link: Spiritual abuse in domestic violence

[sonia]

In Happily Abused: How to Use a Woman's Faith and Trust to Make Her a Willing Accomplice to Her Own Abuse, Vyckie Garrison responds to a religion-based victim-blaming article for women enduring emotional abuse. She clearly lays out the suffering caused by telling an abuse victim that God wants them to be in that position.

[A]ll the old faith-based confusion crept back in to muddle my thinking and I found myself second-guessing everything I've discovered about reality, mutuality, boundaries, self-preservation, equality ... My brain momentarily reverted to its religiously-conditioned comfort zone of self-abnegation and the abdication of choice and positive action in favor of "spiritual" rationalizations for hand-wringing and overwrought inaction.

via Slactivist link roundup

Comments

[onyxlynx]

I suspect that some of that is part of the reason I avoided religion for 40 years. Also, it made me furious.

[sonia]

Fury sounds sounds like a healthy immunizing response.

That self-questioning is so insidious. I'm not even sure where I got infected with it, but I definitely recognize it.

[suncat]

Thanks for posting that. I agree with the commenters -- that really needed to be written.