Diane Wilson~~~ex-JW

by purplesofa 27 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  The Dragon

  Can I tell you a question?.....Can you mislead people by asking questions
• 

  purplesofa

  I am simply using this topic as an example to try to figure out if her actions are right or wrong.

  Dear Dragon,

  I have a suggestion for you........Why don't you start a thread of your own about whether someone should write a book and get paid for it. You have taken this topic and made a pure mess of it.

  I dont think you care what she has to say at all. Or you would have read the site, gleaned something from it and made some sort of assumption from that.

  Also, I have found in my years of raising five kids ALONE, and living thru periods of which I only could feed them rice for three days straight, what my priorities are is where my money goes.

  Without ever reading this womans book you can break free from JW's.

  So as I asked earlier, please use your own thread to discuss what you are interested in.

  Otherwise I will stay appalled at your comments here.

  purps
• 

  Gregor

  Dragon. With all due respect I suggest you lie down in a dark, quiet room and put a cool, damp cloth over your face. Concentrate on regular breathing. Maybe listen to some soothing music. This is valuable advice but I am giving it to you as a gift.
• 

  The Dragon

  Perhaps you are right...perhaps I should have just started a topic on it...rather than mess this one up....my apologies Purp..

  can you forgive me and pretend it never happened?

  My intentions were good....but my ability to please and gain everyones approval is still lacking obviously.

  Please excuse me.....
• 

  Sasha

  I must read it. How long has it been out? Meaning, can I get it at the Library (I'm cheap)
• 

  purplesofa

  Prometheus Books January 2002 Hardcover, 327 pgs. Social Science/ Current Events AWAKENING OF A JEHOVAH'S WITNESS: Escape From the Watchtower Society
  Factual story of the author's 25 years in the Watchtower Society as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. You might find this interesting as well.

  Diane was the first researcher to document in detail the Watchtower Society’s vacillating, hurtful doctrine about rape: that rape is considered willful fornication if the victim does not scream during the attack. This documentation first appeared in an article she wrote for Free Minds Journal that was published in August of 1994. This article was expanded to become a chapter in Awakening of a Jehovah's Witness called "The Last Straw: Rape".

  purps
• 

  caligirl

  Sasha, you should be able to find it at the library. It came out in 2002.
• 

  Oroborus21

  My Review:
  
  Not fearing to tread where others have gone before, Diane Wilson unfolds a somewhat lively but slightly melodramatic recounting of her time spent in the Organization. The biographical passages provide an insightful but too broadly painted look at the culture within Jehovah's Witnesses. The exposé on JW theology is good in itself but it really just represents a regurgitation of findings and conclusions long ago reached by others and available in detail in other better documented and better argued materials. For those unwilling to do their own research, the book provides a handy one-stop compendium of the significant issues facing the Organization.
  
  The book is not so much an "awakening" to insight, much less an "escape" from anything, than an exercise in catharsis for Ms. Wilson. As such it contains all the entertainment and personality of warmed-over macaroni hot-dish. There is no doubt that Ms. Wilson is sincere in her concern to help others. But the knowledge that others have suffered much more than she or have much more interesting and revealing tales to tell, leads one to ask: "so what is so special in this case?" The answer is "nothing."
  
  The principle failing of the book is not its ordinariness or the ordinariness of Ms. Wilson's experience. No, rather it is that the feminine perspective, promising at times, is not adequately explored. Ms. Wilson had the opportunity to address a serious need, namely to write a book that explores what it is like to be a woman in today's Organization but she and her book totally fail in this regard.
  
  Thus we are left referring once again to Barbara Grizutti Harrison's Visions of Glory which is excellent but outdated.
  While that may be the most disappointing failure of Ms. Wilson's book, the most disturbing aspect appears to be that Ms. Wilson has only merely succeeded in substituting one Wise Man authority figure, her "therapist," for the one that she "escaped" the Watchtower Organization.
  
  Thus instead of "the Society says" it now seems to be "my therapist says" - and so the reader is left to wonder whether she has truly obtained any measure of self-actualization or "escape" from an external authority at all.
  Despite these serious failings, novices and active Jws alike that are beginning to explore behind the Watchtower Curtain will find the book a casual light read.