So…does she really deserve the free pass? Didn't her support help the TWI juggernaut get off the ground (before it crushed her too!)? She didn't speak up right in the beginning, when she knew and could nip it in the bud. Doesn't that silence, and her enjoyment of the "benefits" make her also a scammer?
Remember, she was also frequently used by LCM as a prop to prove he was the true MOGFODAT. Although, in her defense, she may not have had many options at that point in her life. Unless her kids would take her in. As I was around but only met her a few times, I don't feel qualified to comment too much.
Before her kids were old enough to take her in. When they were just little. So it would be hard for a woman to leave her husband, with several small kids; don't know what support if any would have been available. Her own family?
But...if she knew he was plagiarizing the work of others, and didn't say anything, that makes her an accomplice. Maybe he did keep her in the dark; he refers to discussing things with Ros Rinker. Hard to think that he didn't discuss with Dotsie.
Did the mrs. know it was a scam? Considering.. didn't she go to leonard's class as well? Also went to who was it in Florida about tongues with interpretation and prophecy.. the vicster mentions them.. forgot the name. Sure we won't find a footnote anywhere in the books..
I think she was well aware of the plagiarism.. and she did get some elevation in the organization..
maybe they enabled each other.. who knows..
just to me, it would seem if she didn't.. it would be like being married to Capone, and thinking everything was wonderful.. not having a clue of the booze, dope and killing..
perhaps at best maybe she rationalized the bad behavior like some of his "men"..
just to me, it would seem if she didn't.. it would be like being married to Capone, and thinking everything was wonderful.. not having a clue of the booze, dope and killing..
my opinion.............no free pass deserved!.............classic enabler and co-dependent............she knew of all der victoid's shenanigans..........and , for reasons known only to her, she chose, willfully, to suffer the indignities of vic's perversions and relentless megalomania............i saw her cry..............i saw her yell............but i NEVER saw her publicly defy what she knew to be his lies and vicious use of human beings to fulfill his personal lust and demons!...........she shared his bed........she bore his children, (well, at least 5 of them anyway), she kept his secrets, she covered his lies, she tolerated his meaness and cruelty to her own kipp family................she alone knows why...........i surely don't!................peace.
I didn't know Mrs. VPW she was very behind the scenes when I showed up in 79.. but I do know the type of person VP was and you can bet your bottom dollar he had complete control of her. I think he cowed her early on.. and she had no way to extract herself.. I don't know if I would give her a free pass but I grew up in an alcoholic family and watched my step dad control and manipulate my Mom so I understand the mechanics of it. Don't get me wrong.. she chose that life but sometimes people get in over their head and do not have the wherewith all to extract themselves.. so I wouldn't give her a full free pass but I would certainly give her a partial one.
Who really knows what or if VP ever threatened to physically harm her if she went public. Or worse, threatened to harm her children. I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying, that knowing the true nature of the man, it's not hard to imagine this scenario being played out. He did, after all, dispatch armed thugs to threaten outspoken Way detractors.
He kept guns, knives, vicious dogs, and loyal toadies at his immediate dispatch.
I don't think it's possible to really understand WayWorld until you finally come to the realization that it's head dog and most of his henchmen were/are batchit crazy. Once you grasp that fact, whole new vistas of understanding open up to you (like an onion - or is it a diamond?)...
my opinion.............no free pass deserved!.............classic enabler and co-dependent............she knew of all der victoid's shenanigans..........and , for reasons known only to her, she chose, willfully, to suffer the indignities of vic's perversions and relentless megalomania............i saw her cry..............i saw her yell............but i NEVER saw her publicly defy what she knew to be his lies and vicious use of human beings to fulfill his personal lust and demons!...........she shared his bed........she bore his children, (well, at least 5 of them anyway), she kept his secrets, she covered his lies, she tolerated his meaness and cruelty to her own kipp family................she alone knows why...........i surely don't!................peace.
... classic enabler and co-dependent ...
Agreed.
