On Amazon Prime's new docu series Shiny Happy People, we're given a look into the Duggars' harmful religious ideology. Eve Ettinger shares their story in the film. Eve joins to talk about their work with the Coalition for Responsible Home Education to help advocate for homeschooled kids.
Listen to Eve's podcast Kitchen Table Cult: https://kitchentablecult.com/
and subscribe to their Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/kitchentablecultpod
SUPPORT Coalition for Responsible Home Education: https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/support-crhe/
Eve's Salon piece:
Shiny happy homeschooling: The abusive Duggar-like household is preventable, if we all take action: https://www.salon.com/2023/06/10/duggar-homeschooling-danger-reform-shiny-happy-people/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Justin heads Up. Today's episode talks about child abuse.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You don't want your kids to be safe, you want
them to be under your control.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unboster Creative. I'm bridget Todd and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. On their
Discovery reality show Nineteen Kids in Counting, the Dugger family
was portrayed as a sweet, loving, close knit family. Parents
(00:35):
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar were raising their nineteen children,
nine daughters and ten sons to be pure, modest and godly,
which includes strict gender roles, having lots of kids, and
of course homeschooling. But behind the cheery, upbeat show masked
a very deep darkness. Josh Dugger, the oldest son, sexually
(00:57):
abused girls, including his younger sisters. He's serving a twelve
year sentence after authorities found child sexual abuse material on
his computer. The Duggers followed the Institute in Basic Life
Principles or IBLP, a Christian organization founded by Minister Bill
Gothard in nineteen sixty one that purports to teach families
(01:17):
to find success through strict adherents to iblp's interpretation of
the Bible, gender roles are rigid, women are inferior to
the male heads of household, children must strictly obey their parents,
and all of this. All of these norms are enforced
through abuse. But it's not just about how individual families
run their households. Because of what's called Christian dominionism, the
(01:41):
idea that Christians like the Duggers should take control over
government and society, religious selates are striving for more and
more control over all of our lives. Eve Ettinger hosts
a podcast called Kitchen Table Cults where they talk about
life as an ex someone who got out of a cult.
Their story is featured in the new Amazon Prime documentary
(02:01):
about the Duggers called Shiny Happy People.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Hi. I'm Evetinger and I am on the board at
the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Eve didn't grow up under IBLP, but they were raised
in an adjacent ideology called Quiverpole, and they know a
lot about the kind of purity culture that's a hallmark
of both movements. So I've just finished watching the Shiny
Happy People documentary. First I have to ask what has
the response been like from the show now that it's aired.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
It's been so sweet. Honestly, it's been really kind. Lots
of survivors reaching out, you know, they relate, they're grateful,
they're really happy that this is being told, and a
lot of other people who are like, oh my god,
I had no idea, how can I help? And so
you know, being able to direct them to CIG and
(02:55):
our work is just really satisfying.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We were talking a little bit off Mike about this,
but you have this really prolific background as an activist
to someone who writes about important issues, and I'm happy
to hear that the response has been positive and sweet
and helpful and supportive as opposed to some of the
other issues, like your piece about the abortion rights movements,
things like that. I can imagine this feels like a
(03:19):
change in getting those kinds of responses.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Night and day different. I've had to like realate up
my security first things when things like this go live,
because I've had you know, a lot of hate directed
my way, some like active threats, and so it's been
just surreal to feel just the kindness around this. And
I also have to like, I think thank the producers
(03:43):
for this, and I think the medium probably has a
lot to do with that, given that there's like so
many of us speaking out together. It's not just me writing,
as you know, one off piece, but also the producers.
I work mostly with Corey and Olivia, and I cannot
speak too highly of them. They've been so wonderful and
so kind. And there were certain topics that were really
(04:06):
enmeshed in the stories that I was telling that I
find it impossible to tell without those other pieces, but
they are there's elements of that that lead me vulnerable
to people from my past, and they were able to
really cleanly edit out all of those things that left
me open to attacks and just really protect me. And
I felt very cared for by how they presented what
(04:30):
the material that they got.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So often, when us the viewers are watching the finished product,
the person who is the subject, the person who is
being spoken about, who's sharing their experiences which are often
like traumatic or painful or heavy. I hate it when
I hear from them where it's like, oh, this felt
me traumatizing, or this felt like exploitative. So it makes
me very happy to hear that you felt like it
was a good situation for you and not something that
(04:54):
was just like, how can we mine this person's pain
more for views, I really can tell when I'm watching
something that feels like that and I don't like it.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, part of the reason I chose to do this
with them is that I felt that Lula Rich preserved
the dignity of the survivors, which was the piece that
they had done before this, and so that carried through.
Olivia is incredibly careful, incredibly thoughtful, and just very trauma informed,
(05:24):
and I just felt really cared for. I think everybody.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Did you know? Something that they make really clear in
the doc is how people watching shows like Nineteen Kids
in Counting might not have really been privy to how
harmful ideologies like IBLP actually are. Why do you think
that is?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
How is it that someone who watched this show could
be surprised by some of what is then clarified in
the documentary. That's a response I've been seeing a lot of, like, well,
I knew something was off, but I didn't know what.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
There's some amount of our culture that like generally universal
American culture, where we kind of want to let other
people do their thing, and you know, we may disagree
with it, we may judge it, we may like hash
(06:20):
it on Twitter or the you know, the Free Gender
Forum exists, like has existed. There's a lot of rubbernecking,
but like I think there's there's some amount of, like,
you know, this is part of the American persona to
like respect someone else's right to like destroy their life
if you will. But I think a lot of people
(06:44):
don't really think that someone would go that far. It
seems kind of like something maybe we left in the past,
Like it feels there's a brutality to what they are
doing to their children that perhaps feels our I can
like can't possibly be happening in this like modern time.
(07:05):
Anyone who's paying attention to like children rights, children's rights
issues knows otherwise. But I think that like a lot
of people aren't looking at the hard stuff and aren't
you know, it's entertainment, so they're not looking at that
and being like, what's wrong here? You know, let me
go noodle around on Wikipedia to find out who Bill
Gothard is there. They're wanting to like bed out after work,
(07:27):
and so Kieran and I always say on the Kitchen
Table podcast, which is when I co host with my
friend Kieran Darkwater, like the conspiracy is real if there's
like an actual conspiracy for Christian dominionism that has been
like put in place over the last thirty plus years,
and it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Good.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Like conspiracy theories are again another like pastime, like a
great icebreaker is like, what's what's one conspiracy theory? You like,
personally would love to be real for it to be real,
you know, like that kind of chit chat. But it
is very real, and I think we just don't want
to take it seriously because it means that there's a
(08:12):
certain amount of religious freedom for the rest of us
that would immediately be at stake.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Follow me here. So I didn't grow up in an
evangelical household, but I did grow up in a kind
of old school Southern like spare the Rod, spoil the
child kind of household. And something that really struck me
in watching the documentary is how when they were talking
about the brutality of some of the physical abuse that
(08:40):
was commonplace in their communities, and how they had all
of these specific ways to avoid the police getting involved
with how they were, you know, abusing their kids essentially,
I you know, you talked about children's rights and this
sort of children first ideology that we're starting to talk
about now that is not a vibe that I grew
(09:02):
up with, And part of me wonders if one of
the ways that people didn't really necessarily want to see
some of the more abusive aspects of these of these
ideologies is because it's it's even if you're not evangelical,
you might be beating your kids, as you know, and
telling yourself it's disciplined, I'm doing this for their own good.
You might have a mindset that says your kids are
(09:24):
not people, your kids are your property, and the most
important thing for your kid is to be respectful to
you and not to express themselves, not to have needs, values, opinions, emotions,
and so that would be very threatening even if you
were not evangelical.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Oh yeah, it goes back a really long way. I mean,
I think there's a piece of this that is like historically,
like you know, women were property right legally, there was
a like tradition of law around that and the women's
like movement to a and that children were under the
(10:04):
same yea had that same status and it really never
changed because they didn't come along with the evolution of
women's rights very far. I talk about a lot about
this In a recent series on Kitchen Table Cult, we
did a deep dive into the history of children's rise here.
But then there's also, yeah, people don't people carry trauma
(10:28):
from their past and they think that they turned out fine,
and so it's okay to like pass that forward because
they're not willing to acknowledge that people that they love
deeply harmed them. And that's a really hard thing to
face and it takes a lot of maturity to be
able to face that and not like implode. And then
(10:52):
also people people really just don't want to take kids seriously.
It's a lot easier to parent by breaking your child's
spirit than to like take them seriously as a rational
individual with whom you need to negotiate because they have
autonomy and consent. It takes more time, it takes more work,
(11:14):
and a lot of people are not willing to do that.
