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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on May 28, 2010 8:37:10 GMT -5
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 8:44:24 GMT -5
Eh... I got sent to a really obnoxious ad for something called Crackle and am unable to read this post.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 8:45:20 GMT -5
Okay, so I can read it when I go directly to the main NLQ page that I have bookmarked, but not by following the link.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 9:08:02 GMT -5
So, now that I've read this, I have some thoughts. I'll first say that I think it's a very good idea to include the perspectives of men here. This is something that has been lacking, and I think it's a good idea overall. Not all men in the movement have been abusers, and it's important to recognize that some have doubted all along, and some have been persuaded of the movement's "rightness" by their wives. Sure.
But I have some problems with this particular article. This is the first statement that made me realize that something wasn't sitting well with me:
"My thoughts on the matter didn’t matter. What could I do? Having sex with a condom meant I was a heathen and forcing her to go against her principles. A good man who is not Quiverfull cannot do anything once his wife becomes Quiverfull."
Brad, I think you have used your wife's enthusiasm for the movement to excuse your own involvement in it. Let me be clear. You were not a passive or powerless follower of some movement that you never really supported in the first place. Sure, maybe you had doubts and questions from the outset, but you were a QF leader. You succumbed to the kind of peer pressure that you faced--your wife did not do this for you. You remained quiet in spite of your better instincts because of the dogma in your community. I do not mean to trivialize the abusiveness of this movement, as I do think it is often abusive and silencing. But your wife is not solely to blame for your involvement. You went along with it because, as you say, you were afraid of being written off as a "heathen" and of inciting the prayers of a disapproving community.
You were a mover and shaker in the movement, and you ran a reversal agency. It feels to me as if you have used this forum to vent remaining resentments that you have against your wife rather than to reflect on your involvement in the movement. I do not mean to be offensive, but I am quite put off by the tone of the piece. No one here would argue with your statement that wives often become enamored of QF before their husbands, even that they encourage this involvement (Vyckie has written extensively about bringing her own family into QF.). But you chose to be involved, and I think you need to be honest about that. It was you and your wife--but not only your wife--who became involved in this movement, for whatever reason(s). But I have a very hard time with seeing this forum used for venting marital resentment without taking responsibility for personal agency. Maybe you are a passive sort of person, but you were not "beaten" into submission, as you say. To suggest that you were is to trivialize actual physical abuse that takes place within far too many relationships.
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on May 28, 2010 9:09:38 GMT -5
Eh... I got sent to a really obnoxious ad for something called Crackle and am unable to read this post. KM ~ the ad should give you the option to "skip this ad" in the upper right corner of the page. I'm hearing complaints on the "Open Comments" post on the forum that the full page ads are annoying too. I would hate to lose readers over the ads. They are about 1,000 times more profitable than the regular ads ~ which could really be helpful IF you all can stand them. But if not ~ I would rather have readers than money. So let me know.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 9:13:23 GMT -5
Eh... I got sent to a really obnoxious ad for something called Crackle and am unable to read this post. KM ~ the ad should give you the option to "skip this ad" in the upper right corner of the page. I'm hearing complaints on the "Open Comments" post on the forum that the full page ads are annoying too. I would hate to lose readers over the ads. They are about 1,000 times more profitable than the regular ads ~ which could really be helpful IF you all can stand them. But if not ~ I would rather have readers than money. So let me know. Vyckie: I agree that they are quite annoying. They may also make people think they've opened an unsafe/spyware-ridden site. I would probably get rid of them. Until you have the readership of something like Salon, I think you'll do better without the ads. Just my two cents though.
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Post by kiery on May 28, 2010 9:21:00 GMT -5
I wonder if that happened with my family....if my dad just went along with it. I'm not sure since they both seemed pulled into it together, but my mom is definitely not the submissive one.
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Post by egalgirl on May 28, 2010 9:22:37 GMT -5
I've seen this type of behavior among patriarchal families that I know. I actually attended a homeschool convention a few years ago - as a children's pastor, I have several families who choose to educate their kids at home, and so I went with them to show my support. Apparently, a lot of church staffers in the past had been downright hostile to the idea of homeschooling, and I attended as a gesture to say that I think it's totally cool that they homeschool, if that's how they choose to raise their families.