But by definition you have to consider how cowed and deeply in denial an enabler is, which is how I see Dotsie. I don't believe it gives her a free pass, just a lot more sympathy than the original purpetrators. Most of us here are willing to forgive her simply because she didn't instigate, she just enabled. It is easier to see how she was a victim, like many of us were victims and are ashamed of what we did under twi's thrall.
Could Vic have done it all without her being by his side? Perhaps but she gave the man and his operation a huge amount of legitimacy because of the way she conducted herself. And she certainly gave Martindale legitimacy at a time when many of us would have bolted for the door if she had shown the slightest indication that Craig was off the mark. Clearly there is no question that her enabling caused harm.
But I've known women who were cowed by men who threatened, beat, and cheated on them. And they wouldn't leave them. They defended them. They blamed themselves and their own shortcomings. And we know twi did that same thing to all of us... if something is wrong, blame yourself first... a lot of us fell into that mentality and some still struggle with it today.
In my opinion it takes outside validation and information (a LOT of it) to break out of the enabling pattern. And it takes a lot of inner strength. You have to be willing to go through h*!! to get out of the h*!! you are in, and some victims just never find their way out.
That's why a lot of us are more lenient toward Mrs. VPW... not because she is blameless, but because that she is a lot more understandable and pathetic.
I didn't know Mrs. Wierwille well at all, had a few brushes with her at HQ, but...
I did know a woman whose daughter was our foster child for a while and then lived with us for a while. We had the daughter because her father raped her several times and she was taken out of the home. He was ordered to pay for her support, but since she did not live under his roof he refused to do so, and the State where we lived would do nothing. So she lived with us at our expense that was fine with us.
Anyways, this woman's husband beat the crap out of her one day. She had huge bumps and bruises all over her face. She came to our home to her daughter for help. The daughter promptly called me at work to come home and I did so. I took the mom to the hospital, to the police station, where she was met by a worker who took her to a shelter, and the cops went and got her younger children.
This man was the most reprehensible human being I ever met. He felt it his parental responsibility to sexually initiate his daughters. He didn't work, he drank, he beat the crap out of his wife whenever he felt like it. And all the time I was driving her around, she was explaining to me how he was really a good man, he had encouraged her to finish her master's degree and get a better paying job, he had made her who she was today. It was always really her fault he beat her, she should not provoke him when he was intoxicated. She wasn't good enough for him and it was her fault he drank, and he was handicapped and frustrated, and she really deserved the beatings, yada yada.
So the cops go and get the kids. The son idolizes his dad, thinks it is hilarious when dad beats mom to the ground, and insists they go back to daddy. So back she goes. Or at least that's her excuse.
I listened to this woman for half a day with horrified disbelief as she rationalized and justified to herself the reasons for her husband's behavior, which she convinced herself were HER fault, not his. Then she lets this 12 year old sociopath-in-training talk her into running back home to receive MORE abuse.
While I was disgusted, I also gleaned a little insight into the twisted workings of the mind that thinks there is no other way, no other option. This woman apparently thought she would be nobody if she wasn't his wife.
Maybe that example and explanation helps a little, maybe not.
Did the mrs. know it was a scam? Considering.. didn't she go to leonard's class as well? Also went to who was it in Florida about tongues with interpretation and prophecy.. the vicster mentions them.. forgot the name. Sure we won't find a footnote anywhere in the books..
I think she was well aware of the plagiarism.. and she did get some elevation in the organization..
maybe they enabled each other.. who knows..
just to me, it would seem if she didn't.. it would be like being married to Capone, and thinking everything was wonderful.. not having a clue of the booze, dope and killing..
perhaps at best maybe she rationalized the bad behavior like some of his "men"..
