from my profile:

oppose Recovery Movement, Pedagogy, Rousseauism, Therapy, Religion

follow early Alice Miller, Deleuze and Guattari, Jeffrey Mason, Andrew Vachss

want collective movement to take redress and legal action against Family System

must keep my affairs private

fascinating video a poster case of why there must be outside intervetnion to obtain redress.

Becoming Other

Tangible Results, not Therapeutic Release
Redress for Wrongs, not Recovery and Religion
Honor before Healing
Victory not Victimhood

Recovery yes, Emancipation no

I sent a query to an organization. Its a fully professionalized non-profit, and it is Recovery oriented. No need to identify it here. But my query ran along the themes of the following post:

http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/fighting-back-against-the-family-system-t63.html

The response I got back was:

"
Your question is beyond the scope of our work. I'm sorry but we have no resources to point you to regarding joining with those who are fighting for emancipation.
"

Well, it made me laugh.

At every level I object to the Recovery Movement. The contempt I feel for it is bone deep.

What is the difference between Recovery and Emancipation?

Well, usually Emancipation is something that has to be fought for. It is not given easily. It means some will have to make some serious concessions. Usually it will apply to a whole class of people and it will mean that they will have a new freedom, a new equality, which they never had before.

What about Recovery? In one way this is rooted in the substance addiction model. But it seems to have been expanded to include those suffering from the effects of trauma and abuse. But this only works if you take that trauma and abuse as being aberrational.

One founder of a group that deals with Recovery from rape talks about how now she is "normal", and about how she "has a job and is married". So becoming "normal" is the measure of Recovery, for her.

Well, on what is this Recovery based? To me it seems to be the idea that there will be no redress sought, and very little change in the social structure either. This has always been part of my argument that the Recovery Movement plays to reactionary tendencies in people's thinking and that the 12 step Recovery Groups attract people with conservative views.

Here is where I have reposted a discussion of a list from a law firm, of the adult symptoms of childhood sexual abuse:

http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/symptoms-of-sexual-abuse-from-11-15-10-t61.html

Notice though that the list deals with exactly the same sorts of things which are always looked to when someone is deemed a failure or immoral. I think with men its more failure and with women its more immoral. So it gets to what I call the Self-Reliance Ethic. This is what the Family System is there to impart. This is what it is built around. As such, there is no redress, no complaint dept, no remedy, no intervention. The Family System gets exonerated by the Self-Reliance Ethic. The State and our entire society get exonerated by the Self-Reliance Ethic. So the State depends on the Family System and on the Self-Reliance Ethic. Our entire society depends on it too. What do you think when you see someone who's life is a mess, someone who is homeless, someone who is an alcoholic? Bad family of course. They may in part be seen as victims, but they are also seen as having some congenital sinfulness.

So yes, this has always been part of my objection to the Recovery Movement, as I know it is very close to the religious model of Original Sin and the need for Salvation.

Is Emancipation different? I say yes. It means fighting to redress a wrong, not just to be able to be "normal". It means fighting against those who are offering Recovery in its place too.

The Recovery Movement and the Family System are built to enforce the same Self-Reliance Ethic, which is mostly an ethic of exoneration.

Emancipation is a very different idea. It means you are going to make common cause with others and fight to gain liberty.

In the United States tensions were raised by the acts of people like William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown, and eventually 600,000 casualties later there was Emancipation. But never forget that one of the reasons this was finally granted was that 180,000 black men trained with rifles and bayonets and fought in the struggle.

BO

Love and Happiness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfWPDGWP568

Hi there, BO.
I've read through your posts. A lot to process! I confess I don't follow it all (I'm sometimes slow), but you've got me intrigued, in part because I'm suspicious myself of social systems that set themselves up as authorities. I love the idea of "emancipation" as a route to healing/becoming whole for those who've been sexually abused. (Forgive me if I've got this wrong. Think I need to hear more...)

But anyway, I see you're new to the site, and I just wanted to say hello and welcome. I'm fairly new myself. I find this a safe place to tell one's story and get support from others. If you feel you want to share the specifics of your personal story, you'll find some great guys here who'll listen sympathetically and support you.

Hi Becoming Other,

I see what you mean, however, as we say about our legal system: it sucks until you look at the real world alternatives.

It is difficult to intervene and punish parents whose children cannot tell of the abuse, and who as adults, try to maintain those damaged but still sought after relationships.

I cannot imagine EVERYONE being raised by the STATE would be in any better condition. Plenty of abuse happens everywhere!

Institutional fixes? I've wondered what could be done. I still have no solutions.

Welcome here.

D.

Thank you both for your supportive words.

