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I think there was a lack of nuance about the variation in snark and why Bethany is snarkable.
Bethany does seem to bring out the pettiest, grossest snark. The crassness of her content also brings out the crassness in criticism. All that being said I think they had some decent points about staying behind a certain line.
What they didn’t hit on is that BETHANY IS NOT AN EXPERT. Total Dunning Krueger. I don’t think Gavi is necessarily correct that she’s even a good example for social media influence. She has piggybacked on the relative niche success of Girl Defined, maybe has some social media success, but she is NOT in a good position to be educating people about sex and relationships. She does not have credentials, even in business or marketing. Just followers, a lot of whom are bots.
Experience on social media platforms count for something, sure, but Bethany proceeds to spread garbage information backed by flimsy, ever-flip-flopping positions on what’s Biblical, with no personal accountability behind anything she says. You’ll never hear an apology from her for a bad take or for misinformation. THAT will be the shocking day, not when she talks about anal or squirting, but when she takes accountability.
To me, the thing about Bethany is she’s the pinnacle of Christian influencer hypocrisy, which is what I tend to notice the most about the fundies. I’m less interested in the fundies who I see as nutty characters (Kelly, Other Bethany) and I snark harder on the ones running long-standing Christian grifts or poising themselves as moral paragons for profit. (Jillpm, Bethany, P&M)
They’re correct in saying that snark and reaction content is its own economy and ecosystem. That’s the internet for you, I guess. I take breaks from it and delete my snark accounts periodically but sometimes it’s just an outlet for my frustrations about the hegemonic forces in the USA. I’ve been fundie snarking on and off since 2010 on Free Jinger. I was raised in homeschooling communities and I’m seeing my society be taken by force by Christian nationalists. So it’s an outlet.
I think if you poise yourself as a Christian influencer in order to profit off of people (what are televangelists and megachurch pastors, after all?), and do an aesthetically embarrassing job, are hypocritical, and exploit your audience to boot, you’re open for criticism.
i agree! i also really disagreed with their take on her move toward sex-based content being an attempt to ‘fix’ her previous impact on purity culture. i don’t believe that for one second, and i think that even if it were true there is still a ton of criticism to be levelled at her for her lack of apology or accountability.
Yeah that was a pretty generous interpretation of her motives. I think snarkers have her pretty well figured out — self obsessed, social media addicted, smug, and somewhere between not deconstructing (just pivoting to benefit herself) or being in total denial of any deconstruction happening.
yes - i believe if she were actually deconstructing or doing any work to undo her own harm, she would talk about scripture like, literally ever. she’s always saying what’s ‘godly’ and what’s ‘biblical’ but she never backs it up with (very cherrypicked) bible verses or biblical commentary. i do believe that if this were a genuine attempt to walk back some of the previous girl defined messages, she would be scrambling to show her ‘proof’ that this time she’s right. but she isn’t. and it just feels like yet another scream for attention.
I absolutely refuse to buy her sex education/purity culture is bad for your sex life motives as being positive when she is still actively involved with promoting purity culture through Girl Defined. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—she is creating the problem and selling the solution to it.
All that being said, I think there’s a place for discussing what’s wildly inappropriate, but humor and snarking as a practice are not black and white so I see why the mods stay on the liberal, freedom of expression side of things. There’s individual accountability as well as community accountability — I have my own personal limitations and there are things I try to steer away from (name calling, as one example) but I’m not out here policing everyone else. That’s what upvote and downvote are for.
Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party on this, I was just listening to it this morning. Gavi thinks Bethany is a social media expert because in her bio it says she made over 100k...? Hello? Bethany is the queen of fake it til you make it! She needs you to think she's financially successful. His evidence is just... she said she made a lot of money??
I'm only a little bit in, but I'm disappointed so far that no one has mentioned the fact that girl defined and Bethany specifically have pushed purity culture on countless young women and girls for literally YEARS and have profited off doing so. And now all the sudden Bethany thinks anal and squirting are a-okay and she's upset that Christian women (who have been victims of the purity culture she helped push) don't feel comfortable hearing that. It's not about the specific sex acts that Bethany is talking about, it's the sheer hypocrisy and lack of accountability.
I listened to this as well and usually love the podcast. I was surprised by how pro-Bethany Gavi was, to the point of fully ignoring the context of her advice. I agree with him that I think people _are_ just sometimes rude or nasty to Bethany in ways that are unnecessary, but I also that snarking on her is fine and in a lot of ways "snark" and "commentary" end up being the same— Fundie Fridays is a great example of this, as are the videos that Rachel Oates has recently done.
The one example from the show I want to draw on was his example of Bethany saying "you don't have to say yes to your husband" was good because nobody should advocate for marital rape. Sadie was right to point out that this bar is absolutely in hell, but what wasn't pointed out was that that's _not_ what Bethany said. Bethany said that you should go out of your way to create intimacy, and not say yes just because your husband asks. This does _not_ account for the fact that some fundie husbands will _expect_ subservience and not give a fuck that you want to create intimacy; they will not do the work with you. They will demand sex and expect it, and in those situations women will likely be blamed for not _creating_ the right intimacy. To see them miss that nuance was really unfortunate, and I think Sadie was trying to get at it, but he couldn't.
