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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 19:17:04 GMT -5
I understand it Sierra. And I think if you had been the one to reply to Charis about how some of statements trigger you because they appear to be expressing ownership over her daughter's bodies this would have been a very interesting discussion. Not the same at all as lecturing someone about their stupidity in believing anti-BC propaganda.
I reacted myself to some of the language because in my husband's fundy family talking about the unmarried ones being virgins is considered normal, wheras in my family of origin (not christian) this would have been a total boundary violator. I've sat there with my jaw dropped as my MIL prattles on about her daughter's virginity to me like this is a normal conversational point about a person.
The insidious assumption of ownership over children is not limited to fundies though. I have heard plenty of completely non-christian moms decry their children's choices because it isn't what THEY wanted for their adult children or grandchildren. Just look at weddings, I have known several women who years later still talk about their child's wedding as though it's a very deep grief to them, simply because it didn't happen the way they wanted--the kid got married in Vegas and didn't do the big family thing in one case. I think letting your child be a completely separate individual, separate not just from you but from the family's culture is something very difficult for some. But in fundy QF land the family culture is completely overwhelming, the stakes are your salvation and your family is sometimes not capable of accepting a child's choice to participate in the world (and by not comfortable I mean deeply uncomfortable if they've been shunning that very world for years.)
FWIW my daughter uses birth control pills and that's her decision, a decision I have nothing to do with. If she never has kids that's her decision too and I really don't think I'm invested in what her decisions have to do with me any more than I am with my neighbours. She does a lot of things differently than me and I am sometimes thrilled with that because I like to see her discovering who she is a young woman of her generation. At my age with my peers having adult children I come up against the ownership assumption on the part of mothers all the time and it makes me consciously wary of that way of thinking, in fact it's a pet rant of mine.
Most adult children chafe at these pressures, but QF/fundy children have had it far worse, they know what pressure really means.
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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 19:20:33 GMT -5
I would like a moratorium on the abortion topic.
Has ANY good ever come out of it on this forum?
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Post by Sierra on Feb 24, 2010 19:37:03 GMT -5
I understand it Sierra. And I think if you had been the one to reply to Charis about how some of statements trigger you because they appear to be expressing ownership over her daughter's bodies this would have been a very interesting discussion. Not the same at all as lecturing someone about their stupidity in believing anti-BC propaganda. Sorry that my post failed to meet your expectations. Nowhere did I call Charis 'stupid' for her beliefs. I was reluctant to make the points of my second post in the first one because they are intensely painful and personal. I'm not here to make a spectacle of my pain - if I can make a point without resorting to rehashing every horrid emotion I've endured in childhood, I will. Even if that means I'm 'lecturing' or appear condescending.
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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 19:42:28 GMT -5
I understand it Sierra. And I think if you had been the one to reply to Charis about how some of statements trigger you because they appear to be expressing ownership over her daughter's bodies this would have been a very interesting discussion. Not the same at all as lecturing someone about their stupidity in believing anti-BC propaganda. Sorry that my post failed to meet your expectations. Nowhere did I call Charis 'stupid' for her beliefs. I was reluctant to make the points of my second post in the first one because they are intensely painful and personal. I'm not here to make a spectacle of my pain - if I can make a point without resorting to rehashing every horrid emotion I've endured in childhood, I will. Even if that means I'm 'lecturing' or appear condescending. I wasn't talking about YOUR reply when I said that about someone lecturing her. I was saying YOUR reply was the one that would have brought about good discussion.
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Post by rosa on Feb 24, 2010 19:59:01 GMT -5
I would like a moratorium on the abortion topic. Has ANY good ever come out of it on this forum? I agree.
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Post by rosa on Feb 24, 2010 20:02:58 GMT -5
Also, I wish we could extend the benefit of the doubt not just to moms with kids leaving QF situations, but also to people who don't say where they're coming from. Not everyone is ready to talk about their families, or their hurts, or their own mistakes or their parents, or their siblings, or whatever their reason for having an interest is. Assuming that anyone who criticizes is just an outsider with no idea means people have to keep restating their bonafides the way Sierra just did.