Important point to this story: My husband could not get time off work, and was unable to attend with me.
When all was said and done, the families I was with seemed disappointed that I didn't become all "gung-ho" on all the ideas presented at the convention. This went beyond just plain homeschooling...there were sessions on courtship, sessions for men on how to be the "priest" in their home, and my favorite, "What about youth groups and Sunday Schools?" in which I sat for an hour listening to some guy tell us about everything the church is doing wrong in ministering to homeschooling families. Gee, thanks...
They were a little bit disappointed that I did not embrace their ideology and immediately vow to go home and tell my husband that this is the way things should be.
Okay...
1. I take longer to process such a large amount of information - I did not have an answer for them right then and there because I hadn't thought it through.
2. I thought it strange that, for being all about "submitting" to your husband, I was supposed to leave mine completely out of the equation and make pretty important decisions about our future family and inform him after the fact.
That's just now how I work. My husband and I are a team. We make decisions together. I just thought it strange that as the "weak little female," I was expected to bring all this information to my husband and convince him of it, as though I had just seen the light and he was a reprobate heathen who needed to be shown the correct way to live.
Seems contradictory to their whole philosophy.....
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maicde
Junior Member
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Post by maicde on May 28, 2010 9:34:18 GMT -5
Brad, from your article:
Brad: So should we just try to figure out when you might get pregnant and avoid those times?
Dawn: No that’s still trying to control God. And I would cry if we used a condom or did anything like that. I couldn’t violate my principles.
So, of course, there you go. You are NOT allowed to "figure out when you might get pregnant and AVOID those times (abstain from sexual relations), but it's perfectly fine and dandy to figure out when you have the highest probability of becoming pregnant (ovulation) and make sure to have sexual relations then. NO, that's not trying to "control God", no sirree. God is in control, ya know. God is keeping an ovulation calendar and telling you when you need to have sex. Yeah, that wouldn't violate any principles. It's the QF double-speak that really gets my goat. Basically, unless you're fully entrenched in QF "think", don't even think about it.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 9:35:02 GMT -5
I wonder if that happened with my family....if my dad just went along with it. I'm not sure since they both seemed pulled into it together, but my mom is definitely not the submissive one. Same in my family. Honestly, I think both of my parents are fairly passive people, but at the end of the day, when someone was forced to make a decision, it was usually my mother. I want to own the fact that my response to this is probably triggered in part by my own family experiences. My father never takes responsibility for anything. He's always getting "beaten into submission," as he puts it. Never deals with his own involvement--or his own choices to be involved. And he never, ever, considers the possibility of standing up to peer pressure. In a movement like QF that is misogynistic and that affords relative power to men, it's hard for me to bear this type of "I never had a choice" mentality from anyone--and perhaps especially from men. You did have a choice. Not only that, but economic independence was on your side as a male leader in the movement... I just... Gah... I find I am really, really frustrated by this piece. I did say that I thought more men should be included on the forum, but... I would add that I know several male children who were brought up in the movement but who later experienced it as repressive and abusive. I'd love to hear from more people like them. Even fathers who left the movement. I think there are ways in which men can--and should!--write about these things without sounding like they're saying, "But what about the pain of the men?" Because, at the end of the day, it remains true that QF is a misogynistic movement that gives fathers a degree of absolute power within their families. Idiosyncratic levels of passiveness do not diminish this fact. And I feel like this piece just argued that "it's *really* the women who have power in QF! The men are just being cowed by overly aggressive wives." And, as a feminist, the message I got felt deeply anti-feminist.
