Regarding Rape/Abuse and JW beliefs.

[TheQueenOfDiamonds]

My daughters fathers family are mostly Jehovahs Witness.
I have no major problem with this, However, the recent news headlines and some comments regarding certain religions prompted me to do a little research into the sort of advice my daughter may be given, and the morals and beliefs she may be exposed to.

So, I have been reading the watch tower website. I am not impressed with some of the advice given. Here are some examples, quoted from the watch tower website;

Should the battered wife leave her husband? The Bible does not treat marital separation lightly. At the same time, it does not oblige a battered wife to stay with a man who jeopardizes her health and perhaps her very life. The Christian apostle Paul wrote: "If she should actually depart,let her remain unmarried or else make up again with her husband." (1 Corinthians 7:10-16) Since the Bible does not forbid separation in extreme circumstances, what a woman does in this matter is a personal decision. (Galatians 6:5) No one should coax a wife to leave her husband, but neither should anyone pressure a battered woman to stay with an abusive man when her health, life, and spirituality are threatened.

"For one thing, in recent years women have entered the job market in record numbers. More women are therefore exposed to situations in which such abuses can occur. However, of even greater significance is what the Bible prophesied long ago: "Remember this! There will be difficult times in the last days. Men will be selfish, greedy, boastful, and conceited; they will be insulting . . . ; they will be unkind, merciless, slanderers, violent, and fierce." (2 Timothy 3:1-3, Today's English Version) The prevalence of sexual harassment is just one dramatic proof that these words are being fulfilled today. Interestingly, an article inMen's Health magazine notes that "the increase in sexual-harassment complaints has been accompanied by an astonishing decline in general civility. Bad manners are everywhere.""

"NO WOMAN should have to run a daily gauntlet of sexual innuendo," says magazine editor Gretchen Morgenson, "but neither is it reasonable for women to expect a pristine work environment free of coarse behavior."

Dress modestly. What you wear sends out a message to others. Back in Bible times, wearing certain styles of clothing branded a person as being immoral or promiscuous. (Proverbs 7:10) The same is often true today; tight, flashy, or revealing clothing can attract the wrong kind of attention. True, some may feel they have a right to wear whatever they desire. But as writer Elizabeth Powell puts it, "if you worked among people who believed stealing money was okay, I'd tell you not to wear your billfold on your hip. . . .You have to recognize the sickness of . . . society's attitudes and try to protect yourself from being victimized by them." The Bible's advice is thus up-to-date. It admonishes women to "adorn themselves in well-arranged dress, with modesty and soundness of mind." (1 Timothy 2:9) Dress modestly, and you may be less likely to be a target of abusive speech or actions.

I have not given my thoughts, As i do not want to put a bias on the post, I am interested to see how many peoples responses match my concerns.

Would you be concerned about your child being taught and advised in this way?

Adora - Of course. Provided you didn't force them to by not dressing modestly...

Tbf I do have very few issues with them. Some of the articles have made my blood boil though. I may go to the kingdom hall next week and quiz them on it. (Not the one that DDs dads family go to, although my local one is oposite his office, so he may see me and wonder what I'm doing lol).

Abody - I'm not worried about alienating myself. He has very little to do with me now anyway. His SIL doesn't like me because 1) he told her I said hed kill our daughter for a book when I first brought up blood transfusions and 2) because my friends don't like him because he used to emotionally abuse me and lead me on.

I get on with his brother. He didn't fall out with me for the blood transfusion thing. I think his wife told him to but he said no because hed only heard his side and didn't believe I'd say that without provocation. That's what I was told anyway.

His Dad hasn't spoken to me since his mum grabbed hold of me and dragged me round her garden when I was pregnantwith ds and tried to prevent me from picking up my daughter, he told J that I lied about that lol and hasn't spoken to me since.

Queen Fuck the fact that they are JW, they sound like an awfully controlling, even violent family...!!! While you were pregnant??

My love, there are perfectly good hospitals in England...this all sounds a bit worrying now

Oh! That sounds awful! Sorry for my useless advice in that case, I just assumed you had an okay relationship.

How old is you DD & how involved is she with the JWs already? You might still want to be a bit careful that you don't end up alienating yourself from her? Of course if she's 2 that's probably not a worry yet!

