Jamie - GREAT thread! MM - thanks (as Satanus said) for posting those quotes - I'm intrinsically lazy, and that made it SO much easier!
This quote - and what Satanus said about it:
"Thinking back over all those years, I realized that Mother was the guiding force behind the cruelty and abuse. This lady who pretended to be so gentle on the surface had in fact caused all the turmoil in our lives. We'd always thought that it was Joseph, but it was her, telling him what to do and how to do it. Like I'd said to her before, she was always throwing the rock and hiding her hand, convincing everyone -- outsiders and my own siblings -- that she was sweet, kindhearted, and compassionate. Little did they know that the minute they were out of earshot she talked about them very, very viciously. After seeing it so many times, I finally had to face the fact that this was her true personality."
As Satanus said - this was ALSO the pattern of behavior in my dysfunctional family, too. I've often wondered - since JW women are, in effect, stuck in a system that mimics the structure and attitudes of Middle Eastern cultures, whether the women actually IN Middle Eastern cultures are as passive-aggressively controlling, manipulative and dishonest as the patterns of behavior I observed within the JW org...
Yes, and the men frequently indulged in such behavior too, but as Satanus said about his family, I too particularly noticed it in my mother - my father was the 'visible tool', the one with the illusion of dominance and power within the biblical system.
Things are probably much worse in Middle Eastern family dynamics - threats of beheading, stoning, and all of that - the actual Middle Eastern religio-governmental systems [with the exception of Morocco, and some other forward-looking Middle Eastern countries] are even MORE totalitarian than the WTBTS system...
Zid 