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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Feb 24, 2010 9:11:22 GMT -5
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maicde
Junior Member
Posts: 69
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Post by maicde on Feb 24, 2010 10:42:47 GMT -5
Ruth, thank you for sharing your experience. I agree, having to accomodate a large family in a very limited space seems typical for most people (who have large families), but certainly hits the nail on the head for QF families.
My own husband grew up the youngest of 9, had 5 girls sharing one room and 4 boys sharing another (some call it an attic, they called it a bedroom. They were Catholic, had no connection to QF.
In any case, the one thing that "calls to me" is the part where your father had to contact the village idiots...err...his council of fathers...in order to fix up the room a bit so that it would accomodate all the boys. See, that's where the problem comes in. People can't use their God-given brains and critical thinking skills to figure out solutions or logistics of a matter, they have to have someone else do the "thinking" for them.
You are absolutely right about the QF families with the TV shows; of course, they are being featured as your average every-day fun-lovin' families who just "happen" to have 19 children....yay!!! The TV channel conveniently forgets the hardship, suffering, and toil it takes on everyone, mostly the kids who didn't really choose to be stuffed in like sardines, and everything else that comes with the territory. It also conveniently forgets to mention the man-made legalism that dogs every one of these families.
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Post by kiery on Feb 24, 2010 11:58:28 GMT -5
Wow, I understand that. Thankfully, we actually ended up moving into bigger houses where we were able to convert some of the extra rooms into bedrooms. We started out in a 3 bedroom in FL, my dad closed in the porch and made a nursery/school/hurricane room so I didn't really have to share a room until mom was pregnant with the 4th (our family is predominantly female, so my brother had his own room). Then a single mom and her family moved in and my brother moved to the school room. Eventually we (through foreclosure, because "God would save our house or provide a new one") moved into a bigish 3 bedroom + den rental (yeah,with two families). I felt bad for my brother because at that point he didn't actually have a room, he had a bed behind the couch or slept in a closet, while I shared a room with the oldest of the single mom's kids (bad, bad idea), and her and the other two were in a spare room, and my sisters (3 at this point, and mom was pregnant with another) shared the closed off den next to my parents. Eventually we ended up moving to Atlanta (by this time we've added two bunk-beds and another girl, so there were 6 of us) to a house my grandparents had bought. We converted the basement into bedrooms, so we had 2 girls in each of the upstairs rooms and me and my brother downstairs. Mom's gotten pregnant twice since then, with a boy and a girl, but I left, which freed up a room, so right now there's two girls to a room, and the two youngest share (as they're almost 3 and 1, so it's not a big deal) , and my brother closest to me, thankfully, has his own space.
Anyway, yeah, it really does seem to happen that way, I think most of my sisters have worn clothes that came from when I was a baby, and my mom somehow figures out how to make dollars stretch (as my dad is an electrician and that part of the economy in Atlanta really sucks). We tried sewing our own clothes, but it was easier to shop on the walmart clearance racks. Still, we always had good christmases, and when we needed shoes and stuff mom would find a way to get them, or someone we know would send hand-me-downs and things, which really did help. We never went hungry either, I blame most of this on my mom's insane budgeting skills, even though she'd only get things on sale and buy really weird peanut butter (she only did that once, this year, after I left, but yeah) because it was a 2for1 deal, as much as it annoyed me, it really was kinda necessary with all of us.
We also have very generous grandparents who would help out and step in when things got really tight. My grandma sent us Angel Food packages for a while, and my Gramme, when we moved, got us all warm boots and coats (since it gets really cold in GA as opposed to FL where we're all from).
In that light, I feel really bad for people like the Duggars who have _all_ the girls in one room and _all_ the boys in another....poor kids. Oddly, in my family, we were actually allowed to be somewhat individual (you know, as long as we agreed with my parents on stuff, we could be cowgirls, ballerina's, and campaign managers before we got married and had to raise a ton of kids).
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Post by anatheist on Feb 24, 2010 13:09:13 GMT -5
Ouch, those foam rolls are not comfortable. Are you and your brothers close or on good terms as adults now ?
