I think for me, what made me jump immediately to the concept of *hate* was the use of strong language, strong emotion, in some earlier posts. So that was my own thing, my own misunderstanding to due to my own baggage.

Also, I think that my life is very different in some practical ways from possibly others on this list. I am a stay at home mom for the most part, I work independently in other people's home's, and I live in a rural area. I live a sheltered life. The worst acts against women that I hear about in my immediate circle is what goes on in the schools. Young teenage men who are disresectful and harmful in manys ways to young women. I mean of course I know that there is awful stuff going on everyday....but its not a part of my immediate life so I think for me it is abstract. Which is troubling to me and as I type here I am thinking of how I can change that.

I have 3 daughters who have been raised to be strong, independent, young women and they are. Even during a time in my life when that wasn't popular with the group I hung with. Thank you for your input which has me thinking a lot and mulling things over.

Annette

Annette, I was not only speaking about my own situation but the situation that all women (or maybe I should rather say the vast vast majority of women) are in. My situation is not unique nor is it anymore terrible or horrible or painful than any other woman's situation (as Heather has stated too). In fact, my situation here is one HELL of a lot better than what many many women are enduring throughout our country and the world.

It's the rule that men have over women that is the "situation" that is terrible and horrible and painful. Do you know of any women who are not in that "situation" in some form or another? If not, then we are all in it, lock... stock... and barrel.

I was taught years ago, to forgive my oppressors, just like you had mentioned in a previous post in this thread. That's what women are taught to do. How else would we survive the oppression if we weren't? How could we justify taking it or accepting it, if we weren't taught that forgiving it will give us peace and freedom?

I think forgiveness "seems far off for me" because I recognize the oppression of women by men as being unforgiveable. I don't think you see it in that same light and that is why you can forgive it.

I don't know of any men that I have ever met who don't oppress and use women. I've never honestly met one! I never recognized that I'd never met one until I learned to recognize the oppression. I believe that when women don't learn to recognize the oppression... or when they refuse to look at it when it occurs in their own lives... or when they forgive it away, in order to gain some false sense of happiness or peace or whatever, it helps to keep the oppression growing and thriving everywhere on earth.

I never used to think this but I do now. I'm still up to my eyebrows in oppression here and most women who do not recognize oppression, would not even see it in my life if they met me or knew me.

If a woman can look at a copy of Norman Rockwell's painting of Thanksgiving:

~with the men and children sitting around the beautifully decorated dining room table

~with the men dressed in beautifully clean and pressed clothing and the children dressed in darling outfits

~with the woman holding the big platter of perfectly cooked turkey and all the trimmings laid out lavishly on the table all around

~with the woman's hair perfect and her nails perfect and her apron perfect

... if a woman can look at a copy of that painting and not see oppression written all over it, then she does not recognize the terrible, horrible and painful "situation" that women are living in this patriarchial society of ours.

I'm still the LearningOne, believe me!

So how does one learn to recognize the oppression? How did you evolve to this place?

Annette

~It was Heart here and her evolvement that helped me and in turn helped so many other women to evolve and recognize the oppression. Without her being so candid and vocal about the happenings in her life, as well as others here, I would not have been able to recognize the place I am in and therefore, would have continued to be in misery without even knowing why (except that my misery was my fault, of course!). More importantly, it was Heart's determination to "keep with me" despite my misconceptions and downright rebellion to what she was doing and thinking and saying. The path with me was rough but she never walked away from me. I walked away from her many times but she never walked away from me. To me, that says a lot about her love of women and her willingness to help them evolve themselves, even for women who seem to be at their lowest point of seemingly impossible-evolvementism.

~It was my own unexplainable (at the time) sadness with my life that caused me to delve further into the why's of it all. I mean, I was SUPPOSED to be happy, right? Husband worked, I stayed home, decent house, enough food, homeschooled kids... husband didn't beat me (physically) and he went to work everyday and gave me free reign as to how to raise the kids and decorate the house and buy the Christmas presents and all of that. By all outward appearances, my situation was perfect... so why was I always so profoundly sad. Only later did I realize I was sad because I was truly not the owner of my own destiny. My husband allowed me to have the things that, in his judgement, were supposed to make me happy... I was not consulted in the deal. He "allowed me" to stay home, have a decent house, enough food, homeschool the kids, decorate the house, buy the Christmas gifts, etc. etc. etc. If he had just as easily decided that I needed to work outside the home, live in a rundown shack, never have enough food in the house, send the kids to the school of his choosing, decorate the house in whatever decorum he deemed as appropriate, and never buy one single Christmas present for the kids.... then that's what would have occurred instead of what actually did occur. It was his call and his decision only. Period. Patriarchy. Period. That was the reason for my sadness and that was my true "situation".... not the false existence that appeared to everyone else who was on the outside looking in.

