Talk about hijacking a thread! Sorry about this wasblind.
Ironically I have a thread specifically devoted to this very article that The Quiet One has such a beef about, but he/she neglected to raise any of these points on there.
Anyway (sigh) here goes...
But even with all of your caveats, you failed to explain a vital detail, which is.. the difference between the public and study editions of the WT, and who they are written for.
Precisely what difference does it make whether the article was published in the public or study magazine? My blog article was written with JWs in mind, not the public - so mentioning the difference between the public and study editions would have been completely irrelevant to the discussion. Oh hang on, here's the explanation as to why it's relevant...
If you are truly not trying to be misleading then you would explain, for the benefit of readers that aren't active jw's, that the Study edition is for baptised Jw's (or students who will be taught the Bible-based policies in the Bible Teach book) who know and choose to obey the Biblical command of Jesus to not divorce for anything except adultery and that THEY would ALREADY know the WT stance on marital seperation.. They would know that it is the persons choice, with no punishment, to leave or not to leave their partner; where abuse, endangerment or wilful nonsupport are involved.
The Quiet One - please remove your Watchtower blinkers and think about this logically just for a second. Who was I writing my article to? Jehovah's Witnesses. What were the websites called that carried this article? JWStruggle.com and JWSurvey.com - do you notice a common theme? Both of those sites are for JWs!! Why do I then need to give a "simpleton" explanation as to what JWs do know and don't know, when I'm writing to JWs who know all of this already?
Also, I go into a lengthy explanation of the rules on marriage and divorce, and how the seperation rules mean that a battered wife having undergone a seperation must live out her days as a spinster without being free to marry anyone else unless she chooses to leave the faith. Please can you actually read the article and take it all on board before issuing the critique?
You instead let some people believe that this experience was meant for people who didn't already know that domestic violence is not condoned by the WT. The ones who already know that it isn't condoned, the people who the article was intended for, do not need to be reminded with a footnote.
A footnote disclaiming domestic abuse as being unlawful under any circumstances was entirely warranted whether it was in the public edition or the study edition. Just because JWs are aware of the doctrine surrounding marriage and seperation, doesn't mean that they shouldn't be reminded that domestic abuse under any circumstances is wrong, and abused women should seek professional help.
as baptised jw's know that we do NOT condone domestic violence.
Again, you assume a lot about what baptised JWs do and don't know. As I write about at length in my article, the fact that JWs overtly denounce domestic abuse is drowned out by the repeated use of 'happily ever after' experiences in which a man beats his wife and makes a miraculous transformation into a loving husband with the onus being on the wife setting a good example. The experience highlighted in the February edition was the 19th such experience to be printed since 1958. Can you see a pattern emerging? Please read the article in its entirety.
and the command to not divorce for domestic violence (or any grounds other than adultery) comes from the Bible, even if you decide to rewrite Jesus's words... Therefore the 'approach', as in not divorcing for domestic violence (but seperation is allowed), is actually the Bible's approach, not the WT's.
As I said in my article, if you or your Watchtower leaders choose to believe that Jesus had a woman getting the shit kicked out of her on a daily basis in mind when he spoke those words, you and they are entirely entitled to your opinion. You can even accept that as being the intended meaning and live your own life accordingly. What ISN'T acceptable is to print an experience every 2 years or so depicting a woman getting the shit kicked out of her, and it being HER FAULT for not being a sufficiently christian and dutiful wife.
This opening statement is sensationalism to me, and immediately reveals your bias to a discerning reader, as you make it seem like it is the Societys approach for women to stay living with the offender, which combined with a picture of a distressed woman, is obviously going to engage emotions first, rather than clear and logical thinking right from the start..
That is precisely the Society's approach, and if you had ever served as an elder or suffered as a beaten wife you would be aware of this in no uncertain terms. Your naivety is staggering.
According to your logic, a hypothetical experience printed in the WT Study edition where: A jw woman was denied necessary money for food and clothing by her unbelieving husband on the day before she had her Bible study. Having been told about this, the sister studying with the woman encouraged her to pray to Jehovah about the matter and read her 'the long-suffering scripture' (or any other to do with enduring), and pointed out that her husband was not a Christian and so she could not expect him to apply him to 'provide for those who are his own'. She decided to stay with her husband and eventually he came into the Truth... would need a footnote stating that Jw's do not condone wilful nonsupport, or that she could have left him for wilful nonsupport (and that would involve assuming that he continued to deny her money, just as you assumed with the article that the physical abuse continued throughout all those years) ? No it wouldn't.. Because all Jw's would know this about wilful nonsupport, it's in the Bible Teach book (which every Jw has studied at least once)!... As is seperation for abuse.
The Quiet One - are you seriously suggesting, even for a moment, that a husband who beats his wife is no worse than one who doesn't provide her with food and clothing for the day??
Seeing as how you are claiming that this is how the WT applies this scripture, the ambiguity of your wording, 'remain with him', is misleading because it makes it sound as though it is the WT's stance that the wife must physically stay with him.
You keep focussing on the scriptural grounds for seperation, and yet you completely ignore the purpose of my article which is to highlight the Society's damaging trend of using quoted experiences to imply that abused women should remain with their husbands even in the face of abuse. This is what I was clearly referring to, and I make no apologies for that.
A jw woman/man CAN leave a partner who is beating them, endangering them or wilfully not providing for them, as any jw knows from the Bible Teach book. They would not even have a Judicial, let alone be disfellowshiped. The decision to stay/not stay with the abuser is theirs alone, it's not anyones right to tell them what they have to do in their situation.
Again, the naivety is staggering. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to take all this seriously. I'm afraid you just don't get it, do you? At no point in my article do I argue that a woman is banned from physically seperating from her husband. It is misleading for YOU to say that the decision as to whether women should remain in the relationship is "theirs alone". It's far more complicated than that. If a battered and abused wife takes her faith seriously and wants to maintain contact with any children from her relationship, she must live out her days as a spinster without experiencing an intimate or loving relationship with any other man FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE - for no other reason that that she commited the mortal sin of NOT knowing that her husband was a wife-basher BEFORE she married him. Now do you understand? Have you ever been in that scenario, giving you an insight to validate your arguments?
In fact, the Governing Body has used the pages of its literature to try and dissuade victims of domestic violence from availing themselves of, for example, the emergency services" -- Here you claim as a fact (that the GB has deliberately dissuaded victims from contacting the emergency services) something that you admitted earlier in your article was only (what you perceived as) an IMPLICATION in the 1979 Awake article. Is that honest?
If you dissuade someone from doing something through implication, you're still dissuading them.
OK The Quiet One, or should I say "Not so quiet one" (judging from how much you have written above) - hopefully that answers your questions for now. I apologise again to the Original Poster for the way in which this fine thread was hijacked.
I will now transfer all of the above to a new thread so that The Quiet One can continue his or her public vendetta against me without trampling on anyone else's blog.
Cedars