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Thread: Big Love 03.01.09

  1. #1
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    Default Big Love 03.01.09

    I was asked to C & P my post from Board Voldemort (The Board That Must Not Be Named) as I was told I had some extra spe-shul insights to offer regarding Big Love. I am a former mormon and watch this show with great interest. Any other exmos/postmos around here are, of course, welcome to join me. I'll start threads on Monday mornings for the latest episodes.

    First, a quick exmo vocab primer (I will use a lot of abbreviations and cutesy terms without thinking):
    exmormon, exmo = someone who has left the mormon church, but may still be very angry about it all
    postmormon, postmo = someone who has left the mormon church, but has gotten past the anger stage of cult recovery
    nevermo = someone who has never been a member of the mormon church
    TBM = True Believing Mormon, or True Blue Mormon
    TSCC = The So-Called Church

    Also, note that I refuse to capitalize "mormon" because I will not give the word enough honor or respect to consider it a proper noun. I'm an editor and am a bit prickly about things like that.

    So, without further ado, here's some of my posts from Board Voldemort about last week's Big Love.

    I was confused about Sarah, too.

    First, Barb makes the observation that "we don't get to have control over our own bodies." Then Bill offers the car and, although he says it could take her to ASU, he says it's never too late to change your mind or your direction (good advice, methinks). So I thought maybe it was a bribe/manipulation attempt to keep her in Utah. Now it looks like she will make the choice to stay in the polygamy life, and choose not to have control over her body. WTF? I think I've missed something or that we will learn more about what Sarah's thinking in the next couple episodes.

    One thing I can tell you is this: in mormon doctrine, there is only one sin considered worse than sex outside of marriage and that is murder. While not every mormon parent would react the same way mine would, I am really surprised that Sarah isn't in more trouble with Bill and Barb. A lot of mormon parents I know would still be railing, would make her go confess to the bishop, who would then impose some sort of sanctions or punishment until repentance was proven. I can tell you, if I'd miscarried at 17, before finishing high school or being married, I would still be grounded today and I'll be 40 this summer. It may seem like, to some of you, that Barb's reactions have been completely over the top, especially when she thought the BC pills were Sarah's. IME, that reaction is dead-on. As a mormon teenager, you can get past getting caught drinking a latte or something, but getting caught screwing? Like I said, the only thing worse would be if you were a serial killer. She's not in nearly enough trouble, so the car thing makes no sense to me.

    Regarding this:
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Board Voldemort poster
    I think they all need to sit down and have a frank conversation about "growing the family" and why it's not a good idea.
    I agree with you, but that shouldn't ever/probably won't happen. God's plan (to them, not to me) is to grow the family and make as many bodies for souls as possible. (They believe there are souls in heaven awaiting their earthly bodies and it is their personal responsibility to provide those bodies as the souls are anxious to do their time on the temporal earth.) This is any mormon woman's mission in life. That's what you're taught from about age 2 onward. Clearly, Nikki and Margene are miserable and this life is not working for them... but they don't have any choice. They gave up their choice when they agreed to be polygamous wives. (And Nikkie, moreso than Margene, knew she was consigned to being a brood mare until menopause. She understood what she was signing up for. Margene maybe not so much.) This is why Bill reacted so strongly when he found out about Nikki's birth control. Not making babies when you are able to is considered tantamount to slapping god in the face and telling him to f*** off. It's just not done. So having a nice sit-down to talk about putting the brakes on the indiscriminate breeding, or not having any more kids altogether... well, first that would be counter to the purpose of a polygamous marriage, but more importantly, that would be a firm rejection of god's plan and for the faithful... it's just not done. They'll blame themselves for being weak and sinners before they will decide that god's plan just isn't a great idea and maybe they should have their own plan.

