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Polygamy and misogyny are alive and well in Canada
April 24, 2008 - 4:46pm
Although polygamy is technically against the law in Canada, there has been much bluster from provincial and federal officials regarding their inability to police polygamous sects because any arrests would ultimately lead to a legal challenge under the protection from religious persecution accorded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The truth is however, that these cases are not so much about religion, as they are about gender.
If someone were to discover a community in Canada which was led by a woman who considered herself a prophet of God, and who indoctrinated young men from birth to become, at 14 or 15 one of many husbands to older wives, and to play no other role than to service the women sexually and physically, the outcry would be loud and long against this type of virtual slavery. Men are not property, they are not breeders, they are not servants. Women, well… it’s not so clear. There is something oddly old-fashioned yet very reassuring about the FLDS women in their long-sleeved, ankle-length dresses, with their tightly braided hair and demure demeanors. They are a throwback to an era many people fear has been lost for good – the pre-media saturation and sexual liberation, mom n’ pop era of traditional gender roles. If women’s ultimate fulfillment during this period was thought to be found in motherhood then these women are in some ways the ultimate fantasy of happy, fulfilled mothers, with their dozens of children and communal living arrangements. When the women themselves express, albeit in a scripted fashion, their contentment with their lifestyle as they have in recent U.S. television interviews, it simply reaffirms the public’s assumption that despite the specter of abuse there is something very genteel and proper about these women’s lives.
It is not surprising then that women who have escaped from these polygamous communities (and escape is not a misnomer, since the FLDS compound in El Dorado is literally locked and guarded) who have shared their stories of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse have been largely ignored by the media and by law enforcement officials. Despite repeated claims that some of the men have threatened, beaten and abused their wives and children, nothing has been done. Just to what lengths, one could ask, do the men of the FLDS have to go in order for the public, and the law to pay heed?
In Canada this year there were numerous discussions in the media surrounding Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor commission on the issue of reasonable accommodation of immigrants and religious minorities. It is ironic that reporters and the public spent so much time pointing fingers at Islamic immigrants, particularly at women who wear the hijab - most of whom resent the notion that they are oppressed by their religion - when there are truly repressive religious regimes at work right in our own backyards. The fact that it is white, Christian, men perpetrating these abuses makes it much more difficult for us criticize them than when we are faced with cultures which seem “different” or “alien” to our own. The truth is we need to take a good hard look at the culture of misogyny that still exists in Canada today and analyze what it is about our values as a society that make abusive polygamous communities quasi-acceptable to the public and to law enforcement officials.
I would add that beside the Conservative appeal you so well detail
polygamists *also* embody the sexual libertarian fantasy of the harem, which endears their moms n' pop lifestyle to both forms of reactionary male resistance to women's rights, showing that when it comes to women, progressive and conservative males have a lot more in common than they like to acknowledge.
[ 24 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Are FLDS women brainwashed?
What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS
And she has a long piece at Campaign for America's Future that I haven't read myself yet.
How Dangerous is The FLDS?
ETA: Oops. Feminism forum. See ya. But I'll leave the links. She's good.
[ 24 April 2008: Message edited by: pogge ]
These institutions would also have to be run entirely by FLDS doctors, which I find a little incredible. I think the writer could give modern mental health care a little bit more credit for being able to recognize symptoms of domestic abuse, or systemic "communal" abuse.
The author's obviously never been to Manitoba [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
So essentially, we are forcing our morality on these people. Now, the justification for this is that their are young innocents that are given no choice. So, are we saying that we can dictate our morality over their religion? Just as we dictated that Jehovah Witnesses could not let their children die, for lack of a blood transfusion?
I suppose the only real way to definitively answer the question of whether they are being exploited or whether they are simply being brought up in a different lifestyle - is to ask them if they were exploited once they are adults.
If, you interview 50 of them when they are 35 years old, and the vast majority of them say that they wish the government had left them alone to live in the polygamous sect - then perhaps we are not doing anyone any favours. I think it is probably unlikely though.
[Note: Ottoman Historical Pedantry to follow]
There was no sex on the actual premises known as the "harem". "Harem" is an anglicisation of haram, the Arabic for "forbidden or protected". The "harem" was literally the place where women's privacy was to be protected and it was quite explicitly "forbidden" for men to be present, let alone to have sex, there.
This is not to say that men did not carry out polgynous relationships with women who lived in the harem.
That said, from either meaning, I'm not sure how that differs from the patriarchal polygamous relationships of "conservatives" Martin is comparing the harem to.
The Western idea of scores of women lying around elaborate pools half-dressed and waiting to please the sexual desires of men seems to be largely an Orientalist fantasy with little basis in fact.
And I certainly don't remember the last time "progressives" were fantasizing about it.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]
Hello martin, and thank you for the welcome. I recognize you from PAR-L (I think?) where I've appreciated your posts.
That's a very interesting point about the idea of a harem, I guess polyamory advocates would argue that it's just fine... which I guess it would be if it were only about sexuality, and "consenting adults" but in this case it's so much more involved...
Keystone I think you're missing the point - it's not about a lifestyle "choice". How much of this is a choice when the only way you can leave is by fleeing with your children in the middle of the night? Or when you fear that if you cross any man in the community you will be eternally damned?
I'm not removing the women's agency, they are independant people with values and opinions of their own, however the FLDS severely limits their freedoms, and allows these abuses to be perpetrated against them in ways that we would find highly unacceptable if they were men. If you ask them if they are happy will they say yes? I suspect many would. But if you ask anyone who's worked with domestic violence survivors many of the victims also claimed they were happy, or have returned numerous time to the partners who abused them, because it's the only life they've known, and possibly the only place they feel that they are loved/wanted.