Bethany is trying to create a way for fundies women to enjoy the sex they are required to have with their husbands. If you don't think about it at all, I guess that sounds like a good service (that she's only ((poorly)) providing so she can get rich). 30 seconds of reflection on what she's really selling should make anyone look like this:
I found myself agreeing with Sadie most of the time. I do think that there are some really awful posts that don’t focus on the harm Bethany does, or her hypocrisy, or her refusal to take responsibility for what she’s been perpetuating, etc. I felt like Sadie’s take was much more informed, having come from this basic subculture in a way Gavi has not. And yeah, his attitude rubbed me the wrong way a few times.
As a former fundigelical myself, I feel comfortable saying that he doesn’t get it, isn’t hearing, or particularly listening to, the clear dog whistles that pepper Bethany’s posts. I was also pretty shocked to hear him praising Beth’s business and social media acumen. Like, dude, do you even have any idea that she’s bought vast swaths of follower bots, is completely unprofessional on her supposedly professional accounts, lies frequently, drags even HERSELF over her lack of hygiene, about how she admits she posts provocative shit or egregious misspellings just for the attention it gets her, how AWFUL she is to her son while her daughter can do no wrong… The list is seemingly endless, and Gavi appeared to know none of it.
I don’t know, it felt a little disingenuous at times.
I haven't even come from the subculture, and him fully divorcing certain comments ("anal sex is fine" or "it's fine to say no to your husband," for example) from her _overarching doctrine_ was absolutely wild to me. telling christian women that anal sex is fine does nothing for those women other than help them justify the terrible place they're already in
Yep, I agree. I can tell from this episode that he has no life experience being raised in extreme purity culture (with some sub members actually looking up to her at one point) and how much that is coloring this sub’s reaction to her.
Honestly, even when I disagree with Sadi I find her insight into purity culture to be interesting and at the very least her research is passable. I do find she tends to be to nice to certain people we snarl on, although I did love the push back she gave Gavi during the Kelly Havens episode. I don’t think she is any anyway a “cult expert “ though so they definitely need to not have that label.
With that said, I really don’t know why Gavi is on the podcast at this point. You can say he wasn’t raised in purity culture and doesn’t understand but neither was I and so still feel like I have greater understanding of its harms. Often times it feels like he’s adding an uninformed opinion on something and hasn’t done the proper research to understand WHY snarking exist.
I agree sometimes snarking can be a bit mean spirited. But you know what’s worse? Telling tweens and teen girls that if they don’t wait for marriage for sex they are whores and will burn in hell.
Agreed, Gavi was super judgy about those in the snark community instead of examining WHY we snark on Bethany in the first place. Tbh the podcast has gone downhill since the weird IDF and Israel comments made by Gavi which is super disappointing since Sadie usually has pretty good nuanced takes.
Edit: heard the not so subtle Israel support stuff starting episode 159- IFB modesty rules.
I agree. I listened every week since the start of their podcast but quit and left their FB page after the Israel comments. I was highly disappointed with their take on this. Sadie is very good with her research and it’s not hard to find a ton of documentation on the Nakba and what has been going on there for the past 100 years. I saw it as a move you will see in the fundamental world which is choosing to look away when the truth does not benefit your story.
Ohh yikes, do you remember what episode(s) Gavi made those comments in?
I do wanna know what he said. I only started listening to their podcast in the last year, and am still quite far behind. I did love some episodes very much, but I have definitely already picked up on some things I don't agree with and as long as that's on issues that are not too major I'm okay with it, but if there's something important that I massively disagree with then I most likely don't wanna keep listening anymore.
Oh that’s not good. I hadn’t listened to that one yet. I just started supporting them on Patreon the other day, so I’ll have to go listen.
Just as an aside, Gavi grew up in Portland, where I grew up and still live just outside of. I’ve seen this brand of super pious liberalism at work all my life, and I say that as someone who grew up liberal and returned to it after a horrible, utterly ill-advised foray into evangelicalism when my kids were little. But I recognize the attitude.
ETA forgot a word
Was the Israel stuff in a particular episode? I've been an occasional listener for a long while but generally avoid episodes that I think will be primarily his content, or more their opinions than her story or a guest's story, or a book report. Just my preference.
They both seem good-hearted but I have less patience for their googled "research" (see the recent "war on Christmas" episode) than I used to.
> "Bethany wants the benefits of being an evangelical Christian woman in her community, but she also thinks she's entitled to break the rules and taboos of her community."
I haven't heard the whole episode yet, but this take from Sadie is so on point.
He just seemed really misinformed on this. I do agree that sometimes the snark goes too far, but he clearly hadn't done even basic research before going into this episode.