Lee Vale was the person in Florida who was a student of Lester Sumrall
I don't think it's possible to really understand WayWorld until you finally come to the realization that it's head dog and most of his henchmen were/are batchit crazy. Once you grasp that fact, whole new vistas of understanding open up to you (like an onion - or is it a diamond?)...
exactly.
it's been pretty well established here by first hand testimony that abusing the wife was not just s.o.p. with twi but was expected as a show of great mogfartiness, and from what i've read here that started long before craig was anything "important". i remember a part in pfal when vp was talking about his wife having a baby and he said he didn't care about the "cow" but just wanted to see the "calf" and i've heard that used on not only my mother but my sisters by their twi boyfriends and spouses, and my brother used it on his wife too. to me this shows an institutionalized expectation of abusing your wife. and always what can be seen is only the tip of the iceberg and what is happening behind closed doors you can bet is criminal and punishable by prison. add to that all the first hand testimony to vp's sexual perversions that made him a sexual predator that led twi to protect sexual predators, and add to all of that the probability that mrs vp was having her children held as hostages and used against her with threats of harm to them if she didn't "fly right", well being mrs vp was no picnic and was more like being a p.o.w.
does that excuse her behavior? there's no excuse, but it certainly shows the absolute and complete insanity of it all. there was not one whit of "sound mind" so how can anybody try to comprehend it via sound thinking? there's just no comprehending it except to say "that was total insanity and i'm glad i got out of it all". for mrs vp she most certainly suffered with some form of severe anxiety and depression to say the least. i would bet she also suffered from battered wife's syndrome which is very much like stockholm syndrome. it's all still mental illness and so the question to me is can the mentally ill be held responsible for what they do? the answer to that can't be figured out even by the professionals so far be it for me to try and figure it out.
i remember a part in pfal when vp was talking about his wife having a baby and he said he didn't care about the "cow" but just wanted to see the "calf"
I don't recall this being said. I remember something in the last session about "wanting to see the baby" as opposed to getting all the details such as length, weight, time of birth... etc.
What was the general context? (I don't need much. I just need something to jog my memory. I don't like repeating the dribble that was taught so I don't ask others to do so either.)
*Brainfixed - I don't doubt you. I just don't remember it. :o
Dooj, as I recall it was not literally about childbirth, it was about seeing results from your labors. I certainly don't remember anything about bovines.
Dooj, as I recall it was not literally about childbirth, it was about seeing results from your labors. I certainly don't remember anything about bovines.
WG
Wasn't that about "the new birth", and not about general labors?
Ditto recollection here... nothing about cows in pfal... just something like "I don't care how you got there, I just want to see the baby!"
I wonder if you are thinking about the "Johnny Lingo" movie that got played a lot... Johnny is the handsomest, most desirable man on a Polynesian island and he ignores all the pretty girls and wants to marry the girl who everyone (including her father) thinks is ugly and unruly. He pays more for her hand in marriage (10 cows, as opposed to 2 or 3) than any man has ever paid for any woman in their history, and sails away with her. When he returns she has transformed into a beautiful woman because he has made her feel special and significant by paying so much.
Nice little message, put out by some Christian organization back in the sixties, I believe. But it wasn't uncommon for the corps guys to refer to women by how many cows they thought they were worth.
And of course, there's the old Bible quote from Samson, "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle," indicating that he knew they had gotten Delilah to reveal the secret.
But there is no question that VP had little or no regard for women and had no problem at all degrading his wife and others in public. Or that his followers imitated him in this like they did in everything else... His references in pfal and in "The Way Living in Love" about never trusting a woman, and about how his respect for a certain gentleman went way up when he saw him berate his wife. Should have been clues to us all, like so many other clues we ignored. Oh, and there's always my personal favorite: when Vic spoke of his wife and said, "Sharp as a meatball and twice as juicy." -- This was in the context of the "Bedside Manners" seminar he was teaching to the corps so you can decide for yourself what he meant.
What do we know about her early life? If what has been said is actually true (and none of us really do know), she must have been a feisty sort of young woman, - she trained to be a nurse, didn't she, and ran away with VPW because her parents disapproved of the marriage? [How wise her parents were!]
When did they get married?
How long was it before the first child came along? Having children may have made it much harder to leave, for many reasons.
They had several children before he went to India, before he split with his denomination and set up on his own/founded TWI.
The alleged incident with one of his parishioners resulting in her pregnancy would have taken place before he founded TWI and surely she cannot have been unaware of it (if it happened).