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Post by arietty on May 28, 2010 9:45:04 GMT -5
What comes through loud and clear in Brad's article is how this movement teaches us to be so dissatisfied with so much.. the world(ly) parts of life, our church, our non-qf friends and our husbands. I cannot tell you how many times I sat through a homeschool or qf or titus 2 meeting and heard women talk with dissatisfaction and disappointment that their husband did not embrace the details of this movement. Maybe he didn't agree that their daughters should have to wear dresses all the time, or he came right out and said he missed the days when she showed some cleavage, or he kept making noises about sending the kids to school once they hit high school OR.. he did Bad Things like watch mindless tv when he got home from work and act like it was a huge pain in the ass to lead devotions because he clearly would rather watch some sports. All this stuff is just personal taste and as Brad says having your own mind. But in QF land everything, absolutely everything has to be chewed into pulp as you determine how worthy it is and how God wants you to be. There isn't his mind and her mind there is THE TRUTH and by golly this family is going to find it and DO IT.
And this is pretty weird.. I know if we did have abusive marriages and brought this up in these meetings we were quickly counselled in submission and perhaps made to examine how our own behavior contributed to the abuse. But if we brought up our husbands wanting to spend 5 hours on Saturday watching sports instead of renovating the house everyone was very quick to pray for that man, that he would take up his calling as a godly husband. Where the heck was that sentiment when you told stories of abuse?
There is not enough room in a marriage for a whole freaking movement. Too many people as this post expresses so well. Too many wagging fingers and too many books on the shelf about what your marriage is supposed to look like. I cannot say these books ever bought anyone I know any marital improvement at all. Maybe people go through the motions for a while and just focusing on the marriage makes them both feel good but soon people slip back into who they really are and they left with nothing but dissatisfaction and a sense a failure. HOW will their poor children ever grow in the Lord if Daddy doesn't lead them in a Godly fashion rather than sitting around on his ass every weekend?! Really, the fear gets to you. Because those teachings play on fear. Not only do you have to be fearful of the world you have to be fearful of the lukewarm even if is your spouse.
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Post by kisekileia on May 28, 2010 9:50:03 GMT -5
I wonder whether families like that of the man who posted, where the man doesn't have any desire to be the sole ruler of the home, are the ones where QF "works" for the woman. There do seem to be some QF families that don't actually practice wifely submission to the husband and which therefore end up less abusive to the wife than ones where the husband is a control freak. I wonder if this is the male perspective from those types of families.
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maicde
Junior Member
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Post by maicde on May 28, 2010 9:55:59 GMT -5
I've seen this type of behavior among patriarchal families that I know. I actually attended a homeschool convention a few years ago - as a children's pastor, I have several families who choose to educate their kids at home, and so I went with them to show my support. Apparently, a lot of church staffers in the past had been downright hostile to the idea of homeschooling, and I attended as a gesture to say that I think it's totally cool that they homeschool, if that's how they choose to raise their families. Important point to this story: My husband could not get time off work, and was unable to attend with me. When all was said and done, the families I was with seemed disappointed that I didn't become all "gung-ho" on all the ideas presented at the convention. This went beyond just plain homeschooling...there were sessions on courtship, sessions for men on how to be the "priest" in their home, and my favorite, "What about youth groups and Sunday Schools?" in which I sat for an hour listening to some guy tell us about everything the church is doing wrong in ministering to homeschooling families. Gee, thanks... They were a little bit disappointed that I did not embrace their ideology and immediately vow to go home and tell my husband that this is the way things should be. Okay... 1. I take longer to process such a large amount of information - I did not have an answer for them right then and there because I hadn't thought it through. 2. I thought it strange that, for being all about "submitting" to your husband, I was supposed to leave mine completely out of the equation and make pretty important decisions about our future family and inform him after the fact. That's just now how I work. My husband and I are a team. We make decisions together. I just thought it strange that as the "weak little female," I was expected to bring all this information to my husband and convince him of it, as though I had just seen the light and he was a reprobate heathen who needed to be shown the correct way to live. Seems contradictory to their whole philosophy..... You have good points. In my own experience, the idea of a "weak female" is not really true. I look at the females I've known in my own family (and extended family), and they are all pretty strong women that did whatever they had to do to raise their children and survive. Specifically, my grandma of 9 who raised the children during WWII by herself (as grandpa was a POW in a concentration camp and then emigrated to the