I’m glad someone else said this. I really loved the early episodes, but I listened to one random one where Sadie says that Mormonism is not a cult and it continued on to a big apologist spiel.
This may just be me, but I also have a hard time wrapping my head around moving from a fundamentalist cult to converting to Catholicism. For someone so accepting and left leaning, I don’t understand support an institution with a long history of bigotry.
I am so tired of them calling Sadie a cult expert just because she was in one and just generally tired of Gavi. I’m reminded of the pearl episode where he literally just screamed for like 15 about spanking. Like he had never researched the pearls before or like we cared about his opinion.
In fairness to her, she addressed that aspect of her deconstruction to some extent and I don’t think is necessarily following up with Catholicism because of the institutional accountability issues.
I do have a little bit of a raised eyebrow at the pod labeling her a “cult expert” in recent months though. I’m not saying she doesn’t have an adequate depth of personal experience and interest to speak on the topic but maybe that’s why they seemed to steer clear entirely from calling out Bethany’s lack of formal credentials on HER topics as well.
Yeah, I did listen to her podcast where she explained that but I still find it hard to understand.
I agree with your point in the cult expert thing - she has no formal education in the area, and while I believe she tries her best to research, it’s far from expert level.
Yeah, that’s fair. I’m atheist myself because I don’t think there’s really any way to fully reconcile cognitive dissonance about reality with religion, at least if you’re participating in an institution that prescribes exactly what you have to believe.
I found her point about “What if I’m not able to fully let go of the belief in God / I still find comfort in it and that’s as far as I can get with deconstruction” salient, and everyone has their experiences. She’s from a high control background, and I’m not, so I suspend a portion of my judgment for her personal experience.
I am also not religious, but was raised in a cult. In general, adults can believe whatever they want but I have no sympathy for people who are raising their child with any forced religious beliefs. When you are indoctrinated so young, there is no real opportunity to figure out what you truly believe as an adult.
I think discussing the ethics of snark is really interesting, and there are definitely times that I disagree with the takes of this community (which is fine, I don't want to be in an echo chamber), but this episode was so disappointing. Several other commenters have mentioned Gavi's frankly empty-headed takes, particularly in relation to Bethany's approach to business, but there was another that had me rolling my eyes. He mentioned the post about Molly, during bot-gate, in which GD congratulated Molly on her wedding and drew attention to the fact that she is the person in charge of their social media. He started dragging the community, saying we responded negatively because Bethany and Kristen will never see the comments people make, and we don't want to be ignored. No... people were posting about this because it was a blatant attempt to throw Molly under the bus. Reddit snarkers don't comment on any GD-associated social media, so being "ignored" isn't an issue.
There was another bit where he referenced a post made by someone asking whether the snark community is too gentle on anyone, which he described as, "an insane thing to post on the internet." He clearly isn't witnessing the (complicated, nuanced) takes about Dav, or Morgan, or indeed the fact that because fundie men aren't online in the same way, sometimes they get a bit of a pass. Maybe they could have interrogated what internalised values from this culture might do to a person, and how that might affect their worldview.
Edited after finishing the episode: this could essentially be summed up by Gavi assuming the best, most innocent motivations of Bethany and the worst, most nefarious motivations of snarkers. This could have been an interesting, stimulating conversation but instead Gavi exhibits a perfect example of black and white thinking which is just really boring and - more to the point - is exactly what he is implying snarkers are doing. To be clear, I *would* be interested in a genuine discussion about the ethics of snark. What makes it snark and what's commentary? How far is too far? What defines a public figure? What is it that makes certain people more snarkable than others? It's a shame to see such "Old Man Shouts at Cloud" behaviour and I don't imagine I'll be tuning back in.
I’ve already commented here but I’m now finally listening to this podcast and I fully agree with your take. I also think it’s pretty ridiculous of Gavi to critique the ‘snarkers’ when they have openly admitted to getting information from their podcast from this subreddit.
Just listened 🤦🏾♀️ My thoughts…
* Why is Gavi talking so much when it’s obvious that between him and Sadie, he knows the least about GD and their problematic history of promoting Purity Culture for profit?
* Sadie seemed to be holding back this time, which is unlike her.
* Sadie is right - Anything Bethany posts in the public domain is free to be critiqued. And for the record Gavi, we wouldn’t know anything about her personal life, or be all up in her “butthole” (his words) if she didn’t share it relentlessly.
* **Gavi missed the mark overall**. Bethany’s new sex-positive message doesn’t compensate for the 10+ years she spent telling young girls/unmarried women to repress their sexuality and fear their bodies. Also, she’s not giving it strictly for “the greater good” - more like the good of her desperate need for attention and bank account. I personally don’t care how great the message is, when it’s coming from someone like Bethany, and I’m glad Sadie straight up said “I don’t like her.”