[Didn't Rhoda come from that church background too? (Or was that Dorothy?) Hmm. What did they know, do they get a free pass too?]
Was Dotsie his first victim?
Or was she complicit? At what point does one denounce one's own husband?
She knew where he'd got much of his material from.
How many "live classes" of PFAL must she have been aware of or sat through, before it was recorded?
In later years, she saw more and more people, especially young women, being drawn into TWI.
She knew about his shenanigans with Corps women; one poster here says she held her hand as she sobbed after being assaulted.
Yet never did she say anything.
Abused women do, time after time, leave - then return - to their husbands; accept the husband's trifling opinion of them; believe themselves worthless; enjoy the public presence whilst fearing the private presence.
How many victims of abuse do go on to become abusers themselves?
There comes a point when a victim ceased to be just a victim and becomes an abuser or abets an abuser, and becomes culpable themselves.
Huh, even VPW said, "Don't judge a man till you've walked a mile in his shoes" (not, of course, his original thought). Perhaps he was thinking, "Don't judge Dotsie till you know what's happened to her." (Though it was probably more like, "Don't even think of judging me!")
I never met the woman. I heard she was a good woman. Longsuffering comes to mind.
Most, if not all of us have no idea what went on behind closed doors between VPW and his wife. I have never been able to figure out why people stay in abusive situations, but I know that two things motivated my mother to stay - fear of the unknown, and the hope that she could change my father's behavior. Maybe that was Dottie's motivation.
These women really do love their husbands despite the abuse and the humiliation. That love makes it almost impossible to get them to look at their situation objectively, much less deal with it.
Then you have the whole submission thing. Abusers, in particular, seem intent on exercising their "rights" in a relationship. This submission thing can be incredibly subtle as can abuse. It was so ingrained in the TWI culture that most people didn't see it until they were out. Openly contesting much of this behavior was not particularly well received.
I have no idea how she is going to be judged. I know that most of us here want to see some level of godly justice when it comes to how these people are dealt with. I doubt if she will get a free pass.
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JustThinking
Remember, she was also frequently used by LCM as a prop to prove he was the true MOGFODAT. Although, in her defense, she may not have had many options at that point in her life. Unless her kids would take her in. As I was around but only met her a few times, I don't feel qualified to comment too much.
JT
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Twinky
Before her kids were old enough to take her in. When they were just little. So it would be hard for a woman to leave her husband, with several small kids; don't know what support if any would have been available. Her own family?
But...if she knew he was plagiarizing the work of others, and didn't say anything, that makes her an accomplice. Maybe he did keep her in the dark; he refers to discussing things with Ros Rinker. Hard to think that he didn't discuss with Dotsie.
Or did VPW scam Dotsie, too?
Any early Corps want to weigh in here?
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Ham
Did the mrs. know it was a scam? Considering.. didn't she go to leonard's class as well? Also went to who was it in Florida about tongues with interpretation and prophecy.. the vicster mentions them.. forgot the name. Sure we won't find a footnote anywhere in the books..
I think she was well aware of the plagiarism.. and she did get some elevation in the organization..
maybe they enabled each other.. who knows..
just to me, it would seem if she didn't.. it would be like being married to Capone, and thinking everything was wonderful.. not having a clue of the booze, dope and killing..
perhaps at best maybe she rationalized the bad behavior like some of his "men"..
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skyrider
Uh.......for me, Ruth Madoff comes to mind.
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Bolshevik
Behind every great man stand a great women.
or something
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Ham
Yep.. or something..
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DontWorryBeHappy
my opinion.............no free pass deserved!.............classic enabler and co-dependent............she knew of all der victoid's shenanigans..........and , for reasons known only to her, she chose, willfully, to suffer the indignities of vic's perversions and relentless megalomania............i saw her cry..............i saw her yell............but i NEVER saw her publicly defy what she knew to be his lies and vicious use of human beings to fulfill his personal lust and demons!...........she shared his bed........she bore his children, (well, at least 5 of them anyway), she kept his secrets, she covered his lies, she tolerated his meaness and cruelty to her own kipp family................she alone knows why...........i surely don't!................peace.