U.S. afterwards. They literally did not see each other for over 20 years). She was an RN (which was unusual in her time when many women had little or no formal education), and that helped her tremendously. My husband's grandma was left a widow of 13 children; a BIL's mom was left a widow of 7 children. Both husband's died in their late 30's and early 40's. My mom raised both myself and my brother as an immigrant in this country, working manual labor jobs and not knowing the language when she first arrived. I agree with you that it's the females that have the bigger influence on converting other women and their own husbands into the movement. I know the mind games that they use on other women. The mind games include quoting biblical verses out of context to prove their point and prop up their position. They use guilt and fear - you are not pleasing God, not pleasing your husband (bad Christian, bad mother, bad wife). I am quite sure that some of these husbands could care less whether or not they were QF (in fact, most of them were burned out trying to support their ever-growing families). Yes, it does take two to tango, but I "get" Brad's point too. We were never QF (although we have a larger family), but if we were to be, it would be "me" that would have coerced my husband to be so, not the other way around. When my husband hears about the head covering/submission stories I tell him, he acts like I'm speaking Martian; he can't believe that this stuff is going on. He listens and then goes outside to work on his garden or gets involved in some other project that he'd rather do. So, yes, I do think that women have A LOT of influence over this whole enchilada. Why is it that the patriarch movement works so hard to shut women up and diminish them? It's because women ARE strong and have the capability to tell other women that this is all a bunch of B.S. Most of the women I knew who were entrenched in this movement early on, usually got out of it in their 40's or later. Sure, you have women like Mary Pride, Nancy Campbell, Debi Pearl and the rest of them telling women how awesome this all is. Well, that's no shocker there. Follow the money trail and the answer will be found. The patriarch/QF movement is a money-maker. It is it's own industry. It's an industry borne of manipulation. Women can be just as masterful in manipulating and coercing as men, even more so, in my opinion based on what I've seen and experienced in my own life. They just do it in a much more subtle way, but it's just as effective.
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Post by calluna on May 28, 2010 9:57:02 GMT -5
I think there are ways in which men can--and should!--write about these things without sounding like they're saying, "But what about the pain of the men?" Because, at the end of the day, it remains true that QF is a misogynistic movement that gives fathers a degree of absolute power within their families. Idiosyncratic levels of passiveness do not diminish this fact. And I feel like this piece just argued that "it's *really* the women who have power in QF! The men are just being cowed by overly aggressive wives." And, as a feminist, the message I got felt deeply anti-feminist. I didn't see it like that at all. I saw him blaming the idea of the movement. Not the women.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 9:59:35 GMT -5
arietty: Your comment makes a lot of sense. And I'm in complete agreement. I think I agree with the general sentiment of the post (i.e., that there is not enough room in a marriage for an entire movement), but it's some of the expression that I'm having trouble with.
I might put it this way: I think QF/P institutionalizes the abuse of women and children. I think it targets thinking people in ways that are stifling and problematic. And I am sure that there are fathers in the movement who experience abusive dynamics, often because they are thinking people who cannot easily mold their lives according to movement teachings. Nevertheless, I think a distinction needs to be made when this is a movement that so privileges fatherhood and male hierarchy. Yes, there are fathers in the movement who do not fit easily into the ideal paradigm. They will have oppressive experiences of the movement, even as the movement's systemic victims remain women and children. In other words, with fathers, it has a lot more to do with whether or not individual personalities can be easily integrated into the mindset. Men are oppressed in QF/P as individuals. With women, the individual personality matters less because the movement always already restricts the choices and autonomy of women in totalizing ways (lack of economic independence, lack of reproductive choice, etc.). It's true that some women adapt their personalities to the mindset more easily than others, but the point is that the movement upholds the inferiority of women as a whole.
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Post by nikita on May 28, 2010 10:15:12 GMT -5
They say that in every marriage there's his side and her side and then there's the truth. I really liked the article. It is how Brad feels, how he saw things and felt within the movement and in coming out of it. I don't think we can say his viewpoint is invalid if it is his own viewpoint and experience. I don't think that because someone else is more abused in a movement that that means that others are not affected negatively at all by it. And I didn't get the feeling he wasn't owning up to his part in it or blaming anyone else for his decisions. I think he was just saying what were the things and pressures that led him to make the decisions he did make. I don't think anyone needs to conform to the feminist viewpoint on anything here in their writings or stories; what I want to hear is their own viewpoint on the movement and their place in it.
