Actually, as an aside note, these days I am considering the patriarchal attacks on me (for that is what they were and are) as being of a rather special nature.
My place in the world has been, in many ways, like that of someone who has grown up in a religious cult, without realizing it, and has now left that cult. There are those around who do not want one to talk, lest one report certain things that they now feel ashamed of. So many, many people -- too many to count -- have taken it upon themselves to silence me, usually by using tactics that are broadly or explicitly misogynistic.
Misogyny is a good way to silence someone because it makes everybody doubt the person's ability to tell the truth -- including the person themselves. So I was told that I was effectively unschooled (despite at that time having a bachelor's degree), that I "couldn't even speak properly", and that I was in various ways and measures delusional. When I reported the abuse, this was represented as further evidence of how I didn't see reality as it in fact was.
Of course I wasn't brought up in an actual cult, but rather within a culture that had effectively seceded from the rest of the world and its views about what was right and proper, to pursue a particular view of Christian righteousness and civilization. That was the ideology underpinning the state of Rhodesia, which began just before I was born. And people shed blood for that ideal. And now they can stand no criticism (however implicit) of it.
Somehow my natural intelligence has made me seem a threat to all sorts of people -- but especially the patriarchal, Christian ideologues, who still uphold the banner of the past. They have made themselves particularly noxious enemies. I guess behind it is a fear that I'll spill the beans in some way. But the extremity of the hostile behavior I have faced these days strikes me as odd.
My place in the world has been, in many ways, like that of someone who has grown up in a religious cult, without realizing it, and has now left that cult. There are those around who do not want one to talk, lest one report certain things that they now feel ashamed of. So many, many people -- too many to count -- have taken it upon themselves to silence me, usually by using tactics that are broadly or explicitly misogynistic.
Misogyny is a good way to silence someone because it makes everybody doubt the person's ability to tell the truth -- including the person themselves. So I was told that I was effectively unschooled (despite at that time having a bachelor's degree), that I "couldn't even speak properly", and that I was in various ways and measures delusional. When I reported the abuse, this was represented as further evidence of how I didn't see reality as it in fact was.
Of course I wasn't brought up in an actual cult, but rather within a culture that had effectively seceded from the rest of the world and its views about what was right and proper, to pursue a particular view of Christian righteousness and civilization. That was the ideology underpinning the state of Rhodesia, which began just before I was born. And people shed blood for that ideal. And now they can stand no criticism (however implicit) of it.
Somehow my natural intelligence has made me seem a threat to all sorts of people -- but especially the patriarchal, Christian ideologues, who still uphold the banner of the past. They have made themselves particularly noxious enemies. I guess behind it is a fear that I'll spill the beans in some way. But the extremity of the hostile behavior I have faced these days strikes me as odd.
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