It just occurred to me how the WTS gave repeated warnings ad nauseum regarding watching violence and sexual images on TV or in the movies, or even in reading material, and yet, here, in this children's book are all these images and stories depicting violent behaviour between people and sexual content (I'm thinking of the picture of the girls swimming with the angels looking on and getting naughty thoughts).
Why would the WTS give warnings on the one hand about how violence and sexuality on TV, movies and literature and how it desensitizes people to violence and sexuality, and on the other hand show violent images and images intended to convey sexual content in their own literature?
Then I thought about unique1's experience:
I am deathly, I MEAN DEATHLY afraid of snakes. Most people don't understand or grasp the exent I am afraid of them until they see the ultimate reaction. My husband witnessed the worst one since we have been together the other week. He and others often ask Why are you so scared of the non poisonous ones? I don't know. Never have. Mom said they showed me one in the garden when I was 2 and said it was a good snake but that I shouldn't touch it. She said I seemed fine.
The earliest point of fear I can remeber is the picture in the MBoBS (I suddenly realize that is MY Book of BS. Funny) where there is a Snake on a pole and all the people are lying on the ground with tons of little snakes around them biting them and they were told to look at the snake on the pole if they wanted to live. I remember this picture more vividly than any of the other pictures. Mom said after she read that one I looked at her at all of 3 years old and said "Mommy, I don't ever want to read that story again." Apparently I won the arguement over the obedience lesson I was learning and I never read it again. Yet I can still remember the photo.
In looking up this picture I ran across the blog of a person that was afraid of dogs because of the picture of Jezabel being thrown out a window to the waiting dogs below. The dogs that were waiting just to tear her flesh apart.
I wonder if the WTS's warnings against viewing violence in other media formats sets up a situation whereby JW children become hypersensitive to these images, as if they are intended to elicit fear and panic reactions to the point of what appears to be a phobia. I also wonder if this was done purposefully - since one of the ways cults retain control over people is through fear.
When working with people who have phobias, one of the ways to help them overcome their irrational fear is to "desensitize" them to the object that causes the irrational fear and panic reaction. I imagine the opposite would be true as well - to shelter someone from other sources of experience and only present certain experiences in a terrifying, fear inducing manner would increase the likelihood of the person never learning to relate that experience to anything other than fear or panic.
I can't even begin to convey how creepy this concept is to me, how sinister, to knowingly do this sort of thing to innocent children. There's no doubt in my mind that this is INTENTIONAL on the part of the WTS.