Imagine how this is compounded when you're taught that everyone outside your immediate community is evil, and works for the devil.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]
Wouldn't that just be giving parents a license to abuse and exploit their children? [img]eek.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]
Also the events at Bountiful and other FLDS compounds are not fantasies. It is not because male control/abuse of women - as youthful as possible - is such a trope in male sexual fantasies (except for Boom Boom's relations...) that they are not to be struggled against in the world.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
I think that's a vicious slur against mainstream and progressive Canadians - I don't know one person who would agree with you.
Actually, it comes from an English cliche "politics makes strange bedfellows", and was an intended pun and not a pronouncement against the libido. My fault, it was too arcane, I suppose.
Not advocating anything - simply pointing out the obvious Freudian/Lacanian retort to your statement.
That said, it isn't "obvious" that culture dictates male sexual fantasies involving power over multiple women at all. Without access to the libido tabula rasa (whatever that would look like) we simply don't know that. The fact that the sexual relationships of many, many mammals, including most primates, involve an element of dominant-submissive violence and control (and almost always by males over females) suggests that perhaps something else is at play.
Again, it is just as "obvious" to argue that the assumption that sexual fantasies of power only result by the libido being deleteriously shaped by cultural constructions (and the concomitant notion that it could be changed by cultural reeducation) may simply be yet another example of a "rational" animal suppressing behaviours developed over several million years. But that's just the obvious retort to your point.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]
As if I didn't know that... and as if it cancelled the fact that such a pejorative reference to being or climbing in bed together (when one wants to slander people by association to other opponents of what they oppose) does reflect the traditional, conservative anti-sex bias...
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
But you take it how you want.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]
Of course, for someone being (erroneously) pedantic about words, you sure did rather casually slough off the problem that your "harem" reference is a racist Orientalist myth impugning Muslim men and women with sexual licentiousness. I guess the subtext only matters when it's someone else's, eh Martin?
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]
What a joke.
We have laws that apply and should be enforced against the exploitation of children by adults. How many life partners you choose to have sex with if you are an adult is none of the states business any more than it is the states business to tell people that only men and women can be married. Even the people who are worried about abuse admit that not all women or children are abused in the community. Is Canadian law to be bent now to get collective judgement against a community? Should everyone be arrested because we think some of the people are abusers?
I think that fundamentalist Christians in general tend to believe that the man is the authority in the household. Should we start sweeps of their churches and communities because we know that the patriarchal attitude that says you are the absolute authority will definitely lead to abuse of women. Should we take the women living in relationships with born again Christians into custody for their own protection?
The next aspect of this is the jailing of children. The Kootenays have seen it before. Canada jailed the Japanese in concentration camps in the 40's in the are north of Creston often times separating families.
In the 50's BC jailed children in concentration camps because we didn't like the Doukhobors. I have met a number of the children scooped up in that raid and they still suffer from it. The state determined their parents were unfit because they refused to have their children indoctrinated by a militaristic school system.
Some History
The other thing besides location that these communities have in common is the sin of cummunal living.
Does anyone think that arresting hundreds of children from Bountiful and putting them through our fucked up child welfare system is not going to lead to a large number of them being emotinally damaged?
Lets attack the abuse of young girls and not start a state pogram against a community some of whom don't abuse their children.
This is about abuse - abuse that goes against laws that exist in this country. It's about finding a way to prosecute the men committing these acts, and about putting in place resources to help women recognize that these abuses violate their and their children's rights and that there is help available to them. It's about countering the attitude that this is about religious persecution because it isn't. It's about safety, security, and women and children's human rights. It's also about the misogyny inherent in a state, and a public that ignores these rights.
[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]
Blackmore applies to have polygamy charges stayed
Montreal professor who calls polygamy laws harmful can testify, judge rules
This is the kind of "expert" that McGill harbours - like Margaret Somerville - misogynists in women's clothing.
Agree unionist, about the rampent misogyny going on these days, but I won't limit it to just McGill academics, or just women academics like the 2 you name.
And trying to use the harm reduction model to support poligamy is just ugly all day.
Big money, not just from the Mormons, is floating around, and one can only wonder whose pockets it is floating into.
Why is it that only women have their gender questioned based on their political positions? Interesting that men don't face the same thing. Women hold many different positions, some that people may find objectionable. They are STILL WOMEN...not just dressing up "in women's clothing".
It would be presumed Ghislaine that men are excused for being misogynist based upon their gender, while women are not.
But then men are excused from a lot of things, which women are not. For example, men can slag each other, tell each other to fuck off, and have other assorted pissing matches all day long with each other and it is just dandy fine, for the most part. However, a woman steps up and defends herself by slagging her attacker(s), telling someone to fuck off, or use other strong language, and it is a whole different story. The systemic and internalized gender stereotypes always come out and into play. It seems most, and this can be both men and women, do not even realize their gender bias slanting their perceptions, and ensuing reactions.
Women are supposed to always be nice, sweet and kind...even in the face of misogyny and sexism. If not, we are; sniping, bitching, hissy fitting, bad feminists, Phyllis Shipley's, and other such personal attacks and slanders.
Hey remind, Unionist said no such thing about how men and women are supposed to behave. Stop claiming he did.
Unionist, such women aren't "misogynists in women's clothing". They are women who are misogynists. They sadly exist.
Maysie, respectfully, I ask that you point out where I claimed/stated unionist said anything? As I did not. And I do not appreciate being accused of doing something I did not do, so thank you advance for your retraction of a false accusation.
In fact, unionist did not even enter my mind when I wrote that. It was a general observation of society at large, and its entrenched and systemic sexism and misogyny, and how they play out most everyone's perceptions and actions. As I took Ghislaines comments to be more "at large" than really in response to unionist's post.
ETA: Though I will say "sorry" to unionist, if he thought I was meaning him.