My ex was a very passive man in that he would say or do anything to end a discussion or stop confrontation, up to and including lie baldly about agreeing with me and then later avow that he never agreed 'really' so his agreement didn't 'count' and he couldn't be held responsible for absolutely anything we did or bought or went etc. Drove me completely up the wall and to this day he is not any better about that kind of behavior, I just don't have to live with it any more. So I totally get the kind of rage that that kind of behavior and talk can induce. Seriously triggering for me.
But I also know that the movement itself does bring in other peer pressure to such an enormous degree - teachers, books, magazines, pastors, other men/women, etc that once inside it is very hard to resist it all. I was checking out some yahoo message boards for reformed folks and they were (of course) mostly men participating and the peer pressure on the groups was very intense. More liberal passive friendly men were put in their place immediately by the control freakish men felt the need to make sure everyone knew that they weren't godly enough, needed to be vigilant, shouldn't let up for a minute, etc etc. It was so oppressive and unpleasant, no joy or lightness whatsoever. And then I imagined living with someone like that. Shuddery thought.
So I am glad for this particular perspective. I would like to hear more about Brad's experiences and feelings and it would be doubly helpful to hear Dawn's take on it all too, even if her perspective is a little different. Assuming she is out of the movement, I wasn't clear on that.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 10:35:30 GMT -5
nikita: I don't think we are in disagreement. Certainly, I never said that Brad's viewpoint wasn't valid, and I wholeheartedly agree with the rest of your comment. My only problem here is that the post seems to excuse the writer from his own choices/actions. I don't disagree that the peer pressure is extreme.
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Post by margybargy on May 28, 2010 10:51:03 GMT -5
I did say that I thought more men should be included on the forum, but... I would add that I know several male children who were brought up in the movement but who later experienced it as repressive and abusive. I'd love to hear from more people like them. Even fathers who left the movement. I think there are ways in which men can--and should!--write about these things without sounding like they're saying, "But what about the pain of the men?" Because, at the end of the day, it remains true that QF is a misogynistic movement that gives fathers a degree of absolute power within their families. Idiosyncratic levels of passiveness do not diminish this fact. And I feel like this piece just argued that "it's *really* the women who have power in QF! The men are just being cowed by overly aggressive wives." And, as a feminist, the message I got felt deeply anti-feminist. I think contributions from all perspectives are valuable. I don't think Brad is saying women have all the power in QF. I don't see where he characterized his wife or any of the wives as overly aggressive. He points out that he really didn't have a lot of maneuvering room when it came to QF principles. It sounds to me like he's a Christian (probably a conservative Christian) whose beliefs were used against him to herd him into a more extreme lifestyle than he was comfortable with. I don't get a "blame the wimmin" vibe at all. If he says, "Honey I don't want any more kids". She shuts him down by saying, "But that's against God's will." Then the other church folk pile on. He wants to please his wife. That's normal. He wants to please his god. That's normal for believers. It's hard to go against the flow. If there's anything I've learned from reading Vyckie's blog, getting sucked into these extreme religious movements happens gradually. And it's high pressure sales on steroids. I think the important message of this post is that it discusses the psychological and community pressure used to keep people (men and women) in line.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 11:16:30 GMT -5
I did say that I thought more men should be included on the forum, but... I would add that I know several male children who were brought up in the movement but who later experienced it as repressive and abusive. I'd love to hear from more people like them. Even fathers who left the movement. I think there are ways in which men can--and should!