the other thing to remember is that they’ve been so wholly insulated from the rest of the world that they believe whatever they’re told about outsiders. When their families tell them that it’s all nonstop depravity and sin and misery outside the compound, then yeah, you’re going to think, “Well, some things here are…

God, I’m so sorry about how many ways you were failed by people who should’ve been on your team. I don’t know what to do about this stuff, but for fuck’s sake, it has to change somehow. We can’t keep tormenting our kids like this; it’s indefensible.

Good points. And it’s also likely that those things don’t flow just one way or the other. I definitely knew a lot of girls in this 6th-9th grade age range whose sense of identity was “rebellious DNGAF girl who has sex and doesn’t get along with the other girls,” and looking back I think, yeah, there were elements of…

The brother also flatly said that his parents were pressuring Anna to stay because all they give a fuck about is how their reputation is affected. I think he seems pretty done with the whole business and not likely to reverse course and start pressuring Anna to forgive and forget.

I genuinely don’t believe Anna’s parents are capable of loving her in the way that most of us would recognize that term. The whole quiverful system is inherently objectifying: children are tools and weapons that you forge in order to use for your larger agenda. I’m sure they have some fondness or affection for their…

No special knowledge here, other than of the culture he grew up in, but I’d still bet my last goddamn dollar that he’s not rough in bed with Anna. That’s the *mother of his children.*

He claimed to be looking for pretty normal stuff, but if you believe the porn actress who says she slept with him, his actual game is pretty fucking creepy. I mean, I think you’re right, he probably started out a pretty normal dude with normal sexual urges. But a lifetime of being conditioned to hate and fear sex as…

Heh, also a Southerner, and I say it all the time, too, though I am by no means a Christian. That and “God knows that blah blah blah” and “that’s God’s honest truth,” as well as still swearing fluently in Christian. I just think of it as a quirk of the local language, basically meaningless noises.

I don’t know why we have to settle for just one. Seems like B would lead to A in short order.

See, again, this is that “not a binary,” non black-and-white thinking. You’re probably a lot like my MIL: cool in many ways. Dead wrong and pretty irrational on this issue. Look, every time someone says “your position on this issue is coming out of some fucked-up priorities,” they are not secretly saying “I fear and…

Nyawww. good answer.

This is the thing. I feel like when a lot of these women say “HE COULD NOT AT ALL FUNCTION,” what they mean is “the house would be a way lot messier than I keep it.”

Jesus fuck. 15 whole minutes once a week to tell the virtual stranger who is your parent and authority figure without recourse to appeal all your thoughts and feelings, so she can decide how best to correct them. The inhumanity of it all just beggars my imagination.

I have similar thoughts all the time. FUCK IT, LET’S GO. Hell, I’m a woman. If I got to start shooting anyone who struck me as worrisomely threatening or infringing on my personal space with potentially unsavory motives, hot fucking damn. I’ve found my new hobby! LET’S DO THIS THING, AMERICA.

The thing is, that sounds true, but it isn’t. “People who want to kill will kill.” It’s not true. *Some* people, yes, but lots and lots and lots and lots of murders are committed in moments of high anger, often stone drunk, and if the murderer had to make the effort to actually form a plan, it would never come to…

Normal ain’t a binary, you know? Here in the South, I know a shit-ton of people who carry handguns. Lots of them are, *in many ways,* quite normal and rational and overall lovely people. But stumble into a conversation with them about why they carry a gun wherever they go, and hoooolllllyyy shit. It’s 0 to…

I don’t know what anybody else thinks, but I just made up a really high number with no statistical evidence on planet Earth that could possibly prove or disprove it, and did I mention that number is *super high?!?*

No, that’s how we say it now, daddy-o! Get with the times!

Bareilles’ little singsong in that video (“We love musical theater / In my family!”) kind of has me convinced that she might be related to me? Or should soon be, by marriage?

I’m very much like that myself! I did make myself change somewhat, not because I wasn’t okay with my life (my family and a very few close friends are fine for me, personally!), but because it sank in on me that other people were walking away from interactions not just disliking me (which, okay, not everyone’s going to…