Abuse and coercion in relationships is awful. Men are generally trash. But this "Save Melania" mess to paint lifelong MAGA women as victims now is nonsense.
That man was MAGA when she met him. He didn't become a new person. The hate was always there.
And y'all act like 47% of white women voters aren't pro-life.
There are a number of people whose very first social media comment ever on the topic of mail-in voting, is to worry about the white MAGA women who might want to vote for Harris, but have husbands that make them vote for Trump.
They've never expressed concern about the millions of Black women whose right to vote at all was stolen by those very same MAGA men.
This is concern for white women, under a veil of concern about the very real topic of domestic violence and coercion in general.
2/N
And again, when we talk about mail-in voting MAGA coercion, we pretend that there aren't white women who do this coercion to their husbands. There are white men that want to vote for Harris, and their racist white women wives and partners won't let them.
Y'all need to accept how many racist white women there are in the US.
Because this election isn't about gender. It's about racism/fascism vs non-racist, non-fascist. Stealing women's reproductive rights is just a side-quest for fascists.
3/3
@mekkaokereke Not even sure where to grade this, but apparently some of the more vocally mysogonistic right hacks are now saying that if their wives voted for Harris it would just be like her having an affair and it would need to be corrected.
So while your entire points stand, now they're apparently attempting to force the other thing into reality by vaguely threatening that it would be fine to punish a spouse for voting the wrong way.
Yes, the "men don't eat ice cream in public" guy said that his wife voting for Harris would be like cheating.
Eva Braun may have been a victim of domestic violence. I'm not saying that Hitler never hit her, or saying that I don't care about domestic violence if it happens to someone I don't like. Domestic violence is always bad. What I'm saying is this: she heard his speeches and knew who he was when she swiped right in the FashyFriends app. I prioritize caring about her victims.
@mekkaokereke
Yeah, and I agree completely- I just think it's interesting that the narrative spin they went with wasn't 'Our couples are like minded and should vote with a pure heart, together', or 'I have no doubt what my wife votes for', or even something that just denies agency- and instead accepted the premise (which is, itself, flawed, as you pointed out) and leaned into implied abuse.
As a pragmatic matter, it's a mistake (I think) because it pairs with the 'nobody knows who you vote for
I used to be a conservative christian that was married to a guy who crammed the bible down my throat in every argument we had. There's that scripture that says the "husband is the head of the wife" and he spouted that to me every time he got mad at me. I remember him telling me he was going to "make me submit if it was the last thing he ever did."
It was an abusive relationship and I was afraid of him. It was tricky getting away from him but I finally got out and left my conservative christian church too. It was all wrapped up together, my church, my husband.....
I understand this clearly. I could have been one of those women who voted for Kamala in private.
After 7 years of hell, I got out and never looked back. And yeah, I'm a white woman who voted for Kamala last week.
@juliesbits @mekkaokereke @Oggie
Good going, both for yourself and for humanity!
@juliesbits @FreakyFwoof @mekkaokereke @Oggie That is a gross misinterpretation of scripture. I’m glad this person left the abusive relationship, but I am sad that she left her church.
@JamiePauls [getting off-topic but]
1) i just googled that verse and i don't see how else it could be interpreted. (i think it's a terrible rule, and this is one of several reasons why i'm not religious.)
2) the first book of the bible opens with a story about how disobedience will be punished with banishment/homelessness, and we can clearly see why ordinary-but-power-hungry bronze-age human beings would have had motive to put this at the very top of their list of rules.
@JamiePauls the whole thing (both the text and the routine rituals) functions as a form of psychological conditioning, such that believers are primed so that they will easily fall in line under hierarchies that are characterized by dominance & submission.
@JamiePauls
Demands for submission are 100% expected from a percentage of the population, because they can use it to consolidate resources & political power, and organize labor (and organized labor is valuable bc an individual's physical abilities are limited).
(also, some people just get off on feeling dominant)
But submission is a curious thing for an ostensibly all-powerful being to want. (Within the cinematic universe of the stories, it could just *snap* and have any outcome it wants.)
@JamiePauls
3) i think we all understand that benign branches of christianity exist, but there are *definitely* branches of christianity that lean hard into the whole submission/dominance thing, and that makes them dangerous to vulnerable members, including women.
And we should all feel some relief when vulnerable people manage to escape that type of hell.
@JamiePauls @FreakyFwoof @mekkaokereke @Oggie
Yes, it was a gross misinterpretation of that scripture, but there are plenty of churches (and men in leadership in those churches) that grossly misinterpret scripture in a similar fashion.
I knew many women from that time who would never openly disagree with their husbands' positions - many would feel compelled to keep their choice of political candidate secret from their husbands if they disagreed with their husbands' choice.
If I had not left that church I would not have been able to leave my marriage. The pastor at that church who observed my husband throw me across my own living room told me later that "I had no biblical grounds for divorce" and counseled me to pray and trust God. Apparently in his and that church's interpretation of scripture violence is not grounds for divorce. If I had listened to his counsel, I might not be alive today.
@JamiePauls @FreakyFwoof @juliesbits @Oggie @mekkaokereke
What those miserable SOBs “overlook” in that passage is the idea that “the husband is to the be head of the wife *as Christ is the head of the church*”
So the role model for husbands presented there is one of self-sacrifice, willingness to relinquish anything - dignity, even life - for the sake of others, not any kind of authority.
I’m glad you were able to get out…
@JamiePauls You’re sad that she left a church that engenders abusive relationships? @juliesbits @FreakyFwoof @mekkaokereke @Oggie
@juliesbits @mekkaokereke @Oggie BTW what you wrote about church and husband being interlaced together is something which many people ignore.
They don't remember or know that disobedience is equal to lose family, friends, social network, so you need to do things in secret
@shigella @mekkaokereke @Oggie
Absolutely true. It was a very dark, lonely time in my life. My church friends and the church leadership offered me no support whatsoever.
But fortunately I was working (out of necessity) and so there were other people on the periphery of my life. Women that I worked with - people who I had thought to be misguided since they did not share in my religious beliefs - these women reached out to me, held me up, loved me and helped me through that really dark lonely time. Their love was life changing.
@juliesbits @mekkaokereke @Oggie
I was a Conservative Christian woman too. My husband didn’t do that- he didn’t need too. The church did it. My dad did it. The environment did it. I was trapped in it. When I went to a conservative seminary and learned how many lies they had to tell themselves to lie to their congregations, I was done. That also meant my marriage was done though- not because he was hugely vested in what I believed but I could never say what I really thought
@Danetteb @mekkaokereke @Oggie
I understand. My family was extremely dysfunctional and didn't attend church which is why I think I was attracted to the church. In the beginning, as an outsider, I saw love and joy and stability in the church. I started attending the conservative church when I was 15. My family didn't understand.
But I was fully engulfed in it and didn't see the hypocrisy or lies until much later and then when I started seeing the dark side of it, I had moved a thousand miles away from my family to start one of these churches. It was terrible and very hard to get out.
I left my husband and the conservative church.... I never left my faith (although my core beliefs now have evolved far beyond what they were back then).