All the kings men and some of his women too

I was reading Mercy's story about how a leader who was at the top from the beginning (hence part of the subject ling in the post- "All the king's men") that there was something Shem did to her that was done to me by an OTHER of the king's men.
I was relentlessly humiliated by Cephas- he's still in the Family too last i heard-
Mercy mentions Shem told her that she was too short and had stumpy legs after hrs of breaking her down.

From Cephas, I was tall and being tall had big feet. Not for my size, but something to be self conscious about if someone were to knock it. AND HE DID. He was continually ridiculing me and putting me down, humiliating me and in front of others, too. Not only that, but Cephas beat his wife at the time, Shiloh. On more than one occasion I saw her with a black eye.

At another time he pinned me down when I was having problems submitting to my husbands sex drive in early pregnancy and was bleeding some. He pinned me down on a bed and french kissed me threatening to humiliate me in a bigger way if I didn't "get the victory". Then he broke down in tears praying for me saying I would be a sheep forever. That's pretty sick. That is the kind of person that hangs around Maria these days, or did for awhile.

Where I am going with this is realizing what the king's "men" had in common and what that was, = degrading and humiliating women after they were drawn into a "family" promoting Christian ideals and "love". This occurred even before FFing started, still Berg had written an early letter with his earliest membership about how to deal with women if they weren't submissive enough.

Looking at this, it is easy to realize if this happened to Mercy and it happened to me it must have happened to many other women as well. To be yelled out and have something, or many things about them criticised. The tearing down is similar to what run of the mill pimps do.

They tell a woman they love her and care for her and for the first time perhaps she feels like someone really loves her she is bathed in attention and showered with affection and then the rug is pulled out and she is humiliated, degraded, told she is nothing without the man, she is dirt, nothing, no good because the pimp has moved on to draw others in and needs her compliance and her production.

The reason for this is to hook the woman and then turn her out in some way, to use her for the gain of the man. It's a systematic process.

I was watching a moving today, "The Cooler" with William H. Macy and Alec Baldwin. Many of the Family leaders, men and some women had this same characteristic. In the movie, this woman who works in a casino is hired to keep Macy in line and falls in love with him. Baldwin is the "king's man" sort of guy, or the king in this case. Anyway, they wind up getting out of the business (Macy and the casino girl) and in one scene she looks at Macy and says something like:

'I always saw the world from the gutter until I got to know you and then I saw the world and all the possibilities when I realized how you really loved me'
That's far from quoting the movie, but it was something like that.

That is how I felt years and years during and until meeting someone who loved me unconditionally. In the family I was an object. From my family of origin I was too. But a person doesn't recognize bondage until they have found freedom.

"Sharing" isn't freedom and mixing couples and teaching children through role modeling that this is "God's way" or even that this sort of behavior is normal or good in a non-religious setting is very destructive. It causes the person to be de-personalized. But then that makes them easier to control. People who develop deeper relationships and independence and healthy relationships aren't so easy to control. So busting up families, or allowing other sexual partners in, in a controlled manner under a charter that controls how to do it, right down to ages and keeping it all in the family, and having older teen parties where people have to perform to certain standards to attain a 'controlled freedom' fosters dependence, lack of a positive self esteem without the group to identify with, etc. I don't want to make this too long. My main reason for posting this was to ask other women how they relate to having experiences like this of being blasted and degraded.

Another good movie about this topic is "Sonny" directed by Nicolas Cage. But don't watch it while you are depressed.