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aimai
Full Member
Posts: 172
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Post by aimai on Feb 24, 2010 14:44:51 GMT -5
This post made me think about the life and work of Mother Theresa--one of the things that Hitchens accused her of in his book attacking her was making a fetish out of poverty and humility--to the point that she misused the funds given her by foreigners and denied the poor in her care. That is, her obsessive focus on poverty as a form of service/a good thing led her to refuse to spend money on the bedding, beds, food, clothing and medicine offered to the poor who came to her. Yet that money was there--offered for their wellbeing by well meaning charitable individuals. She didn't do it to stretch the money to go farther--she did it as a kind of religious practice in keeping with her particular brand of Catholicism. Karen Armstrong writes about many of the same practices of self abnegation in her book about how she choose to become a Nun and eventually left the Church.
Fantasies of Swiss Family Robinson aside what does it say to children when they are treated like charity cases by their own family, when lack and suffering are dismissed as unimportant? How well does this work out for the kids as they grow up? How many end up being willing to replicate their parent's choices and how many rejecting this particular brand of religious devotion?
aimai
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Post by hopewell on Feb 24, 2010 14:59:50 GMT -5
Reminds me of Emily at Under $1000 and her plan to stack her kids in that tiny room. I am simply fascinated to see how people live. Mind you I spent time in Africa living with a middle class [in terms of that country] family of 8 with two bedrooms--the boys slept on mattresses in the living room. Still, this is America and a bed of your own is an expectation if not quite a "right". I'm glad you Dad at least agreed to do something--after all it could have been a case of your Mom as "the babeling brook" nattering on and on about the boys room when he's out there earning a living and she should shut up and not complain!
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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 17:33:13 GMT -5
I know soooo many families like this.. and I used to have 6 children in one VERY tiny room myself. Two bunk beds and a mattress on the floor. My ex husband spend years talking about how he was going to build an extension on the house but he was actually incapable of doing this..he also resisted people offering to help him do anything. It was terrible. Even his most patriarchal friends started confronting him on our housing situation because they had been listening to his (dominating the conversation) bullshit about this extension for many years. He liked to talk about how he was going to build it out of mudbrick and he was going to make each individual brick himself--this from a person who took weeks of work to put up a shelf which was so flimsy you couldn't put anything on it once he finished it. We just had to leave the shelf UNUSED for him to show people who came over as an example of his wonderful woodworking skills.. really crazy making stuff. He had a shed which was his own space and was at least 4 times larger than the kids bedroom Anyway. We were an extreme case. I knew lots of hardworking QF men who did expand their houses, even if the kids were moved into unfinished rooms.. I also knew well off families that bought bigger houses, sometimes quite big and nice. These were hardworking, successful, realistic people both the builders and the buyers.. but for every one of those families there were the families that lived in increasingly, with each kid, ridiculous situations. You never saw them on the cover of The Teaching Home, with their random collection of fold out couches and decrepit trailers in the back yard, or their stacked like cord wood bunks. Thing is it kind of works when your kids are all under 10. You could move little kids into tents and they would think it was super fun.. but people don't prepare for the teenage years, for when you have 6 or 7 or 10 adult sized people that are your responsibility in your house. And their adult sized belongings. I think this is where families often start to implode. Oh and my personal postscript is that I got divorced, sold my teeny shack and bought a nice big house where no one shares a room. It's old and falling apart in places but it is BIG. I will never live in a small space again, the psychological effect was very bad. I used to walk past things like a big scout hall, just a huge shed really and fantasize about moving my family in there because it offered SPACE. I was obsessed with space for many years. I often dreamed in my old house that suddenly discovered a door I had never noticed and when I opened it there was a HUGE SPACE there and I started planning how I would move everyone in there.. that dream never came back once I moved.
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Post by kindaconfused on Feb 24, 2010 18:53:19 GMT -5
Question for all of the ex-QF/P/fundies....
I noticed in Ruth's story (and many of your response posts) you talk about how your parents (or husband depending on whether you were a QF daughter or QF wife) talk about how the father/husband either consults their 'advisor' or just plain refuses help from others for home additions/improvements.
Ruth (and response posts) seem to be talking about the past, 5,10, 15 years ago....do you think things have changed for today's QF family?
