Josh Duggar Allegations: We're So Used to Giving Famous Men the Benefit of the Doubt
By Lindy West
Between Bill Cosby, Jian Ghomeshi, Rolf Harris, Jimmy Savile, Terry Richardson, Woody Allen, like half the British government or something, and, most recently, American schlock TV star Josh Duggar, one might say that it has been a rough couple of years for famous men accused of sexual impropriety. The hammer’s really coming down. Tough break, gentlemen. Or not. Actually, I believe the word you’re looking for is “fantastic”. Fantastic break, gentlemen. Because the reality is that some of these men got away with their alleged crimes for years (decades, even) without ever being publicly exposed. Others saw their victims come forward only to be laughed off and dismissed by the culture at large – victims forced to watch the world fawn over their abusers while the statute of limitations achingly slipped away. None except for Ghomeshi, Harris and perhaps Cosby have experienced significant damage to their careers, and even those who are facing criminal charges got to spend the previous years doing exactly as they pleased, (allegedly) flush with the illusion of untouchability, leveraging their fame and power while freely victimising others for sport and pleasure. That’s not a loss; it’s a win. That’s not being embattled; it’s being pampered. The pain of being criticised, however loudly, on the internet is in no way proportionate to the pain inflicted by sexual assault. Receiving a five-, 20-, or 50-year buffer before any charges stick to you is pretty much as cushy as crime gets. The Duggar case, in this regard, is particularly repulsive. For those unversed in the “look at this weird family” school of American reality television (subsets include “let’s all laugh at the impoverished” and “fats – they think they’re people!”), the Duggar family populates a programme called 19 Kids and Counting, formerly 18 Kids and Counting, formerly 17 Kids and Counting. The premise is that patriarch Jim Bob Duggar incessantly impregnates his wife Michelle in order to expand the ranks of their sanctimonious Christian homeschooling cult – which, as far as I can tell, holds as its sacraments: boringness, purity, female subservience, shamelessly rubbing heterosex in strangers’ faces, the letter “J”, hairdos of a peltlike nature and keeping LGBT people from doing stuff. (Side note: Oddly enough, despite being a show about weird culty bigots who wear pioneer dresses and don’t fronthug before marriage, 19 Kids and Counting manages to be screamingly dull. Like, it would be actually more entertaining if it was literally just 19 kids sitting still and then next to them there was a guy counting.) “News” “broke” this week that the eldest Duggar son, Josh, sexually assaulted at least five girls (four of whom were his sisters) when he was 14, allegedly sneaking into their bedrooms at night to grope them while they slept. I say “news” sarcastically because this occurred all the way back in 2002, so it’s hardly new, and I say “broke” sarcastically because the list of people who are said to have known about it this entire goddamn time apparently includes but is not limited to: Jim Bob Duggar, Michelle Duggar, an unknown number of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s church friends, at least one online commenter, an Arkansas state trooper who did not pursue the case for some strange reason and then in a totally unrelated coincidence was imprisoned for child pornography later. And yet, as is typical, especially in insular, patriarchal religious communities, Josh’s life rolled on with little perceptible disruption – he’s now married with four children of his own, two of whom are girls, and (until he resigned this week) he was executive director of the political arm of the Family Research Council, a rightwing hate group that specialises in spreading hysteria about transgender people assaulting your children in public toilets. Josh has already been defended by rightwing Christians as high-profile as presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, who called the sexual assault of five children a “mistake” made by a “good [person]”. One pastor’s wife who also subscribes to the Duggars’ “Quiverfull” movement (which, apparently, is where you pretend your nutsack is a quiver and your penis is a stout longbow and your wife is a pile of hay or rags that you shoot sperm arrows into), argued that Josh was just “playing doctor” and deserves to be “left alone to live a good life”. It strains imagination to wonder where these supposed pillars of morality actually draw the line. (A transgender person going to the bathroom, I guess.) What’s frightening is that we’re so accustomed to giving powerful, famous men the benefit of the doubt that, on a cultural level, we treat men’s reputations with the same reverence as victims’ safety. “Sure, it’s important to protect the vulnerable and sexually traumatised or whatever, but what about that nice man’s TV show? He worked really hard for that! You can’t just take away a man’s stuff!” The result is a system in which victims often find themselves on trial in their own rape proceedings; a culture in which silence is incentivised and speaking out is often punished; a world in which we have ample vocabulary for comforting the accused (“I’m waiting to hear all the facts,” “we can’t jump to conclusions,” “who can even make sense of consent these days?”) but precious little for victims (when’s the last time you heard a simple, unqualified “I believe you” outside of the feminist blogosphere?). So, to any of Josh Duggar’s alleged victims, to anyone raised in a purity culture that blamed and shamed you for your own victimisation, to anyone whose trauma has been sidelined while your abuser’s feelings are placed centre-stage, to anyone thinking of speaking up and anyone who feels like they can’t: I believe you.
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