    That's where that whole discussion came in with Margene's friend (the neighbor?) about how "we have to be perfect, don't we?" That is a classic mormon woman's dilemma and I'm very pleased with how accurate the writers seem to be showing this undercurrent that is very real in IRL mormonism (both mainstream and FLDS). That's one of the primary topics discussed on mormonism recovery boards: how the women are expected to have more children than they can handle and not really get to make many choices about the timing or number of children, or much of anything. Keep working, keep striving unto perfection, pray, pay, and obey.

    [/soapbox]

    Sorry. I get a little ranty. I'll close with a joke.

    Q. Why do mormon women stop having children at 35?

    A. Because 36 kids is just too many!

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Then someone asked why Kathy went after Selma Green instead of Hollis, so in response to that:

    My first guess is Kathy just panicked and went for the closest person. It's possible that she's been trained to see Roman as almost-god and therefore, again, you wouldn't stab god in the foot with a pitchfork.

    Well, I might, but a believing mormon/FLDS wouldn't.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Then someone asked me why I thought Wanda might relinquish First Wife Status, so I said...
    Bear with me [Board Voldemort Poster], I've had an epiphany! I went to Taco Bell for lunch, and as I was munching on my Mexican Pizza Minus Beef, I realized what I think this episode was all about and I'm delighted (again) that the writers and producers are shining a light on this. It's brilliant, from an exmo (exmormon) perspective. We deal with these issues on the back end (after people leave the church), often for years and years. It's very difficult to teach adult women how to stand up for themselves after they've spent a lifetime of being told to "keep sweet" and "submit" to male authority in their lives.

    This episode (and possibly the entire series, I'm not sure yet) was designed to show you how mormon women are not allowed to think for themselves and make their own choices for their lives.

    Before I illustrate that, I want to make something clear, if all y'all are not already aware: The peculiar stripe of mormonism that the Henricksons practice is not exactly 100% FLDS and it's not exactly 100% mainstream LDS either. I don't think it matters because the basic principles are the same (give or take minor details). Henceforth, I refer to "mormonism" in these threads as an umbrella term for all brands and stripes of the faith depicted in this series. But sometimes, Bill makes choices that make no sense against my mormon background and I think it's because he doesn't practice exactly that brand of mormonism.

    Okay, so let's take a look at each of the women in this episode and see how or if they were able to make choices for themselves. It seems clear to me that "Think for yourself; make your own choices" = there's a very high price to pay for that freedom.

    Let's start with:
    • Barb - Barb would like to be harder on Sarah, but Bill tells her he will handle it. She tries to tell Nikki to "just fix it" and emphasizes her frustration with her inability to control Nikki by banging on the shower door. (I just love Chloe Sevegny in that scene. She looked like she wanted to slam Barb's head right into that shower door.) Of all the women on Big Love, Barb seems to have quite a lot of personal power (moreso than a lot of others), mostly because she is First Wife. She still has to defer to Bill on most decisions. Bill is kind enough to hear her out and you see how the compound husbands "listen" to their wives. Those women's concerns aren't considered at all. Lois and Adaleen also seem to have some power and control over their decisions, but again, they pay a terrible price when they make their own choices and don't just toe the party line.

    • Nikki -- Nikki would like to choose when and if she's going to have more babies. When Barb, Bill, and Margene confronted her, she had an anxiety attack and melted down. This is probably what pushed her into that date with the hottie lawyer (whom I think she should totally boink). Later, though, when Margene surprised her at work and confronted her with her situation, Nikki then chose to quit her job because, clearly, the price for making her own decisions was too high so she had to bail. She still wants "off the schedule" though, and I suspect that Bill will tell her to stay on the schedule or get out of the family. I was taught, in every single year of Sunday School, that the one and only sole purpose of a woman is to be a mother. That is your job and that is god's plan and you shall not deviate from that proscribed path in life. (That's the same Sunday School class that I stalked out of in a huff after that lesson... which is why I'm not a mormon anymore. )

    • Margene -- This is pretty obvious. Girl is in way over her head. She would like to get a break from being brood mare once in a while. She's suffering from depression horribly. I think this is why Ana chose to leave the relationship: she wasn't able to submit her decision-making to Barb and Bill. Good on her, if you ask me. Even Pam, the neighbor with the Zoloft, she feels the pressure of trying to be perfect and sympathizes with Margene because she doesn't get to control her choices either, even as a mainstream LDS woman.