And a lot of people like have kids because they
you know, don't want to be alone, or they want
to have a legacy, or they want to be able
to micro manage someone else's life because a partner wouldn't
stick around and let them do that. So you know,
(11:34):
there's a lot of like immaturity. That goes into why
people have kids, and that's that's one thing. But then
what you do with the children when you have them
is it's very very important to take them seriously as
individuals with autonomy, and that's really really hard to accept.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
In the documentary, we learn about the kinds of brutal
abuse tactics the Douggers use with their children. Tactics like
blanket training, where a baby is put on a blanket
with a toy just out of reach. If the baby
reaches off of the blanket for the toy, they're hit.
This is meant to break the child's spirit so that
they're more obedient. The film showcases the ways that spanking
(12:15):
and brutal physical punishment is glorified as a godly way
for a parent to treat a child.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I say often that spanking is sexual abuse, and people
really do not like that. I'm sorry, that's an erogenous
zone and you are like preparing. I mean, you saw
in the documentary it's functionally grooming for sexual abuse. Like
the whole line doing this because I love you. You
(12:43):
need to submit to an adult who is violating your boundaries,
and you have to go back and hug them after
it's done, and you have to accept them publicly, and
you have to have no respect resentment. You can't scream
out like that's a sign of rebellion like all these things.
It's it's sexual grooming. It's predatory. In addition to just
(13:06):
the like smacking your child is like extremely fucked up.
I don't know, there's just there's a lot there. People
don't like to look at it. They really really don't
like to look at it.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They really really don't. And I think it's kind of
like what you were saying. I think part of it
is that we as a society, I think we hate children.
We are very threatened by the idea that children are
little adults, and that if we actually built a world
that accommodated that reality, that seems big and scary and threatening.
(13:38):
So it's easier to believe that kids are just property.
You don't really need to think too hard about it
and how you treat them.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Are you familiar with the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child. I am not, Okay, So it's you know,
obviously like un acts do not have like control over
our laws. But when we, you know, co sign something
(14:07):
that you know the international community has agreed like this
is fucked up, like it's it's it's endorsing a like
a standard that we're aspiring to right. And we never
endorsed or ratified the Ewan Convention on the Rights of
the Child back in the nineties early nineties because Michael Ferris,
(14:29):
who's the founder of the Homeschool Elyguild Defense Association and
was up until recently the president of Alliance Defending Freedom,
which is a really it's a hate group, lobbied and
organized homeschoolers to try to keep us from ratifying that because,
among other things, it asserts that a child has a
(14:52):
right to not be hit by their parents. I first
read this when I am entirety I knew of it.
I knew it was considered bad in the fundamental sum
school world, but I first read it in its entirety
when I went to Peace Corps. I was serving in
Kirkgyzstan as a educator volunteer, and because Kirkgyzstan had ratified it,
(15:20):
we had to read it as part of our training
as educators there. Wow, and I I lost it. I
had to go leave, go leave and sit in the
hall for like an hour because it was like all
of these things that it's asserting like would have saved me,
would have saved my childhood, would have been wonderful to
(15:42):
have had, as these are our values as a nation.
We just don't like kids. So there's there's like a whole,
there's a whole, like a lot of history behind that.
And obviously, again it wouldn't be binding in the way
that a federal law would be. But just the fact
(16:03):
that we won't even endorse that kind of aspirational value
is deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Let's take a quick break at our back today. EVE
is part of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an
organization that pushes back against the harmful, regressive, and insular
(16:34):
worlds that these kinds of ideologies build by advocating for
the rights of kids who are homeschooled. The homeschool space
has been deeply deregulated, thanks in part to the lobbying
efforts of people like Michael Ferris, republic and activist and
the head of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. EVE says
that homeschooling is a big part of how kids are
further entrenched into and harmed by ideologies like IBLP and Quiverble.
(17:00):
One of the big things I have to talk about
is homeschooling. I have to imagine that the right to
an education is something that I don't know if it's
spelled out in that in that but like kids deserve.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
To be educated, it is, it is, I mean, yeah,
it is.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
That's I mean yeah. Would imagine something that's so clear
in the documentary is that homeschooling. There's a lot of
things that contribute to the harm that is able to
be done and perpetuated here, homeschooling is a big one.
What role do you see homeschooling play as playing in
all of this?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Homeschooling enables abuse, and you've written about this many many places,
like obviously like general caveat of like there are great
parents and homeschooling can be a really wonderful tool. But
as it stands, homeschooling has been systematically deregulated over the
last thirty years by people like Michael Ferris in order
(18:02):
to elevate parental control over a child's right to education
and child's right too in open future. The net effect
is that in I'm in Virginia and I was homeschooled
in California and Virginia. In Virginia, there's two ways you
can register to be homeschooled. One is like the standard process,
(18:23):
where you report to the school board I'm homeschooling, and
then you have to provide certain academic benchmarks to prove
that there's academic progress. That could be standardized testing, that
could be a portfolio, like different states have various benchmarks
that they use for that. But in Virginia, you can
(18:45):
also register under religious exemption, which basically says, I'm homeschooling
for religious reasons, and as soon as you do that,
you don't exist. So this was established back in I
want to say the eighties. I don't think that's quite right,
but it was established originally to allow the Mennonites to
(19:07):
pull their kids from school to be part of the
farming work in their community or whatever they had going on,
and you know, not have the mandatory education through twelfth grade.
And that's a homeschooling loophole that has been used. It's
(19:27):
been like really strongly protected by the homeschool parental rights
extremist lobby and kids, Like if a parent decided to
homeschool their first kid and then decided that we're going
to have a home birth for the second kid, and oh,
(19:49):
we don't want to register this child as existing. If
the homework goes really smoothly and like nothing goes wrong,
they could potentially have a child without a Social Security
number who is being educated at home under the religious exemption,
who the state has no idea that they exist, and
that's perfectly legal. Under the religious exemption, you could have
(20:12):
your kid graduate from high school without knowing how to read,
and again that would be perfectly legal. Virginia's kind of
like one out of many different Every state has a
very different set of regulations. You can look years up
at responsible Homeschooling dot org. We've got a list of
(20:33):
states in there, you know the current state of homeschooling
by state. We consider Pennsylvania currently to be the gold
standard in terms of like how they track this stuff.
But it's the We at CICH have a like vision
of changing policies so that the child's right to an
(20:56):
open future and child's right to an education are preserved,
and currently that's not the case, and so all of
that sets the stage for families like the Duggers. Ironically,
Arkansas is one of two states that does not allow
(21:18):
a registered sex offender in the home if a family
is homeschooling. So if you want to register as a homeschooler,
you have a registered sex defender in the home, you
will not be permitted to homeschool in Arkansas. That's there
are only two states that have that.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That is, I can't. I'm like, I'm I'm I believe you,
but I am shocked. That is shocking information.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So you know, like we're looking at groups like Moms
for Liberty, right, they're trying to they're trying to be
like some of them might be homeschool moms coming to
school boards trying to like regulate how things are censored.
This is based off of the model that the homeschool
lobby has been using to de regulate homeschooling, and it's
(22:04):
been wildly successful. Just why SIG exists because we're homeschool
alumni being like this is fucked up. We would like
a word here, right, and the other side because a
lot of this order, a lot of the lobbying was
done by homeschool parents. They just see us as like
better or disgruntled and and don't take us seriously. Our
(22:27):
concerns are not real because again, in their eyes, we're
still kids. Doesn't matter that I'm thirty four and I
have like a master's degree and like have taught in
multiple different colleges and like institutions of varying levels. Like
I know what I'm talking about when it comes to
(22:48):
education and what kids need. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Because because yeah, you will always be a child in
their eyes, there's not And I also think there's a
kind of thing of like, oh, they're just biased because
they didn't have a good experience, so you know what
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Some of the board members that ci REG had wonderful
homeschooling experiences, but because they saw the peers in the
community who fell through the cracks, they're mad about it,
and they'd like to write the ship. We'd like to
make it safe for you know, even if some of
my home school homeschooling experience was great, I don't need
(23:28):
to like spend a lot of time getting into like
the specifics because it's not up for debate. But they
I liked certain things like times look like for you.
So I'm the oldest of nine kids, and up until
I was thirteen, and my mom had a set of
twins numbers six and seven in the lineup, I had
(23:52):
much more like support and like flexibility. I got to
like have some sort of input in the curriculum. I
didn't have a lot of choices, but I got to
choose within options, and my mom had time to like
work with me on stuff. But once the twins arrived,
I was co parenting the younger kids. I was babysitting
(24:12):
in ninth grade. I did know school. I just read
you know, great books, works of literature. And while I
was watching children, I got super behind in science and math.
I did not have assistance to check my work on things.
I mostly had to do it myself. I had to,
you know, go take the great book and like go
(24:34):
check my answers and like not have any idea how
I got ex algebra problem wrong. And then going to
you know, my mom or my dad for help would
be like does one even remember how it worked? And
does the other even have like the energy to even
look at this, or like there's a screaming toddler who
needs to be fed, Like let's go do that. So I,
(24:58):
you know, I have ADHD. I like to learn. I hustled,
and I didn't want to be stuck at home, so
like I was like an okay student on my own,
but the environment was not conducive to learning, and there
were a lot of gaps that I've had to fill
on my own afterward. If you want to get a
pretty good example of how it can look like that,
like Tara Westover is educated, felt very familiar in terms
(25:22):
of like, you know, I knew that the Holocaust had
happened by the time I got to college, but she didn't.
