Although polygamy is technically against the law in Canada, there has been much bluster from provincial and federal officials regarding their inability to police polygamous sects because any arrests would ultimately lead to a legal challenge under the protection from religious persecution accorded by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The truth is however, that these cases are not so much about religion, as they are about gender.

If someone were to discover a community in Canada which was led by a woman who considered herself a prophet of God, and who indoctrinated young men from birth to become, at 14 or 15 one of many husbands to older wives, and to play no other role than to service the women sexually and physically, the outcry would be loud and long against this type of virtual slavery. Men are not property, they are not breeders, they are not servants. Women, well… it’s not so clear. There is something oddly old-fashioned yet very reassuring about the FLDS women in their long-sleeved, ankle-length dresses, with their tightly braided hair and demure demeanors. They are a throwback to an era many people fear has been lost for good – the pre-media saturation and sexual liberation, mom n’ pop era of traditional gender roles. If women’s ultimate fulfillment during this period was thought to be found in motherhood then these women are in some ways the ultimate fantasy of happy, fulfilled mothers, with their dozens of children and communal living arrangements. When the women themselves express, albeit in a scripted fashion, their contentment with their lifestyle as they have in recent U.S. television interviews, it simply reaffirms the public’s assumption that despite the specter of abuse there is something very genteel and proper about these women’s lives.

It is not surprising then that women who have escaped from these polygamous communities (and escape is not a misnomer, since the FLDS compound in El Dorado is literally locked and guarded) who have shared their stories of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse have been largely ignored by the media and by law enforcement officials. Despite repeated claims that some of the men have threatened, beaten and abused their wives and children, nothing has been done. Just to what lengths, one could ask, do the men of the FLDS have to go in order for the public, and the law to pay heed?

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There is something oddly old-fashioned yet very reassuring about the FLDS women in their long-sleeved, ankle-length dresses, with their tightly braided hair and demure demeanors. They are a throwback to an era many people fear has been lost for good – the pre-media saturation and sexual liberation, mom n’ pop era of traditional gender roles.

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[ 24 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

Are FLDS women brainwashed?

What We're Not Talking About, Part I: Other Issues With the FLDS

And she has a long piece at Campaign for America's Future that I haven't read myself yet.

How Dangerous is The FLDS?

ETA: Oops. Feminism forum. See ya. But I'll leave the links. She's good.

[ 24 April 2008: Message edited by: pogge ]

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The FLDs has also co-opted mental health services into another form of wife abuse. In Hildale/Colorado City, FLDS doctors have proven quite willing to declare unhappy women crazy. Daphne Bramham found that up to a third of FLDS women are on anti-depressants; and that women who are express acute dissatisfaction with the life have often been committed to mental hospitals in Arizona by the community's doctors. According to Bramham, the fear of being labeled insane and shut away in an institution is one of the most potent threats the community has used to keep women in their place.

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These institutions would also have to be run entirely by FLDS doctors, which I find a little incredible. I think the writer could give modern mental health care a little bit more credit for being able to recognize symptoms of domestic abuse, or systemic "communal" abuse.

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One of the most striking things about the FLDS is that certain surnames -- Jeffs, Blackmore, Fischer, Jessop, Barlow, Steed -- occur over and over again.

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So essentially, we are forcing our morality on these people. Now, the justification for this is that their are young innocents that are given no choice. So, are we saying that we can dictate our morality over their religion? Just as we dictated that Jehovah Witnesses could not let their children die, for lack of a blood transfusion?

I suppose the only real way to definitively answer the question of whether they are being exploited or whether they are simply being brought up in a different lifestyle - is to ask them if they were exploited once they are adults.

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:

I would add that beside the Conservative appeal you so well detail
polygamists *also* embody the sexual libertarian fantasy of the harem, which endears their moms n' pop lifestyle to both forms of reactionary male resistance to women's rights, showing that when it comes to women, progressive and conservative males have a lot more in common than they like to acknowledge.

[ 24 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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sexual libertarian fantasy of the harem

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[Note: Ottoman Historical Pedantry to follow]

There was no sex on the actual premises known as the "harem". "Harem" is an anglicisation of haram, the Arabic for "forbidden or protected". The "harem" was literally the place where women's privacy was to be protected and it was quite explicitly "forbidden" for men to be present, let alone to have sex, there.

