R.P. BenDedek
Emotional Abuse: Pt.1 - Feminism, Religion and Brainwashing.
By R.P.BenDedek
Jan 19, 2008 - 9:21:55 AM

Presented in Serial form, this article is Part 1 (of the Second Part) of the full length article Emotional Abuse & Female Emotional Abusers published at King's Calendar com. In this part of the series, we focus on Feminism and Fundamentalism.

Preface

In 2006 I wanted to draw attention to the Suicide Bombings in Israel, and so wrote an article entitled: Mother's Who Kill Their Own Children

The article title was meant to be eye catching, and it certainly attracted attention. Because of that attention, I began to keep the file current by adding links to articles on child abuse, as I came across them in my daily reading. As I did so, I began to notice how frequent were reports of women killing and otherwise abusing men. As time passed I saw the need to set up a special article on the topic and so created the file entitled: The Other Side of Violence

On September 8th 2007 I came across a news item entitled: Exposing the anti-male myth By Bettina Arndt, and was actually stunned by what I read. It seems that even I was unaware of the degree to which Women abuse.

Since that time I have been researching the issue of Feminine Violence, and during that process began to have my understanding enlarged on a whole range of societal issues. Once I began to understand the emotional process of abuse, I began to see connections to so many issues in life, and finally began to understand more clearly, why it is that I absolutely hate Political Correctness and Multiculturalism fanatics.

Today in this article, I am going to look at the issue of 'Emotional Abuse', through a variety of lenses. Each lens filters and uses information gleaned from articles related to the abuse of men by women. We will start with a look at abuse within religious and political contexts, before moving on to address issues related to Children and their fathers.

The Article will be divided into the following Sections:

• Introduction: What is Emotional Abuse?
  1. Religion, Fundamentalism, Terrorism and Abuse.
  a. : The Religion and Power of Feminism.
  2. Emotional Abuse in Politics and Political Activism
  a. Brainwashing
  3. Can We Escape from an Abuser's Emotional Abuse
  a. Is it possible to identify an Emotional Abuser?
  b. How Can I Know if someone is an Emotional Abuser?
  c. How do We Identify an Abuser's Victim
  4. Lies and Shame: Two Particular Aspects of Abuse
  5. Mothers who abuse Children
  6. Why do Mothers Abuse Children? : Personal Reflections
  7. Male Victims of Female Emotional Abuse
  a. Are you an abused Male?
  b. Some Things to Watch out For
  c. About Domestic Violence Against Men
  8. Summary: So Where Do We Go From Here?
  9. Repeating Key Ideas.
  10. Bibliography

Introduction

The Difference between Emotional Offence and Emotional Abuse!

We live in a complex world that just loves to reduce everything to slogans and catch phrases. In today's politically correct world, I can call you a whole string of bad names and get away with it, unless I happen to include some reference to your colour, ethnicity, gender or sexual preference. (The words White - Caucasian - Male and Heterosexual are not however considered derogatory or offensive.) At that point, you will be permitted to claim that you suffered from 'emotional pain, distress or trauma'. This would classify you as having been 'emotionally abused'.

We are all taught that we should not call 'fat' people, 'fat'. It is impolite and hurtful. But what about calling someone 'skinny'? Ever thought how 'skinny' people feel when you call them 'skinny'? Whilst old fashioned 'name calling' used to offend people, today that name calling is considered emotional abuse, and can be subject to criminal prosecution. But is there a difference between 'emotional offence' and 'emotional abuse'?

Many different people can be emotionally offended for many different reasons, so first off, I want to clarify here, that this article is not about 'emotional offence'. It is not about being upset by someone who offends your emotions.

Secondly, 'emotional abuse' will not be linked to 'physical domestic violence'. Domestic violence, which is ultimately about power and control, is classifiable as 'emotional abuse'. In this article we will look at emotional abuse in it's non physically violent form, and it is necessary first of all, to see that there is a difference between deliberately, accidentally or casually offending someone's emotional sensibilities and (consciously or subconsciously) choosing a person to be your 'long term captive victim'.