I don't think she intends to be nasty.
I don't know what it is with her. I think his Dad told him I lied for a quiet life. I was fuming. All I got after that was "if you were telling the truth why didn't you call the police"... Hmmm.. Because I don't want to subject a two year old to witnessing her grandmother getting arrested, maybe?

She had hold of my daughter too. I didn't fight back because I was worried about one of us losing out footing and falling on DD, or injuring myself being pregnant etc.

I sort of stood there and tried to just keep in balance and kept telling her to get off me.

Its very complicated though.. I think she genuinely wants to help usually. I just think she has twisted perceptions on what help actually is.

She doesn't know an awful lot about mine and her sons relationship either which I think frustrates her. I know she's thought one of us has lied etc in the past.

omg! wtaf? it doesn't matter what her intentions/reasons are if the results are that she risks endangering you or your children, if she tries to or risks damaging your relationship, ....... please I think you should take this seriously, it's probably a more pertinent issue than the JW teachings right now.

op Im sending you a private message x

She's 3 now abody.
I don't know what level of involvement she has. She never used to take her to meetings.
DDs dad isn't an active witness, he isn't baptised o anything, he just agrees with a lot of their beliefs, but he said to his mum he wants to lead a "christian lifestyle" so I'm not sure now. He was brought up with it and his brother and sil take their children to meetings so I expect he let's dd go.

He has said to me before he wants to bring her up with some of the beliefs.. Just not specified which ones.

He didn't believe me about one of the men. It happened when I was with him. The girl I was in the house with told him I'd had sex with the man (she text him) and I didn't deny it. When I told him I didn't actually want to, he asked f I was saying hed raped me and I couldn't answer. I couldn't use that word. He didn't believe me anyway.

I don't know whether he just thinks I'm a liar, which tbh I could accept, or whether he thinks I asked for it because I was in a house with two men I didn't know who were drinking, or I didn't do enough to prevent it. If its that then I'm not sure what I'd think.

I always thought he was decent in this way.. I know he detests men hitting women. So to read that these are the sorts of beliefs he is exposing my daughter to, and possibly subscribing to himself is upsetting.

that's horrid.

Queen

That's not religion, it's abuse, plain and simple. Is there not anyway you could get DD back living with you, is the arrangement final?

Your ex's mother assaulted you, if she thinks that's helping then she has a severely warped mind. If she is frustrated by not knowing details of her adult son's relationship then she is a control freak. She's using religion to hide her personality and justify her actions.

I've got a various friends of various religions including a JW. To be honest I have more respect for JW;s than a lot of other religions because at least they do follow the religion more strictly than others. For example I know Catholics who have affairs but still attend church on a Sunday. I'm not religious myself but to be honest the only bit of the original post I found offensive was the quote from the mens health article about "not expecting to not be discriminated in the workplace". I think saying about dressing modestly was just about minimizing risk it didn't say anywhere that you are fault if you avoid taking that advice and are raped. If you are sending the email I would recommend you avoid using any swearing etc and try and be as civil as possible because if he shows it to his family then they may dismiss your points for that reason alone.

I know what she did that day was nothing to do with religion. She is a control freak though you're right.

When I say she knows nothing about our relationship I mean she literally knew nothing. I was 6 months pregnant when she met me. She didn't know I was pregnant until I was 5 months.

No sinister reason for not meeting her previously though. She has a house in scotland too and before GC came along her and her husband used to go up there a lot, J and I worked all hours so time away from work was very much private. We never got round to it, then when I got pregnant he didn't tell them cause he said she would hate him.

He told me she was very religious, he never specified which religion, his SIL told me later on in conversation.

Bp - advising that women should be dressing modestly is wrong because it places the onus on the woman to not get raped, rather than the man to not rape.

I agree with Adorabell I'm afraid, I don't think many JWs would even try to justify the abuse you've been subjected to by his mother or by this other man. If he thinks you were 'asking for it' then he doesn't sound like someone I would want to be bringing up my daughter. I don't think his religion has much to do with that. Sorry if I'm out of line but this all sounds much scarier than I initially realised.

TheQueenOfDiamonds Fri 24-Aug-12 04:11:41
Bp - advising that women should be dressing modestly is wrong because it places the onus on the woman to not get raped, rather than the man to not rape.

But they would also teach as a man you must not commit rape. So when using that context they would be putting the onus on the man. I do not believe they are making out that the responsibility lies with the woman more than the man.