And that's not uncommon or unheard of.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Do you think part of it is gendered? Like had
you not been assigned a female at birth, would you
have been responsible for childcare at nine? Fuck?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, because I was expected to be a wife and
mother someday. And like the long term theory was you
don't really need to go to college, but if you
want to go to college, that's fine, But the only
reason you would need a college degree is like what
if some day in the future your husband got disabled
(26:08):
and couldn't work and then you had to go earn money,
Like that's the kind of like extrapolation. There was no
like I really wish I could have taken my college
search seriously and applied to Ivy League schools, not like
the Ivy's are really better, but at a certain point
I believe that they were. And I had a lot
(26:29):
of anger over the fact that I was directed at
certain private Christian colleges or super local colleges so that
I could be close to home and be available. I
left as far as I could within those parameters. But again,
I had options with any set of choices handed to me.
(26:49):
But I was not encouraged to think about myself as
someone who was going to be earning money in the
future and having to support myself or having to take
care of other people because I was training to be
a wife and mom guess what, not a girl. It
(27:10):
just didn't really work out that way.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, you know, I wonder I your amazingly written salon
piece about homeschooling, and something that really struck me was
how secrecy seemed to be a big part of it.
Like if somebody asks about your education, don't say this,
say that. If somebody from the state comes poking around,
(27:35):
say this, not that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I think a lot of that was early on, and
that part of my life was in California, especially so
California is like homeschooling a low at the time, was
you registered as a private school. There was no limit
on how many students at private school had to have,
and so each individual homeschool could operate as a private school.
(28:01):
And that's how they you know, registered to homeschool. So
back then, you know, this is like ninety six, ninety seven,
ninety eight, somewhere in there. When I was getting taught
those things, like homeschooling was not very well known. Mean
girls hadn't come out, You didn't have like references, and
(28:25):
so it felt like one, probably my mom didn't want
to explain things in the grocery store. Two, there's serious
fear mongering always and is still being carried out by HSLDA.
Mike Veris' org to make homeschool parents paid dues to
(28:47):
participate in their organization based off of the fear that
you might need legal production from a someday, legal representation
from a some day, because the state is probably going
to come for your kids. We were taught to not
trust social workers or to see them as a threat.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Teaching kids to fear agents of the state like social
workers and CPS is sadly not an uncommon thing for
(29:26):
some parents. Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart adopted
six black children who the women physically abused and neglected.
When child protective services would get involved in one state,
the women would pack up the kids and flee to
another state, until eventually, in twenty eighteen, the women loaded
all of their kids into their suv and intentionally drove
(29:47):
it off the cliff. None of them survived.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
If you look at you know, the Heart Family case,
that's a very classic case of this. It was like
they left the state to go to Oregon. I think
they were in Wisconsin. They were the Upper Midwest because
the CPS case was open and they were being looked
into and they were trying to avoid it, and that
(30:11):
was happening again in organ and that's when they took
that fatal road trip. Like being trained to be afraid
of the resources that are there to protect children again
kind of goes hand in hand with the like they
hate kids. You don't want your kids to be safe,
You want them to be under your control.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Fuck, you know, thinking back about how fear is really
used to control people's behavior, the documentary makes this interesting
point that all of this ideology was really picking up
steam on the backdrop of things like school desegregation, and
I was just like watching it. I was like, God, damn,
these people really did not want to go to school
with black people, Like they sent this who it is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It is very clearly laid out. There's a really good
piece that I can send you that kind of political piece.
I believe that documents this. But it's basically like brown
v board. White people started private Christian schools, and then
the private Christian schools started getting desegregated. You look at
Bob Jones University and like the ruling there, and they
(31:16):
fucking panicked and went to homeschooling. And I, you know,
look looking at the homeschooling community I grew up in
both in California and Virginia, predominantly white. There were people
people of color, and there's other, you know, communities within that,
(31:37):
some immigrant families, you know, who were choosing that because
it felt safer for various reasons. Like but it's just
the way it started was like very clearly a move
if your based move around white supremacist ideology, and that
(31:59):
is still like kind of so embedded in the movement.
You can't find homeschool curriculum. There's a few options that
are not overtly religious or don't have like overtly redivisionist history.
So as the during the pandemic, the spate of people
(32:22):
leaving to go homeschool their kids, there's a it seemed
like there was a wave of especially black homeschool families
starting to homeschool. I just I feel really bad for
them because like, yes, this is a really good and
safe option for you, and also you're walking into a
community that is really stacked against you. The resources that
(32:47):
are available are directly opposed to any kind of like
adequate education. It's I just I just feel bad that,
you know, this is a really good option for them
and it's not safe. And again that's part of why
cerig exists, is like this should be safe. There should
(33:08):
be you know, there should be good resources. We'd love
to see like homeschoolers being able to be integrated into
public school extracurriculars, you know, those kinds of things where
you're part of the community, but you get to do
it your way.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, you've made really clear that the kind of abuse
that is made worse by homeschooling that we saw in
the documentary is preventable. What are some solutions to preventing
that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So I did a peace Or Team vogue about this
with my friend Nyla Burton. One of the things we
covered in our reporting or was a lot of former
homeschoolers who are now social workers talking about we don't
want more like mandatory oversights. We like, yes, we want
(33:58):
more interactions with mary reporters or mandated reporters, but not
through like a top down like you have to meet
with this person every year. Instead opening things, opening up
existing resources and existing communities where they will inter interact
with mandated reporters so that you avoid the karciural top
(34:19):
down stuff where if you open up my kid is
homeschool but wants to participate in band, and the local
middle school down the street has a really good band program,
and we can like I can drop Tommy off at
three for band practice, and like he's part of the community,
and that teacher is a mandated reporter, and like, so
(34:41):
providing more integration resources for homeschoolers to participate in systems
that already exist, to be able to take some pressure
off of parents for being the sole source of educational
resources and just kind of like how can we like
(35:02):
bring them in how can we make things accessible and
this will like I feel like everybody would benefit from this.
This will help the kids with disabilities or being homeschooled.
But like we need to participate in certain things, or
you know, being able to pick and choose more and
integrate yourself as much as you want. Well, obviously, like
(35:28):
how to manage that policy wise is complex, but I
feel like a more integrated vision is probably the safest
way forward for everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, that was really clear to me watching the documentary
when folks would talk about how they didn't have they
didn't have TV, they didn't have movies, they didn't have
like when there was a hurricane, there's somebody had a
family member had to call because they didn't have that
even that level of access to the outside world. And
when people are so close off and these communities and
(36:01):
families become so insular, that really is just like a
breeding ground. Not not to mention the way that these
young people are being taught, like do whatever the oldest
male tells you to, or you know, if somebody is
abusing you, that's actually good for you. It's just pretty
obviously like a recipe for not great stuff happening, not
safe stuff happening.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, I it's like, I mean, I also like kind
of think about this in terms of this is this
is absolutely opening a can of worms. But there's kind
of a like back rooms conversation among the ex homeschooler
community about like, you know, for a while and I
(36:47):
think now the question has been close, but for a
while before the most recent allegations came out, is Josh
Duggert actually a pedophile or was he just not given
access to sex ed? And I think like now like
child born case closed, But up before that, there was
a lot of conversation about like we didn't get access
(37:08):
to sex ad and so stories of siblings checking each
other out to figure things out is a really like
terrifyingly common experience for a lot of people, And you
(37:30):
just set everybody up to fail if you don't anticipate
curiosity and provide resources and education. It kind of goes
every which way. You know, kids having information about childbirth
because mom had a home birth in the living room,
(37:50):
but not knowing about how their body parts work, Like
just the lack of information really sets you up to fail.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Definitely, and like not leaving space for the realities of
what kids are going to wonder about and be curious
about it enough questions about Like.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Again, they're todd of us beings. You can't anticipate everything,
you can't control everything, like they are going to surprise
the fuck out of you if you let them just
be willing to like go along and provide resources for them.
It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
From IBLP to Quiverfall. The point of these harmful ideologies
is not just about how one family raises their kids.
It's much more than that. With young people being trained
and educated to serve at the highest levels of government
and politics and using social media platforms like TikTok and
YouTube to put a more palatable telegenic schine on their ideology.
(38:51):
The goal is pretty explicitly world domination. What are the
points that I thought was so scary and salient in
the film is this idea at the end where it's like,
it's not just about this one ideology. This is about
people who are harmful, who are also very well connected politically,
(39:12):
have lots of money, who are doing this because they
want they ultimately want like global domination. They want to
be at the highest levels of government and politics. They
want to be the people who are making decisions for
the rest of us for what we can and cannot do.
