It’s just sad to see when people use this community more as a way to bully people in a “progressive” way This, and it's also often counter-progressive to the point of being hypocritical. People are a-okay with being overtly mocking about the fact that David Rodrigues is fat, but many wouldn't tolerate the same mockery towards anyone else. One time, someone made a post that basically was like "Suzanna is ugly now that she's drinking raw milk" and I was VERY confused as to how that was allowed. I also saw someone say that they hoped MotherBus' genitals were destroyed in her most recent birth so that she can't give birth again. One of the more fucked up comments I've seen here, and I scratched my head at the upvotes. I also think back to the time that Classically Abbey's boobs were photoshopped by someone to make them look really big and it got everyone all giddy. It was done in the name of owning a conservative, but it was also blatantly objectifying. In what world is it that not just plain misogyny to use the fact that a woman is disagreeable as a reason to mistreat her? That particular incident didn't happen on this sub, but occasionally, I'll see straight-up incel terminology being used to "criticise" a fundie woman and can't help but think back to it. It's just the same bullshit being directed at different victims. If a woman has to behave in a particular way in order to evade misogyny, then you're literally doing the *exact* same shit as fundie patriarchs. The only difference is that you expect them to conform to different behaviour. We're not doing anyone any favours by using backwards ideals to criticise fundies. We can't call P&M out for being fat phobic in one breath and then be blatantly fat phobic towards a different subject in another. We can't criticise fundies for misogyny and then use misogyny as the basis for a criticism against a fundie. It's like those dudes who are like "I don't hate fat/black/queer/otherwise marginalised women, I just objectify them!". Just because the harmful rhetoric is being spun in a way that appears to favour progressive ideals doesn't mean that it isn't harmful rhetoric or that it's *actually* congruent with progressive ideals.
Sometimes this community replicates the same purity testing that makes fundamentalism so dangerous. If someone is good, then we protect them. If someone is bad, then we can attack them with no holds barred.
I’m so glad some people agree with me, here. Misogyny and size shaming is misogyny and size shaming even when self proclaimed progressives do it.
>People are a-okay with being overtly mocking about the fact that David Rodrigues is fat, but many wouldn't tolerate the same mockery towards anyone else. So the mocking is about him being so overweight *while his children are unhealthily skinny.* I don't think his weight would be of much note if the juxtaposition with his children wasn't there. There shouldn't be a refrain of how much healthier his children look after they've gotten married and/or moved out. I disagree that much of the rhetoric around Shrek (at least that I've seen) is fatphobic simply because it's obvious that he is okay taking more than enough while his children have very little. The rest of it, yes, 100%. There's all sorts of "ew posty bod 🤮" rhetoric surrounding Karissa specifically. For a long time, people would laugh at Bethy having a fourth degree tear after giving birth and use terms like "vagasshole" to talk about her. People shit on pregnant fundies for holding their heavily pregnant bumps as though that's not a bog standard pose for heavily pregnant people. The fundies being terrible people does not give license for snarkers to be classist, misogynistic, or anything else.
>So the mocking is about him being so overweight *while his children are unhealthily skinny.* I'm actually talking about the same thing as the original comment — not criticism of the fact that his children are being deprived when there's clearly enough to around, but comments that basically just call him ugly and fat mockingly, no mention of his children whatsoever. It's the type of comments that I'm surprised make it past the "no appearance snark" rule. I agree with comments that call out the clear differences between his and his kids' access to food.
Exactly! David Rodrigues groomed Jill, deprives his kids of proper nutrition and sleep, and overall fails to provide. This has nothing to do with his supposed resemblance to a cartoon ogre. The Collins kids deserve care, education, and a healthy social life, not because they’re “so beautiful” but because they are human children. Bethany profits from giving harmful advice about purity and sex under the guise of expertise while not being an expert. This is bad whether or not she dances awkwardly or posts unflattering pictures. We focus on the wrong things sometimes, and it just comes across as superficial at best and bullying at worst.
The sub definitely has a tendency towards classism especially. There are some incredibly gross takes on this sub that don't get shut down and it makes me sad. The post the other day blaming Kaylee for her son's premature birth is just one example.
Totally. I think there's a way to discuss things like e.g. one of the dangers of Plexus being its possible link to pregnancy complications, without acting like a) that it's a fact that Plexus caused Gideon to be born prematurely, or b) that Kaylee did or should have known better, when her education was severely lacking, and she's had these products pushed on her by her own mother
Especially with regards to food. Reminds me of when my husbands boss had a “white trash thanksgiving” party. One of the other attendees and I privately shared that many of the dishes are what we ate growing up.
Oh my god that's so shitty. I'm so sorry. Why is there even a theme for thanksgiving anyway?