    • Sarah -- This was the interesting point, for me. Remember the conversation she had with Barb about halfway through the episode where Barb told her that women don't get to control the choices about their own bodies (Duh, why do you think everyone around you is melting down, Boss Lady?). Sarah says she thinks god punished her for having sex (read: for making her own decisions) so he took her baby. I think Sarah thinks that ASU is not part of god's plan and she wants to be "good" (read: obedient) and stay there in Utah. The price for choosing to control her own body (have a baby) was way too high for her (miscarriage). And absolutely, many mormon moms would tell her that she miscarried because she was not righteous enough and because god didn't want Sarah raising a baby when she's not worthy of that honor. Barb did not do that, to her credit.

    • Heather -- Heather has given up control of her own choices to Sarah, which was why she was so devastated when Sarah said she wasn't going to ASU. Heather has been paying her own price for taking control of her choices in terms of enduring enormous pressure from her parents to go to the Y (BYU to you and me). I don't think Heather really wanted to go to ASU in the first place. She's in love with Sarah and was going to go wherever Sarah goes. Bummer for Heather.

    • Wanda -- I think being in charge and making the decisions for both wives was overwhelming for Wanda. She knows she's barely capable of getting dressed in the morning and she has no clue how to lead. She doesn't want to. Ironically, she made the decision to relinquish First Wife status and like a good, obedient Second Wife, Kathy readily agreed to whatever Wanda wants. (That was a little funny to me.)

    • Kathy -- Obviously had no choice in to whom she would be married. She loved Joey and Wanda and she wanted to be with them, so god forbid the compound men allow a woman to choose what she wants. Purely as a malicious power play and for no other reason, they assigned her to Hollis Green. And I, too, would prefer self-strangulation by my own braid over marrying that creepy dude. Her death was merciful, IMHO.

    • Selma Green -- Now, you'd think a tranny in an όber-conservative polygamy compound would be nothing more than a seething, roiling mass of issues. And, clearly, she is. She's been allowed to cross-dress, but when push came to shove, the men in her life made the choice for her: you will wear a dress and you will act like a proper First Wife and you'll like it. Selma is probably just as relieved about Kathy's death as Kathy should be. (If she could be.)

    • Even Alby's Second Wife -- Did we get a name? She was the one who went begging to Alby to have children and the First Wife (also nameless) insisted that Alby doesn't want Second Wife. See, in a polygamy compound, the more babies you have, the more power you get to amass, the more choices you get to make for yourself and for others. She's on her knees, crying and begging to be slept with so she can have a baby but she is clearly not in control of that choice.

    Who have I missed and is she making her own choices for herself or is she being obedient?

    :: Thinks about Rhonda ::

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Then I was asked this, as well as "Why do you think Joey stays on the compound"


    Quote:
    Originally Posted by [Board Voldemort Poster]
    Do the Hennricksons even have a bishop? I thought the non-compound polygamists were sort of "rolling their own" version of Mormonism and there wasn't a central body governing them other than the LDS Bible and their interpretations of it.
    I don't recall them attending worship services but I could just be forgetting. I would like to see them at one, though.
    In the real world, a family like the Henricksons would be quietly and discreetly escorted out of a mainstream LDS ward house before they even managed to get to the chapel and sit down. No LDS bishop wants any association whatsoever with a polygamist family in any shape or form. Because Barb was born mainstream LDS, her family is known and believe me, there's a very tight mormon network/grapevine in that part of the world. There's no way they could sneak in unnoticed, nor would they be allowed to stay.

    So, the posters below you are correct: Bill sort of acts as his own bishop. I would like to see them run a little Sunday service in the backyard, just to compare it to how the mainstream LDS services are run/structured. If they ever do that, I'll be happy to provide commentary.