I use the expression 'long term captive victim' deliberately, for it carries within it the concept that Emotional Abuse as a psychotic or neurotic disorder, has as it's objective, to 'take you prisoner' (as opposed to just hurt you); a concept that is missing from those 'other' incidents that we might (justifiably) call, 'emotional abuse'. Whilst it is easy to identify someone who hurts us emotionally, it is not always so easy to identify those who are emotionally abusing us.

• Abuse is about control and the fear of losing it. Most abusers abuse surreptitiously. They are "stealth abusers". You have to actually live with one in order to witness the mistreatment. Verbal/Emotional Abuse - Sam Vaknin

In this article, "emotional abuse" will be treated as a specific pathological condition manifest in the abuser, and inflicted continuously (or long term) upon the victim. 'Emotional Abuse' in this article is confined to non physical abuse designed to control the thoughts, feelings, mind and behaviours of the victim. If I could reduce 'my' definition of emotional abuse to a single sentence, it would be this:

• Emotional Abuse is what an abuser continuously and deliberately does to another person, because the abuser (even if subconsciously) not only knows exactly how and when to make the 'victim' feel guilty, worthless, and dependent, but has an emotional need for the victim to be so.

Section 1. Religion, Fundamentalism, Terrorism and Abuse.

I deliberately commence this article here, because I think that I hardly need to provide references for my statements, as the concepts are so commonplace, that they are already accepted 'as a given' within society, even though few people probably stop to think what the concepts really mean.

When you mention paedophilia or sexual abuse within the context of religion, everybody agrees that the abuse occurs because the 'authority figure' (priest, minister, deacon or whoever), has used their power and position to trick, coerce, force or manipulate the 'victim', into doing something that the victim did not consciously choose or want. The Abuser uses 'special knowledge' in relation to the victim's emotional and/or mental state, so as to achieve what would not otherwise have been possible. Furthermore, he uses that special knowledge in combination with his position and power, to guarantee that he will not be exposed.

Whilst most people would probably agree with these statements in relation to sexual abuse and domestic violence, I doubt that many would ever stop to consider those same statements within the context of how we are treated by 'activist interest groups'. But more on that later.

Ruth Stein wrote an article entitled: Fundamentalism, Father and Son, and Vertical Desire on the relationship that exists between religious fundamentalism and terrorism, and postulates: my position foregrounds the libidinal and perverted relations between a certain kind of believer and his God, in which the libidinal and the violent come together. The following is her Introduction:

• In this paper I describe a certain state of mind which, conjoined with cultural and group processes, leads to fundamentalism, and with further developments, to coercive and violent fundamentalism. Hallmarks of this state are a sense of utter certainty, a feeling of being in the right, hermetic consistency, and highly rhetorical reiterations of Truths. I describe how the simplification of complexities into binary oppositions (basically of good and bad) not only creates order out of chaos and vagueness, but also constitutes a "vertical" homoerotic quest for God's love. These processes of ordering and desire are supported by the need to sacrifice, by masochism and coercion, and are enacted by increasingly severe purification processes. It is usually assumed that the religious quest is a search for meaning, but, as will hopefully become clear, this quest is at the same time a series of transformations of fear. In this latter sense, the fundamentalist state of mind originates from what may be likened to an extreme and long-extended form of what we experience at those moments and hours when anxiety and fear, or shame, overwhelm us and reduce us to helplessness, a painful sense of smallness, and the feeling of being at the mercy of greater powers than ourselves.
  
• Basically, there are two elemental types of fear leading to fundamentalist formations: (1) fear of death, or rather, of personal annihilation (see the works of Rank, Becker, or Lifton), and (2) the fear and rage in the face of the very existence of the other human being, whose presence and intentions are experienced as an obstacle to one's desires (Hegel, Sartre, Klein in their works develop this predicament). Fundamentalism would then be the quest to get rid of these experiences, or to violently transcend them. Human destructiveness and self-destructiveness is to a large extent the need to destroy these fears. Significantly, the destruction of fear and rage can be accomplished through processes of idealization and purification in whose service destructiveness is being battled, and at the same time, enacted, even worshipped.