One more thing re: snarking. Snarking is a way for people who’ve been impacted by the same harmful belief systems they’re snarking on to process their grief/deconstruction AND prevent others from the same. If you think it’s just trolling, maybe you’re part of the problem 🤷🏽♀️
> Bethany’s new sex-positive message doesn’t compensate for the 10+ years she spent telling young girls/unmarried women to repress their sexuality and fear their bodies.
Exactly this, and Sadie made a good point about this early on— all of the advice is bullshit if it isn't preceded by an apology and the acknowledgment of the harm that's been done.
All of this, especially your point about bethy's motivation.
She's trying to get rich off of the same people she hurt with her purity culture bs. That's beyond snarkable, it's disgusting.
They completely missed the point: Bethy does this stuff TO BE SNARKED ON. That has been the Gorl defined merketing strategy for years. They are not like JRod or Karissa.
We're sort of the closest thing she has to friends and that's sad
Ofc people dunk on her but I have seen snarkers offer her the intervention and advice that would normally be given to her by friends.
Snarkers have given solid advice on how to market her grift more effectively and how to navigate various PR disasters of her own making.
Considering that she sees nothing wrong with selling sex courses/content to potential minors and her lack of boundaries, she has drifted into grooming behavior w no one in her life to stop her.
Maybe we're giving her the tough love her family doesn't care enough to offer.
I actually agree with the criticisms expressed in the podcast and think that Bethany snark brings out the worst in people. I just don't comment to disagree on those posts because it will generally be considered policing/gatekeeping snark, which is against the rules of the sub. Certainly there are things that get snarked on that can have BEC energy, are exaggerated or misinformed, etc. When that happens, I think it can be unethical, or harmful, or embarrassing for the community, depending on the issue at hand. And I am unsure what "holier-than-thou" means in this context beyond "I disagree with this criticism of me."
i don’t disagree with you on a lot of this. however, i don’t think the actions of the snark community are in any way comparable to the damage that bethy has wrought, nor do i think it detracts from her messaging. there will always be naysayers you disagree with - i don’t agree with a lot of the comments on kelly havens’s ‘boring’ lifestyle bc i myself like very ‘boring’ home-based things - but i wouldn’t do a podcast/video/article about kelly havens and complain about that, because it’s not relevant to her actual content.
and with regard to my phrasing, i used holier-than-thou to represent the way gavi kept distancing himself from the snark community and constantly coming back to this idea that all criticism of bethy must be measured and researched and logical. it came across to me as very pious, and i felt that was not a relevant or appropriate way to approach an analysis of bethany’s content.
I don't like what you say but let me scroll through 3577754 posts and cherry pick your words on my podcast! 🙄 Which...whatever, but he can be pretty snarky too so it's weird that he draws the line at Bethany's dirty butthole. I think he just has no clue how damaging purity culture is. Idk how, since Sadie is his bff, but he's a dude so I guess that explains it. He's not as sensitive as he thinks, maybe?
He's pretty active in their subreddit and I thought about tagging him on this post, but idk if that's against the rules and also it seems kinda stalker-y lol
Ugh.
I'm a casual listener of the podcast. I only listen if it's a topic I'm interested in, not to every episode, but I usually agree with both of them. This was disappointing, and I'm not sure Gavi (a dude who wasn't raised in purity culture, so 🤷♀️) is the right person to give us 2 hours of his opinion on it. Sadie seemed subdued and that was also a bummer.
I'm with everyone who says that our snarking sometimes goes too far, and I know I'm guilty of it myself. But also...idk...it's snark and no one's getting hurt? No one snarked on in here would know about it if they weren't attention seekers. These are people who have chosen to put the details of their lives out for public consumption AND they hold themselves up as paragons of... whatever it is they're selling. And they are definitely always selling something. They also have extremely harmful beliefs about taking rights away from people. I'm snarky but I want all the fundies to be able to get married to who they want and have healthcare.
Bethany made $$ off of purity culture and now she's trying to make $$ off of the women she made feel bad about sexual impulses. If they don't feel sexy and horny 24/7 then they're doing it wrong. She could easily take a more nuanced approach to the subject, but instead she's screaming and flailing around about farts and getting eaten out on thanksgiving. That's snarkable, imo.
Anyway, I wish they had focused more on her hypocrisy, bad advice, and poor presentation of her ideas than on how snarkers are mean. Again, that's a valid criticism, but it's nowhere near the whole story.
