Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart

Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart
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Saturday 7 February 2009

What Real Abuse Is

I've grown tired of reading in various corners of the blogsphere about how horrible formerly religious Jews have had it in their lives before they "left the derech". It's hard not to trip over one of them or another whinging about how terrible their yeshiva rebbes were, or how awful it was to be taught so many "lies" and have the best years of their lives taken away from them. One particular ingrate claims to have been raped because of his religious upbringing.
Riiiiigghhhtt......
The danger with throwing words like "abuse" and "rape" around too much is that, like the overuse of the word "holocaust", the more they are used the less impact they have. And these are words that should have impact. We should have no patience for people who misuse them to fulfill their narrow agendas.
What is abuse? Being beaten by a parent, familiy member or spouse. Being raised to suffer psychological and physical damage. What is rape? Being sexually assaulted against one's will. Being degraded and turned into an object rather than a human being because another had power of you.
Learning in a yeshiva and turning out not to agree with what was taught? Being raised to believe the world is only 5769 years old and then discovering its not quite true? Missing Shakespeare throughout one's high school years? That's not abuse and it says a lot of the people who whinge and claim it is.

2 comments:

SJ said...

Good job taking OTD's post out of context.

OTD said...

Garnel: You're insane.

The link doesn't work, btw.

>Being degraded and turned into an object rather than a human being because another had power of you.

That's exactly what it is, btw.