In think one of the big things to remember is that back in the 60's and the 70's and even the first half of the 80's, Spousal abuse was not something that was talked about in great detail IN some of the bigger urban areas of the country it was coming to the forefront of peoples awareness there were some shelters--but most Police, and doctors, hospitals etc had no cohesive policy of dealing with it. And that was in the big urban areas.
In a small rural Ohio farming community I'd lay dollars to doughnuts that if you had said the words "she is an abused spouse" to the average person on the street you would either have gotten a mystified expression on their face or, as a Anchorage Policemen told me after refusing to arrest my husband as I stood bloody and beaten before him "husbands and wives fight and some husbands and wives fight violently.
Also the land that she was on the land that headquarters is on , if I remember correctly, is the old Kipp Farm, HER land, Her birthright that VPW weaseled away from her.
I don't see going as an option for her
And A man who could behave as violently as he did in public____
I'd be tiptoeing on eggshells to make sure that kind of violence didnl't get directed toward me and the kids
it's not that i don't believe in God. i just don't believe in anything or anyone that wants to tell me they've got a special connection, the inside dope--AND that what God has "told" them applies to me."
I DO understand, that is why I am not in the spin off crap.
I forgot that
"Also the land that she was on the land that headquarters is on , if I remember correctly, is the old Kipp Farm, HER land, Her birthright that VPW weaseled away from her."
does anyone remember when she left her child (jp) behind when he was a couple of months old to go with veepee to india ? i don't think that's a normal heart of a mother
excath, I swear I'm not trying to follow you on purpose lately. :)
But I have been thinking of that very thing off and on all day. And I thought of how I don't think I could have done it. Yet to take an infant into the places they did would have been dangerous in regards to health. I can't recall, was there a reason it couldn't wait till the child was at least a year old and be taken.
I just don't think I could have done it. I don't know what she had to come up with inside to do it. Because I knew her also, and I knew her heart. That doesn't fit the woman I knew.
I don't believe she felt it right to put herself outside the ability to do what she could.
In that control that you and I know intimately. Do you ever smell things that make you shiver? Oh let's not get into that, sorry to have even brought it up probably. But we know control and know how she would have been. You knew the man intimately.
There will always be "what if's" and "should haves."
She didn't leave TWI - period. She left her child behind to go to India - Period. (Now if she were Mother Theresa or Cory Ten Boom or some kind of Florence Nightingale personality, we would be saying how strong and courageous she was.) I am not judging her here. Just trying to state the facts as they have been presented. I never knew the woman personally.
We can speculate all we want. Bottom line is - she did some good and tolerated some evil. Does the good she did outweigh the evil she tolerated?
I think this topic has been very telling because the subject,according to the first sentence in the initial post is not really Mrs. Wierwille but rather greasespotters...
Mrs. Wierwille or anyone else who knew about VPW's abuses of women and did nothing, is guilty of complacency. This complacency helped allow VPW's abuse to continue for as long as it did.
These people made the choice (for different reasons) to be complacent.
Was Mrs Wiereille a victim? Sure she was, but being a victim in one thing doesn't make complaceny in another the right moral choice. People suffered because of this complacency.
These complacent ones (Mrs Wierwille included) allowed women to suffer VPW's sexual abuses so they themsleves would not have to "suffer" the consequences of not being complacent. Young women were "sacrificed" to VPW's abuses for a perceived greater cause -- whether it was continued personal comfort, advancement in leadership, loyalty to VPW, or even as expected collateral damage in "moving the word".
This kind of complacency can not be justified - only explained. It was dead wrong.
Would speaking out or confronting VPW have stopped it? -- I don't know, but to have tried and failed is better than not to have tried at all.
I think this topic has been very telling because the subject,according to the first sentence in the initial post is not really Mrs. Wierwille but rather greasespotters...
The subject is about how GS'ers treat Mrs. VP, which immediately gets to the various opinions of Mrs. VP's setting in Wayworld, which is what we are discussing, right?
Secondly, Pluto is a dwarf planet now, so not entirely out of the planetary picture, but there are two other dwarfs instead of seven (which would have been really cool).