How have you seen this playing out? And should we
be worried?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh? God, So there's a whole lot. There's a whole
lot that goes into this. So I think this was
clear in the film. But like want of just like reiterate,
I did not grow up in IBLP. I grew up
in quiver Fule and the then diagram is like almost
over top of each other, but not quite the only
(39:50):
reason we didn't do that is because my dad liked
to play is electric guitar and that is satanic in IBLP. So,
but pretty much everything else we adopted. And there's a
lot of that like overlap. If you look at our
j Rush June so kind of the grandfather of Christian
(40:11):
dominionism and the like intellectual trickle down effect that he
had on everybody. You could play Bengo with all of
the like stuff that's going on with the Southern Baptist
Church convention right now and evicting women from from practicing
as pastors and the Hillsong documentary stuff and the God
(40:40):
Will Willo Creek Baptist Church problems and all just like
anytime there's a Christian sex scandal or like overt racism
happening in a church community. You can just like there's
there's a genealogy you can trace back to these these
old school Christian dominionists who were like trying to basically
(41:05):
like push the Confederacy into theocratic territory. Like I sound
like the guy with the string map on the wall,
but I built out the string map and it's pretty solid.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
No, the big Karde is like rushianty slashly. Uh. It's
just it just goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
I mean, that's one of the things that's like it
kind of goes back to what we open the conversation
with about this idea that we do have this innate
thing in us in society. That's like, oh, if this
person wants to live like this, even if it's harmful
to them, let them. But some of these harmful ideologies,
it's not enough that they live like this and they
want their kids to live like this. They want me,
(41:51):
I bagually I've never met to live like this. They
want they want what I can do and can't do.
They want to make decisions. It's the same thing like
you were saying, like the homeschooled pairs and some moms
for liberty. Their kids are not even at the public school,
but they want to be at that school making decisions
for what other people's kids can and cannot read. What
do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (42:11):
It's called Christian dominionism. It's a thing. It's it's it's
it's fascist. I mean, that's that's ultimately what it is.
It's it's Christian fascism. And like there's different ways people
get into it. Some of them like have a little
literal eschatological belief that like if Christian America is not
(42:33):
made into a Christian nation, then they will then Jesus
will never have a second coming, like full on, full
on really it's deeply anti Semitic belief system about the
way and times should work and will work if we
(42:54):
do or do not become a Christian nation and then
and there's other people who are much more like soft
about it, but they kind of end up in the
same place through other ways, just in terms of like
wanting to have these like Christian values imposed upon people
or wanting to be able to functionally eliminate certain segments
(43:19):
of society. I mean, like what is happening right now
is a very slow transgenocide, Like that's the plan, and
these book bands are like the start of it. And
that's why I'm calling it fascism because it's looks very slow,
but that's where it's going to end. And they all
(43:39):
get to the same place no matter where they start.
If their interest is controlling children and controlling access to
information and consolidating power.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Even if it's said by a really sweet seeming lady
with a baby voice and big hair, it's still fashes.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
It's gonna do Michelle indentation. But I can't. I can't
bring myself to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
That voice is something. It's like, it's the stuff that
she's saying is like terrifying, and it's that much more
terrifying that she's saying it in that voice. I was like,
oh my god, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Close having a gentle and quiet.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Spirit shows up my spine.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, it's really bad. It's it looks real pretty, I mean,
but then again, Ivanka also looks really pretty, like.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I speaking of like polishing up things that are scary.
Having grown up in the quiver Full movement, which is
basically this theology that's like having lots and lots of
kids is a blessing from God. Do you see the
ways that right now, Like there are lots of tech
billionaires like Elon Musk who are really into pro natalism,
where they're like, I want to have as many super
(44:56):
babies as I can to repopulate the earth and to
make sure that like you know, know, kids with lots
of kids with my good genes quote unquote are running around.
Do you do you see this as like a new
version of the same kind of thinking of that that's
like kind of like vaguely eugenicist, where it's like my
DNA I.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Needs explicitly eugenicist.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Not if you ask, not if you ask people like
Elon Musk, they're like, what do you mean, Like it's
just sorry, my DNA is just special.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You ask any disabled person, they will say it's eugenesis,
and they are the ones that get to have the
authority on that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah. No, it is horrible, and I can't believe I
guess the reason why I say, like, I think that
we are being sold right now that it's actually fine,
it's eugenicist. But like there's that couple who they forget
what magazine they were in, but it's like I think
that right now we are being sold that it's smart, good,
These people are doing their part to make you know
(45:50):
the future better. Blah blah blah. I think we are
being packaged eugenicism with a pretty package, and we're being
told that actually it's good for the world.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
And also like, I'm sorry, Elon, if your dreams are
so good. One, what about that hairline? We've seen them
before pictures. And two he has literally lost more money
than anyone in history has ever lost. If if you
just look at the Twitter deal and those tums still
(46:20):
sound good to be But like, yeah, I know the
pro natalists like birth, you know, reproduced, reproduction, fetish, whatever
it is. It's not that dissimilar. They're just you know,
putting a tech spin on it rather than a first
from proverbs.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, that's exactly what I think. I think if you
told some of these people it's the same, it's the
same thing, just packaged differently, they would really resent that.
They'd be like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I'm a make them squirm, good, make them squirm.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
You know. Another thing I I'm curious about is when
it comes to like the documentary and the work that
you're doing with kitchen table cults, amazing podcast you're writing.
Does it feel good to just be like getting this
out talking about it?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
It does? And also like I have so many other
things that I am interested in and have been working
on writing about that, Like I can't wait till like
this is obsolete, Like we've been trying to end kitchen
table cults for so long, and every year we're like,
guess we're in for another one, because these things keep
(47:35):
happening that are relevant, and unfortunately we still have stuff
to say, Like it's I would love to be able
to shut up about this. I would love for this
to be irrelevant. I would love for like homeschool policy
to like, you know, exist in such a way that,
like Cirig feels like we have nothing to do, Like
that would be great. It would be so nice. It's cathartic.
(47:58):
And also like I wonder, like write a memoir about
my garden. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
What does it feel like to have this life that
you have? You have this full, dynamic life, full of
interests and work and friends and culture and color and fun.
Did you what is that like? Like did you feel
like that would be a life that you had when
you were young?
Speaker 2 (48:25):
No, I have two answers for you. When is this
this T shirt that we need?
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Driving out of Spy. I guess.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
There's a little bit of that that's like, uh, oh,
you said I couldn't do that, fuck you. But there's
actually a lot of it that's like I have lived
far beyond the scope of my imagination that I had
for my life when I was a teenager, and so
sometimes I feel a little like I'm floundering because I'm
(48:55):
like anything else that I too is so far removed
from anything I ever thought possible that like, I'm just
like inventing new goals and inventing new visions for my futures.
It's really cool, and it's also like, wow, I never
It's it's the thought of the you know, I sort
(49:17):
of have experienced this in another sense, but there's the
thought of like when you've experienced a long period of
depression and you're like, damn it, I'm still alive, Like
what now, Like I didn't think i'd live to be X,
and then now I'm here, might as well just like
figure stuff out. Like it's it's that it's a little
of that, like I didn't think I'd get this way.
(49:40):
Whatever else happens is just really cool and gravy. But
also I struggled to dream big any about it because
there's there's so much that I've already been able to
do that was so seems so impossible.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's kind of beautiful.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, it's fucking rad.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
It's fucking rad. Is there anything that I did not
ask that you want to make sure it gets included?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
I think that it's important to know that c REG
is the only organization founded and run by homeschool alumni
for homeschool kids and their rights. I think it's important
to know that we are still largely a volunteer run organization,
and we are we would love to be able to
pay all of our staff all time, so we are
(50:30):
looking for monthly donors. If you feel so alled to
use the church language, go for it. We are about
at the end of our fiscal year, so by the
end of by June thirtieth, we'd like, that's the end
of our end of the year fundraising drive. So and
being able to have monthly donors helps us be able
(50:52):
to project who we're going to be able to pay
next year, and that would mean a lot to all
of us.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Where can folks donate and get involved and learn more.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Responsible Homeschooling dot org. That's the that's the place go
find them.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Also, where can folks here Kitchen Table, Kitchen Table.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Cults, Kitchen Table cult dot com. We have various handles.