Reference to Stein's article appears here not merely because it is well worth the read but because it serves as a legitimizing foundation for what later will follow.

Now if you thought that this section was going to be an expose or defence of religion, then you are off the mark. I include this reference because Stein's work is 'male centred', and today we will 'flip the coin' and look at the feminine side of fundamentalism and terrorism. Stein sees a connection between the emotional needs of the Male, his connection to Deity, and his terrorizing of the Female, and within this article, I am going to suggest that the converse of Stein's observations can be equally true.

1.a. : The Religion and Power of Feminism.

Emotional abuse is undoubtedly 'violent' in nature, but whereas it is easy for us (even without Stein's comments) to see the connection between 'male power and libido', I doubt that many have ever considered the connection between 'female power and libido'. Perhaps we could substitute the word 'gender' for libido in this case.

Whilst (Christian) monotheism is predominantly 'Male Centred', (the worship of the feminine having been destroyed by monotheists ages ago - although some protestants might disagree in relation to Catholicism), in the last few decades the women's movement has revived the pagan worship of the 'goddess'. It may not appear in the form of a formal religion, but that it exists, can hardly be denied, in the face of literary references to it.

• Truth in Flux: Goddess Feminism as a Late Modern Religion Goddess feminism is premised on the necessity of a collective moral confrontation with patriarchy and the planetary injustice and suffering it causes.
• The Feminist Movement Who are they really? Goddesses who have been forced into amnesia by primitive white men trying to keep them from their true potential. Feminism is in fact a spiritual movement based partly on reawakening of "goddess consciousness," and its real goal is matriarchy, not equality.
• On the Proliferation of Goddess Imagery in Popular Culture One of the primary sacred narratives of Dianic Witchcraft was built upon the idea that in civilizations past women held higher status than contemporary society and was only lessened when matriarchy gave way to patriarchy

Feminism is at least in practice if not in heart, (despite it's legitimate political philosophy and ideology), the worship of the female above the male. If we look back to Stein's introduction above, and substitute 'maleness' for 'femaleness', we could posit the following:

• The Feminist state of mind originates from anxiety, fear, or shame, that makes her feel helplessness, small, and at the mercy of men
• Her two elemental types of fear are of personal annihilation (loss of identity) and her rage at the human Male, who is seen as an obstacle to her desires
• The destruction of her fear and rage can be achieved by 'self-idealization' and purification through doing battle with the male and worshipping both the battle and her femininity.

Stein posits that it is this process in men, that leads to (Islamic) terrorism against the 'infidel'. Therefore, if we substitute Feminist for Male Terrorist, we can consider that it is the woman who is required to repudiate men and live in submission to her goddess in hopes of achieving the promise of immortality. It could be said that Fundamentalist Feminism is (to some degree at least), out to terrorise the infidel males. (In the next section we will return to look at 'fundamentalism'.)

Stein relates that fundamentalism is inherently 'unequal' in it's consideration of the genders. Like the Islamic terrorists who view the west as powerful, perverted and to blame for all the suffering of the Islamic World, 21st Century Western Society accepts that men are the source of all evil, hold all the power, and look down upon and abuse women. If abuse of women is ultimately derived from the Patriarchal worship of the Masculine gods, should it surprise us to see Feminism today expressing itself through Misandry, the abusive feminine form of the masculine Chauvinism?

The Feminist movement today is on a power trip! That it is a well deserved power trip - for equal rights and mutual respect - is irrelevant. Ultimately Power corrupts and today we live in a world in which those who profess to want 'equality' - equal rights and mutual respect - having gained such immense power, that they are no longer happy just to achieve their 'ultruistic' goals. Today, Feminism wants only one thing - Power! And Emotional Abuse is about 'power'!