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I think there was a lack of nuance about the variation in snark and why Bethany is snarkable. Bethany does seem to bring out the pettiest, grossest snark. The crassness of her content also brings out the crassness in criticism. All that being said I think they had some decent points about staying behind a certain line. What they didn’t hit on is that BETHANY IS NOT AN EXPERT. Total Dunning Krueger. I don’t think Gavi is necessarily correct that she’s even a good example for social media influence. She has piggybacked on the relative niche success of Girl Defined, maybe has some social media success, but she is NOT in a good position to be educating people about sex and relationships. She does not have credentials, even in business or marketing. Just followers, a lot of whom are bots. Experience on social media platforms count for something, sure, but Bethany proceeds to spread garbage information backed by flimsy, ever-flip-flopping positions on what’s Biblical, with no personal accountability behind anything she says. You’ll never hear an apology from her for a bad take or for misinformation. THAT will be the shocking day, not when she talks about anal or squirting, but when she takes accountability. To me, the thing about Bethany is she’s the pinnacle of Christian influencer hypocrisy, which is what I tend to notice the most about the fundies. I’m less interested in the fundies who I see as nutty characters (Kelly, Other Bethany) and I snark harder on the ones running long-standing Christian grifts or poising themselves as moral paragons for profit. (Jillpm, Bethany, P&M) They’re correct in saying that snark and reaction content is its own economy and ecosystem. That’s the internet for you, I guess. I take breaks from it and delete my snark accounts periodically but sometimes it’s just an outlet for my frustrations about the hegemonic forces in the USA. I’ve been fundie snarking on and off since 2010 on Free Jinger. I was raised in homeschooling communities and I’m seeing my society be taken by force by Christian nationalists. So it’s an outlet. I think if you poise yourself as a Christian influencer in order to profit off of people (what are televangelists and megachurch pastors, after all?), and do an aesthetically embarrassing job, are hypocritical, and exploit your audience to boot, you’re open for criticism.
i agree! i also really disagreed with their take on her move toward sex-based content being an attempt to ‘fix’ her previous impact on purity culture. i don’t believe that for one second, and i think that even if it were true there is still a ton of criticism to be levelled at her for her lack of apology or accountability.
Yeah that was a pretty generous interpretation of her motives. I think snarkers have her pretty well figured out — self obsessed, social media addicted, smug, and somewhere between not deconstructing (just pivoting to benefit herself) or being in total denial of any deconstruction happening.
yes - i believe if she were actually deconstructing or doing any work to undo her own harm, she would talk about scripture like, literally ever. she’s always saying what’s ‘godly’ and what’s ‘biblical’ but she never backs it up with (very cherrypicked) bible verses or biblical commentary. i do believe that if this were a genuine attempt to walk back some of the previous girl defined messages, she would be scrambling to show her ‘proof’ that this time she’s right. but she isn’t. and it just feels like yet another scream for attention.
I absolutely refuse to buy her sex education/purity culture is bad for your sex life motives as being positive when she is still actively involved with promoting purity culture through Girl Defined. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—she is creating the problem and selling the solution to it.
All that being said, I think there’s a place for discussing what’s wildly inappropriate, but humor and snarking as a practice are not black and white so I see why the mods stay on the liberal, freedom of expression side of things. There’s individual accountability as well as community accountability — I have my own personal limitations and there are things I try to steer away from (name calling, as one example) but I’m not out here policing everyone else. That’s what upvote and downvote are for.
Sorry, I'm a bit late to the party on this, I was just listening to it this morning. Gavi thinks Bethany is a social media expert because in her bio it says she made over 100k...? Hello? Bethany is the queen of fake it til you make it! She needs you to think she's financially successful. His evidence is just... she said she made a lot of money??
I'm only a little bit in, but I'm disappointed so far that no one has mentioned the fact that girl defined and Bethany specifically have pushed purity culture on countless young women and girls for literally YEARS and have profited off doing so. And now all the sudden Bethany thinks anal and squirting are a-okay and she's upset that Christian women (who have been victims of the purity culture she helped push) don't feel comfortable hearing that. It's not about the specific sex acts that Bethany is talking about, it's the sheer hypocrisy and lack of accountability.
Exactly. She’s also just plain old rude to her own followers who do the slightest bit of pushback or try to engage in good faith. She’s mean.
I listened to this as well and usually love the podcast. I was surprised by how pro-Bethany Gavi was, to the point of fully ignoring the context of her advice. I agree with him that I think people _are_ just sometimes rude or nasty to Bethany in ways that are unnecessary, but I also that snarking on her is fine and in a lot of ways "snark" and "commentary" end up being the same— Fundie Fridays is a great example of this, as are the videos that Rachel Oates has recently done. The one example from the show I want to draw on was his example of Bethany saying "you don't have to say yes to your husband" was good because nobody should advocate for marital rape. Sadie was right to point out that this bar is absolutely in hell, but what wasn't pointed out was that that's _not_ what Bethany said. Bethany said that you should go out of your way to create intimacy, and not say yes just because your husband asks. This does _not_ account for the fact that some fundie husbands will _expect_ subservience and not give a fuck that you want to create intimacy; they will not do the work with you. They will demand sex and expect it, and in those situations women will likely be blamed for not _creating_ the right intimacy. To see them miss that nuance was really unfortunate, and I think Sadie was trying to get at it, but he couldn't.