That's either Kitchen Table Cults or Kitchen Table Cult Pod
depending on what we were able to get. But we
are available on all your usual podcast platforms and if
you become a patron, we have Patreon. We have a
slack that is largely survivors, venting and sharing theiry like
(51:34):
Little and Big Wins in the after we escaped Now
what World? So it's pretty great. I love it.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Thrive out of Spite, Eve Attinger, thank you so much
for being here and thanks for the work.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
That you're doing. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed. Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(52:21):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts
Justin heads Up. Today's episode talks about child abuse.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
You don't want your kids to be safe, you want
them to be under your control.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of iHeartRadio and Unboster Creative. I'm bridget Todd and this
is there Are No Girls on the Internet. On their
Discovery reality show Nineteen Kids in Counting, the Dugger family
was portrayed as a sweet, loving, close knit family. Parents
(00:35):
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar were raising their nineteen children,
nine daughters and ten sons to be pure, modest and godly,
which includes strict gender roles, having lots of kids, and
of course homeschooling. But behind the cheery, upbeat show masked
a very deep darkness. Josh Dugger, the oldest son, sexually
(00:57):
abused girls, including his younger sisters. He's serving a twelve
year sentence after authorities found child sexual abuse material on
his computer. The Duggers followed the Institute in Basic Life
Principles or IBLP, a Christian organization founded by Minister Bill
Gothard in nineteen sixty one that purports to teach families
(01:17):
to find success through strict adherents to iblp's interpretation of
the Bible, gender roles are rigid, women are inferior to
the male heads of household, children must strictly obey their parents,
and all of this. All of these norms are enforced
through abuse. But it's not just about how individual families
run their households. Because of what's called Christian dominionism, the
(01:41):
idea that Christians like the Duggers should take control over
government and society, religious selates are striving for more and
more control over all of our lives. Eve Ettinger hosts
a podcast called Kitchen Table Cults where they talk about
life as an ex someone who got out of a cult.
Their story is featured in the new Amazon Prime documentary
(02:01):
about the Duggers called Shiny Happy People.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Hi. I'm Evetinger and I am on the board at
the Coalition for Responsible Home Education.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Eve didn't grow up under IBLP, but they were raised
in an adjacent ideology called Quiverpole, and they know a
lot about the kind of purity culture that's a hallmark
of both movements. So I've just finished watching the Shiny
Happy People documentary. First I have to ask what has
the response been like from the show now that it's aired.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
It's been so sweet. Honestly, it's been really kind. Lots
of survivors reaching out, you know, they relate, they're grateful,
they're really happy that this is being told, and a
lot of other people who are like, oh my god,
I had no idea, how can I help? And so
you know, being able to direct them to CIG and
(02:55):
our work is just really satisfying.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
We were talking a little bit off Mike about this,
but you have this really prolific background as an activist
to someone who writes about important issues, and I'm happy
to hear that the response has been positive and sweet
and helpful and supportive as opposed to some of the
other issues, like your piece about the abortion rights movements,
things like that. I can imagine this feels like a
(03:19):
change in getting those kinds of responses.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Night and day different. I've had to like realate up
my security first things when things like this go live,
because I've had you know, a lot of hate directed
my way, some like active threats, and so it's been
just surreal to feel just the kindness around this. And
I also have to like, I think thank the producers
(03:43):
for this, and I think the medium probably has a
lot to do with that, given that there's like so
many of us speaking out together. It's not just me writing,
as you know, one off piece, but also the producers.
I work mostly with Corey and Olivia, and I cannot
speak too highly of them. They've been so wonderful and
so kind. And there were certain topics that were really
(04:06):
enmeshed in the stories that I was telling that I
find it impossible to tell without those other pieces, but
they are there's elements of that that lead me vulnerable
to people from my past, and they were able to
really cleanly edit out all of those things that left
me open to attacks and just really protect me. And
I felt very cared for by how they presented what
(04:30):
the material that they got.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So often, when us the viewers are watching the finished product,
the person who is the subject, the person who is
being spoken about, who's sharing their experiences which are often
like traumatic or painful or heavy. I hate it when
I hear from them where it's like, oh, this felt
me traumatizing, or this felt like exploitative. So it makes
me very happy to hear that you felt like it
was a good situation for you and not something that
(04:54):
was just like, how can we mine this person's pain
more for views, I really can tell when I'm watching
something that feels like that and I don't like it.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, part of the reason I chose to do this
with them is that I felt that Lula Rich preserved
the dignity of the survivors, which was the piece that
they had done before this, and so that carried through.
Olivia is incredibly careful, incredibly thoughtful, and just very trauma informed,
(05:24):
and I just felt really cared for. I think everybody.
Speaker 1 (05:27):
Did you know? Something that they make really clear in
the doc is how people watching shows like Nineteen Kids
in Counting might not have really been privy to how
harmful ideologies like IBLP actually are. Why do you think
that is?
Speaker 2 (05:45):
Like?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
How is it that someone who watched this show could
be surprised by some of what is then clarified in
the documentary. That's a response I've been seeing a lot of, like, well,
I knew something was off, but I didn't know what.
Why do you think that is?
Speaker 2 (05:59):
There's some amount of our culture that like generally universal
American culture, where we kind of want to let other
people do their thing, and you know, we may disagree
with it, we may judge it, we may like hash
(06:20):
it on Twitter or the you know, the Free Gender
Forum exists, like has existed. There's a lot of rubbernecking,
but like I think there's there's some amount of, like,
you know, this is part of the American persona to
like respect someone else's right to like destroy their life
if you will. But I think a lot of people
(06:44):
don't really think that someone would go that far. It
seems kind of like something maybe we left in the past,
Like it feels there's a brutality to what they are
doing to their children that perhaps feels our I can
like can't possibly be happening in this like modern time.
(07:05):
Anyone who's paying attention to like children rights, children's rights
issues knows otherwise. But I think that like a lot
of people aren't looking at the hard stuff and aren't
you know, it's entertainment, so they're not looking at that
and being like, what's wrong here? You know, let me
go noodle around on Wikipedia to find out who Bill
Gothard is there. They're wanting to like bed out after work,
(07:27):
and so Kieran and I always say on the Kitchen
Table podcast, which is when I co host with my
friend Kieran Darkwater, like the conspiracy is real if there's
like an actual conspiracy for Christian dominionism that has been
like put in place over the last thirty plus years,
and it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Good.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Like conspiracy theories are again another like pastime, like a
great icebreaker is like, what's what's one conspiracy theory? You like,
personally would love to be real for it to be real,
you know, like that kind of chit chat. But it
is very real, and I think we just don't want
to take it seriously because it means that there's a
(08:12):
certain amount of religious freedom for the rest of us
that would immediately be at stake.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Follow me here. So I didn't grow up in an
evangelical household, but I did grow up in a kind
of old school Southern like spare the Rod, spoil the
child kind of household. And something that really struck me
in watching the documentary is how when they were talking
about the brutality of some of the physical abuse that
(08:40):
was commonplace in their communities, and how they had all
of these specific ways to avoid the police getting involved
with how they were, you know, abusing their kids essentially,
I you know, you talked about children's rights and this
sort of children first ideology that we're starting to talk
about now that is not a vibe that I grew
(09:02):
up with, And part of me wonders if one of
the ways that people didn't really necessarily want to see
some of the more abusive aspects of these of these
ideologies is because it's it's even if you're not evangelical,
you might be beating your kids, as you know, and
telling yourself it's disciplined, I'm doing this for their own good.
You might have a mindset that says your kids are
(09:24):
not people, your kids are your property, and the most
important thing for your kid is to be respectful to
you and not to express themselves, not to have needs, values, opinions, emotions,
and so that would be very threatening even if you
were not evangelical.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Oh yeah, it goes back a really long way. I mean,
I think there's a piece of this that is like historically,
like you know, women were property right legally, there was
a like tradition of law around that and the women's
like movement to a and that children were under the
(10:04):
same yea had that same status and it really never
changed because they didn't come along with the evolution of
women's rights very far. I talk about a lot about
this In a recent series on Kitchen Table Cult, we
did a deep dive into the history of children's rise here.
But then there's also, yeah, people don't people carry trauma
(10:28):
from their past and they think that they turned out fine,
and so it's okay to like pass that forward because
they're not willing to acknowledge that people that they love
deeply harmed them. And that's a really hard thing to
face and it takes a lot of maturity to be
able to face that and not like implode. And then
(10:52):
also people people really just don't want to take kids seriously.
It's a lot easier to parent by breaking your child's
spirit than to like take them seriously as a rational
individual with whom you need to negotiate because they have
autonomy and consent. It takes more time, it takes more work,
(11:14):
and a lot of people are not willing to do that.
And a lot of people like have kids because they
you know, don't want to be alone, or they want
to have a legacy, or they want to be able
to micro manage someone else's life because a partner wouldn't
stick around and let them do that. So you know,
(11:34):
there's a lot of like immaturity. That goes into why
people have kids, and that's that's one thing. But then
what you do with the children when you have them
is it's very very important to take them seriously as
individuals with autonomy, and that's really really hard to accept.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
In the documentary, we learn about the kinds of brutal
abuse tactics the Douggers use with their children. Tactics like
blanket training, where a baby is put on a blanket
with a toy just out of reach. If the baby
reaches off of the blanket for the toy, they're hit.