But life is not a Snow White fairy tale. There are a lot of imperfect, nasty, lying jerks in the middle of most lives. It's hard for me to put any kind of fairy tale side into the VP predatory story. Bible clothes were the sheepskin for that wolf. Fine that maybe people learned some Bible, but what associated "evil" came linked with that learning ...
like a virus inside one of those friendly joke emails. We laughed at the time, but hidden somewhere in the code was corrupt script that we have trouble removing from the overall program of our lives. So some had to reboot, some got booted, and some reformatted. OK, I got sorta carried away there :) If only it was that simple.
I link the VP Bible stuff with the abuse stuff here because many want to treat VP's teachings as largely profitable, and the evil side something to be dealt with as with a crookeder than a dog's hind leg prophet. Maybe if you just took piffle and walked away, that might be true. But we are dealing with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and how they trod on the peasants. The way scripture was twisted into our brains to accomplish that is pertinent.
i don't think my mom would ever order people around and tell them what pictures need to be hung etc. etc. but then my mom was never a culthead
Dot (I mean Mrs. VP) certainly got used to the royal treatment. I remember her turning her nose up when her kahlua and cream was stirred ... oh, I don't take it stirred. Not a nice request, not even a request, just an understood "take this away and give me one done the correct way". And that was with just 4 or 5 of us in a living room. What does it take to become comfortable ordering around the peasants?
Now that I hear (and I seem to recall) that it was her farm, it seems to put her in more of the power position. And oh yeah, she was a nurse and her sister had some “position”. She had a profession and a farm, what was VP at the time?
I knew a guy for years in another chat that used to live in Ohio … he was closer to their age and sorta knew them a little. He mentioned she was good looking. Maybe it was VP that started feeling inadequate and he overcompensated a little? :blink: Just a thought.
In any case, Mrs. VP made some choices on how to cope with VP, and she had some much more comfortable choices than many who suffer alone. In that respect it's hard to put her in the classic abuse victim category.
She'll never fit the classic abuse case. And the classic abuse case won't fit itself in time.
Complacency as defined by http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=co...p;x=18&y=15 isn't something I think many women of abuse enjoy. I can tell you first hand there are some folks who thought I had a good life at times. Heck someone chose to go into the wc because of what they thought I had. Window dressing is as valuable as its name.
I once insulted Abi, she never mentioned it in post or private but her signature corrected me one day. And I wouldn't say I'd had a life of comfort, but her quote humbled me because I knew I was not thinking as someone in the shoes (as my nephew in Iraq recently said).
Kathy, whatever insult you think you tossed my way I either completely missed or have totally forgotten. My tag line is something that comes from a blog written by an old highschool friend's husband. I thought it was appropriate for some of the things that go on here at the cafe, but it most certainly was NEVER directed at you or any other individual.
I find it interesting that Mrs. VPW got little or no grief from you greasespot folk about why she didn't speak up regarding her husband's sexual exploits. Donna M. certainly knew and didn't do anything either and she received many tongue lashings here at greasespot.
Is it because Mrs. VPW was so well liked?
Does she get a free pass for being sweet?
Why the double standard?
Doesn't asking why she got treated more gently immediately go to GS'ers opinions on her position ... the most obvious of which is that maybe she was dominated/abused/controlled? So she is treated more gently because most GS'ers empathize with that.
That some feel empathy, but still don't hold her blameless is understandable as well. Even criminals have ugly backgrounds that one might empathize with. Maybe it is a matter of degree, the degree of her being controlled and the degree of harm to others that she didn't confront VP on.
I'm missing what direction the thread was supposed to take. Was it to be a look at the type of people that are willing to treat Dorothy more gently? Or what?
Ok - I can be totally off base here - but here's what I think regarding why "us Greasespot folks" are more apt to speak badly of D*nna M. than Mrs. W.
D*nna ticked more of us off. She was a yeller and screamer.
Mrs. W. was a woman that managed to do good while she was living in Wayworld. Maybe not enough good for some here - but at least she tried and cared about folks. She prevented her husband from cornering at least one woman - maybe she did that for more women who have not spoken up here at GS.
Did D*nna ever do that - even once? I don't know - if she did, no one has stepped up to tell the story yet.
My biggest beef with Mrs. W is that she gave her support to Martindale after the late 80's exodus. For many of us her support was a factor in remaining in TWI.
