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Women Talking (a book and a movie)


Rocky
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Movie opens before Christmas. Director Sarah Polley talks about it with Stephen Colbert.

 

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From Goodreads:

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women—all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in—have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.

 



I figured there might be some women survivors of twi who might find this story resonates.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The movie, Women Talking, will be in wide release in the first week of January 2023.

In 2022, I read Polley's memoir, Run Toward the Danger. I loved it.

I'm confident the movie will be very emotionally moving and important in countering cult activity world wide.

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13 hours ago, Rocky said:

THIS movie (and book) seem to me to be very significant an related to the cult (and other religions') practice of sexual predation and abuse.

Can you expound on that?

I personally think the internet is a far more powerful medium to increase sexual predation than cults.  The rise of Only Fans as a way for currently millions of young girls to profit from exploiting their bodies . . . or so they think . . . . and millions of young boys thinking they're acquiring attention with their credit card without leaving home . . . sets up quite a dynamic in the future

Edited by Bolshevik
spelling and whatnot
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2 hours ago, Bolshevik said:

Can you expound on that?

I personally think the internet is a far more powerful medium to increase sexual predation than cults.  The rise of Only Fans as a way for currently millions of young girls to profit from exploiting their bodies . . . or so they think . . . . and millions of young boys thinking they're acquiring attention with their credit card without leaving home . . . sets up quite a dynamic in the future

I won't "expound on" what you personally thing regarding the internet. But regarding the book and movie...here's a description of the book from Goodreads:

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women—all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in—have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.
 

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14 minutes ago, Rocky said:

I won't "expound on" what you personally thing regarding the internet. But regarding the book and movie...here's a description of the book from Goodreads:

. . . 

Oh neither of those, I meant cults and religion.  The implication is that sexual predation is the core of cults and religion.

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20 minutes ago, Bolshevik said:

Oh neither of those, I meant cults and religion.  The implication is that sexual predation is the core of cults and religion.

Rather than sexual predation being "the core" of cults and religion, I believe sexual predation is an inherent risk/danger of any group or institution in which substantive power imbalance exists without adequate "guardrails" in the written/unwritten mores of the group or institution.

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Just now, Rocky said:

Rather than sexual predation being "the core" of cults and religion, I believe sexual predation is an inherent risk/danger of any group or institution in which substantive power imbalance exists without adequate "guardrails" in the written/unwritten mores of the group or institution.

I tend to think people get sucked into these group because they didn't have the "guardrails" and mores in place for themselves in the first place.

(The internet being a place for those folks to congregate)

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  • 2 months later...

Women Talking won, for Sarah Polley and Miriam Toews, the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay

I haven't viewed the movie yet, but I hope to very soon. It occurs to me this story may provide an archetype of how to conduct a discussion forum like GSC.

Do nothing. Stay and fight. Or leave. In 2010, the women of an isolated religious community grapple with reconciling a brutal reality with their faith.

Director

Sarah Polley

Writers

Sarah Polley

Miriam Toews

https://ew.com/the-awardist-podcast/women-talking-ben-whishaw-claire-foy-awardist-podcast/

is a film about community — so perhaps it's no surprise that the cast found real-life fellowship on set.

Writer-director Sarah Polley adapted her film from Miriam Toews' 2018 novel, which was in turn based on a true story in Bolivia. The film centers on an isolated group of Mennonite women, all of whom have suffered violent attacks, drugging, and repeated sexual assaults. When the women learn that the perpetrators are men in their own community, they decide to meet secretly in a remote hayloft to decide their next steps. Their options: remain silent, fight back, or leave and try to forge a new future elsewhere.

It's heavy subject matter. But there's also a surprising lightness to Women Talking, and the film shines with a communal warmth and flickering humor that lights up even the darkest moments.

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I should also note the book Jesus and John Wayne goes beneath the surface to explore how religious culture holds a good bit of responsibility (blame?) for the abusive environment pervasive in too many Christian churches/denominations over the last century or so.

We know Wierwille holds plenty of responsibility. It's important, IMO, to consider the religious culture from which he emerged.

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On 12/21/2022 at 1:33 PM, Rocky said:

In 2022, I read Polley's memoir, Run Towards the Danger. I loved it.

I'm confident the movie will be very emotionally moving and important in countering cult activity world wide.

 

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I'd like to see this movie, though not sure it's the kind of thing the Odious (Odeon) will be showing.  I don't see it at the independents, either.

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1 hour ago, Twinky said:

I'd like to see this movie, though not sure it's the kind of thing the Odious (Odeon) will be showing.  I don't see it at the independents, either.

It's available, though not for free, on Amazon.

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  • 4 months later...

As I understand it, sexual predation IS core to any social organization based on authoritarian leadership unless strong guardrails are in place and effective.

I just learned "Women Talking" will be on Amazon Prime (for no charge) beginning August 29, 2023.

 

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