This is not to say that men did not carry out polgynous relationships with women who lived in the harem.

That said, from either meaning, I'm not sure how that differs from the patriarchal polygamous relationships of "conservatives" Martin is comparing the harem to.

The Western idea of scores of women lying around elaborate pools half-dressed and waiting to please the sexual desires of men seems to be largely an Orientalist fantasy with little basis in fact.
And I certainly don't remember the last time "progressives" were fantasizing about it.

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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polygamists *also* embody the sexual libertarian fantasy of the harem, which endears their moms n' pop lifestyle to both forms of reactionary male resistance to women's rights, showing that when it comes to women, progressive and conservative males have a lot more in common than they like to acknowledge.

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Hello martin, and thank you for the welcome. I recognize you from PAR-L (I think?) where I've appreciated your posts.

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On the one hand, I think people should be able to raise their children as they see fit. The morality that we have today is completely arbitrary, and 300 years ago, marrying a 16 year old or 14 year old would not have seemed immoral at all.
So essentially, we are forcing our morality on these people. Now, the justification for this is that their are young innocents that are given no choice. So, are we saying that we can dictate our morality over their religion? Just as we dictated that Jehovah Witnesses could not let their children die, for lack of a blood transfusion?

I suppose the only real way to definitively answer the question of whether they are being exploited or whether they are simply being brought up in a different lifestyle - is to ask them if they were exploited once they are adults.

If, you interview 50 of them when they are 35 years old, and the vast majority of them say that they wish the government had left them alone to live in the polygamous sect - then perhaps we are not doing anyone any favours. I think it is probably unlikely though.

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Keystone I think you're missing the point - it's not about a lifestyle "choice". How much of this is a choice when the only way you can leave is by fleeing with your children in the middle of the night? Or when you fear that if you cross any man in the community you will be eternally damned?

I'm not removing the women's agency, they are independant people with values and opinions of their own, however the FLDS severely limits their freedoms, and allows these abuses to be perpetrated against them in ways that we would find highly unacceptable if they were men. If you ask them if they are happy will they say yes? I suspect many would. But if you ask anyone who's worked with domestic violence survivors many of the victims also claimed they were happy, or have returned numerous time to the partners who abused them, because it's the only life they've known, and possibly the only place they feel that they are loved/wanted.

Imagine how this is compounded when you're taught that everyone outside your immediate community is evil, and works for the devil.

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]

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Originally posted by KeyStone:
On the one hand, I think people should be able to raise their children as they see fit.

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Wouldn't that just be giving parents a license to abuse and exploit their children?

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: Boom Boom ]

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
And I wouldn't be surprised if action against the leaders of Bountiful - and other sects that more or less enslave women and youths - was being resisted not just by conservative accomplices but by liberal males sharing that fantasy of a Shangri-La of adoring, submissive women.

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Originally posted by martin dufresne:
[QB](Some back-editing) There are a number of fascinating assumptions in the previous post: first, the "bedfellows" (or "getting in bed with") metaphor is essentially anti-sex,

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Actually, it comes from an English cliche "politics makes strange bedfellows", and was an intended pun and not a pronouncement against the libido. My fault, it was too arcane, I suppose.

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and rather ironic coming from someone implicitly advocating for "the libido" -- as if its patterns were cast in stone (or flesh), an unsupported essentialist assumption, when the weight of the culture in its construction is so obvious.

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Not advocating anything - simply pointing out the obvious Freudian/Lacanian retort to your statement.

That said, it isn't "obvious" that culture dictates male sexual fantasies involving power over multiple women at all. Without access to the libido tabula rasa (whatever that would look like) we simply don't know that. The fact that the sexual relationships of many, many mammals, including most primates, involve an element of dominant-submissive violence and control (and almost always by males over females) suggests that perhaps something else is at play.

Again, it is just as "obvious" to argue that the assumption that sexual fantasies of power only result by the libido being deleteriously shaped by cultural constructions (and the concomitant notion that it could be changed by cultural reeducation) may simply be yet another example of a "rational" animal suppressing behaviours developed over several million years. But that's just the obvious retort to your point.