I ask because the only exposure I have are the Duggars...they don't seem to mind taking free help from anybody. This also appears true of their throw-them-a-bone-friends, the Bates. The Bates family had a 1000sf home, Duggars came along and offered a laundry room addition that somehow morphed into a 4000sf addition. JB went on and on about how the 4000sf addition only cost them $400 because of all the free labor. I was insanely irritated by that comment because not everyone looking at their lifestlye oohhing and ahhing are going to have that happen for them.
Of course people show up with free labor when they are getting free advertising on national tv in return. The building supply store did the same, gave them a free front door and whatever else. Who else is going to get that without national media cameras trailing them?
Anyway, back to my question: are all QF/P/fundies unwilling to accept any outside help? or has the trend changed? or are the Duggars and Bates just unusual?
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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 19:23:22 GMT -5
Question for all of the ex-QF/P/fundies.... I noticed in Ruth's story (and many of your response posts) you talk about how your parents (or husband depending on whether you were a QF daughter or QF wife) talk about how the father/husband either consults their 'advisor' or just plain refuses help from others for home additions/improvements. Ruth (and response posts) seem to be talking about the past, 5,10, 15 years ago....do you think things have changed for today's QF family? I ask because the only exposure I have are the Duggars...they don't seem to mind taking free help from anybody. This also appears true of their throw-them-a-bone-friends, the Bates. The Bates family had a 1000sf home, Duggars came along and offered a laundry room addition that somehow morphed into a 4000sf addition. JB went on and on about how the 4000sf addition only cost them $400 because of all the free labor. I was insanely irritated by that comment because not everyone looking at their lifestlye oohhing and ahhing are going to have that happen for them. Of course people show up with free labor when they are getting free advertising on national tv in return. The building supply store did the same, gave them a free front door and whatever else. Who else is going to get that without national media cameras trailing them? Anyway, back to my question: are all QF/P/fundies unwilling to accept any outside help? or has the trend changed? or are the Duggars and Bates just unusual? There is no trend. QF is full of very diverse families, from beggars to the wealthy. What you are seeing here is people talking about dysfunction within those families. If your dad had a great job and just extended the house each time you needed more bedrooms there is nothing to talk about in that area. The reason this thread has stories otherwise is because that was the topic of the thread.
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 0:17:23 GMT -5
Question for all of the ex-QF/P/fundies.... I noticed in Ruth's story (and many of your response posts) you talk about how your parents (or husband depending on whether you were a QF daughter or QF wife) talk about how the father/husband either consults their 'advisor' or just plain refuses help from others for home additions/improvements. Hi kindaconfused, If you're not familiar with this stuff, you've pointed out two distinctions about these kinds of folks which aren't exactly QF but trends QFs tend to follow. Back in the '60s, people in California were at a particular Episcopal church, and they just started speaking in tongues in the middle of the service. This was the start of the "Charismatic Renewal" which spread first into Lutheran and Catholic churches spontaneously and unrelated to one another, and the Pentecostals were doing it all along. So it became kind of vogue to do this, and it was termed charismatic (charis mata meaning "spiritual gifts" in Greek). ' But people got all worked up and afraid that Christianity would become all experiential and wacko (?), so the set up all these rules. One of the ideas was that you had to be assigned to a more mature believer to have them advise you on your life. It ended up spreading these ideas all throughout evangelical Christianity, and what Razing Ruth describes is the carryover from this concept. It is formally called ecclesiocentricity, ecclesia meaning church or fellowship in Greek. So the church is central. Many of these groups believe that for important life decisions, you are supposed to go to your elders and pray (whoever is your higher up in the hierarchy/chain of command) to get their opinion. In this system which is also called shepherding and/or discipleship, you have to submit to the decisions that your authority makes about your life. If you do not do what they want and choose to rebel, you are thought to be venturing out from under God's protection or "spiritual covering" which exposes you to harm. Some say that God will punish you for rejecting and exiting your covering, your authority. So they use fear to manipulate and control. If you leave, you lose personhood. SO IF RUTH'S DAD's church elders and pastors decided that he should not have renovated that room, if he went ahead and did it anyway, they would blame any failures or ill events on their disobedience. (What a crock.) If the car would break down, it would be because Dad rebelled. The helping out works differently in different groups. I have found that in larger churches, or even in smaller ones, certain model citizens get the help, and people who are not models or are not what the group would like, they don't get the same level of help as the favorites. And every group has its favorites. There tends to be an elite group, an inner circle, and then the regular folks. People are always trying to pierce that inner circle because it gives you a sense of importance, but it also provides benefits like this. The help like this can also be used as positive reinforcement for being a model citizen, for grooming a new member, or for a payoff. You can be denied opportunities, and this is negative reinforcement, if you are behaving in a way that the group doesn't like. Like George Orwell's Animal Farm states it so well: "All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others."