    Which brings me to a point that bugged me from way back in the first season. Remember when Bill baptized Teenie in the pool? And Margene got so caught up in the ritual that she jumped in the pool and demanded to be baptized too?

    That was a really weird scene for me. Because, IRL, in a mainstream mormon church, when you get baptized, what that means is you are washed clean of your sins and you are making a covenant to god to live by god's rules. When Bill baptised Marge (and Teenie), he said, "I hereby baptize you into this family in the name of the father...."

    So, what, was Teenie not considered part of the family until she turned 8? And Marge, also not part of the family until the swimming pool baptism? Does that mean that none of Nikki's or Margene's kids have been baptized yet? Nikki's oldest boy should be getting to the proper age (8 is the mormon "age of accountability") soon, if he's not already past it....

    I think that was a perfect example of the Henricksons' "home grown" mormonism.

    I have no idea why Joey stays. I'd guess it's because he doesn't really know anything else. Wasn't he booted off the compound with Bill when they were teenagers (Google "lost boys FLDS" for more on that horrorshow.)? It might be the only safe place for Wanda, who might get herself and Joey into loads of trouble of the mainstream USA law found out about some of Wanda's more psychotic stunts. Joey can keep her out of the way of the Law this way, and have plyg 'family' help keep an eye on her.

    Remember, Kathy was threatened to be sent to Mexico, so (according to Carolyn Jessop's book, Escape) often, as a power play or as punishment, the men in power will split up families and send part or all to British Columbia, Mexico, Idaho, Texas (ahem), to any number of different plyg compounds. Wanda's parents could have been sent away or Wanda was sent to Utah to get her away from some place else.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    And then finally, I said this:Watch the plyg clothes as well.

    Oh, did anyone notice what Nikki was wearing on her date? I have never, ever seen her in something that wasn't buttoned up to the neck and long-sleeved. Usually, she wears long skirts too, but I notice she's wearing loose, flowy pants that almost could be a long skirt if she's standing still. But on her date, she had *gasp* short sleeves and you could see her cleavage (read: dirty pillows /Carrie reference])! :: fans self :: The horror! The immodesty!

    Carolyn Jessop said in her book that (Escape) Warren Jeffs favored that weird swoopy, puffy hairstyle you saw on the news so much last year when that Texas compound was raided. In order to be "in favor" with him, his wives all adopted that hairstyle.

    Then, he began to issue more and more constraints in dress and hairstyle for the rest of the women in his compounds. Soon, and you saw the result of this, there was basically one accepted hairstyle. (Which simply illustrates my point about how the at least the FLDS are all about men controlling every little choice of women down to how to comb their hair.) Jessop also said that bright colors, especially red, were banned and so were certain dress patterns, as they were more flattering to the body. The dresses that the plyg women wear on Big Love look like more of the proscribed set of four dress patterns that the women could choose from. Notice how limited they are in style and color? There's no religious anything in any form of mormon doctrine in regard to clothing or hairstyles; this ain't the Amish or Mennonites. That is simply a function of cult control.

    Can you imagine escaping from a place like that and going to the mall for the first time and being confronted with dozens, if not hundreds, of choices in style and colors?

    \Big Love Commentary

    I think this board was created right around the time this thread died, because there's not a lot of discussion going on over there anymore. Please feel free to add your thoughts and I'll start a new thread on Monday. 'Kay?

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Friend Dogzilla

    I am glad you moved those posts. You have been a good source for info the rest of us Big Love junkies who have little or no insight into the church.

  7. #7
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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Lotta good stuff there,yeah. I'm glad we're getting these threads on this board.

