What would TWI have to gain by making the women more like men?
Maybe it's true, and maybe not.
In my opinion, TWI wanted to make everyone less human, which is to say, less individual, and more controllable.
The more you controlled your emotions at their behest, the more controllable your behavior became. This sort of organizational (or military) discipline comes more readily to the male sex, though I wouldn't call it masculine. I'd call it control.
Oh sure, we were expected to be tough, standing strong & not conforming to anyone's belief's but theirs. Stand up & be a man............................EXCEPT when it came to housework. I can't recall how many times I heard the phrase "The woman is the keeper of the home." So when it came to handling things at home, that was a woman's job.
TWI was bad for both sexes. They made us all into people with glass hearts. This is seen by the countless men who abused their wives and children, who I don't think ever would have had done that, had they not become involved in TWI. The women in turn, learned ungodly submission and thought it Godly, which turned us into instantly obeying, non questioning, mindless, sex toys for the mens pleasure and the target for their stress and anger, which for some turned violent. The normal feelings non TWI people have that stuff, would make them run from such things, we had been taught to turn off or ignore totally.
I learned about glass hearts from a book I read. The woman was dying after being shot and talking to her friend. She had been forced to be a hit woman, not for money, but to save the life of her daughter, who was being held in a secret location by a bad man. Here is what was said after being asked if she believed in God:
"He gave me a glass heart. I did not ask for it, the glass heart. It was a gift. Hard is the glass heart. Nothing moves through it. It has no fragrance or softness. Cold to the touch. It hears no music, sees no light ...
...And yet it is fragile too, so very fragile. When my daughter smiled ... my heart crazed. When she laughed, it shivered almost to breaking. When she kissed my cheek, it shattered into powder.
Hard .. and fragile. I needed both - to survive. And, in the end, to be redeemed. God is grace, even to the damned. One of His endless paradoxes."
We all developed glass hearts to survive. Women tend to be more emotional than men normally, so now as we get beyond TWI teaching and thinking, we feel that fragile part of our hearts all the more. Something that someone who's lived a normal life might not think anything of, can shatter our hearts with one beat. Things that would shock and fill with horror a normal person, we think nothing of and let it bounce right off us.
Not sure if anyone will agree with me, but every time I read that book, that part reminds me of my TWI days and how I had to harden my heart to keep from upsetting them more than I already did by just being me. If anyone can relate to it, then it was worth digging out the book and typing this out for you. :)
I don't think it was about "turning women into men". I think it was about letting you know you weren't good enough no matter what your gender, no matter who you were. I was a fairly "opinionated" person, in that I wasn't afraid to say what I thought, until about my last 5 years in TWI. So for me, the experience wasn't that I was "too weak" or "too emotional", it was that I was too "opinionated" and "not submissive".
Ultimately, the goal was to keep us feeling insecure, off balance, and unable to trust ourselves, so that we would trust and obey the leadership instead.
When I first got involved, there were ordained women, which I thought was cool. A selling point for me.
Way women didn't dress frumpy, like Penacostal women in my area did. Another selling point for the girl I was back then.
Women taught and ran feloowships.
But by the mid nineties we were treated like a twelve year old child, unable to make the smallest decisions for ourselves(Ask you husband, ask your husband...) We could still teach in fellowship--but our teaching had to be cleared with the HFC prior to the fellowship.
There were no women fellowship coordinators in my area.
I got the impression women were not to be trusted.
I have come to the conclusion that a lot of TWI agendas, whether gender related or not, were in response to something they perceived that "the world" was emphasizing. Example: calling something an "advance" instead of a retreat. I'm not saying these agendas were really necessary; I'm just saying that they were simply trendy agendas, not a big cult conspiracy.
In 1993/94 I worked in a warehouse. One day several of us were headed toward the break room. We walked past a girl who was about 19 yrs old, tall, slender, pretty....a GIRL, OK? She had gotten a manual pallet jack stuck in a skid and couldn't pull it out. She was visibly rankled and really embarrassed just because she lacked the physical strength to pull it out.
