No Longer Quivering
I wasn’t going to write about this. As you know unless it directly involves Vice President Pence pushing his Quiverfull agenda I try to ignore here what’s happening in our government and with our president. I’ve been trying to ignore Trump since his Access Hollywood tape release where he uttered this about women and assaulting them – “Grab them by the pussy” As much as I’d like to think that the sexual crimes of the administration are aberrations by a rich man, I have to conclude that’s not so. It goes much deeper than that. Fundamentalist Christianity helps create guys like Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
I know, I know, Kavanaugh is Catholic, not Evangelical, but there are loads of Quiverfull Catholics out there too. I’m reminded anew that all the awful treatment of women, starting down as children, has roots in religion. Remember Josh Duggar and his molestation of his sisters and babysitters? Very similar reasoning. The purity culture pushed by religion creates these serial predators, and yes, it is starting to look like Brett Kavanaugh is a serial predator. I believe his accusers, starting with Christine Blasey Ford.
Yesterday was the official testimony of Kavanaugh’s first accuser Christine Blasey Ford. I’ve watched and am still unable to articulate what it was I saw as a sexual assault survivor myself. It’s all very triggering. Now more accusers are coming forward with new stories. It’s almost overwhelming.
Found on Facebook. Not sure of the origin, but a photo speaks a thousand words.
The defense of the religious is exactly the same in both Josh Duggar and Brett Kavanaugh’s cases – he was a kid and all kids do dumb things like this. No, they do not. But kids raised in high demand religious organizations which demand purity yet allow for no normal sexuality in growing up create these guys. The pressure to be good, to be sheltered from the opposite sex, either in a segregated homeschooling environment, or a sex-segregated Catholic school produce men with a rapacious focus on sex.
Sex education in Catholic school consisted of the nuns telling us to practice the birth control of putting an aspirin between our knees and squeezing right up until marriage. I doubt Kavanaugh got even this from the good Fathers of Georgetown Prep.
What you repress and deny that is natural it comes out somewhere, and usually that somewhere is pretty awful, from rapes and sexual assaults to sexual abuse of marital partners. That’s what we’re seeing playing out now on the national stage.
When you are raised in a religious culture that is all about sexual repression followed by crazy amounts of sex and babies after marriage it’s easy to get very caught up in the focus on sex. Religious folks spent way more time thinking about sex than those of us outside fundamentalism.
The problem with these guys is the damage they wreak on the women in their lives. They leave piles of harmed women in their paths. I’m not going to recap all the things that being a survivor of sexual assault can suffer because former NLQ writer Samantha Fields did it oh so well in her piece ‘Being Cannon Fodder in the War on Women’
It’s splitting our country, it’s becoming even more fractured as lines are drawn between gender lines.
This is not about seeking fame or attempting to shake down someone for money. It’s the damage done by purity culture that leads to rape culture.
Comments today are open to any discussion of sexual assault, the Kavanaugh hearings and general thoughts.
~~~~~~~~
Adding this to say that this piece in no way supports Judge Kavanaugh! Okay, how is anyone getting any thought that I support Kavanaugh. I am a sexual assault survivor from high school. I am appalled by this! Was merely trying to say this isn’t surprising at all, what he did, because of what we were taught in Catholic school. Do you know what the priest said to me when I talked about being raped in the confessional????? TO SHUT UP because I clearly led the boy on and it would harm his life if I reported. I still reported, and the only thing that happened was I was grilled by the police and the kids who were friends with my rapist started to harrass me to the point where I had to switch schools.
Stay in touch! Like No Longer Quivering on Facebook:
If this is your first time visiting NLQ please read our Welcome page and our Comment Policy! Commenting here means you agree to abide by our policies.
Copyright notice: If you use any content from NLQ, including any of our research or Quoting Quiverfull quotes, please give us credit and a link back to this site. All original content is owned by No Longer Quivering and Patheos.com
Read our hate mail at Jerks 4 Jesus
Check out today’s NLQ News at NLQ Newspaper
Contact NLQ at [email protected]
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In