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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 23:52:13 GMT -5
I have a sort of friend from my old homeschool QF life who calls me about every 6 weeks, not to pursue a friendship but to invite me to whatever MLM thing she is selling. This has been going on for 10 years. I have never come to a single one of them!
I know many churches during the boom of MLM stated on their church directories that the phone numbers were not to be used to get people to join MLM stuff (specifically Amway). I remember several big churches actually stopped publishing the yearly directory with everyone's phone numbers because Amway people in the church used it that way.
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 23:29:22 GMT -5
Honestly the word "forgiveness" is a big trigger to me because I have only experienced it as a brickbat about my head with the aim to get me to just shut up. And go away, hopefully. As soon as someone uses that word with me I know that is their agenda.
I left QF over 10 years ago and when I did I searched and searched for an ex-QF forum. I even started a yahoogroup at one point but no one joined. The ex-Fundy forums were full of angry, angry men who reminded me of my ex. There were very few female voices. So even though I'm 10 years out this is my first time and place to talk about all this with other people! And it's great! I feel like I have sharpened my ideas and communication too, so that maybe I can help people not fall into the same traps I did as a very young wife.
I'm not dwelling, I'm processing, learning and sharing. This lifestyle took my 20's and 30's. If I just moved on right away I could have moved on into something very similar because I had failed to understand what led me down that path in the first place.
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 23:09:19 GMT -5
Sierra: I'm interested in understanding more about how Pearl didn't get crushed under the weight of all that dogma. Sometimes, I think there are just...people who can live gracefully in the midst of an oppressive system. And I am not one of them, and I think they are few and far between, and almost saintly... But I have known one or two. I had a similar friend--Elise, who died of old age at 85 a few years back. Yes, isn't it funny, I have observed that myself. Sometimes I think they just don't take everything on board as a personal crusade either in favor or to react against like I am wont to do. Stuff rolls off them like water off a duck's back. Well my back is rather porous..
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 23:00:28 GMT -5
btw my QF friends with the massive debt used to preach that all christians should be debt free, about 20 years ago. They read all those 70's christian books about being debt free and would be quite scathing towards people in the church taking out loans for anything. Now, much to my complete disbelief, they are scathing about people not investing and just paying off their houses because this is like the middle guy in the talents parable who returned the money without losing or gaining anything. How they can be scathing when in such monumental debt is beyond me, it's not like this plan is actually working. The mom is besides herself with anxiety over their finances yet still looks down on those not following similar plans! My QF friends go through phases like this too! Used to be quite scathing about headcoverings. Called them "beanies." Now they all cover! I think the key word here is scathing. The need to not just make choices but to have your choices be superior ones to other peoples.
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 22:46:06 GMT -5
btw my QF friends with the massive debt used to preach that all christians should be debt free, about 20 years ago. They read all those 70's christian books about being debt free and would be quite scathing towards people in the church taking out loans for anything. Now, much to my complete disbelief, they are scathing about people not investing and just paying off their houses because this is like the middle guy in the talents parable who returned the money without losing or gaining anything. How they can be scathing when in such monumental debt is beyond me, it's not like this plan is actually working. The mom is besides herself with anxiety over their finances yet still looks down on those not following similar plans!
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 22:28:37 GMT -5
As to the Family Business model, this is a great idea but some people absolutely suck at it.
I have seen QF moms doing their darndest to get their husband into something like this. One mom I knew went through Amway and numerous other MLM sell programs for her husband to do as a way of eventually quitting his (perfectly good) job and working at home with them all (that quantity thing again).. this went on for years and cost them thousands of dollars and they did not make ONE CENT. Though in her mind they did because she bought tons of stuff from these companies at a seller's discount. The reason it failed is she has a husband who can barely string two sentences together and is NOT a public speaker, stumbles, blushes and mispronounces doing a bible reading at church. He is not going to ever be a high powered salesman but his wife was totally sold on the idea that having a home business and him staying home was God's plan.
Once again it is trying to cram diverse families into one formula, a formula (apparently) derived from a couple bible verses written poetically about a nomadic people thousands of years ago.
The last time I was on a QF mailing list just about everyone there was on WIC and living very poorly. They felt very guilty about the WIC but most had 10+ children and needed to feed them. A few of them had disabled husbands but the others had husbands with regular working class jobs, they just could not afford all these kids especially when they got to the teen years. You can grind your own wheat all you want but that savings doesn't pay for needing a bigger house to rent and a bigger van etc.. or for medical expenses and on and on and on.
My current QF friend is in massive, massive debt. They have entered into all kinds of investments over the last 10 years because "God has called us to.." The investments go from losing money every month but might be okay in a decade to complete scams. They were into some prosperity idea about investing and God will bless you and blah blah.. and they refuse to get rid of any of these investments because that would be saying God did not actually call them to do those things. Some of these things are costing them thousands a month and the debt mounts endlessly.
Anyway.. just to say not everyone is the Duggars who seem to have hard work, luck, personality and some smarts on their side as well as their army of unpaid workers.
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Post by arietty on Aug 27, 2010 22:15:11 GMT -5
Homeschool advocates love to suck mothers into an Us vs Them mindset. If you are insecure about your own parenting there's no quicker way to feel better about it than to buy into this kind of thinking. Do XYZ you are a good, caring parent. Fail to do XYZ and you should have bought a box of condoms (actually this is extreme even for homeschool rhetoric).
Good, loving parenting can happen with ALL schooling choices, and poor parenting can happen with all schooling choices too. One thing I realized after sending mine to school was that the whole idea that the more hours you spend with them the better parent you are is quite silly. It's not all about quantity. Schools can offer a lot to a family and you can work with and be a part of a school community as a family.
After years of observation as well as personal experience my conclusion is that very few people can homeschool a large family to a good, college bound standard for the high school years. I have know families that DID do this and they were highly educated, academic, high energy and financially stable, generally the kind of super-families that will do really well in any setting. At this point I could list you 20 things off the top of my head that my children are learning in school that would take me a very long time to learn myself to a standard to be able to teach them. Astronomy (with field tours), Geology, way-past-Algebra math, advanced French, history of the Russian Revolution.. well I won't list all 20 but you get the idea. And no it is NOT the same to be reading some chapter in an Abeka book about these things, you can't compare it to the depth of knowledge of a teacher passionate about these topics.
So, yes I am making a very good choice for my children to have them in school. If I thought one of them really needed to be homeschooled I would make that choice too. And here's the thing I've found-- many people are very tolerant and encouraging of different schooling choices and parenting styles, it comes easy to those outside of the homeschooling mindset to see that every family is different and that choices aren't automatically good or evil. I'm tired of hearing my QF friend disdain public school when her teenagers can not do long division and are barely literate.
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Post by arietty on Aug 23, 2010 23:00:30 GMT -5
I am wondering if Shelly's revelation about her coat was less about self-abnegation and more about realizing she had been using expensive items to fulfill an emptiness and that she now no longer needs expensive items to do that. I'm thinking Cecelia was kind of like the coat.. she is going to cost a LOT (personally), she looks GREAT, and she promises that you will BE fantastic if you just buy into the image. Shelly is now pretty much over the idea that you can buy into an image to make yourself a better person, though she does look back wistfully from time to time.
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Post by arietty on Aug 16, 2010 22:54:13 GMT -5
I had a friend who secretly got an IUD after her husband told her he would throw her out on the street if she ever used birth control. She had 7 kids at the time. She had been told she was quite likely to die if she had another pregnancy, as it was she was incredibly debilitated by each one. She had a sympathetic friend smuggle her out to the doctor under the pretense of going shopping. Depo Provera would also be good because it's just a shot, once it's in your system that's it, nothing to hide. But YES to Tess, sooooo hard to do anything like that with a posse of kids in tow. Homeschooling makes that kind of thing particularly difficult. When you cannot go anywhere or even make a phone call without kids RIGHT THERE it really limits a woman who may be trying to figure out how to make a break for it. And you end up so socially isolated, it's so easy to have no one to ask for any kind of help And your older kids may well blather about how you went to the doctor or whatever. Still I would like to encourage anyone who feels they absolutely cannot have any more but are prevented from using Birth Control and not ready or willing at this point to leave to look into these (I know, scary) options. The phone book will have hotlines for women in crisis, any one of these can be a starting point to finding out how to get a Depo Provera shot. This could give someone the breathing and thinking space to decide what to do if you are in an oppressive situation, always harder if you get pregnant regularly. Tess thanks for sharing your story with us. You are brave
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Post by arietty on Aug 13, 2010 18:17:11 GMT -5
Ah, the so-called Modesty Survey. I have my own warped take on that here. "So, ladies, do you want to get young Ezekiel's attention at the next youth barbecue? Here's what you do. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA ~~~ I feel like saying this to the boys who filled out this survey about the badness of girls having backs and breasts and shapes. Boys, you're young. You will see stuff that arouses you and you will get aroused just from things floating through your head for 1 second. This is not sin, it's biology. If it causes you discomfort or embarrassment take yourself to a bathroom and let biology take its course, you will be able to focus fine on other things after that. Repeat until age catches up with you. I am quite sure all this endless thinking about how to not be aroused and how to never ever masturbate as promoted by these teachings results in a sex obsessed culture, only everything is flipped on it's head. Instead of talking about girls being hot you talk about how girls being hot is BAD. But, duh, you are still talking about girls being hot, only now it's a very bad thing that is the girl's fault.
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Post by arietty on Aug 13, 2010 18:06:23 GMT -5
LiveJournal (which has a predominantly female userbase) has been my "home" online for so long (since February, 2003) that I assume that everyone I meet online is female, until they prove otherwise. I never really thought about it but now that you mention I realize that I too assume a female is posting on livejournal and some other sites that are not overtly female. Even when the name seems masculine I find it is usually a female's tag. Interesting. As a side, on Facebook it's my male old friends who seek me out and have long discussions with me there. The women (some of whom are their wives and most of whom I lived with and counted as close friends also) talk to each other a lot but the men talk to me. That was what it was like in my old cult days too so I guess it's not strange that the pattern holds twenty five years later. I am very grateful that my cult, for all it's wrongs, was generally gender neutral in teaching and practice. When I hear the horrible teachings and practices people here have had to endure it saddens (and outrages) me. Thank God I was spared the real depths of that particular indignity. It's always puzzled me that on one forum I post actively on that is probably 75% male I am always assumed to be male, referred to as "he" when my user name there is 100% feminine and IMHO my writing would also be seen as female particularly in contrast to the dominant male culture there. It always amuses me. As to friends, interesting Nikita. I do have a couple male friends online but I came to the conclusion the other day that the only male I really like greatly is my husband, lucky him LOL. Otherwise I have little time for men. They are good for discussing actual topics but as a friend pointed out to me women are more interested in the subtext behind everything. I could talk to just about any woman I come across but I've gotten less interested in the whole male gender the older I get. This is putting it as nicely as possible so I don't get flamed here ;D So I happily identify as a gender because for me that has been a meaningful experience.
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Post by arietty on Aug 13, 2010 17:38:05 GMT -5
I would get my Above Rubies mags and just read them over and over and over again. They would inspire me and refresh me and encourage me...and I would take up the gauntlet again and keep on keepin' on. Above Rubies was like a life-line, and articles like Serene's would, as arrietty said, keep me smiling. Above Rubies took on a whole 'nother light, later, when I read them with different eyes. It may be well-intentioned, but it is so much horrible brainwashing for women in terrible and/or abusive situations. Many readers are likely in wonderful situations...but for those who are not, Above Rubies serves to help them maintain denial, self-condemnation (whenever they are unable to maintain denial), and blindness. Jesus said He came to open blind eyes. Above Rubies helps blind eyes. Pretty easy to do the math, me thinks. It took me a while to let go of Above Rubies even after I had thrown out Mary Pride, that horrible Virginia Fugate book and a ton of other stuff. I had been reading about Evangeline etc.. since they were little girls and I did not cancel my subscription even as I was reshaping my life. After all it was just stories right? About people's lives? However I would sometimes feel a sting of guilt and a certain wistfulness reading it even as I divorced and my life changed. But then one day I got an issue in which a woman wrote her testimony of submission unto her continually adulterous husband, how she was convicted that God would eventually triumph and she would win him through her submission despite her trials, heartache and DISEASE that his adultery had caused her. And that was IT, it was all over from there between me and Above Rubies. Not a single cautionary word about this horrible situation was included, no you were supposed to be inspired by this martyrdom potentially unto death that was being held up as a marriage. I wrote "not known this address" on the mailing label and took it back to the post office, never got another issue. The magazine did change over the years too. I remember back in the 80's there would be testimonies from women who had been divorced and then met a new godly christian man at church and how god was blessing their new marriage. This certainly doesn't exist today. I remember Val Stares (long time AR worker and Aus coordinator once the family decamped to the states) honestly grappling with real issues in her family such as when her daughter ran off with the married man next door. She still wrote about her daughter's babies with him in the magazine and she spoke and wrote honestly about the whole thing. Those days are long gone, even more gone than when I was reading if you look at the ridiculous happy family adoption stuff they post about themselves.
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Post by arietty on Aug 12, 2010 18:36:52 GMT -5
This is interesting to me, all the pentecostal teaching. I was very very very set against pentecostal theology, name it and claim it, prosperity and the idea that everything bad that happened to you was because of sin. My mainstream church would dive into varying Pentecostal streams (Vineyard, spiritual warfare..) every few years as a kind of revival. Things were really moving when they were on one of their pentecostal teaching kicks.. which would fade, and be replaced by something else as church is always given to fads. I enjoyed arguing against all these things. They were quite divisive as anyone not embracing the current fad was automatically seen as less spiritual and in need of great prayer by those who did embrace it.
My theology was this: if good things happened to you it was because God loved you. You hadn't earned these things, they were just random Grace that fell out of the sky onto you (I didn't actually say it like that, but that's pretty much how I viewed it). When bad things happened to you they were ALL because of "the Fall". We lived in a fallen world and just like you could not avoid dying and the eventual decay of your cells in old age we could not avoid other products of the fall such as crime, illness, natural disaster. God loved us and would at times do good things for us but there was no escape from the fall until we were dead and in heaven. It was a kind of fatalism that I found quite comforting because it meant random bad stuff was not anyone's fault directly but rather a product of the state of the world.
I made one exception to this. Even though I accepted that people got cancer and other things which they died from I believed that I would NOT have any severe or fatal problems in pregnancy and childbirth. I sincerely believed that God wanted me to open my womb to all the children he would give me and that everything WOULD work out. I actually only shed this conceit over the first few months I started reading NLQ (in part because I had no reason to look at it as I was not having any more children). I think the QF mandate was so powerful for me that it came with it's own special theology that I would not have applied to other physiological processes. I didn't worry about how to fit in bad things happening to other moms though.. that was also conveniently a product of "the fall", and no doubt if I had lost a baby or something else terrible had happened I would have adjusted my special theology to include the fall for my own child birthing.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:59:39 GMT -5
I have a lot of friends like that, Arietty. Only with 1-2 kids, which makes it a 5-8 year phase (or shorter, if they go back to work sooner.) I kind of wonder if the doing it all more more more has to do with the assertion that motherhood *is* important - if people don't quite believe it, so they have to make it a ton of work out of/around it, to justify not having a paid job. I have a friend whose (only) daughter just started preschool this year, and my friensometimes talks about having another baby or doing childcare for another child, because "it won't be worth staying home when she starts school." But if she really wants to stay home, or if she thinks its best for her daughter, she shouldn't have to justify it. Yes I agree, she shouldn't have to justify it. I know that when I had teenagers going through chaos I used to think it would be absolutely detrimental to my family if I was working full time.. the amount of hours the teenagers took up to do even halfway decent parenting was FAR more than taking care of little children. No one should feel they are somehow being lazy by staying home with kids. As to the more more more.. the thing is when you have a baby every other year for 20 years you never move out of the new mommy phase. You change of course.. you can no longer indulge your new mommy impulses financially and time wise when you have 8 other kids, but you never actually get to that point where they are all at school and you could do something *not intimately connected with parenting* for a few hours. Of course with homeschooling this is always the case, that phase of life never comes. I know I have preschoolers now but also have friends my age whose youngest kids are married! We live totally different lives. I do have the occasional regret about not living an adult separate out of the house life at my age but I have found ways around this. Those outlets would not have been available to me if I was still QF, in a bad marriage, and homeschooling. All those things compounded the natural limitations of having young children.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:47:20 GMT -5
Long time lurker, first time poster--hi all! Ok, so the idea that a fertilized egg *could* be discarded doesn't seem to me to on the same level as abortion, however, I can see where that would bother people who do believe in life at conception. But, don't eggs get discarded anyway, prior to implantation in women who are not on the pill and/or who are trying to become pregnant? So, on occasion, God/The Universe/Science/fate/biology decides that a particular zygote (is that the right term?) doesn't "deserve" to be born? On the upside, maybe people will stop listening to this crap as it gets more and more extreme. The fact that Doug Philips spends so much time thinking about this bothers me a lot. Ugh. Yes not every fertilized egg implants. It's very early stages and plenty can go amiss.. or not really amiss as it's designed to not work out if there is something wrong. It just seems simple to me. Lay out the science facts and let people make their own choices. Don't get upset if someone makes a choice different than yours. Don't browbeat christians into making the choice you make. Everything doesn't have to be a campaign to change other people's choices.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:40:58 GMT -5
I'm primarily a lurker, and I hate to "come out of the closet," so to speak, on this issue, which is so controversial ... but I did want to verify that the pill -can- be considered abortifacient, if you consider life to begin at conception. A lot of women don't know that, and I think that's very unfortunate. *Full disclosure: I'm an NFP-using Catholic. Never have been, or will be, associated with QF or VF, apart from reading this forum!* The primary mechanism of the pill is to prevent ovulation, but its secondary mechanisms are to thicken cervical mucus (preventing sperm from reaching the egg) and to thin the endometrial lining (preventing a fertilized egg from implanting). Apparently, this "breakthrough ovulation" occurs more frequently with the newer low-dose pills than with the older, higher-dose ones. I had heard for many years that the BCP prevented implantation but never believed it until the day I looked at the insert for my own pills (Ortho Tricyclen) and saw it right there in black and white. I was terribly upset at the idea that I could have been conceiving on a regular basis. What was even more shocking was that none of my girlfriends or female family members knew that the pill didn't work solely by preventing ovulation. At any rate, while I found the article pretty nutty, I just wanted the posters here to be aware that there was a grain of truth in the info about the pill. (Btw, would a mechanical uterus be such a bad idea? Wouldn't it be a tremendous boon to women who would otherwise abort, or who were unable to carry to term due to health issues? Heck, THINK how many kids the Duggars could have, lol!) Just as I think conservative evangelicals are scared of science I think some that stand against them are scared of this kind of factlet. I mean if it's in the information given in the pill packet why the foment to refute and rebut it that happens every time this comes up? Really, let the science facts stand and let people make their own choices. It's not like only hormonal birth control exists. Many christians know this possibility (prevention of implantation) but it is so early they don't really care, and the percentage of times this might occur is so slim they don't worry about it. But if it bothers a person they can choose otherwise.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:37:19 GMT -5
The Vision Forum Ministries president explains that “our daughters are going to be asked by their physicians whether they want to carry their child or put them in external wombs, which have been created by the scientific community so that women no longer have to carry babies.”That's supposed to be a bad thing? ;D Bring it on! It's hilarious because we are SO FAR from "external wombs". We don't have external wombs at all! What a boon they would be to very prem babies if they existed. The more conservative the evangelicals the more scared of science they are.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 18:22:26 GMT -5
You know, I actually never thought about the TV or puters overtaking REAL community. It is rather ironic that we have been so dumbed down apparently, that folks would rather watch reality TV, about other people..then making real relationships and having community IRL. I guess it really is a loss art sort of speak..unless of course you go out on a hunting trip to find "like minded" people who are looking for the same old time fun times.But then you are running the risk of it turning into a commune/cult. Or people telling you that you are not open minded etc. I am starting to wonder if there really is a difference between commnity and commune/cult? I mean, I use to think there was, but as of lately...I am thinking maybe not. Well my personal experience is that some people want an intensity level from community/friendships that would be satisfied by a cult (or intense controlling church). I have backed away from people over the years whose definition of friendship was just too close for my tastes. I actually don't want people just popping in to chat, or calling me every day. Some people desire friendships where you live in each others pockets. Having teenagers I tend to see that as a teenage girl thing, you spend all day at school together then you rush home to talk to them on MSN.. then you call them, lol. I have some good friends nearby and some good friends further afield.. and I have some very long term friendships made online. It's all disconnected (most of these people don't know each other) and I'm happy with it. It's not the community I longed for in my QF days but I have come to see that as a dependency that was not overly healthy. It's funny people bring up the blackberry, internet thing.. that is one of my pet hates as far as sermons go. The "technology is keeping us apart" sermon, LOL. Every time my husband and I hear it we roll our eyes and it seems it gets trotted out regularly. Life changes. It's easy to focus on things now past (the neighbour dropping in for a chat) and not see new connections right in front of us (friends and family texting us regularly.. FB status's filling us in on stuff we would never have heard before.. the ability to connect on the phone no matter where we are.) Church sermons are always full of laments about how things were better, how we have lost something.. really seems counter productive to me. Why not focus on all we have gained? Why not rejoice in the incredible connectivity we now have? (the answer being because christians need to feel bad so that God can fix it I guess.. though it doesn't have to be that way.) This thread is way sidetracked, LOL..
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 17:53:53 GMT -5
I didn't realize she was Pentecostal. That does explain some of it, yes. ETA: And, again, she is not Australian. She's from New Zealand, or so says the Above Rubies site. For the most part, I get your frustration about American cultural practices being imposed as normative, as I know that happens all the time in US-centric spaces (And that this site is one since QF is a pretty US-centric movement.). However, I'm not sure that's what was going on here. I wasn't really put off by the sound of her voice as much as by the fact that she ignores other people in her presence. And I used the term "psychopathy" to encompass the cruel things she was saying about others, and the sense of joy she appeared to take in doing so (And because I don't personally put any stock in arguments about "demonic possession."). Obviously, I am not qualified to diagnose personality disorders, but "psychopathy" is one word that we have for people who take pleasure in harming others. So, I get what you're saying arietty, but I also think your call for cultural sensitivity would go further if you got the name of her country of origin right. KM I am quite aware of where Nancy Campbell comes from and her history. I began reading her magazines in 1988 long before she moved to America. I am aware of when she moved from New Zealand to Australia. She identified as Australian with a footnote about her coming from New Zealand for a long time and still does. New Zealand and Australia are even more similar culturally than the US and Canada are and New Zealanders very commonly move to this country. Nancy Campbell lived in Queensland and raised her children there, Queensland being "old school" Australia culturally in many ways. If you don't wish to believe my cultural comments about Nancy Campbell then carry on as you were, however don't accuse me of ignorance. I really do think I am quite well versed in Nancy Campbell, Australia and New Zealand.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 17:52:58 GMT -5
Okay I have watched the Nancy Campbell video posted by Sierra in this thread (thank you Sierra). She does not come across as weird AT ALL for what she is--Australian, christian, pentecostal woman in that age group. She is completely typical and I have heard many people who are even more exaggerated in mannerisms than she. Now I know you all want to watch this stuff and think it's psychopathic demons or whatever but you are incorrect. It's a misreading of cultural differences though I think there are similarities in some American pentecostals as well. No one talks like this in the Reform churches! LOLOLOL I didn't realize she was Pentecostal. That does explain some of it, yes. ETA: And, again, she is not Australian. She's from New Zealand, or so says the Above Rubies site. For the most part, I get your frustration about American cultural practices being imposed as normative, as I know that happens all the time in US-centric spaces (And that this site is one since QF is a pretty US-centric movement.). However, I'm not sure that's what was going on here. I wasn't really put off by the sound of her voice as much as by the fact that she ignores other people in her presence. And I used the term "psychopathy" to encompass the cruel things she was saying about others, and the sense of joy she appeared to take in doing so (And because I don't personally put any stock in arguments about "demonic possession."). Obviously, I am not qualified to diagnose personality disorders, but "psychopathy" is one word that we have for people who take pleasure in harming others. So, I get what you're saying arietty, but I also think your call for cultural sensitivity would go further if you got the name of her country of origin right. KM I am quite aware of where Nancy Campbell comes from and her history. I began reading her magazines in 1988 long before she moved to America. I am aware of when she moved from New Zealand to Australia. She identified as Australian with a footnote about her coming from New Zealand for a long time and still does. New Zealand and Australia are even more similar culturally as the US and Canada are and New Zealanders very commonly move to this country. Nancy Campbell lived in Queensland and raised her children there, Queensland being "old school" Australia culturally in many ways. If you don't wish to believe my cultural comments about Nancy Campbell then carry on as you were, however don't accuse me of ignorance. I really do think I am quite well versed in Nancy Campbell, Australia and New Zealand.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 1:58:38 GMT -5
I didn't say that at all valsa. I said Nancy Campbell is Australian. She comes across as Australian and she matches many other Australian christian women. It's read as "creepy" by people who don't have that cultural context. I'm filling in the cultural context for you.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 1:56:49 GMT -5
I completely agree with Valsa. The 50's is a myth. There are very good reasons why the 60's happened in response to it!
As to community, yes it is hard to find. Try to be the community you want, that's my approach. Offer, engage, initiate.. if you live in the 'burbs and don't your neighbors be the person who plans the block party.
I've had long stretches where my only community came via the internet.
The best community I have is now my adult children.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 1:43:25 GMT -5
But it's not all QF/P men at all, and it's not like that's the idea going into it or anything. I just wonder if there is something in particular that causes the disconnect for men in these kinds of belief systems where women are relegated to strict gender roles and lots of children are expected and born. Do these men start out this way or is it something in the teachings or lifestyle that brings this kind of reluctance to be responsible out of them? Irresponsible men in general tend to dump their families. These men don't necessarily leave, they just don't offer the kind of care and emotional and physical support that you would expect of someone who was actively pursuing a godly life with a strong family component. The kind of man who would let their wife and children shiver in the cold and be hungry while they attended a religious conference, that kind of thing. It just makes no sense to me. Some of it comes directly from the woman trying to be as submissive as possible which results in these men being treated like insanely spoiled children. No one ever asks, makes or cajoles them to sacrifice any bit of themselves to take care of their families. I think they just do the selfish thing one day instead of putting their families first, there is not a single protest and it makes it easier to do it the next time. Soon their time is completely their own and if they want to go away on mission while the family lives in a tent they can not only do so but they will be praised by their wife and possibly peers for it. If the wife voices discontent she will be rebuked and encouraged to treat her man as a leader in order that he may lead--which means letting him do whatever he likes with no complaints and plenty of praise. Mature men will take responsibility for their family even if no one is asking them to do so. Immature men are utterly spoiled by patriarchy into thinking the world revolves around their whims (*cough* Godly Callings). I think plenty of men could go either way and may have stepped up to the plate and allowed marriage and family life to mature them into responsible people, but because the wife is not allowed to voice her needs and wants they take the easiest path of laziness. In a healthy relationship both people adapt themselves to meet the needs of the other but if one person believes that she has no needs and that her husband's needs are paramount you end up with something very imbalanced. There is also the element that the men get burned out too. How do you admit you are in way over your head with your crumbling or half built home when you got so much praise for hearing that God has called you to build it? How do you admit that the responsibility of working hard to feed more and more people overwhelms you? I've never heard or read a man admit any of these things yet have seen that it is clearly the case at times.
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Post by arietty on Aug 11, 2010 0:42:23 GMT -5
Boy oh boy, Cheryl, thank you so much! I had forgotten all about the Great Katastole Controversy of the Biblewives. Then there were the Heavy Hair Covering Debates. And the hand-wringing (but secretly thrilling) Cheryl Lindsey: Our Guru Run Amok Conference. Anything, as Cheryl says, to keep the ol' grey matter perking. After a while in this lifestyle you start feeling like nothing but a womb and leaking breasts in sensible shoes with bread dough under your fingernails, drilling the multiplication tables over and over. "secretly thrilling", OMG you nailed it there... You know I have friends now who are into the whole breadmaking, homebirthing kind of lifestyle but there's this huge difference I see between them and me at the end of my QF days. They only have 2-4 children. Their children go to school. They throw themselves into this phase of life and then they gradually move out of it as the last baby weans. They don't spend 25+ years doing the same thing day after day after day after day..
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Post by arietty on Aug 10, 2010 22:54:38 GMT -5
One thing this installment of your story brings to mind Shelley is how we can get sucked into this lifestyle while not actually fellowshipping with anyone else in it. There you were with your headcovering and long skirts and striving for modesty in a church where you got no encouragement to do any of this. I was QF in a mainstream church myself and I knew a few women who headcovered in mainstream churches (headcovering is unheard of here). This is why I look back and am just astonished at how I brainwashed myself just from reading books and magazines (and now so much easier via the internet). This is also why it's easy to say it's not a cult because if I looked around there was no one else in it but me! In my immediate peers that is. And yet it's the same bondage as being in some compound ruled by a cult leader.
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