Posts by avishai

62

Abusive Women and manipulation

by Lady Lee in

the other day we were talking about abusive mothers (toxic relationships).

i was sent this link today and think it is worth sharing.

i think it is an excellent article.

avishai

BOTR, I dig your posts and all, but what does that have to do with abusive women? If there was a post about abusive men and I came on and posted how great it was to be a shriner, or hanging @ a Mens drum circle...

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My article on Russia's ban of JW's

by honorsthesis in

i am a columinst for cornell university's "the diplomacist".

i recently wrote an article on the various troubles jehovah's witnesses are facing in russia.

i try to make the point that, even if you do not support the witnesses (and most don't) you should support freedom of thought, expression and religion.. if you are interested in checking it out, here it is: "snuffing out religious freedom in russia".

avishai

Great stuff, BOTR

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Does Alcoholics Anonymous provide help and hope to addicts? Great video!!!

by whereami in

jw
friends

does alcoholics anonymous provide help and hope to addicts, or is the constant reliance on a higher power, a crutch to keep the addicted from finding true solutions.

ellenbeth candidly shares her story.. .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fv24kui7ozg.

avishai

There are other options. The Sinclair method (medical) SMART recovery..lots of options

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Do You Have a Favorite Christian Band?

by brotherdan in

i've only recently (within the last year) started listening to christian music.

some of it is pretty cheesey, but i'm getting into a lot of it.

right now i really like brandon heath and casting crowns.

avishai

An old xtian industrial band, brainchild, and a Danzig soundalike named Randy Rose

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Abusive Women and manipulation

by Lady Lee in

the other day we were talking about abusive mothers (toxic relationships).

i was sent this link today and think it is worth sharing.

i think it is an excellent article.

avishai

Wow, first off, Lee I think her points do go to this topic, in that her posts are a classicexample of what lets this be hidden so often by society, and often even from the people experiencing the abuse @ the hands of women. So I'd like to address her points and tie it all in.

And (two), that the form of abuse tends to match the form of limited power/powerlessness that the person/abuser is experiencing... An abusive male is probably going to tend towards more overt forms of intimidation - shouting, violence, threats - than an abusive female, because of the very perceptions or social restrictions that many have pointed out - that females are supposedly more 'nuturing', 'non-violent', and so on...

Nope. I've been hit, bitten, slapped, kicked, pinched etc. by far more women than I have by men, and I was a bouncer for years. And when confronted about their violence, 99% of the time, their response wasn't, "Oh, I'm so sorry." it was "what are you, a pussy? You're a man, you can take it" or some variant thereof, whether it was someone at a club or a loved one. On this site, that myth is perpetuated http://www.allaboutcounseling.com/domestic_violence.htm#whomost Here's a paragraph

Overwhelmingly, it's heterosexual men in relationships. However, if we refer just to the act of hitting or physically hurting another person, research statistics from the 1980's and early 1990's shows women are as likely or more likely than men to hit or physically harm a partner. But what is not well explained is many of these women who strike out are responding to a violent situation which has already been created by the male in the relationship.

We must also understand on average men are much larger and better trained to physically defend themselves than women are; and therefore do not have the same reaction to violence directed at them. This is a very important part of battering, which for a lot of men is hard to understand. It is certainly just as wrong for a woman to hit a man as for a man to hit a woman. It's simply wrong, and no one should have to tolerate being hit by another person.

However, in comparison, a man's reaction to a woman's violence is usually far less emotionally traumatic than a woman's reaction to a man's violent acts. The emotional reaction for men being hit by a woman is usually annoyance, anger and self-righteousness. The male might think, "She's got a lot of nerve, who does she think she is laying her hands on me".

That is an incorrect assumption. It's not "annoyance" Or "self righteousness". It's fear. And it sucks. And your always on your toes, and can't react, other than leave. It's even worse when you are disabled, or otherwise incapacitated (my ex who weighed the same as I used to have her fun pushing me around and screwing with me when I was having seizures, or was too weak after having them to even move) it's terrifying. When your a child, and a woman is beating the shit out of you, it's not annoyance, or self righteousness, it's fear.

You bring up the 40's and 50's. Let's go there for a sec. Remember when a woman was hysterical or talked back, a guy would slap her into line? And it was shown as being OK? When was the last time you saw that portrayed as being acceptable? And yet on any given day, you can turn on the TV and see a woman slap a man for saying something she doesn't like, and it's portrayed as totally OK. We can "handle it" and we "have it coming."

So, her response was to IMITATE MALE BEHAVIOR... Consider the intrinsic abuse of the situation, and how it later influenced the feminist movement. She - and many, many others like her - were subjected to a prejudice so base that it prevented them from enhancing their very EXISTENCE... Their FEMALE-NESS if you will, only to be considered [as George Carlin put it...] "kinda sorta equal, but not so's you'd really notice". According to that version of feminism, they had to CEASE BEING ESSENTIALLY, INTRINSICALLY FEMALE, and instead turn themselves into IMITATION MALES, on so many different levels...

On one hand, I totally agree with you, in that the feminist movement sold women a bill of goods to be "imitation males" rather than embracing their power as women and the unique abilities that come with being a woman. Refreshing to see it.

