Leaving Her Ultra-Orthodox Past Meant More Than Losing Her Family. It Meant Redefining Her Womanhood

[Stuart G]

I respectfully submit this story to the Feminists.
It struck me as a wonderful story of growth and change.
Thank You, Stuart G
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sasha Bronner
Senior Editor, Los Angeles

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/escaping-her-ultra-orthodox-past-meant-redefining-what-it-means-to-be-a-woman_55b01a38e4b08f57d5d3a26b?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Leah Vincent separated from her deeply religious family as a 16-year-old over the course of two phone calls. She had been sent to New York City to work as a secretary and to fend for herself. Her family had cast her out.

Vincent’s harrowing 2014 memoir, Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood, chronicles her path from religious devotion to poverty, sexual trauma and self-harm -- and shows her miraculously resurfacing with a new identity (and a degree from Harvard and a career as a writer).

Today, Vincent, 33, lives in Brooklyn, New York with her three-year-old daughter and is writing her second book, a work of fiction that expands on Cut Me Loose and explores specifically how women develop their sense of identity.


“My biggest journey has been figuring out what it means to be a woman,” Vincent told The Huffington Post in a phone interview. “Initially, that meant being completely submissive and subservient.”

rest of story is at link...

[get the red out]

1. All the woman hating cults

Need to be consistently, verbally demonized by people who believe in freedom. Our country puts the freedom of men FAR ABOVE young girls' rights to even know they have rights and should live equally to men.

Freedom of religion is the freedom to oppress women and brainwash females into subservience from birth then claim those same, captive women wanted it that way.

This is ALL extremist cults, no matter what religion they are based on. I was thinking Duggers, FLDS, and Saudi Arabia the whole time I was reading this.

Yet another reason I will never be a good liberal, I do NOT put men's religious rights over the freedom of women and girls to own their own minds, bodies, and rights as citizens. Religious freedom is nothing but a cruel, fucking joke.

[Syzygy321]

2. Thank you. I agree.

On DU it is customary to bash Christianity. But Islam is sacrosanct here. And until this post I had never seen anyone even mention the ultra orthodox Jewish problem.

Here's how I see it: you can believe any wacky ahit you want. But when your religion teaches people to control others and claim godly authority for it (like a priest saying, "If you have an abortion you'll burn in hell" or a Muslim telling his wife, "You must obey because that's in the Quran&quot - big problem!

Of course all religions have historically been ways for some people (priests, kings, men) to grab power over others (laity, commoners, females).

Christianity in the west has developed a lot of liberal offshoots in which kids are pretty free to leave the church, and the doctrine is "eh, just try to be nice.". I have no problem with that because no one is being coerced.

Judaism in the last couple centuries has taken a sharp left turn into secularism and liberalism - even atheism! Reform and conservative Jews are a pretty easygoing bunch.

But the groups that are coercive and authoritarian and hard to escape (whoch in the US means orthodox Judiaism, fundamentalist Christianity, and Islam) are all the enemy of freedom and equality. In fact they exist to enforce nonfreedom and non-equality.

Down with religious coercion!

[get the red out]

3. If the lady who wrote this book

There would be a lot more posts, most likely. If the author had been Muslim, I doubt I would have had the guts to comment.

[Syzygy321]

4. I understand. Because some Republicans are

true bigots (the kind who say "all Muslims are terrorists" or "those ppl should go back where they came from&quot , anyone who says boo against Islam is called an Islamophobe by a self-righteous slice of the left (which has cowed the rest of the left into silence).

It is totally fine to criticize ideologies - just not people. Individual Muslims or Orthodox Jews or fundamentalist Christians should never be insulted or discriminated against. But if we believe that all people are equal, how can we pussyfoot around ideologies that teach, "wives must obey" and "gays deserve death" and "anyone who leaves our special cult must be punished."

It makes no freaking sense. It's just cowardice to pretend that crap is fine, and oh, we must be "tolerant".

The main victims of these religions are the women, gays, atheists, and nonconformists among them. And it makes me sick that liberals throw those people under the bus and call it "tolerance."

We want equality and free choice for ourselves. Let's make space for people in fundamentalist religions to say they want the same things. Let's stop kowtowing to the patriarchs and priests and imams and rabbis who claim "this is a religion of peace; we are all happy here!" while they keep their boots on the necks of half their population.

I just want liberals to judge everyone by the same standard we judge Christians. A fundy is a fundy is a fundy.

[get the red out]

5. Exactly!

I reserve the right to harshly judge ideologies that, in effect, deny human rights! But to so many people judging an ideology is the same as hating the human beings whose rights are being denied by it.

Totally messed up.

[Old Union Guy]

6. "Ultra" or otherwise, it all becomes clear ...

... once one realizes that the abuse husband in the sky does not exist.