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

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B.L.Zeebub: (...)the "bedfellows" (or "getting in bed with") metaphor is essentially anti-sex,
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Actually, it comes from an English cliche "politics makes strange bedfellows" (...)

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[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

Of course, for someone being (erroneously) pedantic about words, you sure did rather casually slough off the problem that your "harem" reference is a racist Orientalist myth impugning Muslim men and women with sexual licentiousness. I guess the subtext only matters when it's someone else's, eh Martin?

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: B.L. Zeebub LLD ]

We have laws that apply and should be enforced against the exploitation of children by adults. How many life partners you choose to have sex with if you are an adult is none of the states business any more than it is the states business to tell people that only men and women can be married. Even the people who are worried about abuse admit that not all women or children are abused in the community. Is Canadian law to be bent now to get collective judgement against a community? Should everyone be arrested because we think some of the people are abusers?

I think that fundamentalist Christians in general tend to believe that the man is the authority in the household. Should we start sweeps of their churches and communities because we know that the patriarchal attitude that says you are the absolute authority will definitely lead to abuse of women. Should we take the women living in relationships with born again Christians into custody for their own protection?

The next aspect of this is the jailing of children. The Kootenays have seen it before. Canada jailed the Japanese in concentration camps in the 40's in the are north of Creston often times separating families.

In the 50's BC jailed children in concentration camps because we didn't like the Doukhobors. I have met a number of the children scooped up in that raid and they still suffer from it. The state determined their parents were unfit because they refused to have their children indoctrinated by a militaristic school system.

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1940

June: the federal government orders all men and women over age 16 to register. To skeptical Canadians, Doukhobors included, this looks like the first step to conscription. Many Doukhobors refuse to cooperate, and some are jailed.

John J. Verigin, Peter V. Verigin’s great grandson, is chosen by the Doukhobors as secretary of the Union of Spiritual Communities of Christ (USCC), the successor organization to Lordly’s Christian Community of Universal Brotherhood.

1943

Determined to make the Doukhobors comply with national registration, the federal government sends an army major to B.C. in 1943. At Brilliant, 3,500 Doukhobors face off against him and declare that they will not register. That night dynamite, gasoline and matches level the Brilliant jam factory, the general store, the meeting hall, the packing plant, a service station and a garage. All had once been part of the Doukhobor commune. Now, as government property, it is a prime target for destruction.

1947–1950

The Sons of Freedom or Freedomites, now a group of some 2000 members, is torn apart by a leadership battle. Widespread arson results, and by 1950, 400 Freedomites are in jail in B.C. A Ukrainian Baptist immigrant named Stefan Sorokin wins leadership of the group. Within two years he has left Canada for Uruguay with close to one hundred thousand dollars collected from his supporters.

1953–1959

Agitation among the Freedomites leads to the arrest and jailing of hundreds of them. Many Freedomite parents refuse to send their children to school, resulting in police seizing 170 Freedomite children. They are forcibly held and educated at the New Denver, B.C, residential school.

1956

For Doukhobors in B.C., the right to vote in both provincial and federal elections is restored.

1959–1962

A renewed campaign of arson and bombing by Freedomites destroys much property of non-Freedomite Doukhobors, the Canadian Pacific Railway and public buildings. Hundreds of Freedomites are arrested and jailed.

1961

B.C. Doukhobors are allowed to buy back their land from the provincial government but only as individuals, not as part of a commune.

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Some History
The other thing besides location that these communities have in common is the sin of cummunal living.

Does anyone think that arresting hundreds of children from Bountiful and putting them through our fucked up child welfare system is not going to lead to a large number of them being emotinally damaged?

This is about abuse - abuse that goes against laws that exist in this country. It's about finding a way to prosecute the men committing these acts, and about putting in place resources to help women recognize that these abuses violate their and their children's rights and that there is help available to them. It's about countering the attitude that this is about religious persecution because it isn't. It's about safety, security, and women and children's human rights. It's also about the misogyny inherent in a state, and a public that ignores these rights.

[ 25 April 2008: Message edited by: werestillhere ]

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It's about finding a way to prosecute the men committing these acts...

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