I only interacted with Mrs. W twice. One time when I was riding on the twig hopper....VPW was a cold cold fish...never SPOKE to me the whole ride which of course had me terrified that I must smell spiritually or something.
I was in the side car and Mrs. was riding behind him....She was totally awsome...leaned over and spoke to me the entire trip pointing out land marks....aasking personal questions...in otherwords making me feel like I was somebody that was worth getting to know.
I thought it awsome that she could be the gracious friendly hostess even on the back of a motor cycle....She was warm and caring, realising that this was probably the biggest moment of my entire life...and NOT letting VP ruin it with his taciturn disposition.
The second time she was teaching at a big state meeting in witchita....in her sharing, she mentioned that she had been deeply wounded by somene at hq (this was after vp had died) She said that she had been so miserable....to the point of beeing in tears ....
Her teaching revolved around being able to find forgivness and love in her heart....
Anyway...I just remember being so angry....how DARE anybody mistreat that dear lady???
When we were all hanging out afterwards...we chatted I know that there was an overwhelming feeling of sadness that she was trying to cover up in her gentle kindness....
I don`t know...it was just a tiny glimpse into her life at way world, that she was not being treated with the care and respect that she ought to have had there.
I also know that when we all rode the motor cycle ...she was wonderfull...she *felt* good, warm. VP on the other hand gave me the stone cold creepy crawlies....at the time I put down the overwhelming feeling of scariness to my own spiritual shortcomings and lack.
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rascal
Gonna weigh in here... Great points word wolf, I hope that you never stop keeping the record straight and people honest here. twinot, i have to say that you are sounding pretty darned judgemental and
rascal
Guess that maybe one would have to experience being abused, not just physically but mentally as well, in order to understand the utter hopelessness of the situation. You have been taught all of your
templelady
In think one of the big things to remember is that back in the 60's and the 70's and even the first half of the 80's, Spousal abuse was not something that was talked about in great detail IN some of the bigger urban areas of the country it was coming to the forefront of peoples awareness there were some shelters--but most Police, and doctors, hospitals etc had no cohesive policy of dealing with it. And that was in the big urban areas.
In a small rural Ohio farming community I'd lay dollars to doughnuts that if you had said the words "she is an abused spouse" to the average person on the street you would either have gotten a mystified expression on their face or, as a Anchorage Policemen told me after refusing to arrest my husband as I stood bloody and beaten before him "husbands and wives fight and some husbands and wives fight violently.
Also the land that she was on the land that headquarters is on , if I remember correctly, is the old Kipp Farm, HER land, Her birthright that VPW weaseled away from her.
I don't see going as an option for her
And A man who could behave as violently as he did in public____
I'd be tiptoeing on eggshells to make sure that kind of violence didnl't get directed toward me and the kids
Confronting him would not have furthered this aim
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Dot Matrix
Sprawled out
"
it's not that i don't believe in God. i just don't believe in anything or anyone that wants to tell me they've got a special connection, the inside dope--AND that what God has "told" them applies to me."
I DO understand, that is why I am not in the spin off crap.
I forgot that
"Also the land that she was on the land that headquarters is on , if I remember correctly, is the old Kipp Farm, HER land, Her birthright that VPW weaseled away from her."
WOW
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excathedra
i'm still trying to figure out how i feel
my mom said that ?
i did that ?
i love you, dot, always and forever
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excathedra
i have something that has bothered me
does anyone remember when she left her child (jp) behind when he was a couple of months old to go with veepee to india ? i don't think that's a normal heart of a mother
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ChattyKathy
excath, I swear I'm not trying to follow you on purpose lately. :)
But I have been thinking of that very thing off and on all day. And I thought of how I don't think I could have done it. Yet to take an infant into the places they did would have been dangerous in regards to health. I can't recall, was there a reason it couldn't wait till the child was at least a year old and be taken.
I just don't think I could have done it. I don't know what she had to come up with inside to do it. Because I knew her also, and I knew her heart. That doesn't fit the woman I knew.
But I know control real intimate like.
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excathedra
she had a nursing degree and her sister owned a grocery store and became the mayor. was she really a poor farm girl without any options ?
and ps. i understand control also
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ChattyKathy
I don't believe she felt it right to put herself outside the ability to do what she could.