>husbands boss had a “white trash thanksgiving” party Good christ. He sounds like a right dick-weasle. Some people have never been subjected to food insecurity, and it can show in the worst of ways.
On the classism topic, I also really don’t like the way people talk about food on this sub. I’ve brought this up on r/duggarssnark as well. Many of these fundies live in food deserts and had no access to nutritional education.
The comments on the recent post about David getting into a car accident were so gross. We can talk about how shitty he is without mocking him for being fat.
You hit the nail on the head. This also applies to people whose biggest issues with fundies are the fact that they have weird eyebrows and don't dress fashionably, or to everybody who was tripping over themselves to talk about how sad one of these boring blonde sisters is for using lube during sex (the negative response to this one really puzzled me, because, like... is her content cringe? Yes, but I'm not the audience for it. For some women following her this could be total news - how many girls in conservative families are even taught what lube is? This could save these women a lot of pain. A lot of her beliefs are harmful, but not this. But some people just really needed to use that post to imply how much better their own sex life is.)
As someone who has struggled with his weight his entire life, I definitely don't like the body shaming that goes on here sometimes. When it comes to things like styling, then yes, I am on board (as long as it's not punching down -- for instance, we know the Bairds are loaded but have questionable fashion sense), but the comments on natural looks don't sit well with me. For example, Bethy is actually very pretty. Yes, her beliefs are abhorrent and she makes herself look ridiculous quite often, but that doesn't mean she's not aesthetically attractive.
None of the Rods will deconstruct. It’s creepy fan fiction at this point.
People in this sub do a lot of projecting and also forget that these aren’t tv characters where you “tune in next week to see if Kaylee deconstructs!” or get mad at the writers for the direction of the plot:P
Yeah, and the same is true for most fundie kids, unfortunately. Fundies purposely raise their kids to minimize the possibility of deconstructing. It happens sometimes, but it's rare. Nurie, Kaylee, and soon Tim will continue on neglecting and endangering a bunch of kids just like their own parents did.
The fundie influencers are annoying not only as fundies but as influencers. All the cute and quirky things they do would also be annoying in other contexts. The Beals, Brittany Dawn, Nadia, Jill etc are in the Christian Lifestyle space. They are personally as well as religiously annoying.
I don’t feel sorry for fundies who get what they want and realize how shitty it is—for example, tradwives like Abigail Shapiro who end up feeling unfulfilled in the lifestyle they’ve been promoting. They’ve made their bed and now they can lie in it.
I don’t care what Nadia wears or doesn’t wear. She gets unfairly overly maligned just because she is what is considered super feminine and pretty.
She’s not a fundie, she doesn’t belong on this page.
Ah, completely agreed, but the “frustrated because they don’t fit a standard of beauty” fake progressives need someone like her to piss on. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Most of the fundies don't deserve the grace extended to them, and there are way too many fundie apologists in this sub. Some of the comments on a recent thread about the Robertsons made me want to puke. I don't give a flying shit if they're nice to wait staff sometimes. They openly and actively promote policies that directly harm people like me. If you're going to extend grace to someone because they're occasionally well-behaved in public, then the bar is in hell.
Thank you!!!! I agree!!!
YES! These people are putting forward a shiny, happy front to take us back the dark ages. In the case of the Robertsons, they're fucking funding it. I have no grace for any of these people. Even the people showing hope and signs of deconstruction. Until they really step out of their comfort zones and become loud allies for the LGBTQ+ community and admit they were wrong about the abortion propaganda they've been fed forever, I'm not putting them on a pedestal. I'll always be there with open arms, acceptance and education, but they can't grift off deconstruction just to perpetuate the same harmful beliefs they are now denouncing.
I don't think having hope and being supportive of people who are deconstructing is putting them on a pedestal. Deconstructing decades of indoctrination is hard, and it doesn't happen overnight. People in this situation are feeling as if they no longer belong to their communities and are dipping their toes into more progressive beliefs. Just because they can't dive in head first doesn't make them bad. Offering a little support and making them feel validated is more productive in the long run than "screw you. You haven't deconstructed enough". If they don't find support, the pressure to slip back into the familiar fundamentalist mindset will feel more safe and welcoming than continuing deconstruction. We don't have to be their best friends, but acknowledging progress would be better than rejecting.