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 0:29:27 GMT -5
A more direct answer to the question of whether all QF/P/fundies accept help like the Duggars.... It is more a question of whether that particular church they go to follows this shepherding/discipleship/Gothard/ecclesiocentric principle of having to get permission from an authority related to every life decision. Each church or local group will have different rules, and they may want to know everything, or you might just have to go to them for certain things that they specify. Like should they buy a new car. Where I went, they wanted you to tell them whether you were thinking of leaving the church. When my pastors turned out to be manipulative, wife-beating supporting liars and thugs, I left, but I decided to call one elder that told me that he thought I was right, but he couldn't support me or he would loose everything. I felt like I had a duty to him to tell him I was leaving. He said that we couldn't leave unless we had the elders pray and agree. If it was their will for us to go, we would have to report before the church on a Sunday AM to have them lay hands on us to make it look like everything was okay. When I said that I didn't want any of those other men ever touching me again, he said said it was not a good idea and became very upset. I asked him why I could not. He said that when other people left without their blessing, they lost their jobs, they got cancer or their children would die. Karen Campbell (thatmom.com) was told that she would be visited by "Death, Disease, and Divorce." Cute, huh? I'm out 13 years and counting, and though life is full of good and bad, we're better than we've ever been. But funny how when the man that told me lost his son in a car crash a couple of years later then died with brain cancer, somehow, he hadn't ever done anything to merit this. But they get people hypnotized by fear, and they think regular life has to do with the curse. It is sick.
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 0:36:33 GMT -5
My own opinion about the Duggars and some of these others...
They seem to claim that these things are God's reward for living the right way, because God's favor is always merited in patriarchy. They just set up a very primitive ego function of seeing all causality as either a blessing or a curse, an ego defense mechanism of mistaking a coincidence as a causality. But it is done because they have to use it to prop up their beliefs. Of course, a bane or a blessing is what your elders say it is, too.
(It is not so of true Christianity where favor with God is God's gift that we receive through faith. It is not a bilateral thing where one gives and one gets something they earned. God just gives it to us without us having to earn anything. We just have to love Him.)
But to quote another contributor here whose name I don't remember: they just might be gold-duggars.
(Whoever said that should get an award. That was pretty funny. No offense to the Duggars, though... all in good fun. I personally think that they are brainwashed and don't really see things this way. They're just reading off the script of the cult.)
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Post by coleslaw on Feb 25, 2010 11:02:37 GMT -5
Um, no it isn't. (Didn't we just have this discussion?) What you are describing is punishment.
Negative reinforcement increases target behavior, just like positive reinforcement does. That's why they are both called "reinforcement", because they both strengthen the behavior. The difference is that positive reinforcement involves getting something pleasurable, like a compliment, or help with a project, or a lollipop, and negative reinforcement involves losing something that is not pleasurable, like you take an aspirin and your headache goes away, or you rock your baby and the baby stops crying. The behaviors of taking aspirin or rocking the baby will increase, not decrease, because they have been reinforced.
But if people deny you opportunities because of your behavior, that behavior will decrease, because it's been punished.
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Post by dangermom on Feb 25, 2010 15:12:01 GMT -5
It is formally called ecclesiocentricity, ecclesia meaning church or fellowship in Greek. So the church is central. Many of these groups believe that for important life decisions, you are supposed to go to your elders and pray (whoever is your higher up in the hierarchy/chain of command) to get their opinion. In this system which is also called shepherding and/or discipleship, you have to submit to the decisions that your authority makes about your life. If you do not do what they want and choose to rebel, you are thought to be venturing out from under God's protection or "spiritual covering" which exposes you to harm. Some say that God will punish you for rejecting and exiting your covering, your authority. So they use fear to manipulate and control. If you leave, you lose personhood. Holy moley. I've never heard of this before, and I'm appalled. I'm sorry that's not actually a very constructive comment, but I just had to say that.