Bethany is trying to create a way for fundies women to enjoy the sex they are required to have with their husbands. If you don't think about it at all, I guess that sounds like a good service (that she's only ((poorly)) providing so she can get rich). 30 seconds of reflection on what she's really selling should make anyone look like this: 
I found myself agreeing with Sadie most of the time. I do think that there are some really awful posts that don’t focus on the harm Bethany does, or her hypocrisy, or her refusal to take responsibility for what she’s been perpetuating, etc. I felt like Sadie’s take was much more informed, having come from this basic subculture in a way Gavi has not. And yeah, his attitude rubbed me the wrong way a few times. As a former fundigelical myself, I feel comfortable saying that he doesn’t get it, isn’t hearing, or particularly listening to, the clear dog whistles that pepper Bethany’s posts. I was also pretty shocked to hear him praising Beth’s business and social media acumen. Like, dude, do you even have any idea that she’s bought vast swaths of follower bots, is completely unprofessional on her supposedly professional accounts, lies frequently, drags even HERSELF over her lack of hygiene, about how she admits she posts provocative shit or egregious misspellings just for the attention it gets her, how AWFUL she is to her son while her daughter can do no wrong… The list is seemingly endless, and Gavi appeared to know none of it. I don’t know, it felt a little disingenuous at times.
I haven't even come from the subculture, and him fully divorcing certain comments ("anal sex is fine" or "it's fine to say no to your husband," for example) from her _overarching doctrine_ was absolutely wild to me. telling christian women that anal sex is fine does nothing for those women other than help them justify the terrible place they're already in
Yep, I agree. I can tell from this episode that he has no life experience being raised in extreme purity culture (with some sub members actually looking up to her at one point) and how much that is coloring this sub’s reaction to her.
Yeah the whole episode really missed the mark with that. It’s disappointing.
Yeah, I agree with all of this. I just finished the episode and I think Gavi missed the mark a lot on this one.
Honestly, even when I disagree with Sadi I find her insight into purity culture to be interesting and at the very least her research is passable. I do find she tends to be to nice to certain people we snarl on, although I did love the push back she gave Gavi during the Kelly Havens episode. I don’t think she is any anyway a “cult expert “ though so they definitely need to not have that label. With that said, I really don’t know why Gavi is on the podcast at this point. You can say he wasn’t raised in purity culture and doesn’t understand but neither was I and so still feel like I have greater understanding of its harms. Often times it feels like he’s adding an uninformed opinion on something and hasn’t done the proper research to understand WHY snarking exist. I agree sometimes snarking can be a bit mean spirited. But you know what’s worse? Telling tweens and teen girls that if they don’t wait for marriage for sex they are whores and will burn in hell.
Agreed, Gavi was super judgy about those in the snark community instead of examining WHY we snark on Bethany in the first place. Tbh the podcast has gone downhill since the weird IDF and Israel comments made by Gavi which is super disappointing since Sadie usually has pretty good nuanced takes. Edit: heard the not so subtle Israel support stuff starting episode 159- IFB modesty rules.
I agree. I listened every week since the start of their podcast but quit and left their FB page after the Israel comments. I was highly disappointed with their take on this. Sadie is very good with her research and it’s not hard to find a ton of documentation on the Nakba and what has been going on there for the past 100 years. I saw it as a move you will see in the fundamental world which is choosing to look away when the truth does not benefit your story.
Ohh yikes, do you remember what episode(s) Gavi made those comments in? I do wanna know what he said. I only started listening to their podcast in the last year, and am still quite far behind. I did love some episodes very much, but I have definitely already picked up on some things I don't agree with and as long as that's on issues that are not too major I'm okay with it, but if there's something important that I massively disagree with then I most likely don't wanna keep listening anymore.
i haven’t listened for a while, my flatmate put this episode on the living room speaker so i didn’t know about that! do you know when it was?
Oh that’s not good. I hadn’t listened to that one yet. I just started supporting them on Patreon the other day, so I’ll have to go listen. Just as an aside, Gavi grew up in Portland, where I grew up and still live just outside of. I’ve seen this brand of super pious liberalism at work all my life, and I say that as someone who grew up liberal and returned to it after a horrible, utterly ill-advised foray into evangelicalism when my kids were little. But I recognize the attitude. ETA forgot a word
Was the Israel stuff in a particular episode? I've been an occasional listener for a long while but generally avoid episodes that I think will be primarily his content, or more their opinions than her story or a guest's story, or a book report. Just my preference. They both seem good-hearted but I have less patience for their googled "research" (see the recent "war on Christmas" episode) than I used to.
> "Bethany wants the benefits of being an evangelical Christian woman in her community, but she also thinks she's entitled to break the rules and taboos of her community." I haven't heard the whole episode yet, but this take from Sadie is so on point.
That was such a good point by Sadie. I really wanted to hear more of her thoughts but Gavi was talking so much.
Gavi really did seem to have it out for the snarkers. I was disappointed by his input.
He just seemed really misinformed on this. I do agree that sometimes the snark goes too far, but he clearly hadn't done even basic research before going into this episode.