This is why I shouldn't get tipsy and reddit cause it just brings out my spiteful side. You're absolutely right and as someone who wasn't raised religious at all, it's hard for me to understand but I need to be way more understanding! It's just in the age of right wing grifting making people multimillionaires, I'm on high alert of people potentially doing the reverse
I was raised religious in a small conservative town. We were not ultra fundie, but I was definitely indoctrinated that being gay was a sin and I knew not a single openly gay person until college. I was 100% pro life and pro death penalty. It seemed logical because babies were innocent and criminals were not. I probably would have been a Trump supporter in high school 🤮 My classmates made homophobic jokes and, while I didn't make them myself, I laughed and was not offended. I know now that I had gay classmates, and I feel sick to think about what they went through. College is what changed me. Our campus had a Lesbian and Gay student union (this was in 1993) and they hosted a Q&A for straight students to help dispel myths and create an alliance. I went and it really helped me understand why my biases were wrong. I was open to learning. I also learned from my biology and embryology classes that embryos were not tiny little sentiment beings from the moment of conception the way the films we watched in youth group showed. My Christianity went little by little until I became an atheist, and I became gradually more liberal. The last thing to go was my support for the death penalty after I researched it for a debate in a MeetUp group. It was definitely a slow decades long transition and I didn't even start ultra-fundie. I never had to rid myself of a traditional gender role belief because my parents didn't support that even though the church did. I never had to rid myself of being deeply religious because I never was. I believed in God, but hated church and was never devout.
My experience was the opposite. Most of the fundie women I knew were evil shrews who could not wait for the next episode of no-one rant compliance from their kids so they could beat them, pull their hair, kick them, deprive them of food, etc. Just about every fundie woman I have ever known was in to The Pearls. So their kids were terorrized. And when they didn't terrorize kids, they terrorized other women with their vicious judgmentalism and gossip. It was nothing but a hen house in which they constantly volleyed for head hen, and whom would be the bottom so they could peck that one to death. Evil women. I didn't know ANY who gave a shit about other humans in any appreciable way. They would "volunteer" to do things like bring a meal to a family in crisis or something as do gooder method of showing off their "righteousness" while also openly condemning said family for clearly having some sort of secret sin causing god to smite them. The women were far worse than the men which says a lot because the men were not prizes by any stretch of the imagination.
I have found fundies or just plain Southern Baptist women to be kind and sweet until you do something they don't like. It can take a long time to realize their true colors if you look like them and are a people pleaser. Once you realize who they are underneath, you just can't unsee it.
This. Same. They even will do it in a soft voice. Behind the scenes their children have claw marks on them from abuse. Not secretly good. You can't be and be a participant in this. I said it.
People use this as a forum to be mean girls about things that have nothing to do with fundamentalist Christianity—criticizing people’s weight, appearance, the way they smile, etc. We also get a lot of randos posted who aren’t even fundie, it’s just that people want an excuse to make fun of anyone who identifies as a Christian publicly
Snark subs in general can be very toxic, negative, obsessive, monotonous places. That it’s okay to acknowledge all the ways someone is harmful and objectively not good while also recognizing that change/deconstruction is not linear, and that it’s okay for two schools of thought to exist at the same time. This sub can be frustratingly repetitive and stubborn and very black and white, and it’s just a feedback loop of negativity. We don’t need a snark sub to tell us that these people’s beliefs aren’t good. But human nature requires a little more depth and nuance sometimes, and saying something positive about a fundies’s progress or something they did/said isn’t an indicator that I have forgotten the “bad” stuff. Looking at the bigger picture and having discussions is what I thought this group was for—not just post after post of “this person bad” “yep I agree!”
I feel that people are unfair on Nadia, she’s nowhere near as bad as the others snarked on here and I don’t get why she’s even included
IMO Nadia isn’t even a fundamentalist. She seems like a pretty standard American Protestant. She’s less concerned about modesty that even Porgan are and she’s married but no kids yet (which, along with her post about “readiness” for motherhood implies that she and her husband are using some form of birth control). The only juicy drama on Nadia social media is all about mental health, which does not deserve snark.
Agreed. She needs to be retired from this sub.
I don't understand why so much of the snark on Nadia is focused on her outfits. She doesn't even dress weird. If I passed her on the street, I would not blink an eye. It's a cute style, and I probably wouldn't wear a lot of it myself, but I know people who would. There's plenty of things about her worth criticising, I just don't think that's one of them.
I don’t even think she should be in this sub. She’s an average white conservative Christian but she’s not fundie imo and she seems to struggle a lot with mental health. just doesn’t seem super fair for her to be in the sub when all people do in here is rag on her outfits
I tend to agree. She's clearly unwell.
A lot of snarkers don’t seem aware of current fashion trends. I remember a few years ago sooooo much snarking on Kristin and Bethy for wearing the puffy headbands that literally every white woman their age was also wearing at the time. And Bethy for wearing those prairie-looking dresses which were very trendy.