In that control that you and I know intimately. Do you ever smell things that make you shiver? Oh let's not get into that, sorry to have even brought it up probably. But we know control and know how she would have been. You knew the man intimately.
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excathedra
ps. if the baby would not be safe in india, stay home with the baby
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ChattyKathy
He would have never allowed that.
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doojable
There will always be "what if's" and "should haves."
She didn't leave TWI - period. She left her child behind to go to India - Period. (Now if she were Mother Theresa or Cory Ten Boom or some kind of Florence Nightingale personality, we would be saying how strong and courageous she was.) I am not judging her here. Just trying to state the facts as they have been presented. I never knew the woman personally.
We can speculate all we want. Bottom line is - she did some good and tolerated some evil. Does the good she did outweigh the evil she tolerated?
Everyone has to answer that for themselves.
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simonzelotes
I think this topic has been very telling because the subject,according to the first sentence in the initial post is not really Mrs. Wierwille but rather greasespotters...
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Goey
Mrs. Wierwille or anyone else who knew about VPW's abuses of women and did nothing, is guilty of complacency. This complacency helped allow VPW's abuse to continue for as long as it did.
These people made the choice (for different reasons) to be complacent.
Was Mrs Wiereille a victim? Sure she was, but being a victim in one thing doesn't make complaceny in another the right moral choice. People suffered because of this complacency.
These complacent ones (Mrs Wierwille included) allowed women to suffer VPW's sexual abuses so they themsleves would not have to "suffer" the consequences of not being complacent. Young women were "sacrificed" to VPW's abuses for a perceived greater cause -- whether it was continued personal comfort, advancement in leadership, loyalty to VPW, or even as expected collateral damage in "moving the word".
This kind of complacency can not be justified - only explained. It was dead wrong.
Would speaking out or confronting VPW have stopped it? -- I don't know, but to have tried and failed is better than not to have tried at all.
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ChattyKathy
Thank you.
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rhino
The subject is about how GS'ers treat Mrs. VP, which immediately gets to the various opinions of Mrs. VP's setting in Wayworld, which is what we are discussing, right?
Secondly, Pluto is a dwarf planet now, so not entirely out of the planetary picture, but there are two other dwarfs instead of seven (which would have been really cool).
But life is not a Snow White fairy tale. There are a lot of imperfect, nasty, lying jerks in the middle of most lives. It's hard for me to put any kind of fairy tale side into the VP predatory story. Bible clothes were the sheepskin for that wolf. Fine that maybe people learned some Bible, but what associated "evil" came linked with that learning ...
like a virus inside one of those friendly joke emails. We laughed at the time, but hidden somewhere in the code was corrupt script that we have trouble removing from the overall program of our lives. So some had to reboot, some got booted, and some reformatted. OK, I got sorta carried away there :) If only it was that simple.
I link the VP Bible stuff with the abuse stuff here because many want to treat VP's teachings as largely profitable, and the evil side something to be dealt with as with a crookeder than a dog's hind leg prophet. Maybe if you just took piffle and walked away, that might be true. But we are dealing with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and how they trod on the peasants. The way scripture was twisted into our brains to accomplish that is pertinent.
Dot (I mean Mrs. VP) certainly got used to the royal treatment. I remember her turning her nose up when her kahlua and cream was stirred ... oh, I don't take it stirred. Not a nice request, not even a request, just an understood "take this away and give me one done the correct way". And that was with just 4 or 5 of us in a living room. What does it take to become comfortable ordering around the peasants?
Now that I hear (and I seem to recall) that it was her farm, it seems to put her in more of the power position. And oh yeah, she was a nurse and her sister had some “position”. She had a profession and a farm, what was VP at the time?
I knew a guy for years in another chat that used to live in Ohio … he was closer to their age and sorta knew them a little. He mentioned she was good looking. Maybe it was VP that started feeling inadequate and he overcompensated a little? :blink: Just a thought.
In any case, Mrs. VP made some choices on how to cope with VP, and she had some much more comfortable choices than many who suffer alone. In that respect it's hard to put her in the classic abuse victim category.
