Links, Updates, and a New Podcast Series!
Hello fellow strong-willed people,
We wanted to pop in and give a few updates to where our work has been featured, what’s coming up for STRONGWILLED, and how you can support/get involved.
First up, our Purity Culture is Pedophile Culture series continues to be our most-read work. You can catch up with the 5-part series here, or find a few good summaries in recent articles.
Secondly, The Revealer recently published an article which covers a lot of the ideology behind Dobson’s advice on forgiving abusive fathers and why it worked so perfectly for people like Jeffrey Epstein. This article does a great job of highlighting other folks who have been hard at work exposing the harms of white evangelicalism, including STRONGWILLED favorites like Shelia Gregoire, Brad Onishi, and Kristen Kobe Du Mez.
Next, Religion Dispatches recently published an article with an overview of Dobson’s history. While both the title and framing are similar to The Revealer piece, this one actually leans more heavily on the research that D.L. has been highlighting James Dobson’s work on the Meese Commission, what folks like Robert J. Lufton were writing about Dobson in the 1990s, and more. It’s a great piece to share with folks if they want a good overview about why Dobson’s refusal to share information that would keep children safe wasn’t just problematic – but downright incriminating.
If you want to dive deeper into why James Dobson was the worst, we recommend starting with our look into Dobson’s Nazi mentor, reading our Purity Culture series, and perhaps listening to our STRONGWILLED 2-part podcast episode titled “James Dobson’s Worst Nightmare.”
For a shorter (but still intense!) look at James Dobson, his eugenicist background, and the very weird circumstances that led to him creating the hit kids radio program Adventures in Odyssey, you can listen to D.L. unpack all of that on the most recent episode of the Ex-Homeschoolers Club podcast. You can watch the Youtube video here, or listen wherever you normally get your audio content.
D.L. has also been posting some carousels on Instagram that succinctly summarize some of the research into James Dobson they have been working on. You can access those here (and read the comments on the most recent post if you need some solidarity).
Krispin is hard at work on a manuscript for a book all about the developmental impacts of religious authoritarian parenting methods. While he works on that project, he is posting his findings (and asking for input) over on his Instagram account.
But the big news is that starting next week, we’re launching a new monthly podcast series for our paid subscribers – exploring developmental impacts of religious authoritarian parenting, examining each developmental phase, explaining what the religious authoritarian parenting manuals advocated for the stage, and discussing the long-term impacts these methods had on development.
If you have ever wondered what kind of developmental impacts these parenting methods might have had on you as an adult, you won't want to miss out on this series.
Our first episode on infancy/birth goes up next Monday, and there are two ways to access these monthly episodes, through Ghost or Patreon. You can join through Patreon, where you can subscribe to STRONGWILLED for as little as $4 a month. If you already support creators on Patreon and listen to audio content there, we suggest signing up there. Plus you can access our entire backlog of patreon-only episodes (some of which are kind of fun!)
If you are a paid subscriber here on Ghost, we will also be publishing the audio for these episodes here on Ghost. Look for the first episode to be in your inbox on Monday.
And if you aren’t a paid subscriber yet, today is a great day to start! Click here to join Patreon or click below to become a paid subscriber here at STRONGWILLED and support the work we do.
We are incredibly grateful to everyone who supports us in any way that they can – encouraging comments, DMs, by sharing our work or tagging us into conversations. While the content can be incredibly draining, it is also a strangely invigorating time to be unpacking the abusive parenting methods that define religious authoritarianism in the United States. Every day it is becoming more and more clear that there is something deeply rotten at the core of the white supremacist patriarchal religious movement that is seeking to punish and control an entire country. While it is never a fun time to unpack childhood trauma, it’s no surprise to us that more and more people are ready to do this work every day. For many of us, we simply have no choice but to start to process the harms – precisely because we believe that a better way is possible for us all.
We are hard at work writing books, shopping books, and dreaming up webinars for the fall, and we are only able to do this because of the support of other survivors like ourselves. Today, like every day, is a great day to get in touch with our inner strong-willed selves and commit to resisting religious authoritarianism wherever we might find it.
Thank you so much, and stay STRONGWILLED.