Abody - I don't know what he thinks, I initially rhought he just thought I was lying. I didn't tell him I didn't want it at first. So I thought he may be suspicious that I had thought of it as a way of getting out of it.

Its only recently I've began questioning some of his reasons. Its only recently I've began to see exactly how bad some of the things are.

Bp - anyone who uses the "you shouldn't dress provocatively" line is contributing to portraying women as responsible for their own rape. Yes, they may tell men not to rape, but they are then excusing some rape, intentional or not, by making allowances for certain situations.

TheQueenOfDiamonds Fri 24-Aug-12 04:29:36
Bp - anyone who uses the "you shouldn't dress provocatively" line is contributing to portraying women as responsible for their own rape. Yes, they may tell men not to rape, but they are then excusing some rape, intentional or not, by making allowances for certain situations.

I don't see it as excusing rape, if it does I don;t think it is intentional. If I wore an expensive Rolex watch on a council estate and got mugged (sorry to use this analogy ,I know it doesn't compare but couldn't think of anything else) they would not excuse theft under those circumstances.

You're missing the point. The womans clothes even being mentioned is wrong. At all. It is unrelated to the crime.

TheQueenOfDiamonds Fri 24-Aug-12 04:43:21
You're missing the point. The womans clothes even being mentioned is wrong. At all. It is unrelated to the crime.

I 100% agree with you that the man should 100% held responsible for rape and that in no way should it be implied that it is in any way the woman's responsibility. What they are suggesting is that dressing modestly may decrease the chances of being raped which may be correct.

Back to the blood thing. UK Kingdom Hall changed their doctrine in 2000, blood is now permissible, but it's personal preference. JWs have used synthetic bloods for years.

JumpingThroughMoreHoops Fri 24-Aug-12 05:13:51
Back to the blood thing. UK Kingdom Hall changed their doctrine in 2000, blood is now permissible, but it's personal preference. JWs have used synthetic bloods for years.
_
Do you know thought the rules were supposed to be direct from the bible so don't change? i

sorry lost some text there.

Do you know why the rules changed? I thought they followed the rules directly from the bible so they don;t change.

No idea. American JWs still follow the same doctrine.

You can't say rules don't change, all religions evolve - otherwise we wouldn't have some churches allowing divorcees to marry or homosexual blessings. Or the worst abomination of all women vicars . I'm not that into theology, but why did the Catholic church allow priests to marry until the 1300's? Then all of a sudden it was disallowed?

I was taught the blood thing with JWs related back to when the religion was established and syphallis was rife. Hence the no blood exchange. Bible quotes were used to back that up (although they are shady as it relates to the eating of an animal) now medicine has moved on, the worry of contracting disease through contaminated blood is almost removed.

Doing some reading this morning, I hadn't knows that JWs also follow the halal/kosher practice of only eating bled meat.

Interesting thanks. I'm a bit surprised at the change it rules as surely it was obvious a bible written thousands of years ago couldn't be referring to a blood transfusion that's not invented,

There are thousands of derivatives of Christianity - Evangelist, Baptist, United Reformed Church, Anglican, Catholic - each has re-written the New Testament to suit it's own purpose.

The Old Testament is based on The Torah. It pre-dates Christianity by thousands of years.

www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/witnesses/witnessethics/ethics_1.shtml

Cell-free blood products, containing haemoglobin but not red blood cells have recently become available and may be acceptable for some Jehovah's Witnesses.

Although Jehovah's Witnesses cannot accept blood, they are open to other medical procedures. Jehovah's Witness Hospital Liaison Committees maintain lists of doctors who are prepared to be consulted with a view to treatment without the use of blood transfusion. This has eased many of the tensions related to the issue.

In 2000 the Witnesses changed the rules on blood transfusions so that the Church would no longer take action against a Witness who willingly and without regret underwent a blood transfusion. Some people wrongly interpreted the change as meaning that Witnesses could now accept blood. But the actual change was just that the Church would not take disciplinary action against that Witness.

This was because the Church had no need to take action; the Witness concerned would no longer be viewed as one of Jehovah's Witnesses because he no longer accepted and followed a core tenet of the faith - i.e. the act of accepting a blood transfusion stopped a person being a Witness, without any further action by the Church.

If the Witness later changes their mind and repents of their action they can return to the Church.

Of course, if a Witness is transfused against their will, this is not regarded as a sin on the part of the individual. Children who are transfused against their parents' wishes are not rejected or stigmatised in any way.