Women’s subjugation in polygamous sect troubling
Posted on Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Just when you thought that women had made some progress, a story blazes across the nation about the bizarre polygamous sect in Texas, in which women have subjugated themselves to men drunk with power, even to the point of denying their basic child protection instincts.
On the one hand, you have those women who have been born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints group, headed by Warren Jeffs and other men who style themselves as prophets. On the other hand, you have a lesser number of adult women who have freely entered such compounds. Both have been brainwashed, but the latter presumably have a stronger sense of self. In either case, one is left wondering if you can be brainwashed to the point where you no longer know right from wrong.
The only rationale I can think of for adult women to join such an enterprise is that they totally lack a sense of self, community, structure and purpose. In exchange for a twisted version of these, the women in this sect apparently agree to give up their rights to equal personhood, or even personhood at all. They agree to dress and wear their hair in pioneer style (notably a style not mirrored by the men ). They agree to isolate themselves from the world. They agree to share a husband with other women (one elder reportedly had 21 wives ). They agree to consider men as the ultimate word on their lives. They agree to be told what to think and say. They agree to limit their continued education mostly to sect dogma. They agree to solely become vessels for childbearing and childrearing. They agree to the possibility of losing care of their own children. They agree not to register their children's birth with the state. They agree to subject their children to male predators.
It's like a reprise of the "Handmaid's Tale," by Margaret Atwood, in which women are sent to a center to be brainwashed into submission, become bearers of children for elites, cannot associate with other men, must forgo their own desires, trade their names for tattoos and must accept they are responsible for all societal ills, while the men remain blameless. But this scenario is supposed to be fantasy.
No doubt the FLDS sect is an "idyllic "world for the men. Power, sex, and, yes, money (this sect gets a lot of state welfare funds ) – it seems to have it all, candy-coated in pseudo-religious virtue. But it does not seem to have made very good people of these men, who are alleged to have abused babies and young girls and boys. Nor does it appear to have made very good people of the women, who seem like automatons, lacking self-worth, personality and child protective abilities.
Sect practices even appear to have damaged the gene pool, as decades of inbreeding have reportedly led to higherthan-normal incidences of fumarase deficiency, a genetic disease that causes retardation and deformation.
Investigators say that at least 41 children out of the 463 removed have had broken bones. At last report, almost 60 percent of the 14- to 17-year-old-girls in custody were pregnant or had had children, and at least one girl has given birth since being removed from the compound.
Brainwashing may destroy your will, but can it destroy your conscience ? Surely there is an immutable part of us that knows right from wrong, that cannot bear to see babies held under running water until they stop crying.
Cults come and cults go, but the losers primarily seem to be women and children. No doubt once they are in these situations, women find it difficult and even dangerous to extract themselves, just like abused wives.
Fear and reduced self-esteem combine to convince them they deserve poor treatment. Religious dogma is used to justify their lower station tion in life (as it is in some other religious circles today ). Leaders are emboldened to claim religious persecution when they are held accountable to the law. But the women in the FLDS sect are not absolved of responsibility, and some of them may face consequences for subjecting their children to abuse.
The time has long since come for women to step fully into equality of personhood, for themselves, for their children, for men and, ultimately, for society as a whole. We are far better people when we equally submit ourselves to one another, rather than try to dominate one another.
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