~It was my puzzlement, as I lived my fundie life, as to why I was not happy when all the other "sisters" seemed to be happy. They spoke of their husbands being steeped in pornography, treating them like doormats, tell them when to jump and how high... yet these "sisters" wore their dresses and headcoverings and praised God everyday for their "happiness" in their situation because they forgave their husbands each and every day for the things their husbands did to them. I tried doing that and it didn't work and so I thought I was just not pious enough... not godly enough... not devoted enough... not reading scripture enough... not living out scripture enough... and that's the reason that the forgiveness I had for my husband, in my heart, was not offering me the peace and freedom and happiness that the other sisters were experiecing. That made me even sadder yet.

~It was finally me putting 2 + 2 together and not coming up with 4, in my life, that caused me to seek. I found others like myself but they would never talk openly about their feelings, as I wouldn't either. But we talked secretly, via email, about our unhappiness but the conversations still eventually wandered to the subject of how WE could make things better for ourselves by correcting the wrongs that we MUST be doing in our lives and in our marriages, which made us so miserable. I recognized those relationships as very toxic to my well-being and therefore pulled away and just decided to do my own thing, in trying to find my own answers.

~But I soon found out that I could not do this on my own. I did not have the resources nor individual wisdom to figure this out as if I was a castaway on an island by myself. So that's when I started to seek out feminists and found out how Heart had evolved and.... well.... that's where I am right now. In a state of evolvement.

I tried to "talk" on these boards early on, asking questions. But because I was so anxious for answers and so desperate for answers, I believe my questions came off as allllll wrong and therefore were just not received nor answered in the spirit inwhich they were asked. So, I did as Heart suggested and just backed-off and read the posts... and read the posts.... and read the posts. I've gone to other websites but none were what I was looking for and so I registered here once again and feel I am now better equiped to ask more relavant questions and perhaps share a *little bit* of what I've learned so far, on my journey.

I hope this explains a little bit and answers the question you asked me, Annette. I am by NO MEANS an expert here but I guess all of us are experts in our own way because we are all women and we bring our own unique perspective on different issues. We've all had different lives and we are all living different lives right now. That's what is so beautiful about this place... you're bound to find someone who is living out a situation similiar to yours and maybe you can relate with someone better than you can someone else.

I feel free to ask questions if I wonder... offer what's on my mind if I feel I have something to say... but most of all, I feel I can come here when my patriarchial world is collapsing in on top of me and I NEED WIMIN to talk to, to be close to, to relate to, to get a verbal hug from.... and I will always find those things. And the wisdom found here... OMG! The wisdom comes from deep inside these wimin's souls, deep inside their human experiences, and they are willing to share those things with us who visit here, which blows me away at times.

In my fundie world, it was women comiserating and sharing in their miseries. Here, it is wimin comiserating and sharing in not only their defeats but their triumphs again the patriarchy world that has us ALL oppressed and downtrodden. The directions, pointing to the underground tunnel that has been dug with teaspoons by all the feminist women before us, can be found here. Those directions can not be found in the fundie world because the tunnel to freedom doesn't exist there. For me, the only thing that existed in my fundie world was the prayers to say everyday in order to forget that a tunnel was needed to begin with. And those "prayers" worked for a very short amt. of time, if they even worked at all.

~LearningOne

The answers to those questions lead to more questions. You have been warned.

Sophia

I hadn't thought about my husband "allowing" me to do the things you mentioned. It never occurred to me. I always felt like I could do what I wanted... I have to think more on that one. Even in our deepest fundie days, we never bought into the "submission" thing whole heartedly. We tried, but could never really it off.

Can I ask...are you still in the fundie world? Do attend a church that believes all of that still? Is posting here your secret life? )

Yes, about Heart too. I have been posting with her for several years now. Reading her stuff for years before that. (I think you and I have a lot in common!) I'm glad that she was there for you.

Annette

Yeah, I did too. Until I tried to do something he didn't want me to do...

Oy. Talk about shit hitting the fan. And my husband is one of the "good guys."

