Thread by @LauraRbnsn

Let's talk about fetishes.
(Stick with me, this will make sense).
I've been thinking about these texts Rebekah drew on for how some Christian circles traditionalist/patriarchal womanhood and how this combines with leaders in Christian positions being shocked when girls raised in

https://twitter.com/MuiRebekah/status/1661087376087629837

these systems don't exhibit the same agency and maturity as girls who don't come from these systems - ie, not strenuously resisting coercion and abuse from male leaders.
So I am a big fan of advice columns. They make me laugh a lot. One of my favorite genres of advice column

is the Guy Who Got More Than He Bargained For regarding some boneheaded idea he got from a fantasy. Basically, a guy begs his wife or girlfriend for years for some extreme sex act - watching another guy have sex with her, or a three way, or an open relationship for both of

them. She says no but the guy is all ramped up on p*rn and his fantasies and thinks it's going to be great, and finally one day he convinces her to go along with it. She does, and it turns out the fantasy doesn't translate to reality. Either he realizes that being in an open

marriage isn't nearly as exciting as he thought it would be, or he realizes he's jealous, or an experience that looked really cool online is not what he thought it would be in reality.
Anyway, makes me laugh.
So this brings me to Rebekah and the way she notices, I think that

a lot of "trad wife" material even in explicitly theological circles looks pretty fetishy. What if women were super open and agreeable?! What if they never said no to anything?! What if they were so innocent and virginal they didn't kiss until their wedding days?! Or know what

sex was until their wedding night?! What if they were just constantly agreeable little girls who would do whatever we told them, but never threatened us because they never asked for anything and never had any desires of their own?!
Wouldn't it be cool if women were like this?!

This is a fetish talking. It's not real life.
But I think the guys at Moscow made their fetishes real life. And they found out, like many men before them who sobered up real fast the fantasy became reality, that making your fetish real isn't as cool as it sounds.

If you read Emilie Dye's full blog article you'll find that, at age 18-19, she didn't know what sex was, she had no concept of consent or saying no to men, she didn't know the names for private parts, and she didn't understand ejaculation. For men who fetishize virginity and

girlishness, she was what this community was trying to produce.
But then the sobering-up moment (remember that these movements aren't that old! A lot of these trad communities were started in the 80s and 90s! They don't have long track records!) is when this 18 year

old completely shocked the men around her by not acting like the real live girls they grew up with and remembered from their own teenage years - girls who actually will blow you off or say "Not if you don't have a condom" or "ew, you're old."

The reality is, the fetish of the girl who never says no and doesn't know anything about sex isn't as cool in real life, because one of the guys around you who shares your fetish is going to take advantage of the situation, and now you have a problem on your hands.

So I think what I see Joe Rigby and Doug Wilson expressing now is the same feeling that guys in these advice columns have - "It wasn't ACTUALLY supposed to be like that! It wasn't like that in my head! I thought she'd snap out of it before there were consequences!"

Basically, it wasn't the way you imagined it in your fantasy. There actually is no such thing as a perfectly innocent, obedient girl who says no to everyone (but you), who knows nothing about sex but knows when to say no to it from everyone (but you), who trusts you completely

except when she's protecting you, who always follows except when she's mothering you, who always submits to you except when you need her to be in charge for a change.
That's not a real person. That's a fantasy. And trying to make it real is, in addition to being

gross, just not the way real life works.

*And I think it is important here to insist on novelty. There's a 0 percent chance my sheep-and-cow-breeding grandma didn't know what sex was when she was 18, or that my grandma who grew up working the counter at her parents' store didn't learn from her mother how to say

"your credit's no good here, and the price is firm."
This is an experiment with womanhood, not a return to form.

(Also the way these advice columns always work is that the guy with the boneheaded idea is mad at his wife for the fantasy not being as good in real life as he thought it would be. Same as these guys. "Why weren't you the thing I built up in my head?!")