Section 2.

Emotional Abuse in Politics and Political Activism

Emotional abuse is the process (consciously or subconsciously) of having power over and controlling 'the other', whose thinking and behaviour is not in line with our own. Our drives requires us to 'control' the other, so as to both empower and legitimize our (emotional) position.

Given the technology we have today, it is an easy thing for information to be disseminated, and to paraphrase an old maxim: Information is Power. Minds are shaped by external influences and no where is this more obvious than in the media. The Media is used both legitimately and illegitimately in the battle to control the minds, hearts and emotions of the public. (What is Truth? A Political Camera Angle!)

Recently there was a news headline in Australia which Read: Toddler drowned while father in shower. What impression does that headline give you? If you are like me, you instantaneously felt angry that a careless father did not make sure that his child was safe while he took a shower. However, when you read the article, a different picture emerges: "Family members failed to notice the little boy walk out of the Beechboro home.."

Whilst the headline gives you the impression that there were only two people in the house, the fact is that the toddler's death was not related to the father taking a shower, although it must be said that the ages of the other people there at the time were not provided.

So I have to ask: What was the point of the headline? Was it misleading? How misleading was it? Did readers notice that it was misleading? Is it possible that we have succumbed so completely to the feminist 'Men are Guilty of Everything' chant; so completely brainwashed, that we don't think twice before 'dumping' on men? Do we just accept that everything is the fault of the male?

Using one website's material on Emotional Abuse, and adjusting it to fit this particular section, I would like to look at some issues related to 'emotional brainwashing'.

2.a. : Brainwashing

Symptoms of Emotional Abuse / The Process of Brainwashing

• The brainwasher keeps the victim unaware of what is going on and what changes are taking place. The brainwasher puts forth a closed system of logic, and allows no real input or criticism.
• The brainwasher controls the victim's time and physical environment, and works to suppress much of the victim's old behavior. The victim is slowly, or abruptly, isolated from all supportive persons except the brainwasher.
• The brainwasher works to instill new behavior and attitudes in the victim.
• The brainwasher creates in the victim a sense of powerlessness, fear, and dependency.
• In other words - What he/she/they says, goes.

Whilst there is no doubt that people voluntarily submit to brainwashing, we as a society are I believe, daily 'brainwashed' through both the media and political activism. From that perspective, let's see how the points mentioned above might apply to political activism.

2.a.(i)

The brainwasher keeps the victim unaware of what is going on.

Recently I read an article that brought this point home to me, on an issue that I would never have connected to the topic of Abuse. Written by Jeff Lukens and entitled: Reflections on the Watergate Tragedy, it contained several extremely interesting points.

• Those who were after Nixon for Watergate had been after him for a long time. Watergate was just the pretext. They sought to prosecute him as aggressively as he had prosecuted Hiss and the Vietnam War.
• He had been correct about his opposition to communism. He had been correct about Alger Hiss and how to end the Vietnam War. But what did that matter to the Left? Watergate was the result of Vietnam, and the collapse of South Vietnam was the result of Watergate. The upheaval that followed his presidency in Southeast Asia, Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere proved that his policies had been correct all along.

Whilst not at any point justifying Nixon's Watergate involvement and behaviour, the author highlights for us, the true cause of Nixon's downfall. Had it not been Watergate, it would have been something else, for in the end, the real reason for Nixon's downfall, was that he made the mistake of providing his abusers with the 'branch upon which his own noose could be hung.' In this respect then, (and this is specifically mentioned in the article), the public was not truly aware of what was going on. They, like Watergate were being 'used' to justify someone else's desire to control, manipulate and destroy Nixon.

2.a.(ii)

The brainwasher puts forth a closed system of logic and allows no real input or criticism.