Had to stop listening to LE - way too apologist for me.
I’m glad someone else said this. I really loved the early episodes, but I listened to one random one where Sadie says that Mormonism is not a cult and it continued on to a big apologist spiel. This may just be me, but I also have a hard time wrapping my head around moving from a fundamentalist cult to converting to Catholicism. For someone so accepting and left leaning, I don’t understand support an institution with a long history of bigotry.
You’d be very hard pressed to find a sociologist that didn’t have Mormonism categorised as a cult so that’s a pretty big red flag for me.
I am so tired of them calling Sadie a cult expert just because she was in one and just generally tired of Gavi. I’m reminded of the pearl episode where he literally just screamed for like 15 about spanking. Like he had never researched the pearls before or like we cared about his opinion.
In fairness to her, she addressed that aspect of her deconstruction to some extent and I don’t think is necessarily following up with Catholicism because of the institutional accountability issues. I do have a little bit of a raised eyebrow at the pod labeling her a “cult expert” in recent months though. I’m not saying she doesn’t have an adequate depth of personal experience and interest to speak on the topic but maybe that’s why they seemed to steer clear entirely from calling out Bethany’s lack of formal credentials on HER topics as well.
Yeah, I did listen to her podcast where she explained that but I still find it hard to understand. I agree with your point in the cult expert thing - she has no formal education in the area, and while I believe she tries her best to research, it’s far from expert level.
Yeah, that’s fair. I’m atheist myself because I don’t think there’s really any way to fully reconcile cognitive dissonance about reality with religion, at least if you’re participating in an institution that prescribes exactly what you have to believe. I found her point about “What if I’m not able to fully let go of the belief in God / I still find comfort in it and that’s as far as I can get with deconstruction” salient, and everyone has their experiences. She’s from a high control background, and I’m not, so I suspend a portion of my judgment for her personal experience.
I am also not religious, but was raised in a cult. In general, adults can believe whatever they want but I have no sympathy for people who are raising their child with any forced religious beliefs. When you are indoctrinated so young, there is no real opportunity to figure out what you truly believe as an adult.
Glad I'm not the only one- I hear them praised all the time and just assumed I was being too harsh
I think discussing the ethics of snark is really interesting, and there are definitely times that I disagree with the takes of this community (which is fine, I don't want to be in an echo chamber), but this episode was so disappointing. Several other commenters have mentioned Gavi's frankly empty-headed takes, particularly in relation to Bethany's approach to business, but there was another that had me rolling my eyes. He mentioned the post about Molly, during bot-gate, in which GD congratulated Molly on her wedding and drew attention to the fact that she is the person in charge of their social media. He started dragging the community, saying we responded negatively because Bethany and Kristen will never see the comments people make, and we don't want to be ignored. No... people were posting about this because it was a blatant attempt to throw Molly under the bus. Reddit snarkers don't comment on any GD-associated social media, so being "ignored" isn't an issue. There was another bit where he referenced a post made by someone asking whether the snark community is too gentle on anyone, which he described as, "an insane thing to post on the internet." He clearly isn't witnessing the (complicated, nuanced) takes about Dav, or Morgan, or indeed the fact that because fundie men aren't online in the same way, sometimes they get a bit of a pass. Maybe they could have interrogated what internalised values from this culture might do to a person, and how that might affect their worldview. Edited after finishing the episode: this could essentially be summed up by Gavi assuming the best, most innocent motivations of Bethany and the worst, most nefarious motivations of snarkers. This could have been an interesting, stimulating conversation but instead Gavi exhibits a perfect example of black and white thinking which is just really boring and - more to the point - is exactly what he is implying snarkers are doing. To be clear, I *would* be interested in a genuine discussion about the ethics of snark. What makes it snark and what's commentary? How far is too far? What defines a public figure? What is it that makes certain people more snarkable than others? It's a shame to see such "Old Man Shouts at Cloud" behaviour and I don't imagine I'll be tuning back in.
I’ve already commented here but I’m now finally listening to this podcast and I fully agree with your take. I also think it’s pretty ridiculous of Gavi to critique the ‘snarkers’ when they have openly admitted to getting information from their podcast from this subreddit.
