Dating as a Fundie

Post Reply New Topic

Corporal punishment is not illegal in the US. It can't be severe enough to leave bruises or marks, but physical abuse is so often inflicted on places that are not seen. It's still legal in some states for schools to spank kids although, admittedly, this almost never happens anymore. Parents can still spank and smack kids. They can even use belts and rods if no apparent marks are left.

JFC. I didn't know that. It's unbelievable. It's what happened to me with cops. They wouldn't charge the f****r because I reported before my bruises appeared. When they did appear, I went back but enough time had elapsed they said it must have been from a different incident e.g., I was lying and faking it for some crazy reason.

Seriously, F them all.





I've listened to preachers
I've listened to fools
I've watched all the dropouts
Who make their own rules
One person conditioned to rule and control
The media sells it and you live the role
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words
Heirs of a cold war
That's what we've become
Inheriting troubles I'm mentally numb
Crazy, I just cannot bear
I'm living with something' that just isn't fair

Mental wounds not healing
Who and what's to blame?
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train
I'm going off the rails on a crazy train

It sort of sucks when your family is physically abusive, but they aren't really monsters. They were doing what they believed and were told was right. Well, my mom thought it was wrong to spank "in anger," but she did it all the time anyway. I'd get pissed off in church when they'd complain about the existence of CPS. Parents should be allowed to leave bruises and welts to their hearts content apparently.

Anyway, when I was upset, I felt like my feelings weren't valid because they loved me.

Those situations are so rough. It's one of the reasons why these crimes are so often unreported.

I think JWs also would never be able to grow beyond a certain point. The persecution complex relies on it too much. It would be hard to preserve that appearance if they get too big. Can you imagine if it the door-to-door work started to breakdown because too many families they encounter were already members?

That's hysterical to think about.

Their growth is very stagnant right now. Access to the internet for most people caused a rapid decline in their growth rate. Fewer born-ins are sticking with it, too.

They certainly have a strong persecution complex. Whenever real persecution does happen somewhere, they get all excited about it because they think the end is coming. That really did not help my anxiety as a kid. Sometimes they imagine persecution where there isn't any, like when someone is mildly rude to them when they are preaching. It's not nice to be rude to them, but people tend not to like being woken up on Saturday mornings.

There's no excuse to swear at them and throw books at them, as has happened to me on many occasions. It just confirms their beliefs in a weird way.

But they pulled down your pants until you were ten.
They broke wooden spoons on you.
How in the world is that OK?

It wasn't, but they didn't know any better.

At the time, they were taught not to like or believe in child psychologists.

That's the most frustrating thing about evil, it's mundane and normal.

Most evil isn't done by people we can easily dehumanize as monsters, most of it is done by regular, boring, everyday people.

We use categories/labels to classify people as good or bad and use that to avoid confronting that harmful and self-serving behaviour comes from all sorts of people, including people exactly like us. We don't want to have to identify with potentially being harmful to others, so we compartmentalize our way around that problem.

This ends up being a control mechanism these sorts of groups end up using to manipulate people too.

I know. I'm sorry. I hope I'm not triggering you. I'm just so triggered myself I don't get it. My kids went through hell and the courts allowed it. I went through hell. You went through hell. Who's looking out for children? Would teachers be allowed to do that to kids? These parents are acting as their teachers. Don't they have the same mandate?

I'm honestly doing deep breaths.

It clicked for me in high school that they were trolling to confirm the sinful world hated them and from that point on I went out of my way to be as kind as possible to them.

That said, they stopped showing up after catching me in the garage in an infamous Cradle of Filth shirt.

In places where people have access to the Internet, similar declines in growth -- or declines in overall membership -- seem to be occurring at an accelerating pace (imho).Asking for deeper explanations than what their literature provides seems to be perceived as an attack, as well.  I guess they expect the rest of The World to simply believe whatever they say.Last week, I was seated at the side of a local market, watching some JW cultists try to proselytize the locals, when a group of beggars made a beeline toward me.  I directed them toward the cultists.  There was arguing.  There was shouting.  I have not seen the cultists in or around the market ever since.  The beggars are still there, however.

I've never used any corporal punishment on my own kid. My parents have complained that since I didn't spank him I'm a "permissive parent."

Growing up, I was always told that I was bad and ended up believing it, but I still felt like I was mistreated. Many people continue the cycle and beat their own kids. I saw that in action some when I was a teenager.

I don't know if this helps, but the problem often isn't so much who is looking out as why are they so ineffective, why are institutional failures so common?

Funding, social norms, attempts to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children, etc all contribute but we need to care enough as a society to be willing to risk backlash from people who aren't monsters but defend the indefensible.

They will make reasonable cases and appeal to our sympathies and they will behave like martyrs when challenged and we'd need to ignore all of that. We'd also need to have the political capital to expend because it will almost certainly trigger backlash. Muh rights! I got beat and I turned out fine! Muh religious freedumbs! needs to just be ignored, but doing so will carry a cost for whatever bloc does it.

You aren't triggering me. I don't think I realized how f****d up it all was until I started thinking about it recently. It's certainly affected me in various ways and probably made me more susceptible to abuse as an adult. I have a really hard time standing up for myself when, as a young child, I was pretty assertive and strong-willed and was punished for it. That eventually broke down.

I feel that.

I don't feel that my parents' beliefs were behind it for the most part, but I was emotionally abused by my mother in my late teens for two or three years probably. Some of it was, because my mom felt that because I was leaving fundamentalism behind that I was going off the deep end and she treated me like the black sheep of the family.

And yet? I don't feel that my mom is a bad person. People aren't black and white.