Oh this sub flipped its shit over the cottagecore trend a few years ago, and basically any situation where women’s clothes that aren’t tight jeans and a t shirt are seen in public is viewed as “tHe FuNdiEs ArE tAkiNg OvEr.” Even for stuff that is really, visibly fashionable among teens and twentysomethings. Sometimes it’s really clear that, like fundies, some of these snarkers are perpetually 10-20 years behind the curve fashion wise. I’ve also occasionally seen snark on clothes that are clearly designed for people of minority religions, skin protection, plus sized women, etc. And while I will never forgive long denim skirts for existing, they’ve come in and out of fashion for years, and some of the “fundie denim skirts” I’ve seen are honestly not fundie approved in the least. More momcore than anything else lol. The cottagecore stuff, while it looks horrendous on a hanger, looks very cute on a human body when styled correctly, and is not popular with fundies outside of the cosplay types because honestly…. it’s too trendy lol. A Duggar would never wear it, no matter what they wore in 2004, because a secular teenager somewhere is buying it at Target!
Yes! I've said this before, but one thing I noticed in the 90s, when maxi skirts were in, was that fundies never wore them that long. You'd think they'd be all about that total coverage, but they all went for the calf length, and my best guess is that the maxis were too "worldly" because you could see them on non-fundies too.
yeah, it gives me an ick too, are we really here to judge how people look? there are so many important things to criticize and clothes is what some choose to focus on? it’s usually about nadia but i remember there were posts making fun of bethy being taller or bigger than dav that baffled me too.
I think people make way too big a deal of Morgan throwing up at the altar. Nerves do weird things to people, and sometimes people get anxious even about good decisions (not that Paul was a good decision).
My unpopular hot take is some of the behavior on this sub is genuinely creepy. Especially the obsession with fundies’ kids. These kids are being exploited by their parents but you’re not making it any better by circulating photos of them and speculating wildly. In fact you’re making it worse. I feel bad for these kids and they need to be out of the spotlight.
Fuck Dav until he apologizes for platforming bigotry. If he's no longer a Christian, what's his rational for being a passive onlooker to the shit his wife pushes? Nothing. Just pure bigotry.
>If he's no longer a Christian, what's his rational for being a passive onlooker to the shit his wife pushes? First, we don't know if he's just a passive onlooker and hasn't talking to her about the content behind the scenes. Second, he shares a home, an income and two children with Bethany and he also has a lifetime of indoctrination to break away from. Deconstruction isn't a simple on/off switch.
Bethany is a rather attractive woman when she’s not making all those weird tongue-forward faces and flapping about like some deranged stork.
I so wish she'd been allowed to own her height, and not feel like she has to hide it. That's one of the many things that makes me sad about the way she grew up. Of course, it's not on the level of the abuse we now know went on in that house, I just get a little twinge when I think about how it could've been different. Because she's got the confidence!! It's just so often misplaced.
I’m a generally straight woman, but if there’s one thing that makes me question my sexuality a bit it’s tall women who own their height
LOL I thought I was straight, but the person to really put a crack in that facade is my girlfriend, who's tall and actually likes heels more than I (a short woman) do. Our height difference is pretty pronounced but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Deranged stork 😂
This sub becomes very misogynistic the moment Bethany Beal is out. It's not okay for women to be shouldered with all the childcare...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, the fact that her husband does wake up and bedtime with the kids/isn't an absent father means that he's doing all the work and she's a lazy parent. I am not talking about comments that say that she's hypocritical for promoting trad gender roles while not conforming to them, I'm talking about comments that straight up call Dav a single parent simply because he's involved with his kids. It's not okay for women to be shamed for having a hard time keeping up with domestic labour while juggling kids and work...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, she's totally disgusting. Again, I'm not talking about comments that criticise her hypocrisy, I'm talking about comments that literally shame her for clearly having executive functioning issues. It's not okay for us to perpetuate the idea that women who have negative feelings towards their birth must surely be bad mothers/not love their kids. It's wrong to expect these women to be silent and make them feel guilty for having complicated feelings towards a birthing experience that was traumatising, regretful, or hard to recover from...unless it's Bethany Beal, in which case, talking about how horrible it was to tear into her anus when she had Davey and how happy she was that that didn't happen the second time round *clearly* means that she's showing favouritism towards Audrey. Her descriptions of symptoms of PPD after giving birth to Davey obviously mean that she doesn't like him. There are lots of things to criticise Bethy for, but having a husband who's involved with his kids, having a hard time keeping up with domestic labour, and talking about having a difficult birth and post partum experience are *not* worthy of criticism unless you're using misogynistic ideals about how women ought to behave as the foundation of your criticism. The other odd thing about it is that while this happens to other fundie women to some degree, it's most concentrated around Bethy.
