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In Reply to: interesting post on Moving On posted by Raymond Shaw on September 08, 2004 at 01:46:38:
Sometimes it's not clear how much a person may have confounded their feelings, attitudes & perceptions about their parents and FGs they knew growing up with what the FGs who post on this website have to say.
I believe that many exer FGs who perpetrated abuse or tacitly cooperated with it don't come here very often or for very long. That's because we do get into some brutally honest, tough love discussions about taking responsibility for our shared history. Does Banshee's mother post here? If she did, she would be encouraged to grow to a place where she could give her daughter a clearer accounting of her conscience.
Of course, there are always a few of us on an early learning curve about the issues that divide FGs and SGs. Some people also are in the earliest phase of developing a social conscience about their former life in the Family. Yep, some of us are still fairly clueless. Getting a healthy perspective on our experience in The Family is the purpose of this website.
I agree that James Penn gave a very good example of what an apology should look like coming from someone with his level of culpability. He didn't just read the MLs--he edited and packaged them for widespread consumption. But his story is different than those of women who were coerced, raped, beaten, and terrorized by people wearing the deceptive velvet glove of God's "love".
I believe there are a certain number of FGs who read the MLs and didn't have a clue about what they implied for the welfare of their children. They didn't think, because they didn't know how to think or didn't have the opportunity. They were too shell-shocked & too scared.
In 1972 I was asked to read the Book of Ester as part of my babes' training. After reading the story, my teacher told me I should be prepared to be married off to a king if it would help save the people of God (the Family) from destruction. This is essentially the plot of Heaven's Girl in a nutshell. I thought to myself at the time: If that's what you believe, OK, but I'm not going to let anyone tell me who I should have sex with or marry.
I'd be willing to bet there are other FG women who got the same teaching as babes and never thought it might apply to them, that these naive ideas about self-sacrifice for the community might be twisted into a doctrine of sacred prostitution.
Maybe one difference between me and the FGs who stuck around is that they were more more trusting & naive than I was. Perhaps they didn't see the danger in letting an external authority make personal decisions for them because they were raised to be more submissive. I was raised to question authority and fight back. Bottom line: There are people in this world who are easier prey to the predators than others.