This is meant to break the child's spirit so that
they're more obedient. The film showcases the ways that spanking
(12:15):
and brutal physical punishment is glorified as a godly way
for a parent to treat a child.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I say often that spanking is sexual abuse, and people
really do not like that. I'm sorry, that's an erogenous
zone and you are like preparing. I mean, you saw
in the documentary it's functionally grooming for sexual abuse. Like
the whole line doing this because I love you. You
(12:43):
need to submit to an adult who is violating your boundaries,
and you have to go back and hug them after
it's done, and you have to accept them publicly, and
you have to have no respect resentment. You can't scream
out like that's a sign of rebellion like all these things.
It's it's sexual grooming. It's predatory. In addition to just
(13:06):
the like smacking your child is like extremely fucked up.
I don't know, there's just there's a lot there. People
don't like to look at it. They really really don't
like to look at it.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They really really don't. And I think it's kind of
like what you were saying. I think part of it
is that we as a society, I think we hate children.
We are very threatened by the idea that children are
little adults, and that if we actually built a world
that accommodated that reality, that seems big and scary and threatening.
(13:38):
So it's easier to believe that kids are just property.
You don't really need to think too hard about it
and how you treat them.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Are you familiar with the UN Convention on the Rights
of the Child. I am not, Okay, So it's you know,
obviously like un acts do not have like control over
our laws. But when we, you know, co sign something
(14:07):
that you know the international community has agreed like this
is fucked up, like it's it's it's endorsing a like
a standard that we're aspiring to right. And we never
endorsed or ratified the Ewan Convention on the Rights of
the Child back in the nineties early nineties because Michael Ferris,
(14:29):
who's the founder of the Homeschool Elyguild Defense Association and
was up until recently the president of Alliance Defending Freedom,
which is a really it's a hate group, lobbied and
organized homeschoolers to try to keep us from ratifying that because,
among other things, it asserts that a child has a
(14:52):
right to not be hit by their parents. I first
read this when I am entirety I knew of it.
I knew it was considered bad in the fundamental sum
school world, but I first read it in its entirety
when I went to Peace Corps. I was serving in
Kirkgyzstan as a educator volunteer, and because Kirkgyzstan had ratified it,
(15:20):
we had to read it as part of our training
as educators there. Wow, and I I lost it. I
had to go leave, go leave and sit in the
hall for like an hour because it was like all
of these things that it's asserting like would have saved me,
would have saved my childhood, would have been wonderful to
(15:42):
have had, as these are our values as a nation.
We just don't like kids. So there's there's like a whole,
there's a whole, like a lot of history behind that.
And obviously, again it wouldn't be binding in the way
that a federal law would be. But just the fact
(16:03):
that we won't even endorse that kind of aspirational value
is deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Let's take a quick break at our back today. EVE
is part of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, an
organization that pushes back against the harmful, regressive, and insular
(16:34):
worlds that these kinds of ideologies build by advocating for
the rights of kids who are homeschooled. The homeschool space
has been deeply deregulated, thanks in part to the lobbying
efforts of people like Michael Ferris, republic and activist and
the head of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association. EVE says
that homeschooling is a big part of how kids are
further entrenched into and harmed by ideologies like IBLP and Quiverble.
(17:00):
One of the big things I have to talk about
is homeschooling. I have to imagine that the right to
an education is something that I don't know if it's
spelled out in that in that but like kids deserve.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
To be educated, it is, it is, I mean, yeah,
it is.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
That's I mean yeah. Would imagine something that's so clear
in the documentary is that homeschooling. There's a lot of
things that contribute to the harm that is able to
be done and perpetuated here, homeschooling is a big one.
What role do you see homeschooling play as playing in
all of this?
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Homeschooling enables abuse, and you've written about this many many places,
like obviously like general caveat of like there are great
parents and homeschooling can be a really wonderful tool. But
as it stands, homeschooling has been systematically deregulated over the
last thirty years by people like Michael Ferris in order
(18:02):
to elevate parental control over a child's right to education
and child's right too in open future. The net effect
is that in I'm in Virginia and I was homeschooled
in California and Virginia. In Virginia, there's two ways you
can register to be homeschooled. One is like the standard process,
(18:23):
where you report to the school board I'm homeschooling, and
then you have to provide certain academic benchmarks to prove
that there's academic progress. That could be standardized testing, that
could be a portfolio, like different states have various benchmarks
that they use for that. But in Virginia, you can
(18:45):
also register under religious exemption, which basically says, I'm homeschooling
for religious reasons, and as soon as you do that,
you don't exist. So this was established back in I
want to say the eighties. I don't think that's quite right,
but it was established originally to allow the Mennonites to
(19:07):
pull their kids from school to be part of the
farming work in their community or whatever they had going on,
and you know, not have the mandatory education through twelfth grade.
And that's a homeschooling loophole that has been used. It's
(19:27):
been like really strongly protected by the homeschool parental rights
extremist lobby and kids, Like if a parent decided to
homeschool their first kid and then decided that we're going
to have a home birth for the second kid, and oh,
(19:49):
we don't want to register this child as existing. If
the homework goes really smoothly and like nothing goes wrong,
they could potentially have a child without a Social Security
number who is being educated at home under the religious exemption,
who the state has no idea that they exist, and
that's perfectly legal. Under the religious exemption, you could have
(20:12):
your kid graduate from high school without knowing how to read,
and again that would be perfectly legal. Virginia's kind of
like one out of many different Every state has a
very different set of regulations. You can look years up
at responsible Homeschooling dot org. We've got a list of
(20:33):
states in there, you know the current state of homeschooling
by state. We consider Pennsylvania currently to be the gold
standard in terms of like how they track this stuff.
But it's the We at CICH have a like vision
of changing policies so that the child's right to an
(20:56):
open future and child's right to an education are preserved,
and currently that's not the case, and so all of
that sets the stage for families like the Duggers. Ironically,
Arkansas is one of two states that does not allow
(21:18):
a registered sex offender in the home if a family
is homeschooling. So if you want to register as a homeschooler,
you have a registered sex defender in the home, you
will not be permitted to homeschool in Arkansas. That's there
are only two states that have that.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
That is, I can't. I'm like, I'm I'm I believe you,
but I am shocked. That is shocking information.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
So you know, like we're looking at groups like Moms
for Liberty, right, they're trying to they're trying to be
like some of them might be homeschool moms coming to
school boards trying to like regulate how things are censored.
This is based off of the model that the homeschool
lobby has been using to de regulate homeschooling, and it's
(22:04):
been wildly successful. Just why SIG exists because we're homeschool
alumni being like this is fucked up. We would like
a word here, right, and the other side because a
lot of this order, a lot of the lobbying was
done by homeschool parents. They just see us as like
better or disgruntled and and don't take us seriously. Our
(22:27):
concerns are not real because again, in their eyes, we're
still kids. Doesn't matter that I'm thirty four and I
have like a master's degree and like have taught in
multiple different colleges and like institutions of varying levels. Like
I know what I'm talking about when it comes to
(22:48):
education and what kids need. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Because because yeah, you will always be a child in
their eyes, there's not And I also think there's a
kind of thing of like, oh, they're just biased because
they didn't have a good experience, so you know what
they're talking about.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Some of the board members that ci REG had wonderful
homeschooling experiences, but because they saw the peers in the
community who fell through the cracks, they're mad about it,
and they'd like to write the ship. We'd like to
make it safe for you know, even if some of
my home school homeschooling experience was great, I don't need
(23:28):
to like spend a lot of time getting into like
the specifics because it's not up for debate. But they
I liked certain things like times look like for you.
So I'm the oldest of nine kids, and up until
I was thirteen, and my mom had a set of
twins numbers six and seven in the lineup, I had
(23:52):
much more like support and like flexibility. I got to
like have some sort of input in the curriculum. I
didn't have a lot of choices, but I got to
choose within options, and my mom had time to like
work with me on stuff. But once the twins arrived,
I was co parenting the younger kids. I was babysitting
(24:12):
in ninth grade. I did know school. I just read
you know, great books, works of literature. And while I
was watching children, I got super behind in science and math.
I did not have assistance to check my work on things.
I mostly had to do it myself. I had to,
you know, go take the great book and like go
(24:34):
check my answers and like not have any idea how
I got ex algebra problem wrong. And then going to
you know, my mom or my dad for help would
be like does one even remember how it worked? And
does the other even have like the energy to even
look at this, or like there's a screaming toddler who
needs to be fed, Like let's go do that. So I,
(24:58):
you know, I have ADHD. I like to learn. I hustled,
and I didn't want to be stuck at home, so
like I was like an okay student on my own,
but the environment was not conducive to learning, and there
were a lot of gaps that I've had to fill
on my own afterward. If you want to get a
pretty good example of how it can look like that,
like Tara Westover is educated, felt very familiar in terms
(25:22):
of like, you know, I knew that the Holocaust had
happened by the time I got to college, but she didn't.