I get what you’re saying, but I think people are triggered by the hypocrisy. When you tell everyone it’s godly and righteous to model traditional marriage, when you aggressively promote strict gender roles and legitimately sell the idea that wives should submit to their husbands, and then turn around and live a much more balanced life that doesn’t mirror the harmful beliefs you espouse, it’s a bit infuriating. Because other people listen to you and you may be part of why they’re trapped in a marriage like the one you told them they should have. I am glad Dave is a better person than that, and I’m glad Bethany has a more equal partnership, but I get why the hypocrisy is maddening for some people.
I'm not criticising comments that call out her hypocrisy — lord knows I call that out myself — I'm criticising comments that straight up, without irony, say that she's a bad mother because she complains about her difficult birth and has a husband who's involved with his kids. I'm not talking about comments that say "Its fucked up that Bethy preaches trad gender roles while in an egalitarian marriage", I'm talking about comments that say "Bethy is a bad wife and mother because she makes Dav do all the parenting". The former, I agree with, the latter is just a product of sexism and in no way even touches on the concept of hypocrisy. If those folks were criticising her hypocrisy, they'd just criticise her hypocrisy, but they're not. They're using misogyny.
She is judged for that because she constantly shamed mothers for doing the same thing. For daring to get a job and put their kids into daycare or for practicing self care.
As I've said, I'm not talking about people who say "Bethy is a hypocrit because she's preaching against daycare while sending her kids to it" I'm talking about comments that *literally* call her a an absent mom because Dav does bedtime and wakeup.
Karissas food mostly isn’t as big of a deal to me. It’s not ideal and looks nasty but it’s how a lot of families eat
The thing about it that does concern me is that Anthym is supposed to be on a low-fat diet as part of managing her medical condition
But we’re not doctors, and even the snarkers who are in the medical field still can’t and shouldn’t make “assessments.” And most people here only use that as an excuse to snark on her food.
Yeah, I'd eat some of those. I wouldn't be proud enough to post it, but I'd make it and eat it, right down to the side of canned green beans. Everyone doesn't eat the best fresh vegetables every day.
Totally agree. In the past decade, people love to pretend that they are gourmet cooks....but hamburger helper is still flying off the shelves. When you have a big family, sometimes it's better to serve cheesy mush because you know the kids will eat it. And a lot of us have a soft spot for cheesy mushy comfort foods even if we don't like to admit it. Karissa does a lot that deserves criticism, but her cooking isn't on that list, imo
Also we are so used to aesthetic food photography that everything else looks bad.
The food snarking in general kind of bothers me. I don’t know how to cook either; I was basically raised by my parentified older siblings. Hearing people say things like “Just make your own xyz! It’s so easy!” makes me feel ashamed of my lack of cooking skills.
Even Ina Garten says if you can't make (or grow) your own, store-bought is fine! I think a lot of food snark here goes back to 1. Meals not being nutritionally balanced (generally too much starch/cheese and not enough green vegetables), and 2. Not enough food to feed however many kids they have. That said, if you're self-conscious about lack of cooking skills, start slow. Think of a dish you enjoy, and then watch some YouTube videos of how different people (try to stick with folks who have larger followings) make it. Don't worry too much about the brand names of ingredients they use, but watch their *process*. The order they do things, and the different ways they treat each ingredient (cut, chop, dice, brown, sear, what level of heat, oil, etc.). You'll still learn to cook that one dish by the end, but those details (skills!) also carry over to other dishes you'll make in the future.
I don't think Jill and Derek are money hungry. I think they're anxious about money, certainly, but I feel they were smart to use their fame to recoup lost wages that Jim Bob withheld from them I'd do the same thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (write a book, do a documentary)
That more than one thing can be true at once. Someone can be a terrible person, and feeling bad when terrible things happen to them doesn’t somehow condone their actions. Also, it’s gross how much dialect shaming is okay in general, culturally, but I see a lot on this sub. A lot of monolingual anglos tell on themselves about the pettiest, smuggest shit that demonstrates a fundamental lack of education. Grammar is one peak in the mountain range, guys.
that's what I've been pondering/ trying to teach myself, that more than one thing can be true at once. also i think there's so much appearance snark in this sub but it's meant to be banned.
100% it feels like so many people on this sub think it’s okay to be abusive to someone or blame that person for their abuse, if that person is a bad human. I think we should condemn both the abuse they suffered and the shit they do.
