Middle-aged women & the BKWSU
Posted: 25 Feb 2013
Admin wrote:Moved from: Why Celibacy ...?
ex-l wrote:Is this not another element? A religion attracting women of a certain age when their sex, hormones and perhaps childlessness comes to the fore?
How much of the infantilisation of their followers is due to their suppressed, denied or lack of real motherhood?
I think much of what motivates "women of a certain age when their sex, hormones and perhaps childlessness comes to the fore" is their backgrounds. Many BK westerners would come from a Roman Catholic background, I would hazard to suggest they make up a disproportionate number of Western BKs.
By that I mean if RC make up, say, 20% of a population in a Western country, then they should make up about 20% of background of BKs from that country (leaving aside Hindustani expats). My experience is that there seems to be a very large number of those from RC backgrounds, and many of the rest from a strict Christian background of other denominations (or family culture). I am talking about conservative types of Christianity/families/church & private schools which are hierarchical, down on sex itself, or down on any expression or discussion of it, so that it is always connected with "dirty". It is never celebrated or treated as a fundament of life.
As you've mentioned elsewhere on forum, ex-l, the BKs allow women from such backgrounds to live out their childhood conditioning (sex is bad) in an alternative, cool new-age way, as part of this groovy new meditation thing that's not mainstream, and is also "cool" because it's pseudo-feminist and a pseudo-liberation from patriarchal shackles (which if examined is actually one of the most disingenuous aspects of their public persona).
Simpler language: young Roman Catholic child grows up in religiously devoted family (or at least one parent is), this child attends mass regularly, goes to Catholic school and is taught by strict nuns. This child has no sex education from parents, is spanked if ever found to be touching genitals, particularly hard when they eventually discover masturbation. Maybe the mother complains about life and let's it be known that she should have chosen withdrawing to a convent? Imagine the psychological shaping taking place!
Teenage rebellion and peer influence sees them consciously abjure Christianity, but the child HAS been shaped. As the Jesuits say, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man".
You can take the child out of the church after that, but harder to take the church out of the child!
My hope is that this wave of middle aged women is in decline. The influence of pre-Vatican II education is waining. But there is also a new wave of Christian conservatism and born-agains whose children may be seeking alternatives the way the baby boomers and Gen Y did. There always has been and always will be demand for the alternative religion industry.
Much of what is discussed here would also apply to Hindu families ...