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Post by madame on Feb 25, 2010 16:09:44 GMT -5
Each church or local group will have different rules, and they may want to know everything, or you might just have to go to them for certain things that they specify. Like should they buy a new car.
The church I grew up in, small home-church, with nobody calling themselves pastor, sort of required this. I remember my dad talking about asking permission to do x y or z, or how someone asked permission before they bought a car. I couldn't understand it at the time, and I can't understand it now, either.
Ironically, these men, who like to consult each other over everything, think it's ok to make life-changing decisions without consulting their wives. Go figure.
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 16:40:03 GMT -5
Um, no it isn't. (Didn't we just have this discussion?) What you are describing is punishment. Negative reinforcement increases target behavior, just like positive reinforcement does. That's why they are both called "reinforcement", because they both strengthen the behavior. The difference is that positive reinforcement involves getting something pleasurable, like a compliment, or help with a project, or a lollipop, and negative reinforcement involves losing something that is not pleasurable, like you take an aspirin and your headache goes away, or you rock your baby and the baby stops crying. The behaviors of taking aspirin or rocking the baby will increase, not decrease, because they have been reinforced. But if people deny you opportunities because of your behavior, that behavior will decrease, because it's been punished. Coleslaw, You mistake my meaning and use of the term. To avoid the cognitive dissonance that the word "punishment" carries in the context I used it will prevent a number of people (laypersons in particular) from understanding the germane point that I am trying to communicate. I agree that in the summation, it is punishment, but because of the way it is used subtly in these groups, punishment is too strong of a term, and it opens up arguments of intent on the part of the person who employs the reinforcement. It is not always intentional, so is it actually punishment? It may be functional punishment, but if I use punishment in this way and in this context, it also implies intent. I explained that I use the term in the most general sense, and I was not using that term according to the specific definition of a particular field of study, assuming that a great number of people here are laypeople in terms of this information. In a venue where psychologists are discussing psychology, this is an issue, but in this forum, I use the term as a wide descriptor which I don't see as problematic. I'm sorry if I failed to make that more clear. Leadership in manipulative groups utilize factors in the environment and measures of intervention to subtly communicate indirectly just how they want the follower to respond. What what a person must understand is that many leaders learn this as "just what you do" if not God's ordained way of shepherding a flock of sheep. But because it is subtle and indirect, it is for most leaders just a part of the process and not really anything that intends much. It is just "what works." From that perspective, they do not see it as punishment, and might even argue from a point of intent that it is care. They do not intend punishment but see it as conditioning that it non-punitive. If you asked them if they were in favor of punitive measures, they would likely say "rarely" and only if someone was causing great harm to others. They will see what they are doing as negative reinforcement. I was taught by exit counselors and have seen this term used this way in the literature when discussing this point. That is why I use the term of "negative reinforcement" rather than punishment. In a Venn Diagram, am I incorrect then to classify punishment as a discrete subset of negative stimuli, what I am calling negative reinforcement? Or are these completely and mutually exclusive in your mind? I don't understand, as this is how I was taught. I think we are just stuck in the finer points of semantics. No?
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Post by coleslaw on Feb 25, 2010 16:53:26 GMT -5
They aren't completely and mutually exclusive. Punishment and negative reinforcement are processes that both use negative stimuli. The difference is in the timing of the stimulus and the outcome. If a negative stimuli follows a behavior, that behavior decreases. For example, if I drink alcohol, I get a headache, so I have stopped drinking alcohol. That's the process called punishment.
If the negative stimulus precedes the behavior, and stops when the behavior is initiated, the behavior increases. If I take Trexamet when I get a headache, it goes away, so whenever I get a headache, I take the stuff. That process is called (by behaviorists, the people who coined the term) negative reinforcement.
If you call the process of extinguishing behaviors by applying a negative stimulus "negative reinforcement", then what term do you use for the process of increasing and strengthening behaviors through the removal of negative stimuli?
One of my major professors in linguistics and language development used to get frustrated when people dismissed discussions of terminology as "just semantics." He finally made this distinction: if we are using two different words to mean the same thing, that's "just semantics". But if we are using the same word to mean two different things, that's semantics, but it's not "just semantics". Given that we are communicating in a written medium where we can't use the non-semantic aspects of language like gesture, facial expression, pauses and inflection to convey meaning, may I respectfully point out that the finer points of semantics need our attention more than they ordinarily would?