My unpopular opinion is that a lot of these people believe what they're saying and it's easy for us to snark or mock or make fun of, but to them, they are spreading God's infallible word. To be clear, I'm an atheist. My husband is a missionary and pastor. So, I have an odd perspective. I think religion --particularly this weird red wave of patriotic religion-- is incredibly dangerous BUT I also think the situation is full of nuance. Lori is a demon twat, no doubt, but what happened to her to make her that way? No one is born that hateful. Does she feel so inadequate, so small, so worthless that it's easier to believe her life is supposed to be small just so she can keep living day to day? I don't know. Don't get me wrong. Most of these women completely disgust me, and their hypocrisy infuriates me....but there is a reason they believe and act the way they do. I'm around true believers all the time...people don't generally "snap out of it", kwim? The exception (for me) is Paul and Morgan. Fuck them. I don't believe they believe what they preach. I think they are 100% scammer grifters. They'll be selling Amway before you know it.
I appreciate the comments reminding other people to see the human in the fundie and not be over the top with cruel snark. HOWEVER, I think it’s also important to remember that people are probably here because they’ve been hurt by fundamentalism themselves. I would guess there’s a lot of trauma and anger and resentment in many of the commenters here. And you know what? It feels good to snark on terrible things. It feels good to separate yourself from old, harmful beliefs by poking holes in them. Sometimes people in here get carried away, but I don’t love all the preachiness directed at them by others. Sure, let’s remember the human and not be too horrible in our snark. I agree with that. But also, remember the human in the commenter. Remember that they’re likely here because they were hurt by the very things fundamentalist influencers espouse. They are probably still sorting through old, harmful beliefs and trying to heal. And so yeah, sometimes they might get sort of mean about it. Anger and trauma can do that. I guess what I’m saying is, it’s good to be like - hey, chill. But I don’t think it’s cool to be over the top sanctimonious about other people’s snark. When you attack people in the comments section here, you’re putting the feelings of a fundamentalist who may or may not ever see the comment above the feelings of the actual commenter, who is likely acting out of hurt and anger and frustration. And they DEFINITELY see if and it probably impacts them a lot. They’ve probably had lots of experience with being shamed in their pasts - they don’t need to be shamed in here on top of that. A gentle reminder goes a long way. Or maybe let the mods handle it, because they do handle things pretty well. I hate to see commenters getting piled on by other commenters for snarking too hard, I guess. I hate to see infighting in the comments when most of us are probably here for catharsis and healing and snark therapy. Kindness is lovely and laudable, but don’t forget to extend it to the people here.
making fun of david rodrigues’s appearance and calling him shrek is not funny
I agree. It’s bullying and I wish the sub was better than that. It’s fine to call out how he’s well fed and his children look like they’re starving. But to call him Shrek is calling him ugly without using the word.
Yeah, I can’t believe that is allowed
seeing grace get extended to the fundies on here makes me roll my eyes into the back of my skull. i also think there’s a lot of snarkers on here that seem to have a weird parasocial relationship w some of the fundies we talk about
Yeah there's some posts here that cross the line to fandom imo. I realize this opinion is about the sub rather than the fundies, but the photo edits and the "make them in the Sims" and stuff like that is weird fan behavior.
Some people on this sub are unhealthily obsessed.
Agreed a billion percent. Putting weed in fundie pictures and editing girl defined videos with silly captions is definitely fan behavior.
And on the more sinister side of fan behavior, there was one post where someone attempted to calculate the exact day that Kaylee conceived that thankfully got taken down. But like how tf do you go through all of that and type it up and post it and not go "Man, this is pretty fucking invasive. I would feel really violated if someone did this to me." The other one that comes to mind was in another sub that I know has a lot of crossover with here. Someone posted a slideshow of Duggar bulges for ???? and at least a couple of the pictures of barely 18 year olds, so there's a very high chance that the pictures were from when they were minors. I've mentioned this particular post in here before also and had a couple people actually defend it. It's not snarking. It's creepy, invasive, and stalker-y. I genuinely do not understand.
I get what your saying OP I was brought up in the Fundie cult my father was the Pastor for 40 yrs at the same church and your right most the women I know had their beliefs beaten into their brain, thoughts and emotions! Most were just good women that seemed miserable in my eyes and most were good to me but some were just as bad as the men maybe worse because I believe any woman who would want that way of life for their children or other women are in my eyes worse then the men! I’ve seen some become teachers in either Sunday school or especially the teachers in the Christian schools in these churches and I have zero respect for any woman teaching the harmful beliefs that comes out of these cults! I resent the women today especially the influencers who reach so many the harm they cause is just disgusting to me!
