{"id":24003,"date":"2014-11-10T08:36:41","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T12:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=24003"},"modified":"2016-01-26T16:19:18","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T20:19:18","slug":"sexual-repression-the-duggar-parents-and-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2014\/11\/sexual-repression-the-duggar-parents-and-mine.html","title":{"rendered":"Sexual Repression, the Duggar Parents, and Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

When people on the outside think about fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals and others who teach that sex before marriage is sin, they often seem to have this picture of people who are completely sexually repressed, who feel shame about having sex and can\u2019t bring themselves to say the word \u201csex.\u201d Now I\u2019m not denying that such people exist\u2014they certainly do. What I want to point out is simply that this does not describe all<\/em> fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals who teach that sex before marriage is sin. It does not describe my parents and never has, and it doesn\u2019t appear to describe Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar either.<\/p>\n

Last Wednesday\u00a0Jessa posted this\u00a0photo<\/a>, the first public photo of her kissing her husband Ben Seewald. The couple had married the previous Saturday, but chose to have their first kiss in private. Then yesterday, Jessa posted this photo<\/a>\u00a0of her parents kissing, saying her mother had texted it to her. The image was obviously an attempt to recreate the kiss picture between Jessa and Ben, with the same angle and expressions, etc.<\/p>\n

Yes, that\u2019s right, Jim Bob and Michelle recreated their daughter\u2019s first public kissing photo. And yes, this feels very much parents who forget that boundaries are a thing and use their children\u2019s relationships to garner attention for their own (Michelle had her wedding dress displayed at Jill\u2019s reception, and Jim Bob and Michelle kissed on the stage during Jessa\u2019s wedding while she and Ben kissed in public). But there\u2019s something else this moment points to. The oldest of twelve purity-ring-wearing homeschooled children, I grew up in the same culture as the Duggars, and seeing this photo immediately brought my mind to my parents<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The moment the second photo came across my feed, I turned to my husband Sean. \u201cI know this really is going too far and all, but this is totally<\/em>\u00a0something my mom would do,\u201d I told him. Sean laughed. \u201cOh definitely,\u201d he said. \u201cShe would totally<\/em> do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

My parents never showed the slightest bit of shame when it came to marital sex. I grew up watching them kiss in the kitchen, and even drop bits of sexual innuendo. It was always clear that they were completely into each other. It\u2019s funny, they did things\u2014said things\u2014that would probably scandalize many completely ordinary American couples. It\u2019s not that what they did was ever wrong<\/em>, it\u2019s just that\u00a0they weren\u2019t at all<\/em> shy about their sexual desire for each other or the beauty of marital sexual union. And they never attached\u00a0even a hint of shame to their union or to marital sex in general.<\/p>\n

My parents\u2019 openness about the joys of\u00a0marital sex\u00a0was never stilted, never something they were putting on to make waiting some worth it to us children. From what I know of them, the\u00a0Duggar parents appear to approach marital sex in the same way.<\/p>\n

And yet, as a teenager I believed that even the slightest sexual thought or fantasy was sin\u2014because this, too, is what I was taught. And this is what is so weird about the worlds created by people like my parents, and Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar. Marital sex is seen as healthy and good, and is approached without shame, but pre<\/em>marital sex is portrayed as something that could ruin you forever. Not only is it sin, they teach, it also cripples relationships and is a sign that the couple doesn\u2019t really love each other\u2014at least not in a deep, lasting, truly caring sense. And not only that, but even thinking<\/em> about sex when you\u2019re not married is equated with having<\/em> premarital sex.<\/p>\n

When I got married, my mother switched from drilling me about whether I was having sex with my boyfriend and applying so much pressure and guilt on the topic that I didn\u2019t want to so much as talk to her on the phone to making quips about sex and gifting us lacy lingerie in my size. It literally happened overnight. My mother immediately became so supportive of my sex life\u2014and so open about it\u2014that it was almost too<\/em> much. While sometimes weird, it certainly beats what came before. I can ask my mom to call back later because both children just feel asleep and Sean and I desperately want to have some intimacy,\u00a0and she\u2019ll respond with complete support and understanding and not an ounce of shame. In fact, were she in my position\u00a0she\u2019d probably just say \u201chave sex.\u201d I\u2019m the one who prefers to use code words like \u201cintimacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, are my parents sexually repressed? The reality is\u00a0more complicated than a question like that allows.\u00a0My parents\u00a0did a number on my siblings and I through their incredibly sexually repressive approach to not only premarital sex specifically but also adolescent sexuality in general, but when it comes to marital sex they appear to be less<\/em> sexually repressed and\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0open about sex than your average parent of their generation (or so says my informal polling of friends not raised in my parents\u2019 conservative evangelical culture). Given Jim Bob and Michelle\u2019s constant surveillance of their courting daughters but immediate recreation of their Jessa\u2019s\u00a0first marital kiss photo, I suspect the same is true of them as well.<\/p>\n

And yes,\u00a0it\u00a0can sometimes feel like whiplash.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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