This girl did not strike me as the extreme feminist type, and to this day I can't understand why she felt obligated to have a man's brute strength. Again, a girl felt like she should be like a man. TWI leaders may have felt that some traditional aspects of femininity should be emphasized to counter the world's perversion of femininity, as they saw it. In fact, I heard about a possible attempt to do just THAT, which horribly backfired.
Superbowl 12, Jan. 15, 1978, Cowboys/Broncos. The plan was that the 6th and 8th in residence corps at Emporia were going to do this: guys watch the superbowl/ girls do something "feminine" with Donna. Word has it that after the 2 genders went to do that, several women outbursted their displeasure with the arrangement. Donna was ambushed and went crying to LCM. Don't know what the girls ended up doing, but the guys had to listen to a lecture on sensitivity training by LCM and only got to watch the 4th quarter.
In my opinion, TWI wanted to make everyone less human, which is to say, less individual, and more controllable.
The more you controlled your emotions at their behest, the more controllable your behavior became. This sort of organizational (or military) discipline comes more readily to the male sex, though I wouldn't call it masculine. I'd call it control.
That's pretty much what I was going to express... once I got permission! :)
I don't know if twi made me more "like a man" as far as emotions are concerned. But it did make me extremely critical of people in general without any kind of real empathy toward them. I think it did that to men too though.
There was a lot of teachings about not letting emotions rule you. Of course some of this was taken to extreme, rather it was meant to go that way or not - I think some people in certain areas were zealots for anything that was spewed out at HQ and made it their mission to master whatever it was or die trying.
But I do remember being told I should be more "stotic" - I laugh to think about it now... As a woman from New England - Maine, to be exact - and who is Welch/English/Irish - there was a more stotic person to be found. You could tell me I had the woes of Job and I wouldn't have messed up my mascara. (Back then, anyhow... I'm an ol' softie now since having kids.)
Not to be more like "a man," but more like the man Wierwille. You know, the man who didn't think that sex was a personal thing between himself and his wife.
So stop taking it so personally, you women. Just take it.
Peguin: I have thought about what you said for years and years.
I could be a little confrontational as it was, being Irish and from the North East, I was raised not to take any crap.
But years in TWI I took more and more crap from leaders and became more and more "butch" (I am not a lesbian) But I did feel as though I was being pushed into being mean.
Mean is different than not taking any crap. I was being pushed into being mean to people for the tiniest infraction. Such as being a minute late, dear God you were to treat that as if someone cut the arms off a baby. How dare you disrespect God and his class? Shoot it was a "minute", we had no idea what it took for them to get there.
I was married at the time and I do think I became more and more left brained. My marriage ended and I often think it was because I lost the God given softness and kindness. I feel terribly how "corps" I became toward a really nice man.
I mean preTWI if someone went off on me I gave it back to them. But I did not want to rip someone's heart out for being a minute late.
I think they wanted us to all be little waybots. All of us.... that's why the emotions are the icing on the cake and not to be heeded was such a prominent teaching. They wanted to rip all the humanity and "natural affection" from us so that we would do whatever they said to do because it was the "logical" thing to do and it came from leadership - leadership who always knew what was better for us than we ourselves did.
I used to be bubbly, funny, sometimes loud and rambunctious. TWI killed that in me. I got very emotional with my friends - if they were doing the happy dance and laughing till their sides split, I was right there with them. If they were crying buckets full of tears and sick with grief, I was right there with them. After a little while in TWI I was better at pointing out how, if they would just come to fellowship with me and if they would take TWI's classes, they would have an even better life. Then I would oh so knowingly point out why and how they were doing things wrong. If they would only listen to me and quit letting their emotions get to them - do the word - pay no attention to anything else, just what I tell you the Bible says.
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WhiteDove
Last thing I remember
I was running for the door
I had to find the passage back to the place I was before
Relax said the nightman
We are programed to recieve
You can check out any time you like
But you can never leave .................
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Tom Strange
Does this mean we're (men) not allowed to post on this thread?
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satori001
What would TWI have to gain by making the women more like men?
Maybe it's true, and maybe not.
In my opinion, TWI wanted to make everyone less human, which is to say, less individual, and more controllable.