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 16:53:32 GMT -5
I just pulled two sources and checked them, and both refer to negative reinforcement, and they also state that punishment is also used. All are used. I incorrectly used "negative reinforcement" in that sentence in that particular late evening post. Actually as a manipulation tactic, negative reinforcement works very well because it is more subtle. Most adults, when relating to other adults in a religious setting don't spend much time thinking about the type of thing you think of in terms of childhood development. You only notice how you feel after the fact. And a good manipulator walks away with his mark thanking him for the manipulation.
To clarify, they use all three, but I think the reader gets the general point of negative stimuli. I wasn't thinking of it that deeply. I'm sorry if that was confusing and I apologize.
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Post by cindy on Feb 25, 2010 17:13:31 GMT -5
Here's an excerpt from Don Veinot's article about Doug Phillips' patriarchy. They pick and choose which OT laws they want to embrace and which ones they want to ignore, and they don't actually follow Biblical patriarchy at all. Don Veinot:www.midwestoutreach.org/Pdf%20Journals/2007/spring_2007.pdfSorrowfully, Isaac let Esau know that his hands were tied. The mantle of rulership had been passed on and now all of Jacob’s relatives, aunts, uncles, brother’s sisters, cousins, etc., including Esau, are to be Jacob’s slaves, Jacob’s property. The point is Vision Forum isn’t going far enough if their objective is to embrace Old Testament patriarchy! If they want patriarchy, they cannot simply pick and choose which elements they wish to leave out. Are tribal fiefdoms really supposed to be the pattern for the Church? Forget about wives submitting to husbands—all our relatives have to submit to Uncle Ned!Things get complicated then, because what if your church elders tell you one thing but your father and grandfather tell you something else? No one ever talks about that problem. I've seen others talk about grooming their son in law into the family system, but it seems that this established patriarchal family expects this son to commit the sin of breaking with his father. Maybe they have a manual of protocol for when the parents of married adults disagree about the course they should follow? Sandlin's critique of patriarchy:undermoregrace.blogspot.com/2009/03/hegemonic-patriarchy-by-andrew-sandlin.htmlOld-Fashioned Conservative Tyranny Today’s hegemonic patriarchalism seems at points to bear an eerie resemblance to the pagan patriarchy of ancient Rome (before the rise of the Empire). Pre-Empire Rome was a patriarchal culture. The housefather was given virtually unlimited authority. His word was law — not metaphorically, but literally. If his wife bore a daughter, and he preferred a son, he could simply cast the daughter into the streets to die of starvation or be eaten by a wild animal. He could beat and otherwise abuse fellow family members at will. With limited exceptions, the father was the central authority in society. Many other ancient cultures were similarly clan-based, and these extended families (not just Mom and Dad and Junior and Susie, but the grandparents and third cousins and “in-laws”) ruled the countryside by blade and blood. At the center of this tyranny was the patriarch, generally the oldest surviving male of the family. (Mario Puzo’s rendition of The Godfather furnishes an embellished, but generally accurate, portrait of this arrangement.) For this reason it is sometimes ironic to hear Christians declare that they are championing a “conservative view of the family.” If they are conserving the old-fashioned pagan patriarchy, they are deviating from Biblical Faith, which repudiates this tyranny. We are called first to be obedient Christians, not card-carrying conservatives. Today’s Christian patriarchalists are far removed from the violence of the pagan patriarchalists (in most cases, at least!), but in their commitment to hegemony, they are too close for comfort. >>>>> So this has just been morphing from one thing into another over time. I'm not sure how they go about overlapping these "spheres" of family now along with the church spheres. It's crazy-making, if you ask me.
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Post by kindaconfused on Feb 26, 2010 19:03:27 GMT -5
Wow Cindy, I thought I was done working for the day, but you have overloaded my brain After combing through all of that information..... I would have to say all you say does make sense....still I have to wonder why men who are (of course) more then willing to be the King and rule over everyone else would be able to blindly accept instruction from the 'elders'....it's seem's those two ideas would go against each other The only thing that comes to my mind for men to accept needing permission from the elders would be if they viewed it as 'paying their dues' until they could be exalted to the elder status themselves.