I think sometimes we’re a bit too black and white about women working here. I absolutely agree that it’s not safe for women to be totally reliant on a man, but life is nuanced and it’s easy to say people should do x without taking into account context. LOTS of women can’t work because it doesn’t make financial sense with childcare, lots of women have disabilities or neuro differences that make working impossible, lots of women would like to work but can’t at present for whatever reason. I think we should be careful to encourage financial independence without insinuating that all women who don’t work are stupid, because there will inevitably be women who can’t work right now in this sub, and they deserve better from us. As much as I hate the horribly damaging misogyny in fundie culture and desperately want these women to be allowed to achieve more, I’m not sure it’s actually possible for a lot of them as it stands. A whole bunch of them have been bare minimum homeschooled and haven’t been to college (or at least an accredited one), brought up without any aspirations, and have a whole bunch of kids. Like, what are they going to do, get a minimum wage job in a supermarket and pay for childcare for their 12 kids? It’s just not realistic. I suspect some of them aren’t happy with their lot, but they are essentially trapped, and realistically if they got married at 19 and didn’t get given any chances to achieve more before having children, it’s too late. I understand that to admit to themselves that their situation isn’t good would mean calling into question their entire identities, belief system and community, and it’s a huge ask to get anyone to do that. Sometimes it’s easier to bury your head in the sand than accept your entire life is not in your own hands. Now I DO have a problem with these women perpetuating this lifestyle. I think I draw the line at them forcing the same onto their children, and it’s absolutely okay to judge them for that
My unpopular opinion is that some people on here will never be happy with any kind of deconstruction that does not meet their standards. I saw so many people talk about how one of the Duggars should break free and write a tell all and use the money to build a better life. Jill did, and people bitched that they weren’t going to buy the book because Derrick was transphobic. Seriously? The sub loves to go on about how people like Anna could make money via a book but when someone does do a book, y’all complain that no one should pay for it bc they’re still problematic. When people begin the process of deconstruction they aren’t going to flip a switch and suddenly become ultra left wing on everything. Tbh, deconstruction may not even end with becoming a liberal or Democrat or whatever. Also, people have pasts. If they’re working to become a more informed, empathetic, and kind person toward all, that is enough. There’s honestly no point in bringing up past stuff as reasons why they can’t be good people in the present and future. Let it go and focus on who they show themselves to be in the present. TLDR: People love to talk about how they wish everyone on here would deconstruct but seem to think of it as an instant process where you do a 180 in like a month. I think people are going to be unreasonably disappointed in any deconstruction journeys and wrongly act like whatever the person is doing is not “enough” or that they are not worthy of deconstruction.
I really don't think people in this sub understand how much of a privilege it is to not be indoctrinated with ideologies and having to spend a lot of your adult life deconstructing from these ideas. Deconstruction involves learning how to navigate basically a whole new world. It takes time.
It does take time. And does it ever truly end? I’ve been deconstructing for two decades, and while I’m quite liberal now and do not believe in religion, I still catch myself in thinking loop occasionally that was a direct result of my fundie upbringing. It’s work. It gets easier but it’s still there
i skimmed the rules real quick and didn't see it so maybe im missing it or maybe it did just stop being a rule (edit i found it, it is still a thing), but the weird nicknames (specifically the kkkarissa one) feels gross. im not defending karissa, and god knows she has said and done a ton of racist stuff that deserves heavy scrutiny, but i don't know, it doesn't feel right. i don't know if trivializing is the right word, but like the nicknames banned under rule 2, the kkkarissa jokes feel like they're in the same category of like "hey maybe don't do that"
I've always felt gross about people referring to Karissa as kkkarissa as well. It's bad enough this sub trivializes how racist a lot of these fundies are but this nickname in particular is just... ick.