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Post by Sierra on Feb 24, 2010 21:08:22 GMT -5
I wasn't talking about YOUR reply when I said that about someone lecturing her. I was saying YOUR reply was the one that would have brought about good discussion. Oh, I must have misunderstood your post. Sorry about that; I'm very tired. This is a good sign it's bedtime for me. I think we can still have a good discussion if anyone wants to get on board with analyzing the different experiences, processes and triggers of mothers and daughters. Perhaps on a new thread?
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Post by arietty on Feb 24, 2010 21:15:37 GMT -5
I wasn't talking about YOUR reply when I said that about someone lecturing her. I was saying YOUR reply was the one that would have brought about good discussion. Oh, I must have misunderstood your post. Sorry about that; I'm very tired. This is a good sign it's bedtime for me. I think we can still have a good discussion if anyone wants to get on board with analyzing the different experiences, processes and triggers of mothers and daughters. Perhaps on a new thread? Who will be brave enough to start it.. LOL I think it's a good discussion, we can look at the same experience (just name any one) from both sides of the coin. In another 10 years some sons might show up and have something to contribute.. (J/K!)
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Post by anatheist on Feb 24, 2010 22:22:46 GMT -5
I would like a moratorium on the abortion topic. Has ANY good ever come out of it on this forum? If you mean that everyone should refrain from turning it into a debate, I agree. If you mean that no one should talk about how abortion or attitudes toward abortion affected their life personally, then I don't agree. The story that Sierra shared helped me a lot. Thank you, Sierra. I really sympathize with this. Right up until my divorce, I was constantly planning what I could do to rid myself of an unwanted fetus (especially because my ex-husband threatened to sabotage my birth control pills). I knew that if I had a legal abortion and anyone found out about it, my parents and almost everyone in my life would consider me a murderer and I'd never get rid of the shame that they wanted to force upon me. It's interesting that starving was mentioned, because that was one of my thoughts too- that maybe I could starve myself (or become bulimic and get rid of any nutrients as fast as possible) and cause a miscarriage. Finally I decided that I would kill myself if I got pregnant by my abuser. And then I decided that I was going to kill myself because I didn't think I could stand a lifetime in the Fundamentalist gulag, and divorce wasn't an option. But when it came time to kill myself, between two things that I just couldn't do, it turned out that I preferred divorce to death. And I think that it's hard to really explain the total control that the lifestyle had over me without being able to explain that I was prepared to die to escape it rather than suffer the earthly consequences of defying it, which in my mind would have been being held up as the community murderer for the rest of my life.
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Post by cindy on Feb 24, 2010 22:49:36 GMT -5
In defense of oral contraceptives not being an across the board abortifacient.
Some pills, depending on the type, do not suppress ovulation very well. They then do a very poor job of preventing ovulation which then would be very much an ethical problem from a very conservative perspective.
Science accepts that the average woman who is sexually active and does not become pregnant over the course of a year actually has 4 to 5 conceptions without implantation. Conception is somewhat easy -- it is implantation of that ovum that is more difficult. I've been married for 20 years, and give or take, does that mean I've had over 50 abortions?
With the advances in ultrasound (US) that have come from the IVF industry (ethical issues with that not withstanding), we can determine from US of the ovary that only 0 to 2 ovulations occur per every five years on the medication. If that is the case, and you are taking this pill, you can actually argue that you have prevented more abortions than the sexually active, barren woman has had.
Woman on pill effectively suppressing ovulation: 0 - 2 "abortions" Barren and sexually active woman no pregnancy: 20-25 "abortions"
Abortion is the termination of pregnancy, not when conception fails to result in a pregnancy.
OC does diminish the richness of the endometrium of the womb over time, but it does not rule out the possibility of pregnancy. If you needed a rich and inviting endometrium to implant a fertilized ovum, there would never be such a thing as an ectopic pregnancy. There is no inviting endometrium or any endometrium in the fallopian tube where the majority of ectopics occur.
I like the analogy of unexpected guests showing up at your door. If you are not prepared to receive them with ready food and clean beds, do you necessarily turn them away? No. Well, a fertilized ovum releases local hormones and such that allow it to implant -- the zygote does that, not the endometrium, causing local changed that allow it to implant where it shouldn't. How much more likely that if "God wants to open the womb" of a woman on the pill that He will, regardless of what the woman does to prevent pregnancy, isn't sovereign God going to see that she gets pregnant when it implants in a diminished but present endometrium?