Sophia

What was it they used to preach in our old world? Something like that they saw it as their goal to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Well, that's kind of what I do, in a different way, maybe. I just know what it's cost me to give so much of myself because that's what a woman is supposed to do, to work so hard to be whatever-it-was-I-was-being-at-the-time because that's what a woman is supposed to be. It's cost me so, so much. On the one hand, I don't have regrets. I like the woman I am, I am excited about the future, and nothing would be as it is had I not lived the life I've lived. On the other hand, I have many regrets, and if I had it to do over, I'd make many different choices. That's the wierd thing about being a woman: you can have no regrets and many regrets at the same time. You so often don't recognize what happened to you and why it happened to you. You don't begin to see it until your pain becomes unbearable enough that you just have to get underneath it, have to find answers, have to understand what led you to this place that you are just awash with anger and grief and sadness. And you know, on the one hand, I wouldn't wish that on any woman. Like you said, Annette, you don't want to be angry all of the time. So true! Who wants to be angry all of the time, it's miserable! And who wants to be sad, resentful, feeling grief, regret. Well, I don't want to feel that way. What I know is, on the other side of the anger and the grief, moving beyond these, a step at a time, a whole world of possibilities sometimes opens up to us. At least this is how it's been for me.

What you said up there so eloquently, LearningOne, is something millions of women can relate to, or could, if they could find it within themselves to face up to the reality of their lives. Which isn't to suggest that it's every woman's experience or that women aren't telling the truth if that isn't their experience, hugs to you, Annette, which is just to say that I hear you. Women who live as you describe are like birds in gilded cages. To mix metaphors egregiously, heh, that's the beauty of bb posts, , those beautiful gold bracelets they're wearing are actually handcuffs if you look more closely. Finding ways out of the cage and out of the handcuffs is disruptive, painful, for a long, long time, you go in and out of grief and anger and deep feelings of loss and sometimes fear and terror. What will become of me if I just stop being what I am expected to be? What will happen to me if I stop doing what I am expected to do? What if I lose everyone I love? What if I lose everything I have? What if I end up homeless and on the streets, destitute and alone? What if everyone pities me and says of me, "See, that's what will happen to you if you do THAT." What I've found so far is that when I have stopped being what I was expected to be, stopped doing what I was expected to do, first in small ways, maybe only immediately apparent to me (!), then in more important ways, although I have lost some things and the love of some people, and though those losses have sometimes been painful to me, I've also felt exhilarated, freed to try things, do things, be what I'd never have allowed myself to be in the old days, and the more I've practiced trying and doing these new things, facing down the fears, the more deeply hopeful I've become that eventually, the handcuffs and the cages will be a distant memory to me.

Thank you, LearningOne and Annette, for your good words, they mean a lot to me. I love it that you two and so many other women have clung to me even when it must have been painful for you for so many reasons. Risking being cheesy and maudlin, but oh well, it's Thanksgiving , it reminds me of the way Ruth said to Naomi that wherever Naomi went, Ruth would go, that Naomi's people would be Ruth's people. Well, they were both women in a man's world and so that wasn't really given to them, you know? They couldn't really be one another's as they wanted to be, not really, couldn't stay together in that way, even if they wanted to. But that's where Ruth's heart was, those were her longings, "Let me go with you, I want to be with you, don't leave me behind." And Naomi saw that and, to the degree that she was able, given that she was a woman in a hostile world, she said, "Okay, if that's what you really want." So here we are, trying to figure things out together.

Well, I'm thankful for you women.

{{}}

Heart

I just know that I always wanted a family. I didn't have one as a child. Raised with alcohol and drug abuse, violence, fighting, guilt trips, and all I could think about during those years was that someday I would have a family of my own. I have worked so hard to create it and it isn't perfect and it is time consuming, and all of that, but its what I've got. You know what I mean?? I can't imagine not having it. Altering it, making changes, tweaking it, but abandoning it altogether....I just can't even fathom it.

And my husband and I have come out of all of that Christian oppressive crap and we have learned to work together pretty well. "I want to do thus and so...." "Let's see how we can make it happen then." Again its not perfect, but its what I've got. It seems when other people are in your life to any degree there will have to accomodations and compromises made.

I don't know...I'm feeling confused. I know none of you have said that to be a feminist, we need to leave our families. I do understand that is not a pre-requisite... but sometimes it happens in the process anyway.

I have to think some more... thank you for your patience and all of the wonderful explanations and communication.

And hey! Happy Thanksgiving!!! (((HUGS))) to all.

Annette