    If mormons hate premarital sex so much, what's their take on female adultery? As noted, that was one FM top Nicki was wearing on her date.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Fascinating stuff. I somehow missed the thread over in ::mumblemumble:: so am glad to see it here. I've been wondering how mormons view this program and how accurate it might be. I picture mormon women sitting in dark closets all over Utah with tiny portable TV sets, getting their fix.
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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    One thing I'm really noticing about the show is that they're very carefully peeling back the happy shiny veneer of the Henrickson family and showing the essential misery and misogyny underlying the whole system. The denial of the women's right to control their own bodies is rather terrifying and the fact that it's so universal is scary--even Pam across the street is terrified she'll be tossed aside because she and her husband aren't fertile together and is willing to buy children if necessary. The mindless worship of fecundity is creepy and it's even worse that the women are the enforcers just as much (if not more so) as the men around them--it's freaking medieval!

    The parallel structures of Hollis Green's and Alby's personal lives is freakish as well--Selma is a chick who lives as and obviously thinks of herself as a man (and boy howdy do I suspect that welcoming a new wife is just the smallest of the marital duties she resists performing!) with her husband's connivance and Alby's gay as old Bob's hatband but his first wife is covering for him with the other wives so it's not so apparent that marital duties are not something he's real enamored of either. Finding out Selma's Roman's little sister makes it even more weird--does this stuff run in the family or what?

    This denial of the worth of women outside of their uteruses is the major reason I walked away from traditional Christian religion in the first place. Women are blamed for every bad thing, held responsible for the bad behavior of men and there's no female principle in the Judaeo-Christian tradition--it's all just one big sausage party up in there. I think it's pretty sly of the writers to have focused so heavily in the first two seasons on the compound women and how downtrodden they are while showing the Henrickson women as nominally self actuated with their own houses and cars and credit cards and more or less normal clothes, but as time goes on we're seeing that it's nothing more than window dressing, that underneath they're just insects caught in amber no different from their compound sisters.

    The doctrine that the mormons are supposed to keep squeezing out babies to be soul houses is squicky as hell--but it reminds me of a story I read quite a while ago in which overpopulation has continued unabated and babies start being born who are just... wrong... their parents know there's something amiss with them although they appear to be normal and healthy, then it's postulated that the number of living humans is greater than all humans who have ever lived and the well of souls is gone empty so what's being born are just the empty shells of people who will never gain a soul. Anyway, that creeped me right the fuck out and I'm getting the same heebie jeebies over the heedless pursuit of more-more-more babies in the Henrickson clan, brrr!
    "And I hope I don't get born again, 'cuz one time was enough!" -- Mark Sandman

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Quote Originally posted by Rube E. Tewesday
    Lotta good stuff there,yeah. I'm glad we're getting these threads on this board.

    If mormons hate premarital sex so much, what's their take on female adultery? As noted, that was one FM top Nicki was wearing on her date.
    Female adultery... This could be a long post.

    The youth group for girls is called Young Women's (YW). There's a lot more activities than just going to church every Sunday and maybe a Wednesday meeting. High school youth are expected to attend Seminary, which is not at all unlike Sunday school, only you have to go every day during the week. (They ratchet up the End Times predictions in Seminary. Sunday school is slightly mellower. In case there's nonmembers investigating the church in attendance.) In Utah, the students are excused for one period and they take Seminary as a high school class. (Don't remember if they get credit or not. I think they do.) Out of Utah, we had to go to Seminary at 5:00 a.m. M-F. The only thing that sucked more was the nonsense they filled your head with in those meetings. (There's dances, service projects, fundraisers, and a girls camp, boy scouts, and a Youth Conference, which is a weekend of indoctrination on some nearby college campus. The kids are as busy as the adults, constantly going, doing, being as mormon as possible. You heard all of this at all of these meetings.)

    What I learned in YW and in Seminary (I was told this over and over and over): Men are weak, helpless, pathetic little critters with no sense of self-control whatsoever. Therefore, it was my sworn duty as a girl to keep the boys in check. If a boy broke standards and fooled around (even French kissing was taboo -- a lot of mormon kids think that's what "oral sex" refers to. I am not making this up.), then it was always the girls' fault for being such a disgusting temptress. Girls who wore shorter skirts or sleeveless tops or, *gasp* god forbid, tank tops or spaghetti straps, were labeled "walking pornography." JCPenney catalogs -- the underwear section anyway -- were considered pron.

