I remember sitting on my bed with my boyfriend, Josh, while both of us trolled through various social medias, and he looked up at me and said, "I just read that Josh Duggar molested little girls when he was a teenager."
Knowing me as well as he does, Josh knows that I am a fan of the Duggars. I have followed their lives since their earliest specials. I am not one for overly dramatic, Kardashian-style reality television. Real life people dealing with real life problems in larger than life proportions, that is fascinating to me. I have enjoyed watching the children grow and overcome ordinary struggles like falling in love and trying to find the balance between individuality and family, religious expression and societal norms, and of course marveling over the fact that Mrs. Duggar still has hair after having 19 children. I enjoy simplicity and wholesome values, and though I don't agree with all of their social or political positions, I respect their unwavering dedication to those beliefs. As a Christian, I admire their absolute faith in God. I've never thought they were a perfect family, the concept of perfection ever being applicable to a human being goes against the very foundation of Christian beliefs, but I never thought twice when I responded to my Josh with, "It's just some tabloid trash trying to bad mouth the Duggars, it's not true." But as we all now know, I was wrong.
The next day and in the weeks that followed, the Duggar family issued apologies, made statements, had their show pulled from the air, and tried their very best to convince everyone that this grotesque piece of their past was settled. Josh's victims had forgiven him and moved on years ago, why shouldn't the rest of the world?
Begging the world to forgive Josh because "boys will be boys" was never the right move. Begging the world to respect and support Josh's victims was. But the Duggar's live in a such a strictly patriarchal system of beliefs that Josh's status was the only one that was worth protecting or salvaging in their eyes.
And his victims proved that more than anyone.
Any time one of the Duggar sisters spoke out about their abuse, it was in defense of their brother or a plea to respect that the family had dealt with the matter. They never really spoke about how they felt about what happened or the impact it had on their lives, because they have been ingrained with the belief that men matter more than women and it is a woman's job to submit to male authority even if she has to take the blame for his mistakes. They align themselves with the belief that it is a woman's job to monitor the lust of men, and to base all of her choices in consideration of how a man will perceive her, even if that man is her relative. Because it is a woman's job to remain pure at all cost, in all situations. Even if the choice is taken from her and is done against her will, she should have been more careful, more modest, thought more about how she would make men react through her dress or words or choice of street to take home. Because if a woman isn't pure for her husband, she's worthless, she's damaged goods. And it is all her fault.
It is for that reason that the world will never truly forgive Josh Duggar for what he did as a child or his parents for the actions they took upon discovering these transgressions. Their son made their daughters feel worthless and they did almost nothing to stop it, and then made their daughters forgive him because boys can't control themselves. And worst of all, they convinced the girls that this was all God's will.