However, to attribute the abusive behavior to them imitating men to me reminds me of a vegan who called the Michael Medved (himself a vegan) show and said "The reason that carnivores eat other animals is because MAN taught them too!" The host laughed so hard he had to go to a commercial. Women have had (and used) the capability for violence and abuse for millenia, it sure as hell didn't start 50 years ago.

Nor do emotionally stable men. We're not talking about either. Yes, people who have been abused are more likely to abuse. Thank you captain obvious. And it's still no justification.

That's what we - my generation of the '60's and your generation of the 80's - 90's - did and do...

But it's not what the earlier generations did... That wasn't their mentality, AT ALL... Wasn't even "on their radar", so to speak...

Even in the 60's, girls were still being told that they COULDN'T be geologists, park rangers, and so on - because I wanted to be a geologist or a park ranger, and was told BY MY TEACHERS that women geologists were relegated to the classroom, and by the guest speaker - a park ranger [male] - that "females" couldn't withstand the stresses required of "real" park rangers...

I'm a child of the 1970's. I'm 41. And I do remember the institutionalized patriarchal attitudes, I remember the news stories about the "first female firefighter in the station" etc. But we also sell our grandmothers and great-grandmothers very short. To hear it from modern Women, you'd think they were stupid, simpering, uneducated baby machines totally dependent on male support and opinion. I knew three of my great grandmothers. All of them from very different backgrounds, and all three more skilled than almost any woman, or man that I know today. All three could raise babies, cook, hunt, shoot, sew, swing a hammer (two of them built houses with little help from their husbands) play instruments, two were published authors, one an acomplished painter. ALL of them were adults before they even had the right to vote. Amazing, wonderful people, and in spite of a society that marginalized them.

You might want to study female history - no, better yet, get your hands on some ["Ladies Home Journal" - and others aimed specifically at women...] magazines from your mother's generation - and if you REALLY want to have your eyes opened, get your hands on some magazines from your grandmother's generation - which would be, I would guess, around the 1930's - 1940's...

Read them, all of the articles, and then come back to the discussion...

All sarcasm and snark aside, your attempt at condescension is wildly off base and unwarranted, and ironic. I collect old books and magazines, have numerous old ones such as Harpers weekly (big fan of Charles Dana Gibson) and yes, Ladies home journals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Also own ( and yes, have read) tons of womens magazines from the 50's-60's. I still use recipes from them.

All of this aside, it doesn't change the fact that there are and were abusive women, who's abusive behavior has nothing to do with "patriarchy". It's moral equivocation of the worst kind, in my mind nearly as bad as men who hit women because she "drove him to it." Abusive behavior is a choice, and a shitty one. Copping out by pointing the finger elsewhere is lazy and counterproductive.

But back to abusive women - their emotional fragility, since you brought it up, would be the quintessential reason for their bizarre, violent, out-of-control behavior... Emotionally stable women generally do NOT 'act out' violently. Another point - I didn't make it in the above post, but I meant to - many studies have shown that physically abused women - battered women - are MUCH MORE LIKELY to batter their own children. I don't recall what studies have been done, showing how psychologically abused women act toward and treat their children, but I suspect that many of the same behaviors might arise...

21

Local Elder advises Young woman to make up with abusive husband

by troubled mind in

jw
friends

just never ceases to amaze me how things in the organization stay the same .

you would think by 2011 these guys could come up with something better than " makeup now ,you know jehovah hates a divorcing !

" ( but obviously he doesn't mind a woman being abused !

avishai

I like my dads solution. When he was a young elder, giving the public talk @ an out of town cong., he saw a childhood friend who was battered and bruised. Between the talk and WT study, he took her husband outside and kicked his ass, told him he was taking the wife back to her family, and not to come to get her, or else.

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Abusive Women and manipulation

by Lady Lee in

the other day we were talking about abusive mothers (toxic relationships).

i was sent this link today and think it is worth sharing.

i think it is an excellent article.

avishai

Interesting responses, but I am dismayed at the antique attitude displayed by the article... It almost sounds as if we're back in the late 1940's to the 1950's, when women were supposedly "catty, vindictive, petty, manipulative, sneaky, cowardly"... And so on. You pick your insulting term indicating weakness and mental or emotional fragility and use it against women in general...

Really? Where? This was written by a WOMaN describing WOMEN who do these things. Who ARE these things, and abusive to boot. It's not talking about "emotionally fragile women", it's talking about abusive ones. To deny that women also have the ability to be assholes is really sexist, and deny's their humanity.

Is it any wonder that women under stresses will act out - often violently - towards their own offspring, under such unfavorable dynamics???

False dilemna. That's like saying "Is it any wonder the JW's are abusive to thier own members after being persecuted by so many govt.s?"

I was beaten and abused as a child, I was abused in many ways by the JW's. And went thru alot of other shit. Does that make it OK for me to pass it on? No. I worked @ a group home for emotionally disturbed kids, went to parenting classes, read books, etc. and chose to have a child @ 32 rather than younger, because I wanted to fix it, learn as much as i could not pass it on. That's what you do.

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