Chelsea, your post helps me clarify some of the complicated thoughts I've had about this post also.

I first got stuck on the term "brainwash," which to me connotes coercion and not socialization. All socialization is, in a sense, a form of "brainwashing" in that it is a form of structuring how we think, what we are likely to value and how we are likely to act. But socialization is not uniform, and there are subcultures and counter cultures that compete with the dominant culture in most societies. "Brainwashing" implies, to me anyway, a coercive uniform reprogramming of a person's thinking.

Michelle Vitt was socialized into a restrictive subculture, certainly. But that does make it sound rather like a neutral process. It's true that she herself has harmed nobody, except to the small degree that the press attention she gets for this story supports the restrictive subculture in question in its efforts to further cut access to things like sex ed funding, contraception, access to abortion and so on. (Of course the political activities of that fundamentalist voting block and the candidates who cater to them are very harmful.)

But has she herself been harmed by her socialization? This is another place I initially got stuck in reading JanieBelle's post. I think she has been harmed, but we can't know for certain without seeing the curriculum she was exposed to. If she was exposed to abstinence-only education I would say she was harmed. If she was told that sex would make her dirty or cause her to go to hell I think she was harmed. But was she abused? Maybe. It's harder for me to say so.

The third reason I had a hard time with this post initially is a personal one: I just spent a week with my partner's family and am reminded that these fundamentalists are respectful of views that differ from theirs, and their own views are more complex than their religious faith would lead you to believe. In particular I am always happy to spend time with my partner's siblings and their kids. These are good-hearted, open people who, on some issues that are important to me, hold views I'd probably abhor, yet with whom I can often have interesting conversations about issues that we about which we disagree because we can talk about the many sides of the issues without becoming personally involved. These are well educated, smart people who hold to a restrictive faith and whose votes I will try very hard to counter by good organizing!

All of that is to say that it does irk me to see generalizations about groups whether they are groups I get on well with or groups I have lots of conflicts with. If one is speaking about the whole group, a generalization is appropriate. But often the point is about an individual or smaller group within the subculture, and then a generalization based on the larger group can miss important details.

Back to Michelle Vitt... If we knew more of her story, beyond the sort of fluffy profile in the Jacksonville Daily News, I'd wonder about the following:

-Did she have access to groups who differ from hers and support in her desire to learn about them and interact with them? (Or did she have no desire to learn about people different from herself and her subculture?)

-Did she have access to accurate information about health, biology, and sexuality? Or was she given inaccurate information about contraception failure rates and given inaccurate information about the risks that come with sexual activity?

-Did she make her choice with some freedom, that is, with good information about alternatives? Or was she really very isolated and thus unable to make a clear choice?

A choice, made with some freedom, to remain a virgin or even to refrain from kissing is not in itself offensive. But socialization into a subculture that denies science, proffers inaccurate information about sexuality, supports bias and discrimination makes it difficult to frame Vitt's commitment as a clearly made individual choice.

The fluffy news profile seems to valorize the outcome of what is an oppressive process. It is not her lack of kissing that bothers me. It is the socialization process that I suspect she was subject to that bothers me. And that is a process I can't be sure of from the story without investigating details that seemed unimportant to the reporter. (And while I'd like to do that investigating, I just don't have time. If anybody would like to look up info on the curriculum used by Vitt's parents when homeschooling her, or by the Potter's School theology program or by Coastal Carolina Community College's elementary ed program I'd be curious to know what you find out.)

And then, while we're on the subject of groups that don't act the way our stereotypes would lead us to believe they would, we should be talking about how even the Democrats just voted to increase funding for abstinence-only "education" though many of them claim to oppose those porgrams!

Appalling, really.

...because public space really matters!

Elizabeth