The more you controlled your emotions at their behest, the more controllable your behavior became. This sort of organizational (or military) discipline comes more readily to the male sex, though I wouldn't call it masculine. I'd call it control.
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Vyctorya911
Oh sure, we were expected to be tough, standing strong & not conforming to anyone's belief's but theirs. Stand up & be a man............................EXCEPT when it came to housework. I can't recall how many times I heard the phrase "The woman is the keeper of the home." So when it came to handling things at home, that was a woman's job.
Vyctorya
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BikerBabe
TWI was bad for both sexes. They made us all into people with glass hearts. This is seen by the countless men who abused their wives and children, who I don't think ever would have had done that, had they not become involved in TWI. The women in turn, learned ungodly submission and thought it Godly, which turned us into instantly obeying, non questioning, mindless, sex toys for the mens pleasure and the target for their stress and anger, which for some turned violent. The normal feelings non TWI people have that stuff, would make them run from such things, we had been taught to turn off or ignore totally.
I learned about glass hearts from a book I read. The woman was dying after being shot and talking to her friend. She had been forced to be a hit woman, not for money, but to save the life of her daughter, who was being held in a secret location by a bad man. Here is what was said after being asked if she believed in God:
"He gave me a glass heart. I did not ask for it, the glass heart. It was a gift. Hard is the glass heart. Nothing moves through it. It has no fragrance or softness. Cold to the touch. It hears no music, sees no light ...
...And yet it is fragile too, so very fragile. When my daughter smiled ... my heart crazed. When she laughed, it shivered almost to breaking. When she kissed my cheek, it shattered into powder.
Hard .. and fragile. I needed both - to survive. And, in the end, to be redeemed. God is grace, even to the damned. One of His endless paradoxes."
We all developed glass hearts to survive. Women tend to be more emotional than men normally, so now as we get beyond TWI teaching and thinking, we feel that fragile part of our hearts all the more. Something that someone who's lived a normal life might not think anything of, can shatter our hearts with one beat. Things that would shock and fill with horror a normal person, we think nothing of and let it bounce right off us.
Not sure if anyone will agree with me, but every time I read that book, that part reminds me of my TWI days and how I had to harden my heart to keep from upsetting them more than I already did by just being me. If anyone can relate to it, then it was worth digging out the book and typing this out for you. :)
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templelady
BikerBabe
You said it perfectly and far more eloquently than I ever could Thank You
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Abigail
I don't think it was about "turning women into men". I think it was about letting you know you weren't good enough no matter what your gender, no matter who you were. I was a fairly "opinionated" person, in that I wasn't afraid to say what I thought, until about my last 5 years in TWI. So for me, the experience wasn't that I was "too weak" or "too emotional", it was that I was too "opinionated" and "not submissive".
Ultimately, the goal was to keep us feeling insecure, off balance, and unable to trust ourselves, so that we would trust and obey the leadership instead.
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penguin
Well, the men can post too--I am sure they have observations.
Thanks BB for the quote. I am still suffering from the glass heart and can relate to it.
Think about marching around with wooden spoons--how much did us women have to harden our hearts in order to use that on our sweet liitle ones?
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Bramble
When I first got involved, there were ordained women, which I thought was cool. A selling point for me.
Way women didn't dress frumpy, like Penacostal women in my area did. Another selling point for the girl I was back then.
Women taught and ran feloowships.
But by the mid nineties we were treated like a twelve year old child, unable to make the smallest decisions for ourselves(Ask you husband, ask your husband...) We could still teach in fellowship--but our teaching had to be cleared with the HFC prior to the fellowship.
There were no women fellowship coordinators in my area.
I got the impression women were not to be trusted.
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johniam
I have come to the conclusion that a lot of TWI agendas, whether gender related or not, were in response to something they perceived that "the world" was emphasizing. Example: calling something an "advance" instead of a retreat. I'm not saying these agendas were really necessary; I'm just saying that they were simply trendy agendas, not a big cult conspiracy.
