Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Straight, Inc. and Derivatives => Topic started by: Anonymous on January 18, 2007, 03:07:54 AM
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"During her nine months at Pathway, Nicky said she spent nine to 11 hours a day, forced to sit in a rigid position on a straight chair with a cushion, legs pressed tightly together, feet straight out, hands on knees, elbows straight. "
I have a problem sitting. I don't like crossing my legs because it pulls my back. But when I uncross them I often get a trigger, it makes me feel like Straight, you know how we had to sit legs uncrossed, hands on our thighs. This is what people don't understand who say "get over it," who think we are just still mad and blaming Straight for all our problems or whatever they think. I don't think about my time in Straight that much anymore, but it's still there. It is hard to explain the feeling, but it's a trigger like I feel like I am being controlled again, that's the feeling I have when I uncross my legs. That is how something seemingly innocuous like sitting in a chair can become torture in a totalitarian environment.
When I was young I read books all the time. One time I read a book that was about three teenagers trapped in an endless room with staircases going up and down and every which way, it was all staircases as far as they could see. They didn't have any food, but little by little they figured out that when they went up and down the stairs, maybe up a stair then down a stair then up two stairs, whatever pattern, food would appear. There were lights like traffic lights that gave them signals. They got trained by an unseen scientist or something. After they got out, one girl had figured things out, but she saw the other two walking down the street and there was a traffic light and she saw them doing the same ritual, stepping forward and back, like they were in a trance. I am trying to find this book again so I can post the title and also look into it more, it sure does seem symbolic and I wonder what experience or knowledge the author had about mind control.
Beyond that, read the news article quote at the top again ( the rest of the article is on the PFC forum), it's sick, it's unbelievably sick. I was never in a Catholic school, but in novels they are sometimes as strict as this, and abusive in other ways.
Does anyone know the origin of this kind of strictness in institutional settings? Does it have anything to do with factory production? A young Chinese woman was crying on television the other night when someone was asking her about working in a factory. She started crying and had to compose herself. She said they were not allowed to speak, at all, from 6am until 6pm. I will always think of that when I pick up anything that says "Made in China". I think there are some people that enjoy factory work and there may be good factories to work in. At any job, you can develop a sense of camaraderie, friendly competition, pride in what you do and so on. It is fun to chatter over your work with the different kinds of people you would not otherwise have met or talked to. But I have, at two factories, witnessed firsthand excessive and demeaning control. At one factory, three men in suits came up to me and noted that I went to the bathroom often. Well yeah, it's morning, I drank coffee or tea and I have to pee more than once. At another one, the whole production line was down for hours but I couldn't even half sit by leaning on a perfectly sturdy metal rail and I couldn't read a book, I was supposed to stand there and do nothing! I ignored them! Factories have also always had the worst polluted air from the machines that are running.
But I digress. I think the only message the cult was giving us when we had to sit straight with our legs uncrossed and hands on thighs is that they were in control, constantly in control of our bodies so we couldn't even lean back in the chair, cross and uncross our legs, put an elbow on the back of the chair and lean head into hand for some relaxation. And then when we did have "special" raps when we got to do these things and be a little more comfortable, it was still another mind control thing, where they adjusted us to be a little more open, to share a little deeper. Or it was like the torturer in all the descriptions of torturers I have read, how they will slack up and be nice sometimes, and this gives the illusion that there is kindness and humanity in them.
Anyways, I titled this Triggers, and I digressed a lot, but I think the situations are the same: body control, mind control, and the humiliation and helplessness a person naturally feels when their body is not their own body to move, when they can't speak freely. I mean, until I started reading things here, it didn't even occur to me that it was a natural human right to engage in free conversation with one's peers, I never even thought of that as another thing Straight violated, and deeply! Not only could we not speak freely to each other, we were used as pawns in someone else's conception of how we should relate to authority and relate authority to our peers, that is, be responsible for enforcing the cult rules on each other!
The whole thing makes me sick because sometimes I do feel like I go into a trance state, in different ways. I wonder if other people have shaken these triggers off? I am not obsessed by them, I just notice them, and I think it is helpful to write it out, especially because we older survivors are a voice of understanding for the kids in programs now, and I know it is our journeys that have helped journalists like Maia Szalavitz to understand institutional abuse.