Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: April 13, 2020 01:22PM
I enjoyed reading that very much. Well said, D&D (as usual).
>Dedicated to my mother who told me as a teen that a woman could never be president because "they just don't think like men."
Or maybe that is *why* they *can* be president! lol
But yeah. Vicious is a word that can be fairly applied to some women, unfortunately. I didn't make friends with a single Mormon woman during my three years in (other than the mo work-friend's wife who I became friendly with *before* they started the conversion efforts, that worked for a little while). Surely that is somewhat strange. I got the impression that perhaps it wasn't because as a group they were nasty people but more that they were so burdened by all the requirements of their religion they were afraid to put themselves in a position where they may have to do even more, like taking on responsibility for yet something else or facing more demands from yet another person.
Friendship, after all, takes time, at least, and effort on some fronts, and then there's the unknown emotional and even potential physical toll of getting involved in somebody else's life. Of course, in the middle of being a newly baptized (in a traumatic way) convert, I may have been seen as yet another issue they didn't have time to deal with. The "friend" who had invited me for supper weekly to have the "discussions" with the missionaries stated after the last one, "Now I've done my job". Job? I thought we were friends having dinner, wanting to spend time with each other. I thought she was just taking an opportunity to provide a meal for the missionaries. (Yes, I was a dope - slow to comprehend the set-up). And it's not like I didn't reciprocate, helping in her household with the meal prep, housework, her four children, and other specialized tasks (I don't want to mention all the specifics here. But included were multiple entire weekends when I looked after the children while the parents were out of town, including a time when I had to deal with their son who was expressing suicidal thoughts).
Nasty women aren't limited to Mormonism, as you say, D&D. I have unfortunately run into my share of vicious women in non-mo churches. On two occasions the negative experiences very nearly shattered me. I can see my younger self as earnest, curious, well-meaning, trusting, and at times they broke me. The female members of one church alone perpetrated three separate major outrages against me. But they were the nice church ladies and I was the strange interloper. Unfortunately for me, I used to always try to work things out rather than just walk away, ending up hurting myself even more. Finally I realized it's OK to walk. It doesn't indicate anything negative about you; rather, it's a good self-defence/survival technique.
They did me one huge favour - their actions and attitudes guaranteed I wouldn't join their church (which I had thought was mainstream but in retrospect, as I learned more, was still on the fundamentalist scale). For some reason, I was generally attracted to the more fundy-style churches yet I was always the odd one out - not able to embrace the closed nature of the beliefs, attitudes and actions. Finally I got that about myself and quit hurting myself by getting involved with such groups.
So, for sure, women hurting women. It's a thing. Not confined to Mormonism, of course, but out there in the wide, wide world. It's most unfortunate. Because together, stronger, 'n all that.