Certainly, if a person's conscience gives them pause, they shouldn't use OCs, but if you have concerns and ensure that you are on a variety of pill that suppresses ovulation, you can actually argue that you are doing the more humane thing in terms of conception without implantation.
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Post by cindy on Feb 24, 2010 22:54:00 GMT -5
Sorry!
I jumped down to post that last (certain type of) OC defense before I read the moratorium on the topic!
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aimai
Full Member
Posts: 172
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Post by aimai on Feb 25, 2010 10:39:31 GMT -5
On Mothers and Daughters,
I hope this thread doesn't die because it seems to me that a lot of really important issues have been raised about Mothers, Daughters, Daughters becoming (or failing to become) Mothers, and Mothers remembering what it was like to be daughters and single women. The tension expressed by Jemand vis a vis Charis was specifically the tension of a younger woman, Jemand, who does not (rightly, I'd say) want to see herself, or all women, defined primarily as reproducers, family members, mothers, docile daughters on their way to closing a family circle.
Right now it seems as if the board is still largely composed of adult women who are working through their own relationships to their mothers, motherhood, feminism, work outside the home, men, children--etc... The perspective of the daughter generation and, as someone said way upthread, the sons, is sorely lacking. I'd really welcome people taking a minute to post or comment on these issues speaking solely as daughters and I'd love to see some of us, who have committed to parenthood or gone in and out of a sometimes hostile work force, giving them the space to talk about their issues which are going to feel and look different because they are prospective rather than retrospective.
aimai
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Post by margybargy on Feb 25, 2010 11:45:23 GMT -5
Sorry! I jumped down to post that last (certain type of) OC defense before I read the moratorium on the topic! I thought your post was interesting and I thank you for it. I'm observing the moratorium now, too. ETA: Hope my 2nd post (#17) wasn't read as an attack. It may have been insensitive, but it was inspired by genuine curiosity.
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Post by km on Feb 25, 2010 11:55:14 GMT -5
Sierra's also been there done that...but not by choice at all. She was born into it. A lot of the conflict lately has been between kids of religious parents and moms who have been there. It's not just one side feeling attacked, judged, or pushed around. We're all evolving. Yes, this.
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Post by km on Feb 25, 2010 12:07:29 GMT -5
On Mothers and Daughters, I hope this thread doesn't die because it seems to me that a lot of really important issues have been raised about Mothers, Daughters, Daughters becoming (or failing to become) Mothers, and Mothers remembering what it was like to be daughters and single women. The tension expressed by Jemand vis a vis Charis was specifically the tension of a younger woman, Jemand, who does not (rightly, I'd say) want to see herself, or all women, defined primarily as reproducers, family members, mothers, docile daughters on their way to closing a family circle. Right now it seems as if the board is still largely composed of adult women who are working through their own relationships to their mothers, motherhood, feminism, work outside the home, men, children--etc... The perspective of the daughter generation and, as someone said way upthread, the sons, is sorely lacking. I'd really welcome people taking a minute to post or comment on these issues speaking solely as daughters and I'd love to see some of us, who have committed to parenthood or gone in and out of a sometimes hostile work force, giving them the space to talk about their issues which are going to feel and look different because they are prospective rather than retrospective. aimai I think this is accurate. I also think that the perspective of mothers tends to be privileged over that of daughters by the general, eh, commentariat. This may be a function of the fact that Vyckie is a mother, but I would really like to see more concern for people like Sierra, Jemand, atheistBB, and, yep, me, when we suggest that certain attitudes are triggering and painful for us. My experience of fundamentalism was first as a daughter, and while it never got as extreme for me as for some others here... I still find comments that express possessiveness over an adult child's body extremely painful.
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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Feb 25, 2010 12:09:45 GMT -5
On Mothers and Daughters,
I hope this thread doesn't die because it seems to me that a lot of really important issues have been raised about Mothers, Daughters, Daughters becoming (or failing to become) Mothers, and Mothers remembering what it was like to be daughters and single women. The tension expressed by Jemand vis a vis Charis was specifically the tension of a younger woman, Jemand, who does not (rightly, I'd say) want to see herself, or all women, defined primarily as reproducers, family members, mothers, docile daughters on their way to closing a family circle.