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Twinky
Ham, you agreeing with me? Or with Bolshy?
SkyRider: like your ref to Ruth Madoff.
So it looks so far like, No free pass. But no doubt others will join in this discussion. Who knows, from way (Way??) back?
Thanks, DWBH, we were posting simultaneously. Your opinion carries a lot of weight, for me.
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leafytwiglet
I didn't know Mrs. VPW she was very behind the scenes when I showed up in 79.. but I do know the type of person VP was and you can bet your bottom dollar he had complete control of her. I think he cowed her early on.. and she had no way to extract herself.. I don't know if I would give her a free pass but I grew up in an alcoholic family and watched my step dad control and manipulate my Mom so I understand the mechanics of it. Don't get me wrong.. she chose that life but sometimes people get in over their head and do not have the wherewith all to extract themselves.. so I wouldn't give her a full free pass but I would certainly give her a partial one.
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waysider
Who really knows what or if VP ever threatened to physically harm her if she went public. Or worse, threatened to harm her children. I'm not saying he did. I'm just saying, that knowing the true nature of the man, it's not hard to imagine this scenario being played out. He did, after all, dispatch armed thugs to threaten outspoken Way detractors.
He kept guns, knives, vicious dogs, and loyal toadies at his immediate dispatch.
"He was a mean man"
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George Aar
Stockholm syndrome anyone?
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George Aar
I don't think it's possible to really understand WayWorld until you finally come to the realization that it's head dog and most of his henchmen were/are batchit crazy. Once you grasp that fact, whole new vistas of understanding open up to you (like an onion - or is it a diamond?)...
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waysider
"It just sits there like a duck"
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TheHighWay
... classic enabler and co-dependent ...
Agreed.
But by definition you have to consider how cowed and deeply in denial an enabler is, which is how I see Dotsie. I don't believe it gives her a free pass, just a lot more sympathy than the original purpetrators. Most of us here are willing to forgive her simply because she didn't instigate, she just enabled. It is easier to see how she was a victim, like many of us were victims and are ashamed of what we did under twi's thrall.
Could Vic have done it all without her being by his side? Perhaps but she gave the man and his operation a huge amount of legitimacy because of the way she conducted herself. And she certainly gave Martindale legitimacy at a time when many of us would have bolted for the door if she had shown the slightest indication that Craig was off the mark. Clearly there is no question that her enabling caused harm.
But I've known women who were cowed by men who threatened, beat, and cheated on them. And they wouldn't leave them. They defended them. They blamed themselves and their own shortcomings. And we know twi did that same thing to all of us... if something is wrong, blame yourself first... a lot of us fell into that mentality and some still struggle with it today.
In my opinion it takes outside validation and information (a LOT of it) to break out of the enabling pattern. And it takes a lot of inner strength. You have to be willing to go through h*!! to get out of the h*!! you are in, and some victims just never find their way out.
That's why a lot of us are more lenient toward Mrs. VPW... not because she is blameless, but because that she is a lot more understandable and pathetic.
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Watered Garden
I didn't know Mrs. Wierwille well at all, had a few brushes with her at HQ, but...
I did know a woman whose daughter was our foster child for a while and then lived with us for a while. We had the daughter because her father raped her several times and she was taken out of the home. He was ordered to pay for her support, but since she did not live under his roof he refused to do so, and the State where we lived would do nothing. So she lived with us at our expense that was fine with us.
Anyways, this woman's husband beat the crap out of her one day. She had huge bumps and bruises all over her face. She came to our home to her daughter for help. The daughter promptly called me at work to come home and I did so. I took the mom to the hospital, to the police station, where she was met by a worker who took her to a shelter, and the cops went and got her younger children.