    Rape and abuse victims are blamed and told they are filthy, disgusting whores who are ruined forever and that no righteous man would ever want a girl who gave up her virtue so easily. Because even if she was raped, she probably asked for it and the men are not held responsible because she tempted them and it wasn't their fault. The mormon prophet in the 80s was a dude by the name of Spencer W. Kimball. His claim to fame (the quote he's famous for) was that parents should prefer that their children come home in a pine box rather than come home with their virtue no longer intact. In other words, if I were accosted in a back alley on my way home from buying Kool Aid, and a man holds a gun to my head and demands sex, I'm to go for the death option instead of giving up sex for self-preservation. If a girl is abused or raped in the mormon church, she'll wish she were dead if the rapist doesn't actually kill her. (And yes, there's just as much, if not more, familial abuse within the church as there is out of it. And yes, that puts girls who are being abused by family members in a terrible, terrible position. A) It's their responsibility not to tempt a man, any man, even their father, even if you're only 8 years old. B) If they don't die, then the rape/abuse is their own fault. C) If they are raped or abused, then they were unrighteous in some way and god saw that as a punishment, so they probably had it comin'. D) You don't rat out your father, who probably won't kill you when he's finished.)

    If a man cheats on his wife, generally she is held to blame because she didn't lose her baby weight fast enough, or she didn't "perform her wifely duties" (could mean anything from doing the dishes to providing sex to the hubby, as long as she doesn't enjoy it too much), or she wasn't obedient to her husband. Same goes if a man beats his wife: the church elders will find a way to twist the situation around and blame the woman for whatever is happening to her. She wasn't righteous enough, she didn't pray hard enough, she wasn't sincere when she prayed, she didn't pay tithing, she didn't obey the men, whatever she did, she wasn't good enough, so she had it comin'.

    So female adultery is unheard of. Sort of. Girls are told that only men have sex drives and we must resist at all times. Sex is for procreation, not recreation; therefore, women are not supposed to want sex, or enjoy it, unless they are making a baby right at that moment. Most mormon women are so repressed under the guilt and shame of Eve, that they wouldn't dream of cheating on their husbands. In fact, most mormon women are so exhausted from raising multiple babies, doing church work, and taking care of the house and husband... I would imagine that most don't have the energy to cheat.

    So Nicki is a very interesting case. I would suspect she'll be booted out of the family if she gets caught with hottie lawyer. Or if Marge discovers her tops have gone missing.

    And what SmartAleq said above about the misogyny in the church is pretty much dead on. Again, we work with postmo women at another board I'm on and that is the biggest issue for the women: learning how to expect to be treated with respect, how to stand up for themselves, and the most difficult thing, how to not take on responsibility for the actions of others or for situations completely out of their control. Some women never get there; others spend years trying to self-actualize. (I think it depends on what age you leave the church and how emotionally whole you were at that time.)

    Whatever is wrong with the world, blame Eve. It's all her fault. Her and her damn apple. Men bear no responsibility for anything except passing judgment.

    That was a little trauma-triggering, so I must go sit in a meadow full of daisies for a while and breathe deeply.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Quote Originally posted by Chefguy
    Fascinating stuff. I somehow missed the thread over in ::mumblemumble:: so am glad to see it here. I've been wondering how mormons view this program and how accurate it might be. I picture mormon women sitting in dark closets all over Utah with tiny portable TV sets, getting their fix.
    Most mormons probably don't have HBO or don't watch shows like Big Love because there's sex or cussing. If a show advises viewer discretion, it's not mormon-approved. Women appear with their shoulders showing, or wearing multiple earrings. Those who do have HBO and are watching the show, I think, do it with a sort of train-wreck fascination mindset and will perform all manner of mental gymnastics to avoid seeing the parallels between their own lives and the doctrine they're taught and what they see on Big Love. The mainstream LDS tries really hard to distance itself from polygamy in every way, so I'd hazard a guess that TBMs watching this show will laugh it off as fiction, in general.