And that's not uncommon or unheard of.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Do you think part of it is gendered? Like had
you not been assigned a female at birth, would you
have been responsible for childcare at nine? Fuck?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yes, because I was expected to be a wife and
mother someday. And like the long term theory was you
don't really need to go to college, but if you
want to go to college, that's fine, But the only
reason you would need a college degree is like what
if some day in the future your husband got disabled
(26:08):
and couldn't work and then you had to go earn money,
Like that's the kind of like extrapolation. There was no
like I really wish I could have taken my college
search seriously and applied to Ivy League schools, not like
the Ivy's are really better, but at a certain point
I believe that they were. And I had a lot
(26:29):
of anger over the fact that I was directed at
certain private Christian colleges or super local colleges so that
I could be close to home and be available. I
left as far as I could within those parameters. But again,
I had options with any set of choices handed to me.
(26:49):
But I was not encouraged to think about myself as
someone who was going to be earning money in the
future and having to support myself or having to take
care of other people because I was training to be
a wife and mom guess what, not a girl. It
(27:10):
just didn't really work out that way.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, you know, I wonder I your amazingly written salon
piece about homeschooling, and something that really struck me was
how secrecy seemed to be a big part of it.
Like if somebody asks about your education, don't say this,
say that. If somebody from the state comes poking around,
(27:35):
say this, not that.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
I think a lot of that was early on, and
that part of my life was in California, especially so
California is like homeschooling a low at the time, was
you registered as a private school. There was no limit
on how many students at private school had to have,
and so each individual homeschool could operate as a private school.
(28:01):
And that's how they you know, registered to homeschool. So
back then, you know, this is like ninety six, ninety seven,
ninety eight, somewhere in there. When I was getting taught
those things, like homeschooling was not very well known. Mean
girls hadn't come out, You didn't have like references, and
(28:25):
so it felt like one, probably my mom didn't want
to explain things in the grocery store. Two, there's serious
fear mongering always and is still being carried out by HSLDA.
Mike Veris' org to make homeschool parents paid dues to
(28:47):
participate in their organization based off of the fear that
you might need legal production from a someday, legal representation
from a some day, because the state is probably going
to come for your kids. We were taught to not
trust social workers or to see them as a threat.
Speaker 1 (29:05):
More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Teaching kids to fear agents of the state like social
workers and CPS is sadly not an uncommon thing for
(29:26):
some parents. Jennifer Jean Hart and Sarah Margaret Hart adopted
six black children who the women physically abused and neglected.
When child protective services would get involved in one state,
the women would pack up the kids and flee to
another state, until eventually, in twenty eighteen, the women loaded
all of their kids into their suv and intentionally drove
(29:47):
it off the cliff. None of them survived.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
If you look at you know, the Heart Family case,
that's a very classic case of this. It was like
they left the state to go to Oregon. I think
they were in Wisconsin. They were the Upper Midwest because
the CPS case was open and they were being looked
into and they were trying to avoid it, and that
(30:11):
was happening again in organ and that's when they took
that fatal road trip. Like being trained to be afraid
of the resources that are there to protect children again
kind of goes hand in hand with the like they
hate kids. You don't want your kids to be safe,
You want them to be under your control.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
Fuck, you know, thinking back about how fear is really
used to control people's behavior, the documentary makes this interesting
point that all of this ideology was really picking up
steam on the backdrop of things like school desegregation, and
I was just like watching it. I was like, God, damn,
these people really did not want to go to school
with black people, Like they sent this who it is.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
It is very clearly laid out. There's a really good
piece that I can send you that kind of political piece.
I believe that documents this. But it's basically like brown
v board. White people started private Christian schools, and then
the private Christian schools started getting desegregated. You look at
Bob Jones University and like the ruling there, and they
(31:16):
fucking panicked and went to homeschooling. And I, you know,
look looking at the homeschooling community I grew up in
both in California and Virginia, predominantly white. There were people
people of color, and there's other, you know, communities within that,
(31:37):
some immigrant families, you know, who were choosing that because
it felt safer for various reasons. Like but it's just
the way it started was like very clearly a move
if your based move around white supremacist ideology, and that
(31:59):
is still like kind of so embedded in the movement.
You can't find homeschool curriculum. There's a few options that
are not overtly religious or don't have like overtly redivisionist history.
So as the during the pandemic, the spate of people
(32:22):
leaving to go homeschool their kids, there's a it seemed
like there was a wave of especially black homeschool families
starting to homeschool. I just I feel really bad for
them because like, yes, this is a really good and
safe option for you, and also you're walking into a
community that is really stacked against you. The resources that
(32:47):
are available are directly opposed to any kind of like
adequate education. It's I just I just feel bad that,
you know, this is a really good option for them
and it's not safe. And again that's part of why
cerig exists, is like this should be safe. There should
(33:08):
be you know, there should be good resources. We'd love
to see like homeschoolers being able to be integrated into
public school extracurriculars, you know, those kinds of things where
you're part of the community, but you get to do
it your way.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, you've made really clear that the kind of abuse
that is made worse by homeschooling that we saw in
the documentary is preventable. What are some solutions to preventing
that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
So I did a peace Or Team vogue about this
with my friend Nyla Burton. One of the things we
covered in our reporting or was a lot of former
homeschoolers who are now social workers talking about we don't
want more like mandatory oversights. We like, yes, we want
(33:58):
more interactions with mary reporters or mandated reporters, but not
through like a top down like you have to meet
with this person every year. Instead opening things, opening up
existing resources and existing communities where they will inter interact
with mandated reporters so that you avoid the karciural top
(34:19):
down stuff where if you open up my kid is
homeschool but wants to participate in band, and the local
middle school down the street has a really good band program,
and we can like I can drop Tommy off at
three for band practice, and like he's part of the community,
and that teacher is a mandated reporter, and like, so
(34:41):
providing more integration resources for homeschoolers to participate in systems
that already exist, to be able to take some pressure
off of parents for being the sole source of educational
resources and just kind of like how can we like
(35:02):
bring them in how can we make things accessible and
this will like I feel like everybody would benefit from this.
This will help the kids with disabilities or being homeschooled.
But like we need to participate in certain things, or
you know, being able to pick and choose more and
integrate yourself as much as you want. Well, obviously, like
(35:28):
how to manage that policy wise is complex, but I
feel like a more integrated vision is probably the safest
way forward for everybody.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Yeah, that was really clear to me watching the documentary
when folks would talk about how they didn't have they
didn't have TV, they didn't have movies, they didn't have
like when there was a hurricane, there's somebody had a
family member had to call because they didn't have that
even that level of access to the outside world. And
when people are so close off and these communities and
(36:01):
families become so insular, that really is just like a
breeding ground. Not not to mention the way that these
young people are being taught, like do whatever the oldest
male tells you to, or you know, if somebody is
abusing you, that's actually good for you. It's just pretty
obviously like a recipe for not great stuff happening, not
safe stuff happening.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah, I it's like, I mean, I also like kind
of think about this in terms of this is this
is absolutely opening a can of worms. But there's kind
of a like back rooms conversation among the ex homeschooler
community about like, you know, for a while and I
(36:47):
think now the question has been close, but for a
while before the most recent allegations came out, is Josh
Duggert actually a pedophile or was he just not given
access to sex ed? And I think like now like
child born case closed, But up before that, there was
a lot of conversation about like we didn't get access
(37:08):
to sex ad and so stories of siblings checking each
other out to figure things out is a really like
terrifyingly common experience for a lot of people, And you
(37:30):
just set everybody up to fail if you don't anticipate
curiosity and provide resources and education. It kind of goes
every which way. You know, kids having information about childbirth
because mom had a home birth in the living room,
(37:50):
but not knowing about how their body parts work, Like
just the lack of information really sets you up to fail.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Definitely, and like not leaving space for the realities of
what kids are going to wonder about and be curious
about it enough questions about Like.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Again, they're todd of us beings. You can't anticipate everything,
you can't control everything, like they are going to surprise
the fuck out of you if you let them just
be willing to like go along and provide resources for them.
It's not that hard.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
From IBLP to Quiverfall. The point of these harmful ideologies
is not just about how one family raises their kids.
It's much more than that. With young people being trained
and educated to serve at the highest levels of government
and politics and using social media platforms like TikTok and
YouTube to put a more palatable telegenic schine on their ideology.
(38:51):
The goal is pretty explicitly world domination. What are the
points that I thought was so scary and salient in
the film is this idea at the end where it's like,
it's not just about this one ideology. This is about
people who are harmful, who are also very well connected politically,
(39:12):
have lots of money, who are doing this because they
want they ultimately want like global domination. They want to
be at the highest levels of government and politics. They
want to be the people who are making decisions for
the rest of us for what we can and cannot do.
How have you seen this playing out? And should we
be worried?