Right now it seems as if the board is still largely composed of adult women who are working through their own relationships to their mothers, motherhood, feminism, work outside the home, men, children--etc... The perspective of the daughter generation and, as someone said way upthread, the sons, is sorely lacking. I'd really welcome people taking a minute to post or comment on these issues speaking solely as daughters and I'd love to see some of us, who have committed to parenthood or gone in and out of a sometimes hostile work force, giving them the space to talk about their issues which are going to feel and look different because they are prospective rather than retrospective.
aimai aimai ~ I'm with you ~ I really did not mean to stiffle this conversation ~ only the part which seemed to be turning into yet another abortion/birth control debate as I could see where it was headed. My fears proved well-founded ~ this thread lead to this from Charis: The radical pro-abortion feminists who (oddly enough) seem to be the majority of Vyckie’s followers and supporters are intolerant of any expression of pro-life belief on the NLQ forum and set out to shoot the messenger. I know for a fact based on private messages I have received that QF women are driven away by the pro-abortion atmosphere.(Full post is here: hupotasso.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/radical-pro-abortion-feminism-and-hyper-submissive-quiver-full-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/ ) I don't even know where to begin to respond to this ... it's just sad and overwhelming. So now ~ how about that discussion about "Mothers, Daughters, Daughters becoming (or failing to become) Mothers, and Mothers remembering what it was like to be daughters and single women" which aimai suggested?
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Post by Sierra on Feb 25, 2010 12:48:35 GMT -5
On Mothers and Daughters, I hope this thread doesn't die because it seems to me that a lot of really important issues have been raised about Mothers, Daughters, Daughters becoming (or failing to become) Mothers, and Mothers remembering what it was like to be daughters and single women. The tension expressed by Jemand vis a vis Charis was specifically the tension of a younger woman, Jemand, who does not (rightly, I'd say) want to see herself, or all women, defined primarily as reproducers, family members, mothers, docile daughters on their way to closing a family circle. Right now it seems as if the board is still largely composed of adult women who are working through their own relationships to their mothers, motherhood, feminism, work outside the home, men, children--etc... The perspective of the daughter generation and, as someone said way upthread, the sons, is sorely lacking. I'd really welcome people taking a minute to post or comment on these issues speaking solely as daughters and I'd love to see some of us, who have committed to parenthood or gone in and out of a sometimes hostile work force, giving them the space to talk about their issues which are going to feel and look different because they are prospective rather than retrospective. aimai Thanks for this, aimai. I also want this discussion to happen - but I'm at something of a loss as to exactly what outcome I, for one, want to see. I don't have a lot of time to comment right now, but some preliminary thoughts on how I, as a daughter, perceived my life and motherhood: 1. I felt defensive of my mother when my father was abusive and she submitted to it. I felt that her insistence on 'submission' required someone else to step in and protect her. This actually caused me sometimes to think of myself in the capacity of 'son' - I insisted on doing things for her like driving or shoveling our impossibly long (600ft+) driveway by hand in the winter (coded as masculine duties in my church), to demonstrate that I was strong and I was going to take care of her. 2. I felt devalued when she said she wanted a quiver full of children (she never got it, but not for want of trying/praying/crying). I felt like a collectible who wasn't good enough to make her happy. 3. I felt trapped in a pointless existence when I was taught that my purpose was to raise children just like her purpose was to raise me. When did the cycle end? When did anybody get to just ... live? When they were born with dangly parts. 4. Because motherhood looked like a curse, I wanted nothing to do with any of it. I was an imaginative child: I made up stories for everything I played with - stuffed animals, toy cars, playmobil, what have you. Inevitably and instantly in these stories, when any of my characters had children, the mothers died and the story became all about the next generation. This is how I felt about life - which contributed to the sense that my life would be over by the time I was 20, because that's when I was expected to hand over my life to childbearing and stop living it.