    One of the writers on Big Love (Dustin Black http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0085257/, who just won an Oscar for Milk) is an exmormon. Based on the discussions I've had at postmo dot org, I'd say it's pretty damn accurate, regardless if you want to stick your head in the sand and pretend otherwise.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Man, that's some brutal shit there--I had no idea of the depths of misogyny inherent in the mormon church, they cover it up pretty well. Why in hell do these religions hate women so damned much, anyway? WTF do they gain by treating us this way, and why in hell do the women buy into this and become their own jailers? It's a level of self loathing that baffles me completely.
    "And I hope I don't get born again, 'cuz one time was enough!" -- Mark Sandman

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    I wish I knew the answers to that, SmartAleq.

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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Quote Originally posted by SmartAleq
    Man, that's some brutal shit there--I had no idea of the depths of misogyny inherent in the mormon church, they cover it up pretty well. Why in hell do these religions hate women so damned much, anyway? WTF do they gain by treating us this way, and why in hell do the women buy into this and become their own jailers? It's a level of self loathing that baffles me completely.
    Agreed. I had no idea of the breadth and depth of assholery practiced by this bunch. I have little regard for religions in general, but try not to get all worked up about them. But these folks deserve all the active criticism that can be mustered. And the right wants to put one of these pricks in the White House?
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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Quote Originally posted by Chefguy

    Agreed. I had no idea of the breadth and depth of assholery practiced by this bunch. I have little regard for religions in general, but try not to get all worked up about them. But these folks deserve all the active criticism that can be mustered. And the right wants to put one of these pricks in the White House?
    Hey! We can link to other boards here, right?

    There are several exmo/postmormon recovery boards where people are working these issues out. I have posted only a tiny smidgen of the information about the church that completely pisses me off. If y'all would like more information, look at some of those sites... the stories will curl your hair and will put mormonism right up there with Scientology for ya. Google for The Exmormon Foundation, or Recovery from Mormonism. This is one of my favorite sites: http://www.i4m.com/think/intro/

    Sorry, I haven't figured out yet how to embed links like we did on Board Voldemort. Anyone who knows... could you PM me with the proper coding protocol?

  16. #16
    Elephant
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    Feb 2009
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    PDXtc, d00dz!
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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    Thanks for the linky, Dogzilla, just what I needed--more ways to spend time on teh intarwebz!

    Coding the embedded URLs here requires the oldfashioned method, but it looks like this: {url=web address}text to show as the link{/url} with the curly brackets replaced.

    Maybe I need to start a whole thread about the oppression of women by Abrahamic religions because it's been a burr under my saddle ever since I was a kid and it's so damned unfair!
    "And I hope I don't get born again, 'cuz one time was enough!" -- Mark Sandman

  17. #17
    Member
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    Mar 2009
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    Tallahassee, FL
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    Default Re: Big Love 03.01.09

    I got into a debate once about women in the bible. My argument was, where are all the women? There's thousands of men, hundreds mentioned specifically by name, but I can count on maybe one hand the names of women in the bible. So I was pointed to a web site listing all the women in the bible. There were maybe 30. Roughly 5 of them are mentioned specifically by name and not one is a positive role model. They all serve as examples for how not to be: Eve is the root of all evil, Jezebel was a temptress and a whore, and Lot's wife, who doesn't even have a name, was turned into a pillar of salt for being disobedient.

    This has been one of the biggest points that has led me away from Christianity in general: I can't find any role models in the Bible that demonstrate to me how a woman should live. Ergo, I make up my own morals and rules to live by, which are basically based on the Wiccan Rede, which makes a lot more sense to me. Christians will know the Wiccan Rede by its Christian name, the Golden Rule.

    I think whoever wrote the bible must have really hated his mother.

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