Speaker 2 (39:30):
Oh? God, So there's a whole lot. There's a whole
lot that goes into this. So I think this was
clear in the film. But like want of just like reiterate,
I did not grow up in IBLP. I grew up
in quiver Fule and the then diagram is like almost
over top of each other, but not quite the only
(39:50):
reason we didn't do that is because my dad liked
to play is electric guitar and that is satanic in IBLP. So,
but pretty much everything else we adopted. And there's a
lot of that like overlap. If you look at our
j Rush June so kind of the grandfather of Christian
(40:11):
dominionism and the like intellectual trickle down effect that he
had on everybody. You could play Bengo with all of
the like stuff that's going on with the Southern Baptist
Church convention right now and evicting women from from practicing
as pastors and the Hillsong documentary stuff and the God
(40:40):
Will Willo Creek Baptist Church problems and all just like
anytime there's a Christian sex scandal or like overt racism
happening in a church community. You can just like there's
there's a genealogy you can trace back to these these
old school Christian dominionists who were like trying to basically
(41:05):
like push the Confederacy into theocratic territory. Like I sound
like the guy with the string map on the wall,
but I built out the string map and it's pretty solid.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
No, the big Karde is like rushianty slashly. Uh. It's
just it just goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (41:29):
I mean, that's one of the things that's like it
kind of goes back to what we open the conversation
with about this idea that we do have this innate
thing in us in society. That's like, oh, if this
person wants to live like this, even if it's harmful
to them, let them. But some of these harmful ideologies,
it's not enough that they live like this and they
want their kids to live like this. They want me,
(41:51):
I bagually I've never met to live like this. They
want they want what I can do and can't do.
They want to make decisions. It's the same thing like
you were saying, like the homeschooled pairs and some moms
for liberty. Their kids are not even at the public school,
but they want to be at that school making decisions
for what other people's kids can and cannot read. What
do we do with that?
Speaker 2 (42:11):
It's called Christian dominionism. It's a thing. It's it's it's
it's fascist. I mean, that's that's ultimately what it is.
It's it's Christian fascism. And like there's different ways people
get into it. Some of them like have a little
literal eschatological belief that like if Christian America is not
(42:33):
made into a Christian nation, then they will then Jesus
will never have a second coming, like full on, full
on really it's deeply anti Semitic belief system about the
way and times should work and will work if we
(42:54):
do or do not become a Christian nation and then
and there's other people who are much more like soft
about it, but they kind of end up in the
same place through other ways, just in terms of like
wanting to have these like Christian values imposed upon people
or wanting to be able to functionally eliminate certain segments
(43:19):
of society. I mean, like what is happening right now
is a very slow transgenocide, Like that's the plan, and
these book bands are like the start of it. And
that's why I'm calling it fascism because it's looks very slow,
but that's where it's going to end. And they all
(43:39):
get to the same place no matter where they start.
If their interest is controlling children and controlling access to
information and consolidating power.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Even if it's said by a really sweet seeming lady
with a baby voice and big hair, it's still fashes.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
It's gonna do Michelle indentation. But I can't. I can't
bring myself to do it.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
That voice is something. It's like, it's the stuff that
she's saying is like terrifying, and it's that much more
terrifying that she's saying it in that voice. I was like,
oh my god, it's.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Close having a gentle and quiet.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
Spirit shows up my spine.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Yeah, it's really bad. It's it looks real pretty, I mean,
but then again, Ivanka also looks really pretty, like.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
I speaking of like polishing up things that are scary.
Having grown up in the quiver Full movement, which is
basically this theology that's like having lots and lots of
kids is a blessing from God. Do you see the
ways that right now, Like there are lots of tech
billionaires like Elon Musk who are really into pro natalism,
where they're like, I want to have as many super
(44:56):
babies as I can to repopulate the earth and to
make sure that like you know, know, kids with lots
of kids with my good genes quote unquote are running around.
Do you do you see this as like a new
version of the same kind of thinking of that that's
like kind of like vaguely eugenicist, where it's like my
DNA I.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
Needs explicitly eugenicist.
Speaker 1 (45:16):
Not if you ask, not if you ask people like
Elon Musk, they're like, what do you mean, Like it's
just sorry, my DNA is just special.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You ask any disabled person, they will say it's eugenesis,
and they are the ones that get to have the
authority on that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah. No, it is horrible, and I can't believe I
guess the reason why I say, like, I think that
we are being sold right now that it's actually fine,
it's eugenicist. But like there's that couple who they forget
what magazine they were in, but it's like I think
that right now we are being sold that it's smart, good,
These people are doing their part to make you know
(45:50):
the future better. Blah blah blah. I think we are
being packaged eugenicism with a pretty package, and we're being
told that actually it's good for the world.
Speaker 2 (46:00):
And also like, I'm sorry, Elon, if your dreams are
so good. One, what about that hairline? We've seen them
before pictures. And two he has literally lost more money
than anyone in history has ever lost. If if you
just look at the Twitter deal and those tums still
(46:20):
sound good to be But like, yeah, I know the
pro natalists like birth, you know, reproduced, reproduction, fetish, whatever
it is. It's not that dissimilar. They're just you know,
putting a tech spin on it rather than a first
from proverbs.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yeah, that's exactly what I think. I think if you
told some of these people it's the same, it's the
same thing, just packaged differently, they would really resent that.
They'd be like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (46:53):
I'm a make them squirm, good, make them squirm.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
You know. Another thing I I'm curious about is when
it comes to like the documentary and the work that
you're doing with kitchen table cults, amazing podcast you're writing.
Does it feel good to just be like getting this
out talking about it?
Speaker 2 (47:14):
It does? And also like I have so many other
things that I am interested in and have been working
on writing about that, Like I can't wait till like
this is obsolete, Like we've been trying to end kitchen
table cults for so long, and every year we're like,
guess we're in for another one, because these things keep
(47:35):
happening that are relevant, and unfortunately we still have stuff
to say, Like it's I would love to be able
to shut up about this. I would love for this
to be irrelevant. I would love for like homeschool policy
to like, you know, exist in such a way that,
like Cirig feels like we have nothing to do, Like
that would be great. It would be so nice. It's cathartic.
(47:58):
And also like I wonder, like write a memoir about
my garden. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:03):
What does it feel like to have this life that
you have? You have this full, dynamic life, full of
interests and work and friends and culture and color and fun.
Did you what is that like? Like did you feel
like that would be a life that you had when
you were young?
Speaker 2 (48:25):
No, I have two answers for you. When is this
this T shirt that we need?
Speaker 1 (48:30):
Driving out of Spy. I guess.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
There's a little bit of that that's like, uh, oh,
you said I couldn't do that, fuck you. But there's
actually a lot of it that's like I have lived
far beyond the scope of my imagination that I had
for my life when I was a teenager, and so
sometimes I feel a little like I'm floundering because I'm
(48:55):
like anything else that I too is so far removed
from anything I ever thought possible that like, I'm just
like inventing new goals and inventing new visions for my futures.
It's really cool, and it's also like, wow, I never
It's it's the thought of the you know, I sort
(49:17):
of have experienced this in another sense, but there's the
thought of like when you've experienced a long period of
depression and you're like, damn it, I'm still alive, Like
what now, Like I didn't think i'd live to be X,
and then now I'm here, might as well just like
figure stuff out. Like it's it's that it's a little
of that, like I didn't think I'd get this way.
(49:40):
Whatever else happens is just really cool and gravy. But
also I struggled to dream big any about it because
there's there's so much that I've already been able to
do that was so seems so impossible.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's kind of beautiful.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, it's fucking rad.
Speaker 1 (50:02):
It's fucking rad. Is there anything that I did not
ask that you want to make sure it gets included?
Speaker 2 (50:09):
I think that it's important to know that c REG
is the only organization founded and run by homeschool alumni
for homeschool kids and their rights. I think it's important
to know that we are still largely a volunteer run organization,
and we are we would love to be able to
pay all of our staff all time, so we are
(50:30):
looking for monthly donors. If you feel so alled to
use the church language, go for it. We are about
at the end of our fiscal year, so by the
end of by June thirtieth, we'd like, that's the end
of our end of the year fundraising drive. So and
being able to have monthly donors helps us be able
(50:52):
to project who we're going to be able to pay
next year, and that would mean a lot to all
of us.
Speaker 1 (50:58):
Where can folks donate and get involved and learn more.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Responsible Homeschooling dot org. That's the that's the place go
find them.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Also, where can folks here Kitchen Table, Kitchen Table.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Cults, Kitchen Table cult dot com. We have various handles.
That's either Kitchen Table Cults or Kitchen Table Cult Pod
depending on what we were able to get. But we
are available on all your usual podcast platforms and if
you become a patron, we have Patreon. We have a
slack that is largely survivors, venting and sharing theiry like
(51:34):
Little and Big Wins in the after we escaped Now
what World? So it's pretty great. I love it.
Speaker 1 (51:43):
Thrive out of Spite, Eve Attinger, thank you so much
for being here and thanks for the work.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
That you're doing. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (51:59):
Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget Todd.
It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed. Creative Jonathan Strickland
is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
(52:21):
Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts
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