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FLDS Junkie
Apr. 28th, 2008 10:06 pmI'm becoming an FLDS junkie. I can't leave the issue alone. Whenever a new bit of information about the group in Texas shows up, I read all the versions of the story on-line. I look at the videos. I'm reading books.
Child abuse and institutional abuse have always been a hot-button issue for me. It doesn't take much to get me going on either one, always have. I've written fiction that explores the two themes more than once, and I have plans to do it again. (These aren't exclusive themes; just ones that have cropped up more than once.)
I guess what really gets to me is that this sort of thing is going on RIGHT NOW. It was going on RIGHT NOW in THIS COUNTRY with people who grew up thinking IT WAS OKAY.
Everyone focuses on what it was like for the girls. As a male, though, I want to know more of what it's like for the boys. What's it like growing up as a throwaway? The women are at least taught that they can help the community by having babies, but the boys can't do that because the alpha males take up the wives. How do you emotionally deal with nocturnal emissions in a culture that tells you they're a sin (even though you'll have them if you don't masturbate, which itself is a sin)?
How much of the attitudes do you really believe and how many do you just pretend to believe because it's convenient or out of survival? What do you do as a male if you want to leave the community?
How do you handle fallilng in love with a girl, only to watch her be married off to a man old enough to be her grandfather? How do you handle lying in bed at night, knowing what he's doing to her?
What's it like to know you're only one of a dozen children, and your father doesn't particularly care about you because you're the fourth boy and have no value except as a strong back?
And so on.
All the books and articles I've looked at focus on what it's like for the women and girls, but none of them come from the throwaway boys' point of view.
And I want to know more about the politics of the polygamous family. The wives competing for the alpha male's favor. How the different children are treated and mistreated by different sister wives. The differing status of different wives.
Like a fifty-car pileup, it's horrifying and fascinating. I want to untangle everything and understand it thoroughly. And then I want to break it all up so it'll STOP HAPPENING.
And don't get me started on the guy from Austria. Not FLDS, of course, but the most horrifying of abusive fathers. He chains his daughter in the basement, fathers seven children on her, and keeps them all locked up down there. For nineteen years. You want a difficult integration into society, look no further. How do you bring someone who's never seen the sun into the real world at age nineteen?
--Steven
Child abuse and institutional abuse have always been a hot-button issue for me. It doesn't take much to get me going on either one, always have. I've written fiction that explores the two themes more than once, and I have plans to do it again. (These aren't exclusive themes; just ones that have cropped up more than once.)
I guess what really gets to me is that this sort of thing is going on RIGHT NOW. It was going on RIGHT NOW in THIS COUNTRY with people who grew up thinking IT WAS OKAY.
Everyone focuses on what it was like for the girls. As a male, though, I want to know more of what it's like for the boys. What's it like growing up as a throwaway? The women are at least taught that they can help the community by having babies, but the boys can't do that because the alpha males take up the wives. How do you emotionally deal with nocturnal emissions in a culture that tells you they're a sin (even though you'll have them if you don't masturbate, which itself is a sin)?
How much of the attitudes do you really believe and how many do you just pretend to believe because it's convenient or out of survival? What do you do as a male if you want to leave the community?
How do you handle fallilng in love with a girl, only to watch her be married off to a man old enough to be her grandfather? How do you handle lying in bed at night, knowing what he's doing to her?
What's it like to know you're only one of a dozen children, and your father doesn't particularly care about you because you're the fourth boy and have no value except as a strong back?
And so on.
All the books and articles I've looked at focus on what it's like for the women and girls, but none of them come from the throwaway boys' point of view.
And I want to know more about the politics of the polygamous family. The wives competing for the alpha male's favor. How the different children are treated and mistreated by different sister wives. The differing status of different wives.
Like a fifty-car pileup, it's horrifying and fascinating. I want to untangle everything and understand it thoroughly. And then I want to break it all up so it'll STOP HAPPENING.
And don't get me started on the guy from Austria. Not FLDS, of course, but the most horrifying of abusive fathers. He chains his daughter in the basement, fathers seven children on her, and keeps them all locked up down there. For nineteen years. You want a difficult integration into society, look no further. How do you bring someone who's never seen the sun into the real world at age nineteen?
--Steven