--write about these things without sounding like they're saying, "But what about the pain of the men?" Because, at the end of the day, it remains true that QF is a misogynistic movement that gives fathers a degree of absolute power within their families. Idiosyncratic levels of passiveness do not diminish this fact. And I feel like this piece just argued that "it's *really* the women who have power in QF! The men are just being cowed by overly aggressive wives." And, as a feminist, the message I got felt deeply anti-feminist. I think contributions from all perspectives are valuable. I don't think Brad is saying women have all the power in QF. I don't see where he characterized his wife or any of the wives as overly aggressive. He points out that he really didn't have a lot of maneuvering room when it came to QF principles. It sounds to me like he's a Christian (probably a conservative Christian) whose beliefs were used against him to herd him into a more extreme lifestyle than he was comfortable with. I don't get a "blame the wimmin" vibe at all. If he says, "Honey I don't want any more kids". She shuts him down by saying, "But that's against God's will." Then the other church folk pile on. He wants to please his wife. That's normal. He wants to please his god. That's normal for believers. It's hard to go against the flow. Well, generally, I think all perspectives are helpful, particularly assuming that the person speaking has left QF and is on board with the whole "No Longer Quivering" side of things, yes. And, of course, Brad says he is no longer quivering. Great. I guess what I'm asking is for Brad to clarify some of this. Because I did read the example as an illustration of his own inability to stand up to a woman who was more assertive--and an insinuation that this problem is perhaps more widespread than some of us may realize. The notion that QF almost destroyed the marriage is easier than saying, "Well, my wife became attracted to this extremist movement, and I didn't really have the knowledge/courage/resources/confrontation skills (or whatever it was that was lacking) to stand up to her. Her attraction to extremism and my inability to stand up to it allowed this huge totalizing movement into a marriage that should've been about the two of us, and we came very close to allowing QF to destroy our marriage." I'm not saying that I think Brad should take full responsibility for the dynamic, and for the record, I think the statement, "I'll cry if you use a condom," is manipulative and maybe even abusive. But when people go along with these things in order to avoid a fight, this causes insurmountable damage to those who are born into an already-dysfunctional situation. I count myself as one, and my dad's capitulation to my mom's early fundamentalism was a part of it. Neither of my parents could ever stand up for the right thing, and the kids paid the price for this. Whatever it is that makes *some* people attracted to QF and that makes others afraid to stand up to QF is a part of us even after we leave QF... We interact with QF as individuals, and it bothers me when we lose sight of that. And, once again, this seems to me to come down to the perspective of a child (whose family left the extremist movement when she was fairly young, after all) and a parent.
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Post by rosiegirl on May 28, 2010 11:25:09 GMT -5
I kind of think that people here are so adamant that its the mans fault and its him that abused her, that they feel like anyone who says different is somehow invalidating their experiences.
Brad was sharing his experience, how he felt about the whole ordeal. He wanted his wife to be happy. And I have seen this in churches all too much; the woman being assertive to get what she wants, some sort of good godly life, and if the man isnt living up to that standard, like Brad said, he's bashed.
Sure, you can fault him all you want for "Well, you should have done THIS, because what you did just lead to abuse" or whatever, but you also need to look at yourself when you say that. I feel like its too easy to blame the men, especially when they're agreeing with you and sharing their experiences.
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Post by rosa on May 28, 2010 11:27:08 GMT -5
This is an awesome point:
"If there's anything I've learned from reading Vyckie's blog, getting sucked into these extreme religious movements happens gradually. And it's high pressure sales on steroids. I think the important message of this post is that it discusses the psychological and community pressure used to keep people (men and women) in line. "
And I do think seeing it from a non-patriarchalist husband's point of view is important. Especially if Brad (and maybe other husbands and ex-husbands) can get the space to talk about how they tried to cope, and what went wrong, and maybe what they could have tried.
I know from the outside it's easy to speculate on this stuff - so if her husband says take off the headcovering, what does she do to "properly submit"? So it's fascinating to see one experience of that.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 11:32:16 GMT -5
Also, a reminder that Brad was a QF leader, not a passive follower. Take this example (It's extreme, but just for the sake of argumentation): Imagine hearing Doug Phillips one day say, "Oh, wait, just kidding. I didn't mean it. I was only trying to appease my wife." We'd sputter and go, "Buh... Huh? What about...all of your work on behalf of QF? That you didn't mean it doesn't undo the fact that you worked to accomplish it's vision--that you were, in fact, a major leader in this movement. What about that? I mean, you were so passive that you started a major organization and became a leader and activist? What about that?" Appeasement is one thing, but Brad and his wife together started a reverse sterilization organization. That's deep involvement, and it's action on behalf of the movement. It's far from just, "Whatever makes you happy, dear." Am I the only person who feels kinda like... "Uh, wait a second..."