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Post by Sierra on Feb 25, 2010 12:59:37 GMT -5
My fears proved well-founded ~ this thread lead to this from Charis: The radical pro-abortion feminists who (oddly enough) seem to be the majority of Vyckie’s followers and supporters are intolerant of any expression of pro-life belief on the NLQ forum and set out to shoot the messenger. I know for a fact based on private messages I have received that QF women are driven away by the pro-abortion atmosphere.(Full post is here: hupotasso.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/radical-pro-abortion-feminism-and-hyper-submissive-quiver-full-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/ ) I don't even know where to begin to respond to this ... it's just sad and overwhelming. I'm not surprised by this, but I hardly think it's fair or appropriate of charis to make highly inflammatory, possessive statements about 'grandchildren' being 'microaborted' and then whinge when someone who has been sold into reproductive slavery from childhood responds with resentment to it. I hardly see myself as 'radical' or 'pro-abortion,' nor do I think any of us have expressed the view that we want to evangelize for abortion. The fact that charis repeated her inflammatory remark tells me she has deliberately closed her ears to what was, for me, an extremely painful post to make about what exactly that sort of language means. That feels like malice. She has disrespected not just me, but the daughters of this community at large, and I frankly don't think she deserves a response. I was going to send this as a private message so as not to derail the discussion, but I am not going to hide my disgust at being labeled and discarded because I reacted to a volatile remark with a different perspective.
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Post by jemand on Feb 25, 2010 13:12:07 GMT -5
I also am not sure what I want out of this discussion, but one thing I am sure of, is that when a poster insists on possessive language for adult children, we at least do not dump on those posters who react to it in *the exact same way* we ALL would react to a male poster coming on here and starting to use possessive language to own all of his wife's decisions. About how they reflect on him. About how everything she does is all about him, etc.
Also, we are not the ones who are bringing up the "abortion" topic again. We are focusing exclusively on healthy boundaries between mother and daughter, and trying to drop that discussion. That was my intention all along-- I have finished the abortion discussion on this forum, but I DO believe that all posters should be expected to respect their daughters in their posting language. And I don't see how hijacking the discussion to be all about abortion and posting it on your own blog is really helpful to that larger idea of healthy boundaries within families at all.
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Post by rosa on Feb 25, 2010 13:18:39 GMT -5
Sierra, I think it probably would be helpful to a lot of moms and daughters here to have a conversation about the anger and pain of being in patriarchal families, partly just because it's always easier to talk to/about someone else than to your own kids or parents. But that doesn't mean it's your responsibility to contribute, if it hurts you. I know for me, my little brother and my mom had a lot of healthy, angry confrontations when he was a teenager. I never got to have them, because my dad was still at home when I was a teen (he left not quite a year before I did) and only he was ever allowed to be angry. The two of them are a lot closer than the two of us. So it has taken, literally, almost 2 decades for me and my mom to work through a lot of this stuff, and we STILL have conflicts when my experience of being her daughter conflicts with her need to see herself as a good mom. I know I bored you all with my stories of how I ruined Christmas this year - at base, that was conflict between her need to have us all be happy all the time and my need to be able to be honest about my feelings. It took me a lot of struggle to get to where I can be honest about negative feelings in the first place, so I'm pretty fierce about defending that.
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Post by anatheist on Feb 25, 2010 13:32:24 GMT -5
I've been having a written conversation with my father about how Fundamentalism hurt me growing up.
But my mother is still hiding her head in the sand. And I've decided that I'm ok with that. If she doesn't want to face it, I'm not going to be the one who forces a big ugly confrontation. But I'm not going to waste much sympathy on her either.
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Post by anatheist on Feb 25, 2010 13:38:22 GMT -5
omfg.
I just read Charis' blog post... and it is obvious to me that I need to take a break from here for a while because else I am going to react in a way that I will regret. Even though I could write a calm rebuttal, I think that it would not be in the spirit of what this place is for, but I don't have the self-control to be here and say nothing. So it would be better for me to go for a while. I will still check my inbox and email for news about constructive things that are being done here.
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Post by AustinAvery on Feb 25, 2010 14:19:08 GMT -5
Quick question atheistBB: what post?
I see a "musicmom." Is that Charis? And if so, to which post do you refer? The "omfg" has me intrigued, to say the least.
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Post by rosa on Feb 25, 2010 14:24:28 GMT -5
Charis has posted here in the past, she changed her name to Beloved Disciple sometime around the last time she posted on this thread.
Vyckie linked to aCharis/Beloved Disciple made on her own blog about NLQ, in I think the most recent comment Vyckie made on this post.
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Post by km on Feb 25, 2010 14:24:39 GMT -5
Quick question atheistBB: what post? I see a "musicmom." Is that Charis? And if so, to which post do you refer? The "omfg" has me intrigued, to say the least. The post that Vyckie linked in her comment above, on Charis's blog, wherein Charis decries the "radical feminist pro-abortion" make-up of this forum. Charis and musicmom are not the same person as far as I know.
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