In 1993, New York-based writer and psychotherapist, Nina Silver wrote an article entitled: Is 'Political Correctness' Big Brother in drag - or a laudable attempt to give the oppressed a chance? (New Internationalist - Issue 249 - November 1993). The article was about a (Jewish) university student who, "roused from sleep by some noisy, drunken classmates, shouted to the group that they were worse than a herd of water buffalo." For this he was denounced as a 'racist'. Silver writes:

• While supporters of multicultural diversity applauded his censure no-one seemed to take account of Jacobowitz's own Jewish background. Had they, they might have discovered that in Hebrew the word 'behama' - which means water oxen - is slang for 'dolt'."
• I think that to effectively launch multiculturalism, we must be clear that there is an immense difference between a private conversation and publicly-sanctioned, institutionalised hatred and prejudice. Students should have the right, either publicly or privately, to speak their minds. Tolerance and open-mindedness cannot flourish in the presence of fear. Democracy is a living, breathing thing that transforms with people's needs and conditions of life. Unless those who advocate social change are prepared to deal with the oscillations inherent in any viable social system, they will end up as rigid and intolerant as their critics.

Political Correctness Thought Police and the Multiculturalism Thought Police are very quick (in the name of non-discrimination) to accuse, point the finger, abuse and vilify anyone who says anything of which they disapprove, and as Silver points out above, not only is there no interest in the 'wider or broader picture', but there was the risk - back in 1993 - which has now become a reality in 2008, that those who preach diversity end up becoming intolerant, undemocratic, and totalitarian.

The reason for this is that what commenced as a wonderful 'ideology' has been corrupted by the driving needs of those who most vehemently push the political correctness agenda. The base root of that corruption, is that 'activists' have several sometimes conflicting emotional motivators that require them to control the thoughts, words and actions of the public, so that the activist themselves can feel secure, righteous and worthwhile.

One thing that is not considered by many, is that Thought Police are as easily affected by 'reaction formation', as any other person, and the dogged determination to 'enforce' a particular ideology, may arise from the fact that the enforcer suffers an inner conflict. That conflict may arise between the natural feelings of the enforcer, and the ideology that they espouse.

It can be said that - when a person seeks to cover up something unacceptable by adopting an opposite stance - they are exhibiting Reaction Formation. When a person cannot accept that they have within themselves the very thing which they despise, they vehemently seek to enforce the 'right way' on others. Refer to: Sneers from those who think they're above it all : By Michael Duffy : December 17, 2005

• When Pauline Hanson was in Parliament, preachers such as Robert Hughes enthusiastically condemned the innate racism of the Australian people. There were numerous gleeful predictions of suburban pogroms. But what happened was that nearly all the violence flowed the other way. At Hanson's apogee, hundreds of people would demonstrate outside her meetings, abusing, and in some cases spitting on and attacking, those who came to see her. Many were frightened away. It was possibly the most disgraceful episode in the recent history of our democracy. Strangely, it went almost completely uncriticised by the educated middle classes.
  BenDedek Comment: The activists accused M/s Hanson of Promoting Violence, or being racist (discriminatory), of being undemocratic, but what flowed from them demonstrated quite clearly that they cared nothing for the democratic process; that they were violent and discriminatory. The very things they claimed to hold dear were trodden under foot as they proclaimed their 'righteous beliefs'.

In Part 2, we shall continue to look at the issue of Brainwashing, before taking a look at the personal characteristics of Abusers and their victims.

Full Length Version - Two Parts - 13,000 words:

• PART 'A' - Emotional Abuse in Society
• PART 'B' - Women who Abuse Men and Children

R.P.BenDedek

Email: rpbendedek@hotmail.com

• The Other Side of Violence: Women Abusing Children

R.P.BenDedek is the pseudonym of the Author of 'The King's Calendar: The Secret of Qumran' (http://www.kingscalendar.com/), and is a guest columnist at Magic City Morning Star News. An Australian, he currently teaches Conversational English in China.

Social Commentaries at Kingscalendar

"The King's Calendar" is a chronological study of the historical books of the Bible (Kings and Chronicles), Josephus, Seder Olam Rabbah, and the (Essene) Damascus Document of The Dead Sea Scrolls.