To be as transparent as possible, I have a very similar reaction to some of Cheryl Lindsey Seelhoff's writing. I know she has some fans here, and I really don't want to get into an argument about her merit as such. I'm just trying to describe a reaction that I often have. That is, I see what she writes, and I think, "Yes, you were in an abusive situation. F*** that bastard who did that to you. But..." But I always have a lot of cognitive dissonance when I read her because it doesn't take long for me to go, "But... You were buddies with James Dobson and Jonathan Lindvall and Mary Pride. Your magazine was one of the most important early publications in QF literature. It had a vast impact in shaping QF culture. You don't become prominent in this movement by passive inaction. No, I don't want to beat you over the head with tropes about choice and individualism, but really... Can we talk about that just a little? How did you become a leader in this movement if you never bought it? I mean, look, I'm a queer person whose unfreedom to marry is linked directly to the actions of you and your former friends, so I want some answers or at least some introspection here... Do you acknowledge any of your agency in this?"
I blame no one for being abused, and I want to be clear about that. But people are not forced to become leaders... And it frustrates me when former leaders act as if they had no agency in any of it. Sure, everyone's experiences are valid, but... Frankly, it troubles me very much when former leaders are this circumspect about taking responsibility for what they have done.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 11:35:15 GMT -5
Sure, you can fault him all you want for "Well, you should have done THIS, because what you did just lead to abuse" or whatever, but you also need to look at yourself when you say that. I feel like its too easy to blame the men, especially when they're agreeing with you and sharing their experiences. Do I now? I was a child, and I was sixteen by the time I got out of it. I "shepherded" no one and participated in no QF politics. I never spoke anywhere. I was never a leader. I gave no money... If you're addressing me. I'm not blaming the men. I'm saying that adults in these situations have responsibilities, and I usually see them admit that here... But I didn't see it in this post.
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Post by km on May 28, 2010 11:41:08 GMT -5
And I mean... I really, really don't support just...mindless blaming of the men. I disagree with Frankie Schaeffer about a lot of issues, but I think he's done a great job of taking responsibility for his actions, and I have the utmost respect for the things he's written about his former life. I just want some acknowledgment that going along with anything just to avoid a fight is...part of what gets us into these situations in the first place.
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Post by Sierra on May 28, 2010 11:41:13 GMT -5
Brad's post is interesting. He sounds a lot like the men I knew who got dragged along into Branhamism halfheartedly by trying to stay with their increasingly extremist wives. I think some of the 'manipulative wife' vibe can be put aside by remembering that Dawn probably didn't have ulterior motives - this was a matter of life or death to her, and the full weight of rebellion against God was compelling her to 'entreat' her husband to live the code as she was trying to live it herself. I saw this emotional distress in my own mother, who spent many nights and Sundays in sobbing prayer over the rebellion of my father. She truly believed that upsetting my father's way of life was saving his soul.
Here's my question: Do any of you actually believe that there's a 'right' way for a spouse to respond when a person gets caught up in QF/P beliefs? I don't think I do.
-I've known men who tried to support their wives by going along with them to the Branhamist church, even if they weren't particularly convinced. -I've known men who went to their own churches and let their wives do their own thing. -My father became belligerent toward my mother and tried to 'forbid' her to participate, then divorced her. Other men did the same thing.
In none of these cases did it make one iota of difference what the men did. The women were hook, line, and sinker sold out for Branhamism/quiverfull and no amount of heartache from their husbands or children would dissuade them from it.
...
As an aside, my mother once commented in genuine puzzlement, 'Why are the boys in our church so depressed? Why are they all failing and dropping out of school?' Gee, I wonder, mom.
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