Below I'm responding to a supportive reply on another forum:

Responding to a supportive reply:

Thank you for the encouragement. I believe that Western Europe is further along here as they are less religious, have a better social saftey net, and overall are more pluralistic.

I have hear that they prevent disinheritance too, though I do not know this first hand.

If you or anyone else has specific information about how in Europe liberation from familiyism is achieved, I would be especially interested in knowing about it.

When attacking the Family System and the Self-Reliance ethic which underlies it, preventing disinheritance is an important component of this. One reason it is important is that it should apply to everyone, not just those who have been "ab*s*d". Rather, it is an attempt to mitigate familyism.

As I see it, the Recovery Movement is a component in the the ongoing oppression and the ongoing violation.

BO

Reply to a question:

Are you asking me what is harmful about the Recovery Movement?

Telling people that they can't seek redress for they ways that they were used, is harmful. Its almost like subjecting a rape victim to another rape.

Telling alcoholics and addicts that have only themselves to blame for the mess they have made of their lives and that they have to pull themselves up by their own boot straps ( with the help of Jesus natch ) and that there are not real pains under the surface which would be extremely hard for any one to face, is harmful.

Telling everyone that they cannot seek redress and have to put their own lives together, following the Self-Reliance Ethic, the same ethic which legitimates the Family System and allows it to use children, is harmful.

Promoting the idea of the Good Family, and making everyone who's experience is different from that feel like they are lepers is harmful. And further, it encourages people to perpetuate it, its pronatalist. This is most harmful.


What would replace these? Holding those who use the Family System accountable. I don't mean child support payments or otherwise imposing a penalty for having a child, for conception, or sex. That is different. I mean holding people responsible for having used a child, having practiced the Family System. In most cases this would only be monetary. But in some it could also be criminal. Some people have no money, but holding those who have money responsible would change our society. Our society looks to those who have money as the example to follow. So for many with socially conservative tendencies, practicing the Family System is the measure of adult success. Problem is that this means using children.

So first thing to do is to block disinheritance. When one has practiced the Family System, they relinquish that option. Second, when there is animosity, only animosity, then there will be other steps taken. Assets might be placed in trust so that they cannot be squandered. The higher the level of animosity, the tighter the trust controls. When it has reached the level of abuse, or if there is need, there can be earlier distribution.

Yes, this only effects people who have money. But it will change how our society thinks and pave the way for a comprehensive social safety net. It is because we still support the Family System that we do not have that safety net today.

It starts when people decide that they are going to stop Recoverying and instead start Fighting Back!

BO
http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/


when asked for further specifics about the Family System:

You ask what is harmful about the Family System and what could replace it. Mostly I think its just a matter of shielding one from it, of mitigating it. One has to get beyond the nurturance myth and instead look to its real basis in economic and social power.

What is harmful is that children are being used so that adults can claim that they have successful lives.

Here I've copied forward an old post:

http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/symptoms-of-sexual-abuse-from-11-15-10-t61.html

A law firm lists the long term effects of childhood sexual abuse. But what I am saying is that they are exactly those matters which the Family System and our entire society uses to denigrate someone. Its all based on the Self-Reliance Ethic.

So often, when people find that they cannot use a child, that it doesn't work, then they make the child into a scapegoat and they will be such for the rest of their lives. They will always be at risk to those peddling salvation and to the psychiatric system.

For people with an unmitigated conservative temperment, using a child is essential to their claim on adulthood. Then when they are done using that child, the child will likely go on to use other children. Or they may be so seriously harmed that they are preyed upon for the rest of their years.

Prior to the industrial age I'm sure these same tendencies were latent, as its in the Oedipus Myth. But it seems that not until the age of industial capitalism and the full flourishing of the Self-Reliance Ethic that these factors have really come into their play.

BO

there has never been a female singing group as good as this, not before and not since:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDlHaZz9PNo&feature=related

Disinheritance of Minor Children

http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=twlj&sei-redir=1#search="american children disinheritance chester"

Looking for more information in this area, as it is one of the fights I want to get into. I don't want to be a victim. In terms of talking about myself, I practice Rape Prevention, I don't talk about myself.

Those of us who have been used and scapegoated by the Family System need to band together and learn to fight back. Otherwise we will forever be preyed upon by Therapy, Religion, and the Recovery Movement. We need to band together and fight if we are even to have a Chance to Survive.

BO

http://freedomtoexpress.freeforums.org/

Are you a survivor of sexual abuse? You refuse to answer on the profile.

The presence of that quote on this site can cause a whole lot of hurt (on a scale you may never understand) for members and the public doing some private discovery work.

If you are going to leave such a sweeping generalized bomb like this, please qualify it, or back it up with legitimate citation.