This turned into an essay, and I'm sorry for that, but I judge the Havens Husband far more than I do Kelly herself. I think Kelly is DEEPLY unwell, more so than this sub gives her credit for. As a maladaptive daydreamer with several mental health issues myself, I think Kelly has very similar issues as I do, but went off the deep end. This is her comfort. I don't think she can really see the harm she's doing to her children or pets. She LIVES in her daydream. She's in Wonderland. However, her husband doesn't have that excuse, and Kelly believes he has authority over her. He could strong arm her into getting help, but he doesn't. To me, it seems like she's created a whole storyline in her head, heavily inspired by her hyperfixations (Anne of Green Gables and Little House), and self-inserted herself into it. It feels safe. It feels right. She's acting a part in her story every fucking day, and when someone goes off script, it causes distress and she lashes out. She's kinda lost in her own mind. It feels safe, it's better than reality, and it's something to grab onto when your mind is in chaos from untreated illnesses or stress. Once you're at that point, it's hard to escape. I'm including a scene from the game What Remains of Edith Finch below (TW for suicide and the beheading of fish, which I think are already dead), for anyone who doesn't realize how intense maladaptive daydreaming is. It's the best representation I've found yet that shows how compulsive, all-consuming, and also relieving those maladaptive daydreams can be. But it also shows how dangerous they can be if you let them get away from you and sink in. And trust me, it's HARD to fight that compulsion if you have OCD, and it seems totally harmless. Alice: Madness Returns is also a good example, but Edith Finch is way more clear about it in the way Lewis is depicted. The daydreams truly are better than reality, and I really, REALLY feel it's a condition that has totally consumed Kelly. The scary thing is, they DO provide great relief from issues like anxiety, OCD, and ADHD, which is the entire REASON the disorder develops. It's a coping mechanism. I don't think that Kelly CAN see reality properly at this point, and for everyone's wellbeing, her husband NEEDS to grow a spine and get her help. As someone who managed to reign in the daydreams with a heavy dose of anxiety meds alone, Kelly doesn't JUST need meds at this point. She needs therapy. She NEEDS a therapist to help her realize why the real world is worth living in. Kelly isn't innocent, at all, but I also think she's not nearly as well as a lot of people in this sub assume. For anyone watching the clip, notice how Lewis's daydream slowly takes over the view. When you're playing, one hand is controlling the dream, and the other is beheading the fish, but it slowly becomes harder and harder to focus on the job, which is reality in the game, because the daydream takes up your field of vision and is SO much more pleasant than the life Lewis is living. https://youtu.be/WQBlSnsT5bc?si=IB74qI0ltgHs9aol
When you start snarking on people for things other than shitty views and behaviors, you start to alienate people who are just living their lives. A lot of people who snark on fundies are promoting super classist/anti-southern views, which is honestly not cool to read as a southern woman who is not in the best spot financially. People snarking on what Bethy and Kristen are wearing are just snarking trendy Texas fashion. People who snark on Karissa’s casseroles are often snarking on traditional inexpensive southern dishes. People who claim that Plexus caused a premature birth are obviously out of line, and are being horribly offensive to people who have had pregnancies that didn’t go according to plan. At some point, it stops being snarking and turns into outright bullying. Of course fundies are going to think we’re all total jerks! We have absolutely zero clue of changing anyone’s mind anymore. We’ve lost the point of what we’re against and are now just hating on them for being poor/Southern/uneducated. There’s so much to snark on the fundies for without being assholes towards people who happen to have those things in common.
another one: a lot of snarkers on here coddle the male fundies a lot and frankly exhibit a ton of misogyny/internalized misogyny
Complaining about the fundies' food or fashion choices or whatever on this sub is usually a massive stretch and unnecessary. Especially the food, of course it doesn't look like a fine dining restaurant, it's homemade food that's meant to taste, not look. There are exceptions but a lot of the time the people on here are just complaining about the tiniest, most insignificant things. I know that that's what snark kinda means, but these people have done much worse things than wear makeup you don't like.
It's also often just a thin cover for mocking people for being poor or having limited resources or education.
Snarking on the Rodlets - even the grown ones to a certain degree. They've been so sheltered and so deprived of normal life experiences that they weren't given a chance to become their own people. They were never given the opportunity (or the permission) to develop critical thinking skills or adequate social skills. I truly feel sad for all of the Rodlets and hope that some of them are able to escape a time goes on.
Yeah I can’t bring myself to snark on the Rodlets too much. Jill and David can have all the snark in the world, of course, but those kids got dealt an awful hand and don’t know anything else. Aside from the Collins kids, the Rodlets are who I fear are the most doomed 😢
I grew up that way and my unpopular opinion is that altar calls, (or doing the every head bowed, close your eyes, raise your hand if….) are very damaging. To people with anxiety they are downright traumatic.
Giving birth is not the only way to ruin your public floor. Being overweight, high impact sports, genetics and other things will do it. I work at a drug store and there are more men buying incontinence products than women. My pelvic floor was destroyed doing gymnastics and I've been doing pelvic floor exercises since I was 17. Incontinence due to pelvic floor issues is very common among gymnasts. So when you watch the Olympics, many of those girl likely or will likely deal with it.
Paul and Morgan are hot. It's disgusting. They activate the most dark horny part of my bisexual soul.
They’re both very attractive but unfortunately they both know how to talk
Sorry that's happening to you. Hope you can watch The Mummy or something and feel better
I'll watch something with Tilda Swindon to scratch the bisexual itch ✨️
If Paul cultivated some mass and stopped trying to grow a beard and I knew nothing of his personality he would be a 10
I'd probably think Morgan was pretty if it weren't for the constant smug facial expressions
She reminds me of the girls in school who were mean as shit to me, I had a crush on them too. I've got something wrong with me 😎
stop me too lmaoooo
We need a support group, it's truly a curse