In 1993/94 I worked in a warehouse. One day several of us were headed toward the break room. We walked past a girl who was about 19 yrs old, tall, slender, pretty....a GIRL, OK? She had gotten a manual pallet jack stuck in a skid and couldn't pull it out. She was visibly rankled and really embarrassed just because she lacked the physical strength to pull it out.
This girl did not strike me as the extreme feminist type, and to this day I can't understand why she felt obligated to have a man's brute strength. Again, a girl felt like she should be like a man. TWI leaders may have felt that some traditional aspects of femininity should be emphasized to counter the world's perversion of femininity, as they saw it. In fact, I heard about a possible attempt to do just THAT, which horribly backfired.
Superbowl 12, Jan. 15, 1978, Cowboys/Broncos. The plan was that the 6th and 8th in residence corps at Emporia were going to do this: guys watch the superbowl/ girls do something "feminine" with Donna. Word has it that after the 2 genders went to do that, several women outbursted their displeasure with the arrangement. Donna was ambushed and went crying to LCM. Don't know what the girls ended up doing, but the guys had to listen to a lecture on sensitivity training by LCM and only got to watch the 4th quarter.
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Tom Strange
That's pretty much what I was going to express... once I got permission! :)
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nolongerlurking
I don't know if twi made me more "like a man" as far as emotions are concerned. But it did make me extremely critical of people in general without any kind of real empathy toward them. I think it did that to men too though.
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ChasUFarley
There was a lot of teachings about not letting emotions rule you. Of course some of this was taken to extreme, rather it was meant to go that way or not - I think some people in certain areas were zealots for anything that was spewed out at HQ and made it their mission to master whatever it was or die trying.
But I do remember being told I should be more "stotic" - I laugh to think about it now... As a woman from New England - Maine, to be exact - and who is Welch/English/Irish - there was a more stotic person to be found. You could tell me I had the woes of Job and I wouldn't have messed up my mascara. (Back then, anyhow... I'm an ol' softie now since having kids.)
Here's the Way Math on this one:
Outward show of emotion = weakness
Outward show of sympathy = weakness
Weakness = reproof, consequences including M&A'ed
So, there you have it...
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shazdancer
Not to be more like "a man," but more like the man Wierwille. You know, the man who didn't think that sex was a personal thing between himself and his wife.
So stop taking it so personally, you women. Just take it.
-- Shaz
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Dot Matrix
Hi BB!
I agree
Peguin: I have thought about what you said for years and years.
I could be a little confrontational as it was, being Irish and from the North East, I was raised not to take any crap.
But years in TWI I took more and more crap from leaders and became more and more "butch" (I am not a lesbian) But I did feel as though I was being pushed into being mean.
Mean is different than not taking any crap. I was being pushed into being mean to people for the tiniest infraction. Such as being a minute late, dear God you were to treat that as if someone cut the arms off a baby. How dare you disrespect God and his class? Shoot it was a "minute", we had no idea what it took for them to get there.
I was married at the time and I do think I became more and more left brained. My marriage ended and I often think it was because I lost the God given softness and kindness. I feel terribly how "corps" I became toward a really nice man.
I mean preTWI if someone went off on me I gave it back to them. But I did not want to rip someone's heart out for being a minute late.
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Belle
I think they wanted us to all be little waybots. All of us.... that's why the emotions are the icing on the cake and not to be heeded was such a prominent teaching. They wanted to rip all the humanity and "natural affection" from us so that we would do whatever they said to do because it was the "logical" thing to do and it came from leadership - leadership who always knew what was better for us than we ourselves did.
I used to be bubbly, funny, sometimes loud and rambunctious. TWI killed that in me. I got very emotional with my friends - if they were doing the happy dance and laughing till their sides split, I was right there with them. If they were crying buckets full of tears and sick with grief, I was right there with them. After a little while in TWI I was better at pointing out how, if they would just come to fellowship with me and if they would take TWI's classes, they would have an even better life. Then I would oh so knowingly point out why and how they were doing things wrong. If they would only listen to me and quit letting their emotions get to them - do the word - pay no attention to anything else, just what I tell you the Bible says.
It's alarming how stoic I became.
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