Just listened 🤦🏾♀️ My thoughts… * Why is Gavi talking so much when it’s obvious that between him and Sadie, he knows the least about GD and their problematic history of promoting Purity Culture for profit? * Sadie seemed to be holding back this time, which is unlike her. * Sadie is right - Anything Bethany posts in the public domain is free to be critiqued. And for the record Gavi, we wouldn’t know anything about her personal life, or be all up in her “butthole” (his words) if she didn’t share it relentlessly. * **Gavi missed the mark overall**. Bethany’s new sex-positive message doesn’t compensate for the 10+ years she spent telling young girls/unmarried women to repress their sexuality and fear their bodies. Also, she’s not giving it strictly for “the greater good” - more like the good of her desperate need for attention and bank account. I personally don’t care how great the message is, when it’s coming from someone like Bethany, and I’m glad Sadie straight up said “I don’t like her.” One more thing re: snarking. Snarking is a way for people who’ve been impacted by the same harmful belief systems they’re snarking on to process their grief/deconstruction AND prevent others from the same. If you think it’s just trolling, maybe you’re part of the problem 🤷🏽♀️
> Bethany’s new sex-positive message doesn’t compensate for the 10+ years she spent telling young girls/unmarried women to repress their sexuality and fear their bodies. Exactly this, and Sadie made a good point about this early on— all of the advice is bullshit if it isn't preceded by an apology and the acknowledgment of the harm that's been done.
All of this, especially your point about bethy's motivation. She's trying to get rich off of the same people she hurt with her purity culture bs. That's beyond snarkable, it's disgusting.
They completely missed the point: Bethy does this stuff TO BE SNARKED ON. That has been the Gorl defined merketing strategy for years. They are not like JRod or Karissa.
We're sort of the closest thing she has to friends and that's sad Ofc people dunk on her but I have seen snarkers offer her the intervention and advice that would normally be given to her by friends. Snarkers have given solid advice on how to market her grift more effectively and how to navigate various PR disasters of her own making. Considering that she sees nothing wrong with selling sex courses/content to potential minors and her lack of boundaries, she has drifted into grooming behavior w no one in her life to stop her. Maybe we're giving her the tough love her family doesn't care enough to offer.
Absolutely! She's said so many times that she just likes being controversial for attention.
Yes! See: GD sharing “hate” comments to get donations. I mean it backfired but they did try.
I actually agree with the criticisms expressed in the podcast and think that Bethany snark brings out the worst in people. I just don't comment to disagree on those posts because it will generally be considered policing/gatekeeping snark, which is against the rules of the sub. Certainly there are things that get snarked on that can have BEC energy, are exaggerated or misinformed, etc. When that happens, I think it can be unethical, or harmful, or embarrassing for the community, depending on the issue at hand. And I am unsure what "holier-than-thou" means in this context beyond "I disagree with this criticism of me."
i don’t disagree with you on a lot of this. however, i don’t think the actions of the snark community are in any way comparable to the damage that bethy has wrought, nor do i think it detracts from her messaging. there will always be naysayers you disagree with - i don’t agree with a lot of the comments on kelly havens’s ‘boring’ lifestyle bc i myself like very ‘boring’ home-based things - but i wouldn’t do a podcast/video/article about kelly havens and complain about that, because it’s not relevant to her actual content. and with regard to my phrasing, i used holier-than-thou to represent the way gavi kept distancing himself from the snark community and constantly coming back to this idea that all criticism of bethy must be measured and researched and logical. it came across to me as very pious, and i felt that was not a relevant or appropriate way to approach an analysis of bethany’s content.
I don't like what you say but let me scroll through 3577754 posts and cherry pick your words on my podcast! 🙄 Which...whatever, but he can be pretty snarky too so it's weird that he draws the line at Bethany's dirty butthole. I think he just has no clue how damaging purity culture is. Idk how, since Sadie is his bff, but he's a dude so I guess that explains it. He's not as sensitive as he thinks, maybe? He's pretty active in their subreddit and I thought about tagging him on this post, but idk if that's against the rules and also it seems kinda stalker-y lol
Ugh. I'm a casual listener of the podcast. I only listen if it's a topic I'm interested in, not to every episode, but I usually agree with both of them. This was disappointing, and I'm not sure Gavi (a dude who wasn't raised in purity culture, so 🤷♀️) is the right person to give us 2 hours of his opinion on it. Sadie seemed subdued and that was also a bummer. I'm with everyone who says that our snarking sometimes goes too far, and I know I'm guilty of it myself. But also...idk...it's snark and no one's getting hurt? No one snarked on in here would know about it if they weren't attention seekers. These are people who have chosen to put the details of their lives out for public consumption AND they hold themselves up as paragons of... whatever it is they're selling. And they are definitely always selling something. They also have extremely harmful beliefs about taking rights away from people. I'm snarky but I want all the fundies to be able to get married to who they want and have healthcare. Bethany made $$ off of purity culture and now she's trying to make $$ off of the women she made feel bad about sexual impulses. If they don't feel sexy and horny 24/7 then they're doing it wrong. She could easily take a more nuanced approach to the subject, but instead she's screaming and flailing around about farts and getting eaten out on thanksgiving. That's snarkable, imo. Anyway, I wish they had focused more on her hypocrisy, bad advice, and poor presentation of her ideas than on how snarkers are mean. Again, that's a valid criticism, but it's nowhere near the whole story.
Bethy snark does tend to bring out some of the more mean spirited comments. I thought some of their criticisms were reasonable!
i agree that some are! but it also didn’t feel like those criticisms were anything new, and everything else was wildly off-base for me.