This man was the most reprehensible human being I ever met. He felt it his parental responsibility to sexually initiate his daughters. He didn't work, he drank, he beat the crap out of his wife whenever he felt like it. And all the time I was driving her around, she was explaining to me how he was really a good man, he had encouraged her to finish her master's degree and get a better paying job, he had made her who she was today. It was always really her fault he beat her, she should not provoke him when he was intoxicated. She wasn't good enough for him and it was her fault he drank, and he was handicapped and frustrated, and she really deserved the beatings, yada yada.
So the cops go and get the kids. The son idolizes his dad, thinks it is hilarious when dad beats mom to the ground, and insists they go back to daddy. So back she goes. Or at least that's her excuse.
I listened to this woman for half a day with horrified disbelief as she rationalized and justified to herself the reasons for her husband's behavior, which she convinced herself were HER fault, not his. Then she lets this 12 year old sociopath-in-training talk her into running back home to receive MORE abuse.
While I was disgusted, I also gleaned a little insight into the twisted workings of the mind that thinks there is no other way, no other option. This woman apparently thought she would be nobody if she wasn't his wife.
Maybe that example and explanation helps a little, maybe not.
I don't mean it as an excuse.
WG
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WordWolf
One the one hand,
she didn't seem to mind enjoying the royal treatment she got, that vpw demanded they both get.
She's been heard being rather bossy at times with jobs that had to be redone that were technically fine,
but didn't look the way she pictured, so Way Builders had to pull out good work and start over.
Her appearance at his side lent slick vic a legitimacy beyond his con.
On the other hand,
would any of us want to have traded places with her? Despite the creature comforts, she lived under
vpw's thumb and at his sufferance. The man had a violent temper, chose to rage at will, was frequently
drunk, and saw all other humans in relation to what they did for him, and not people in their own
rights, due their own dignity. I have little doubt she lived in fear of him for much of her life.
(Or "negative believing" for those of you who haven't freed yourself of compulsive wayspeak.)
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Thomas Loy Bumgarner
Lee Vale was the person in Florida who was a student of Lester Sumrall
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brainfixed
exactly.
it's been pretty well established here by first hand testimony that abusing the wife was not just s.o.p. with twi but was expected as a show of great mogfartiness, and from what i've read here that started long before craig was anything "important". i remember a part in pfal when vp was talking about his wife having a baby and he said he didn't care about the "cow" but just wanted to see the "calf" and i've heard that used on not only my mother but my sisters by their twi boyfriends and spouses, and my brother used it on his wife too. to me this shows an institutionalized expectation of abusing your wife. and always what can be seen is only the tip of the iceberg and what is happening behind closed doors you can bet is criminal and punishable by prison. add to that all the first hand testimony to vp's sexual perversions that made him a sexual predator that led twi to protect sexual predators, and add to all of that the probability that mrs vp was having her children held as hostages and used against her with threats of harm to them if she didn't "fly right", well being mrs vp was no picnic and was more like being a p.o.w.
does that excuse her behavior? there's no excuse, but it certainly shows the absolute and complete insanity of it all. there was not one whit of "sound mind" so how can anybody try to comprehend it via sound thinking? there's just no comprehending it except to say "that was total insanity and i'm glad i got out of it all". for mrs vp she most certainly suffered with some form of severe anxiety and depression to say the least. i would bet she also suffered from battered wife's syndrome which is very much like stockholm syndrome. it's all still mental illness and so the question to me is can the mentally ill be held responsible for what they do? the answer to that can't be figured out even by the professionals so far be it for me to try and figure it out.
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doojable
I don't recall this being said. I remember something in the last session about "wanting to see the baby" as opposed to getting all the details such as length, weight, time of birth... etc.
What was the general context? (I don't need much. I just need something to jog my memory. I don't like repeating the dribble that was taught so I don't ask others to do so either.)
*Brainfixed - I don't doubt you. I just don't remember it. :o
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Watered Garden
Dooj, as I recall it was not literally about childbirth, it was about seeing results from your labors. I certainly don't remember anything about bovines.
WG
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WordWolf
Wasn't that about "the new birth", and not about general labors?
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TheHighWay
Ditto recollection here... nothing about cows in pfal... just something like "I don't care how you got there, I just want to see the baby!"