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kim
New Member
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Post by kim on Feb 27, 2010 17:51:03 GMT -5
Oh, poor things. Sleeping in bunks like that. Probably even went to bed with nutritious foods in their tummies, too.
Seriously, what a whine fest.
I bet the poor kids in Haiti right now would cry buckets over this one.
Socks in milk crates. What dreadful parents not to give them the very best.
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Post by jemand on Feb 27, 2010 17:56:13 GMT -5
kim? Do you want to try to restate your point? Right now you sound like a troll. Did you even read the post? Razing Ruth was LONELY. She wanted to sleep with her brothers. The family had access to better options, but refused to do them. And... just so you know, it isn't ok to abuse and deprive children just because someone else sometime in history somewhere in the world has done worse. That is a really cruel position.
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Post by km on Feb 27, 2010 18:00:37 GMT -5
Oh, poor things. Sleeping in bunks like that. Probably even went to bed with nutritious foods in their tummies, too. Seriously, what a whine fest. I bet the poor kids in Haiti right now would cry buckets over this one. Socks in milk crates. What dreadful parents not to give them the very best. wtf? This is a cruel and disgusting comment. I think it should be deleted.
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Post by justflyingin on Mar 8, 2010 2:33:06 GMT -5
Oh, poor things. Sleeping in bunks like that. Probably even went to bed with nutritious foods in their tummies, too. Seriously, what a whine fest. I bet the poor kids in Haiti right now would cry buckets over this one. Socks in milk crates. What dreadful parents not to give them the very best. wtf? This is a cruel and disgusting comment. I think it should be deleted. In reaction to your comment, km.. I was also wondering when I read this, why it is awful for kids to sleep in bunks. My kids have had bunkbeds. They liked them. My children haven't used their rooms that much for anything but sleeping, at times, depending on how many are in the room (girls had 2, boys had 3). I actually thought the mom in the featured article must have been a gem. The husband probably just needed more work/income. The mom was hard working, thrifty and smart. She made sure her kids didn't lack, and it didn't sound like the kids lacked either, at Christmas time, etc. Living "in poverty" certainly means different things in different cultures. In Poland, "poverty" means you all are in one room, with 3 people sleeping in the same bed--"The kids" don't get their own room. Plus you probably just eat watery soup and bread. You may or may not have heat in your house. You probably don't have electricity, or have it turned off because of lack of payment. You don't actually have enough "stuff" to worry about storing somewhere because there just isn't that much "extra". You get put in a state owned boarding school (much like a children's home) and arrive with all your stuff-in the equivalent of a Walmart plastic bag. Maybe it would do us a bit of good to watch Little House on the Prairie again and read more about what it was like to be "really poor". I asked one guy here how he used to open his banana when he was little--from the stem end or the other one (since most American open it using the stem end, but most Poles/Russians use the other end.) His reply, "I don't remember having bananas when I was a child--they were too expensive." When we get to feeling sorry for ourselves, maybe a visit to the truly poor in this world would help us get some perspective. We actually might change our thinking about what is important and what just doesn't matter.
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em
Full Member
Posts: 176
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Post by em on Mar 8, 2010 17:23:59 GMT -5
IMHO, it is never appropriate to respond to somebody detailing bad or painful experiences, as Ruth's story is, with a "stfu, stop whining [the 'you ungracious, lucky little bitch' is kind of implied]. God, people have it so much worse elsewhere." That is not cool. It's completely rude to try to make somebody's pain or the bad things they've endured in their life seem completely illigitemate. Is it true people have had it worse than Ruth? Yes, but this is her story and who are any of us to tell her she shouldn't complain about things that hurt her because others have endured worse? That's what it comes down too. It's basically saying to Ruth she has no cause to feel how she feels, that she should not feel this way, her feelings are completely invalid.
(This is not directed at you, justflyingin. You made the point but in a polite and respectful way. Your post just pointed out that it's not so bad in comparison, but I didn't get the impression of rudeness or telling Ruth she shouldn't feel like she does from your post at all the way I did from the original comment. That, as far as I am concerned, is the problem with that post. The total disrespect and disregard of Ruth and telling her that she can't feel hurt about bad things she's experienced because others had it worse ... no there's no excuse for that at all.)
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