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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Jul 12, 2009 7:10:42 GMT -5
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Post by krwordgazer on Jul 12, 2009 19:48:50 GMT -5
Tapati, your blog post was fascinating. I was especially interested in this statement:
Anywhere you find a rigidly controlled social and religious system, you see women in modest dress behaving in a subservient manner and spending the bulk of their time rearing children with limited access to money of their own. You also fail to see women in roles of authority within the church or temple structure. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the real goal of any such organization is in fact the control of women in order to elevate the men to unparalleled authority and power.
I think you're right-- but I'd take it a step further. The main purpose of a rigidly controlled social and religious system is to elevate the leaders to the top of the heap and keep everyone below them in a strict hierarchy. The top leaders, then the lower leaders, then the committed men (in your case, the celibate ones), then the less committed men, then the women, then the children. The middle orders in the hierarchy can feel better about having the leaders over them, by having those under them that they, too, can control. In this way the subjugation of women helps keep the men from getting fed up with being controlled themselves-- which ultimately helps keep the leaders in power. Ultimately, the rank-and-file men are dupes too. It's really all about the power-hungry founders and their successors.
The group I was in was just like this, too. Everyone had their own place in the hierarchy-- and within the ranks, there was constant jockeying for a higher position-- the more "godly" men over the more "worldly" ones; the more submitted women over those who dared to assert themselves; the more outwardly obedient children over those who couldn't play the game.
Dreadful.
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Post by rosa on Jul 12, 2009 20:32:39 GMT -5
That was really interesting, Tapati, and the connections you make are important - I see too many people drifting from group to group, looking at the things that are different and not seeing the underlying sameness.
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Post by debrand on Jul 12, 2009 21:11:03 GMT -5
I think that there is a need in many humans to simply follow orders.
There was a study done in the sixties or fifties in which the subject thought that an unseen actor was receiving shocks every time an incorrect answer was given. The subject thought that the test was to determine if pain helped participants learn but the real subject of the test was to see if an authority figure could convince an unwilling person to hurt another innocent person.
The actor, I should say, was not really connected to an electric current, but they made sounds as if they were.
No matter how uncomfortable the real subject was with shocking the other person, most continued to follow orders.
Only about 1/3rd of people refused to obey.
Apparently there is something deep within our makeup that makes humans act like sheep. I don't know what the evolutionary advantage of such behavior is, but its a part of us that we need to be aware.
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Post by ambrosia on Jul 12, 2009 21:40:17 GMT -5
...There was a study done in the sixties or fifties in which the subject thought that an unseen actor was receiving shocks every time an incorrect answer was given. The subject thought that the test was to determine if pain helped participants learn but the real subject of the test was to see if an authority figure could convince an unwilling person to hurt another innocent person. The actor, I should say, was not really connected to an electric current, but they made sounds as if they were. No matter how uncomfortable the real subject was with shocking the other person, most continued to follow orders. The Milgram experiment ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment There's more online, but this is a reasonable overview.)
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Post by tapati on Jul 13, 2009 8:12:38 GMT -5
KRW:
And even the lowest on the totem pole get to feel superior to outsiders!
Plus nobody has to make tough decisions--that's what the people higher up do for them.
It's all very sad once you wake up and see how much time you wasted being a cog in the machine.
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Post by tapati on Jul 13, 2009 8:13:57 GMT -5
That was really interesting, Tapati, and the connections you make are important - I see too many people drifting from group to group, looking at the things that are different and not seeing the underlying sameness. Thank you! This first post was to lay the basic framework so I can then go on and talk about the personal experiences I had that I think will most resonate with QF women. I think they will be startled at the similarities. When we weren't wearing saris, we had "karmi" clothes that were modest and resemble some of the long dresses and skirts that various fundamentalist Christian groups wear.
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Post by tapati on Jul 13, 2009 8:16:28 GMT -5
debrand: Good observation, and thanks for bringing up that experiment! It was pretty chilling. It's clear that some people are wired to want to be leaders, and others are wired to follow. Perhaps in our hunter/gatherer past it was adaptive and made for less conflict within the group, which enhanced group survival. It makes less sense nowadays but we still have those tendencies. Ambrosia: thanks for finding that link.
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Post by tapati on Jul 13, 2009 8:23:33 GMT -5
There was also the Stanford Prison experiment: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experimentIf you expand what they learned about how people will fill the roles expected of them and act out the parts, even to becoming abusive as a prison guard or submissive as a prison inmate, you can see how abuses can occur in these religious groups with strict hierarchies. Quote: The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.[1]
Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,[2] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days.[3]
Ethical concerns surrounding the famous experiment often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former college friend. Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr wrote in 1981 that the Milgram experiment and the Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger which lurks in the darker side of human nature.[4]Perhaps this explains why even normal men can become abusive in a system where they are given absolute authority over the women and children in their household. It also explains how the gurukula teachers came to abuse their charges.