I wonder if you are thinking about the "Johnny Lingo" movie that got played a lot... Johnny is the handsomest, most desirable man on a Polynesian island and he ignores all the pretty girls and wants to marry the girl who everyone (including her father) thinks is ugly and unruly. He pays more for her hand in marriage (10 cows, as opposed to 2 or 3) than any man has ever paid for any woman in their history, and sails away with her. When he returns she has transformed into a beautiful woman because he has made her feel special and significant by paying so much.
Nice little message, put out by some Christian organization back in the sixties, I believe. But it wasn't uncommon for the corps guys to refer to women by how many cows they thought they were worth.
And of course, there's the old Bible quote from Samson, "If you had not plowed with my heifer, you would not have solved my riddle," indicating that he knew they had gotten Delilah to reveal the secret.
But there is no question that VP had little or no regard for women and had no problem at all degrading his wife and others in public. Or that his followers imitated him in this like they did in everything else... His references in pfal and in "The Way Living in Love" about never trusting a woman, and about how his respect for a certain gentleman went way up when he saw him berate his wife. Should have been clues to us all, like so many other clues we ignored. Oh, and there's always my personal favorite: when Vic spoke of his wife and said, "Sharp as a meatball and twice as juicy." -- This was in the context of the "Bedside Manners" seminar he was teaching to the corps so you can decide for yourself what he meant.
[sorry... didn't mean to derail the thread...]
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Twinky
An interesting one, this.
What do we know about her early life? If what has been said is actually true (and none of us really do know), she must have been a feisty sort of young woman, - she trained to be a nurse, didn't she, and ran away with VPW because her parents disapproved of the marriage? [How wise her parents were!]
When did they get married?
How long was it before the first child came along? Having children may have made it much harder to leave, for many reasons.
They had several children before he went to India, before he split with his denomination and set up on his own/founded TWI.
The alleged incident with one of his parishioners resulting in her pregnancy would have taken place before he founded TWI and surely she cannot have been unaware of it (if it happened).
[Didn't Rhoda come from that church background too? (Or was that Dorothy?) Hmm. What did they know, do they get a free pass too?]
Was Dotsie his first victim?
Or was she complicit? At what point does one denounce one's own husband?
She knew where he'd got much of his material from.
How many "live classes" of PFAL must she have been aware of or sat through, before it was recorded?
In later years, she saw more and more people, especially young women, being drawn into TWI.
She knew about his shenanigans with Corps women; one poster here says she held her hand as she sobbed after being assaulted.
Yet never did she say anything.
Abused women do, time after time, leave - then return - to their husbands; accept the husband's trifling opinion of them; believe themselves worthless; enjoy the public presence whilst fearing the private presence.
How many victims of abuse do go on to become abusers themselves?
There comes a point when a victim ceased to be just a victim and becomes an abuser or abets an abuser, and becomes culpable themselves.
Huh, even VPW said, "Don't judge a man till you've walked a mile in his shoes" (not, of course, his original thought). Perhaps he was thinking, "Don't judge Dotsie till you know what's happened to her." (Though it was probably more like, "Don't even think of judging me!")
God is the searcher of hearts....
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Tzaia
I never met the woman. I heard she was a good woman. Longsuffering comes to mind.
Most, if not all of us have no idea what went on behind closed doors between VPW and his wife. I have never been able to figure out why people stay in abusive situations, but I know that two things motivated my mother to stay - fear of the unknown, and the hope that she could change my father's behavior. Maybe that was Dottie's motivation.
These women really do love their husbands despite the abuse and the humiliation. That love makes it almost impossible to get them to look at their situation objectively, much less deal with it.
Then you have the whole submission thing. Abusers, in particular, seem intent on exercising their "rights" in a relationship. This submission thing can be incredibly subtle as can abuse. It was so ingrained in the TWI culture that most people didn't see it until they were out. Openly contesting much of this behavior was not particularly well received.
I have no idea how she is going to be judged. I know that most of us here want to see some level of godly justice when it comes to how these people are dealt with. I doubt if she will get a free pass.
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