Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
Explain straight to me
Anonymous:
--- Quote ---My guess, based solely on my personal experiece, is that it's always easier for the perpetrator to justify doing the act than it is for the victim to accept that it happened and deal with resulting emotional pain.
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Ah-fucking-men
NOT12NOW:
Ooops that was me
NOT12NOW:
Antigen I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your post. Your answers and links were very helpful to me. I understand how straight worked much more clearly now. Actually I wrote a long email the day I read your entry but lost it somewhere in cyberspace and haven?t had the heart to re-write it till now.
Clearly, growing up with the seed helped you to survive straight; unfortunately you probably end up slapped into straight because the seed was so fungal in your family.
I wonder, from what you wrote, if part of the reason straight became more physically abusive then the seed (at least the seed I experienced) was because the straightlings were more encouraged to make other kids do things. Make newcomers motivate; you even mentioned a stage where you were intended to serve as an extension to the staff.
If you take a lot of freaked out kids and give them permission to blow off steam on other kids. Someone is going to get hurt. I was mean to my newcomer, because I was trying to prove myself through her progress but deeper down because I was angry and yelling at her was an approved way to express that anger. If I had been encouraged to be physical I am sure I would have hit, pulled hair and pushed her while I yelled at her.
We used to hear about Straight. Art and sometimes staff would talk about these arrogant seed parents who thought they knew how to help kids and were starting a program using some seed ideas they didn?t understand. