19 comments:
EK said...
I don't generally curse, but I feel the urge to curse up a storm!
Patriarchy--ancient or modern, secular or religious--rests on a simple and yet breathtakingly absurd premise.
Patriarchy and all its manifestations--including contemporary society's essentialized construction of gender and gender roles--asks us to believe one LUDICROUS tenet:
*That men must lead and rule because they had the great good fortune to be born with penises.*
That's all, folks.
Patriarchy in a nutshell.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Charis said...
I eventually figured out that it wasn't God "cursing" me, it was my husband "punishing" me for making independent decisions.
In Bancroft's book "Why does he do that?: inside the minds of angry and controlling men" he describes how the husband slams around and terrifies the family when asked to do the dishes, so no one ever asks him again. (Here's a link to the account on Google Books) He said, its a "male entitlement" thing, they do it because they enjoy the perks.
My husband wouldn't be in any "dishes" scenario since he doesn't do "women's work", but I remember when he was looking for a hairdryer for some man project and I had taken a huge step of giving my teenage daughter permission to go somewhere without asking him first. Only she knew where the hairdryer was, and I was "punished" verbally for allowing her to be gone.
Superstition is fear, and I believe fear was at the root of most of my compliance with the lifestyle.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
jesnicole said...
HI, I HOPE IT'S OKAY THAT I LEFT YOU A COUPLE OF COMMENTS ON THE POST TITLED: "TO THOSE WHO MAY BE SHOCKED, DISAPPOINTED, AND HURT BY MY APOSTASY". JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW. THAT'S THE FIRST BLOG I'D COME ACROSS BY YOU. HOPE I HEAR BACK! LOVE MEETING NEW PEOPLE ONLINE.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
adventuresinmercy said...
I SO RELATE TO THIS!!!!
When I finally cut off my long hair (3 1/2 years ago, a few months after I really started coming out of the mindset), I was literally trembling as the lady cut it. I spent the next three days so afraid that I'd lost my salvation, even though I knew better than that, until I could slowly talk myself out of those fears...
It is SO hard to make decisions for yourself after years of being controlled---and even worse when you think God is the one approving of the whole set up and ready to punish whatever doesn't meet His standard.
It is one thing to know it in your head, that you are free...it is another thing to purposely walk against those years of superstition. The fear is palpable.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Vyckie said...
Charis ~ you've mentioned that book, "Why Does He Do That" before ~ I have it in my Amazon cart and just as soon as I find the gift certificate that I have, I'm going to order and read it!
As soon as you mentioned husbands slamming dishes around ~ my mind was FLOODED with memories of my ex-husband "helping" with the dishes ~ ugh!!! I might have to write about that now and include it in our "NLQ Snapshots" section.
Anyway ~ thanks so much for your posts ~ I really am grateful that you're here ;-)
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
aimai said...
I, too, really enjoy Charis's posts and her insights. Vyckie, I think a lot of books that regular (non religious) moms have been reading over the years might be as valuable to you (and to Laura) as some of these interesting books on general relationships. I'd love to hear the other posters suggestions. It sounds to me like all those books about women and men "women who love too much" or "men are from mars, women are from venus" or the one that just came out (which makes hysterically funny reading and I highly recommend just skimming in a bookstore) "he's just not that into you" might all be good books to read to start thinking about the ways our lives in coupledom can be screwed up by either men pursuing their own urge to dominate or by women pursuing a need to be needed and loved and cared for beyond what that particular man can manage.
But what I was really wanting to recommend was a book that I think you and your children, and Laura and her children, might find helpful. It has been out twenty five years and I found that late edition really helpful because it has so much good reader response at the back. It is "How to talk so kids will listen/how to listen so kids will talk." I bought it when my kids were pre-verbal and then dropped it for years, and then re-read it a few years ago and I found the model for communicating was very powerful. And I also found some of the descriptions of family dynamics really revealing for understanding my husband's family. Particular the chapters on parent/child interactions where the child's viewpoint is routinely suppressed. I was reading along looking for tips for my own relationship with my children and stumbled across a pathology that is typical of my husband's family but not mine. I'd been sitting through what I thought of as bizarre parent/child interactions that always ended with my (adult) sisters in law in tears for several years without realizing how common certain parent/child interactions really are.
At any rate, I think you and Laura both might really enjoy the very sympathetic and thought provoking writing of that book and it might be helpful going forward in dealing with adolescent issues and also looking back to see how your husbands treated you in conversation and negotiation.
Here's a link to the amazon blurb:
www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen/dp/0380811960/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238606140&sr=1-1aimai
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...
I agree with EK again. These stories just make me want to slap your husbands-- and their spiritual leaders-- silly.
How could they demean another human being (let alone someone they were supposed to love) to the point where she doesn't even believe she can function as a normal adult? Grrrrr.
KR Wordgazer
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
LotusGeek said...
OK, I have a question for the QFers (both prior and current) specifically, and xians in general...
As I have read all of the posts on the site, I repeatedly see a great deal of the justification for the QF lifestyle and behavior being pulled from the
OLD TESTAMENT. If I remember correctly from my xian days, the Old Testament is simply a "historical reference" of sorts for the xian faith; it is NOT supposed to be the "law"! That's why god created the
NEW Testament - as a new statement of how xians should conduct themselves moving forward from Jesus on. That's why you went from "If thine eye offend thee..." to "...turn the other cheek.", and so on.
Sorry, but it pisses me off when people take advantage of others by bending some arcane text to suit their needs and play on their superstitions. Hell, even I can appreciate much of what Jesus taught, but I see so, so few so-called xians living -
truly living - to those ideals (love, charity, forgiveness, modesty, understanding, etc.)
How is this explained and reconciled?
--Rock, aka LotusGeek
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...
Tat!Anon back again.
I never had anything like this degree of emotional abuse, but I was emotionally abused growing up by boys I thought were "better" than me. Authority backed them up.
It took me years to realize how badly *they* had been abused in being allowed to think treating another human being like that was normal and healthy. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of them were still abusers because that was what they had learned from each other--just to other targets.
The thing is, your husbands, who thought they had all that power--who you thought had power and gave power to--really have nothing. Nothing at all. They didn't prepare their children well, they didn't make good partners, and while they thought they were doing what they should and what they were told was right, they were doing harm and wasting years.
None of which is ever going to lead me to say "go back and save them." It's not the duty of the victim to save the abuser, and nobody will change unless they realize they need to. You did wonderfully in getting out. Keep going!
But the patriarchy and the religion supported their warping, prevented them from growing, and made them think the harm they were doing was normal and, this is the worst, GOOD. I'm not completely unsympathetic to them, much as they'd never appreciate it.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Kaderin said...
You know, I recently saw a headline that said "Poll shows Christians are more likely to be superstitious" and my reaction was "...duh?"
Religion is basically one huge superstition, cemented with community and authority.
I am so sorry to read how being trapped in this dogmatic framework eroded your faith in yourselves and with it your abilities and even your mind. At the same time, I am filled with a sense of wonder that you managed to break through this vicious cicle of self-fulfilling prophecy after being immersed in the poinonous ideology for so long.
Aimai
Not to hijack the comment section or anything, but I just couldn't let your recommendation of "men are from mars, women are from venus" stand - the book is loaded with sexism, gender roles and male entitlement. Not something to read if one is trying to escape patriarchy.
There's a really good commentary site for the book. Anyone who's planning to read it or has read it should definitly take a look, if only to get a different point of view.
Rebuttal from Uranus
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
aimai said...
Kaderin,
You are so right! I had a brain blip. I meant to recommend Tanner's "You Just Don't Understand" which is also problematic on the gender sterotyping but is still quite intersting and a more respectable academic approach (though she had to gut it for a popular audience) to speech differences in this culture. I beg everyone's pardon for referencing the wrong--oh so wrong, as Kaderin points out!--book.
aimai
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
aimai said...
And in response to Rock, c'mon, you know, or ought to know, that its all "new testament for me and old testament for thee" out there. Or, to paraphrase a joke I saw on Yes, Prime Minister, "saved is an irregular verb"
I am saved
You may be saved
He is going to hell.
There can always be a prooftext found for any conclusion the individual wants to make. The question for the various sects and sub sects is "who shall rule? over the texts" (this of course is a paraphrase of Humpty Dumpty).
aimai
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
adventuresinmercy said...
"Sorry, but it pisses me off when people take advantage of others by bending some arcane text to suit their needs and play on their superstitions. Hell, even I can appreciate much of what Jesus taught, but I see so, so few so-called xians living -
truly living - to those ideals (love, charity, forgiveness, modesty, understanding, etc.)" --Rock/LotusGeek
YES.
This is what happened to me about 4 years ago now, the beginning of what ended up being a full deconstruction of the *kind* of Christianity I'd been taught and embraced, and a rebuilding of a Christianity that was actually based on (heh, strangest thing) CHRIST.
What was fascinating, especially looking back (at the time it was flat-out fear inducing, as if I didn't have enough fears of my own already) was the reaction from those in the first camp and my husband. It made a difficult thing even worse.
I cannot believe what emphasis I (and those who taught me) put on superflous outward things and how LITTLE emphasis was put on the actual meat of what Christ taught: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, humbleness...
Instead, it was refashioned, all twisted up and ruined into things like, "As a woman, your *role* is to be patient and kind toward your husband, putting up with pretty much any and everything he will do to you without losing your God-honoring smile..."
I would later wonder how it was I could read the Bible and miss what was so glaringly obvious. Sheesh, the whole point of Christ coming was because performance-based relationships DID NOT and WOULD NOT work. Yet there I was, a busy little bee, performing, performing, performing (and teaching others to do the same) all in His name.
It is really stupifying, looking backward, that I could have fallen into such an obvious trap...but, boy, when in the middle of it, it's so foggy there that it's really impossible to have any sort of clarity at all. You're just glad when you can see your hand in front of your face.
...
Btw, I like what Charis has to say, too.
She has been so helpful to me...and her book recommendations ROCK (I speak with experience-ha). It's nice to have a fellow sister on this often-lonely path. I think that is why I am also addicted to this blog now. You all also "get it." It's nice to not be alone. Thanks for being such sweet company.
Warmly,
Molly
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Arietty said...
The dynamic in my marriage was this: you never asked for anything directly because the answer was always "No". In my husband's mind if I or the children asked for something and he said yes then he would have lost and we would have won. Every single exchange was a power struggle to him in which he must come out on top. When the kids were teenagers post-divorce he would never answer a direct question but put them off by telling them he would get back to them. This is for the simplest, most obvious things. Then he would call them and tell them his answer. That way HE was telling YOU what was happening, so he had won. If he had actually answered a question then he would be giving you what you had demanded so he would have lost.
This dynamic existed in all his relationships. I wish I had a recording of our property settlement in court because this is how behaved to the judge, taking it to heights of ridiculousness. He came across as raving, controlling and incredibly petty.
I don't blame it on patriarchy because he was like that long before any church entered his life. Patriarchy just anointed his actions and could now call them headship. Mentally for all of us it was incredibly exhausting.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Jadehawk said...
LotusGeek, the reason they use OT so much is because a lot of fundies have an all-or-nothing stance on the bible. keep in mind that a subset of that group thinks the KJV is the only divinely inspired version of the bible! basically, the thinking goes: if it's in the bible, it's relevant, or else god wouldn't have put it there in the first place.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Anonymous said...
Tat!Anon again!
Arietty: in that case, I will bother neither with sympathy nor pity and go straight to disdain for him. XD
The people I was raised with were at least raised in that mindset, so I have to think of them as just as affected as I was.
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Charis said...
Speaking of books, I have not read the whole book, but a trusted online friend recommends this one. If one translates the technical jargon in this description of abuse into biblical language, it sounds very much like a real life description of “your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you” Genesis 3:16
As a fundamentalist Christian woman in recovery from a fatal marriage killing MIS-understanding of biblical submission, I identify very much with the lifestyle described here:
Coercive control: the entrapment of women in personal life by Evan Stark
Thursday, April 02, 2009
W. Lotus said...
Have either of you read "Dance of the Dissident Daughter" by Sue Monk Kidd? That book is a memoir of her growth out of the Southern Baptist tradition and into a spirituality that embraces the divine feminine. It was a path she started on when she finally got fed up of patriarchy. That book gave me the courage to finally start asking the questions I had suppressed my entire life about patriarchy and misogyny in Christiandom!
Friday, April 03, 2009
Laura said...
Dear LotusGeek,
First off, thank you so much for your posts here. It's nice to hear from a supportive man. Second, yes, Vyckie and I are in process of reading "The Dance of the Dissident Daughter" and it has been very interesting for us. I had heard of Sue Monk Kidd in the world of Christian writing but was unaware of her"awakening". Thanks for reading here and posting your thoughts. It's appreciated.
Friday, April 03, 2009