She’s a young newlywed mother-to-be with a history of being molested, and she wants to share her story with other women. Sounds like the kind of thing the feminist sisterhood and the emotion porn-loving Oprah crowd can agree to get behind. Unless that woman happens to be a white Christian with the name Duggar attached to her.
Back in July it was announced that Jessa Duggar and husband Ben Seewald would be featured speakers at the Southern Women’s Show in Birmingham, AL. The Women’s Show is a four day event highlighting shopping, food, fashion, health, beauty, and fun for women.
The invitation earned the show’s organizers dismay and condemnation from attendees.
The announcement that the show would feature Jessa Duggar was made public on July 13 via the event’s Facebook page. “Immediate reaction was quick and predictable, with a few announcing they could not attend an event with Jessa as a speaker and others expressing an increased interest,” According to the DailyMail. “Those reactions seemed to die down, however, by the end of July.”
In light of older brother Josh Duggar’s scandal with the Ashley Madison hacking, the anger towards Jessa speaking has ramped back up as of last Friday.
Several negative comments were left on the event’s Facebook page according to Raw Story, including:
'Your choice of including an uneducated, judgmental and arrogant Duggar as a guest speaker has made it impossible for me to attend any more of your events,' one commenter said.
'I’m having a very difficult time wrapping my head around the concept that Jessa even remotely has anything valuable to contribute,' wrote another commenter. 'She was raised in a culture where women are devalued as equals and are viewed as second class citizens, whose only true purpose is to breed. She’s not a proud Southern woman, not by my standards.'
“’This whole family is like a bad case of syphilis that just won't go away,'” DailyMail reported of one commenter.
Keep in mind Duggar’s speaking engagement is to cover topics such as her wedding details, being a newlywed, and becoming a soon to be first time mother—a very normal discussion for a women’s conference already featuring these things.
So why all the hate towards Jessa? It seems the media’s gleeful feeding frenzy over the Duggar downfall has done its job influencing the public. The entire Duggar family has felt the media backlash of the eldest son’s exposed actions.
It doesn’t help that the media have always treated the family like anthropologists studying some isolated pre-Columbian tribe – fascinated and horrified by their arcane rituals. And it isn’t so much the Duggar family that draws the criticism, but rather the Duggar family who hold the Christian faith that contemporary mainstream society has a problem with. The family, in general, has been described as religious cultists, homophobic, bigoted, and guilty of forcing their values on society.
Perhaps the Women’s Show attendees would be happier with the drug promoting, scantily dressed, pansexual Miley Cyrus. After all, she’s been dubbed by liberals as an exceptional role model for women.