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ChattyKathy
She'll never fit the classic abuse case. And the classic abuse case won't fit itself in time.
Complacency as defined by http://thesaurus.reference.com/search?q=co...p;x=18&y=15 isn't something I think many women of abuse enjoy. I can tell you first hand there are some folks who thought I had a good life at times. Heck someone chose to go into the wc because of what they thought I had. Window dressing is as valuable as its name.
I once insulted Abi, she never mentioned it in post or private but her signature corrected me one day. And I wouldn't say I'd had a life of comfort, but her quote humbled me because I knew I was not thinking as someone in the shoes (as my nephew in Iraq recently said).
I think simonzelotes said it best.
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ChattyKathy
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Abigail
Kathy, whatever insult you think you tossed my way I either completely missed or have totally forgotten. My tag line is something that comes from a blog written by an old highschool friend's husband. I thought it was appropriate for some of the things that go on here at the cafe, but it most certainly was NEVER directed at you or any other individual.
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ChattyKathy
:wub:
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rhino
OK, you lost me now.
Here is the first post ...
I find it interesting that Mrs. VPW got little or no grief from you greasespot folk about why she didn't speak up regarding her husband's sexual exploits. Donna M. certainly knew and didn't do anything either and she received many tongue lashings here at greasespot.
Is it because Mrs. VPW was so well liked?
Does she get a free pass for being sweet?
Why the double standard?
Doesn't asking why she got treated more gently immediately go to GS'ers opinions on her position ... the most obvious of which is that maybe she was dominated/abused/controlled? So she is treated more gently because most GS'ers empathize with that.
That some feel empathy, but still don't hold her blameless is understandable as well. Even criminals have ugly backgrounds that one might empathize with. Maybe it is a matter of degree, the degree of her being controlled and the degree of harm to others that she didn't confront VP on.
I'm missing what direction the thread was supposed to take. Was it to be a look at the type of people that are willing to treat Dorothy more gently? Or what?
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doojable
Ok - I can be totally off base here - but here's what I think regarding why "us Greasespot folks" are more apt to speak badly of D*nna M. than Mrs. W.
D*nna ticked more of us off. She was a yeller and screamer.
Mrs. W. was a woman that managed to do good while she was living in Wayworld. Maybe not enough good for some here - but at least she tried and cared about folks. She prevented her husband from cornering at least one woman - maybe she did that for more women who have not spoken up here at GS.
Did D*nna ever do that - even once? I don't know - if she did, no one has stepped up to tell the story yet.
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Oakspear
My biggest beef with Mrs. W is that she gave her support to Martindale after the late 80's exodus. For many of us her support was a factor in remaining in TWI.
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rascal
I only interacted with Mrs. W twice. One time when I was riding on the twig hopper....VPW was a cold cold fish...never SPOKE to me the whole ride which of course had me terrified that I must smell spiritually or something.
I was in the side car and Mrs. was riding behind him....She was totally awsome...leaned over and spoke to me the entire trip pointing out land marks....aasking personal questions...in otherwords making me feel like I was somebody that was worth getting to know.
I thought it awsome that she could be the gracious friendly hostess even on the back of a motor cycle....She was warm and caring, realising that this was probably the biggest moment of my entire life...and NOT letting VP ruin it with his taciturn disposition.
The second time she was teaching at a big state meeting in witchita....in her sharing, she mentioned that she had been deeply wounded by somene at hq (this was after vp had died) She said that she had been so miserable....to the point of beeing in tears ....
Her teaching revolved around being able to find forgivness and love in her heart....
Anyway...I just remember being so angry....how DARE anybody mistreat that dear lady???
When we were all hanging out afterwards...we chatted I know that there was an overwhelming feeling of sadness that she was trying to cover up in her gentle kindness....
I don`t know...it was just a tiny glimpse into her life at way world, that she was not being treated with the care and respect that she ought to have had there.
I also know that when we all rode the motor cycle ...she was wonderfull...she *felt* good, warm. VP on the other hand gave me the stone cold creepy crawlies....at the time I put down the overwhelming feeling of scariness to my own spiritual shortcomings and lack.
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excathedra
donna used to be a great girl. she helped me
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Dot Matrix
What was the context in which she helped you, it may help us better understand her.
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