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Post by debrand on Jul 13, 2009 9:18:56 GMT -5
...There was a study done in the sixties or fifties in which the subject thought that an unseen actor was receiving shocks every time an incorrect answer was given. The subject thought that the test was to determine if pain helped participants learn but the real subject of the test was to see if an authority figure could convince an unwilling person to hurt another innocent person. The actor, I should say, was not really connected to an electric current, but they made sounds as if they were. No matter how uncomfortable the real subject was with shocking the other person, most continued to follow orders. The Milgram experiment ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment There's more online, but this is a reasonable overview.) Thank you! :)I was driving myself nuts trying to remember the name of this experiment so that I could provide a link.
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Post by rosa on Jul 13, 2009 9:39:17 GMT -5
It's not just how we're wired, though - you can teach leadership, you can heal the kind of trauma that makes people unable to stand up to abuse.
One of the interesting things is the ripple effect that one dissenter can have - when they seed a study group with just a few conscientious objectors, you get a much higher percentage of other people choosing not to follow along (or choosing to follow the objectors.) One interesting place this plays out is the military; there are far different rates of refusal to bomb civilian targets among American, Australian, and British air force pilots, for example.
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Post by mostcurious on Jul 13, 2009 13:26:36 GMT -5
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Post by luneargentee on Jul 13, 2009 16:51:18 GMT -5
There's a place in our brains that manages the "we/me" function. People who have an increased need for "we" are more likely to be religious and followers. I'm sure this goes back to tribal times when things would become difficult and people had to band together to survive. People who found it easier to join up with others were more likely to survive.
Does this mean we can blame the last ice age for our current morass of religion?
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Post by tapati on Jul 13, 2009 18:22:55 GMT -5
Another aspect of the whole thing is that leaving home early to join the temple allowed me to live in a healthier environment (until I got married anyway) than the one I had left behind. I exchanged total chaos for an ordered environment, which is what I needed at the time.
Now it would have been better if social services could have found a household for me rather than sending me to the county home, which was the only place they had for teens who either were acting out or were in unstable homes. It was like going to juvie but not having committed a crime. We were warehoused on wards with the indigent adults who could no longer care for themselves. (Some of them were nice, but the place and its long list of rules was not.)
I was not the only person who joined up to escape an environment that was even worse. (And to be sure, there were pleasant aspects of temple life, which we've discussed on my forum, GR.)
It certainly beat living on the streets.
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jlp
Junior Member
Posts: 54
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Post by jlp on Jul 17, 2009 18:51:35 GMT -5
It will be interesting to hear the next part of your story.
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Post by tapati on Jul 18, 2009 3:05:09 GMT -5
It will be interesting to hear the next part of your story. Thanks, I hope to have more of it quite soon.
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Post by janedoe on Apr 17, 2010 12:20:52 GMT -5
SISTER, WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE GIVING UP, WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE THE FIGHT IS NOT WORTH IT, WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE NO ONE UNDERSTANDS...
YOU ARE NOT ALONE, THE FIGHT IS NOT IN VAIN, NEVER, NEVER, GIVE UP...AND KNOW, KEEP IN YOUR HEART, ACROSS THE WORLD, BLOOD OF MANY SISTERS HAVE FOUGHT FOR YOU, HAVE BLED FOR YOU, HAVE DIED FOR YOU,
SO THAT WE, CAN ALL, ONE DAY BE FREE.
YOU FIGHT AS PART OF A COLLECTIVE, A WHOLE, AGAINST ALL KINDS OF MISOGYNIST TYRANNY...SISTERS OF A WHOLE, FROM THE BEGINNING OF TIME
THE FIGHT IS FAR FROM OVER, THE BATTLE WOUNDS AND SCARS OF MANY A WOUNDED SOLDIER IN THIS BATTLE NEED HEALING, NEED ENCOURAGEMENT, NEED TO BE LIFTED UP.
Can we do videos on this board? Sometimes I prefer to say it with a video rather than long discussions, or poetry. The War against Patriarchy--from the Anti-Patriarchy & Misogyny Front [regardless religion or secular] WARNING, SOME DEPICTIONS MAY TRIGGER...
WHERE ARE WOMEN AT TODAY IN 2010?
NO MATTER HOW DARK IT IS, NO MATTER HOW MUCH THEY TRY TO SILENCE US
THE SONG WILL GO ON
AND ONE DAY
SHE WILL RISE FROM THE ASHES, CHAINED NO MORE
SO SING, SING WE SHALL, THOUGH THEY PUT THE GAUNTLET AROUND OUR NECKS, THOUGH THEY BLIND OUR EYES, THOUGH THEY RIP OUR BODIES
TO OUR GRAVE
WE WILL NEVER
STOP DREAMING STOP SINGING STOP BELIEVING
NEVER
WILL WE BE SILENCED!
BECAUSE WE, ARE MORE THAN ONE,
WE ARE
HER.
note: the latter song is from the movie "Dancer in the Dark", by BJORK, SONG, NEW WORLD, if you have not seen it, it is a movie about a woman[whom Bjork plays, she did awesome job] who poor, immigrant, her son going blind, gets into legal trouble, is exploited, and is hung in prison. IT is a hard movie to watch--I chose this song because
it reminds me of the Thousands and I do mean Thousands of Women who have been Killed, for fighting for our Human Rights,
for All of Them, I dedicate this post,
you've NOT been forgotten Sister
and your Song, for Freedom, we carry on...the fight, was NOT
IN
VAIN.
Love, In Solidarity,
Jane
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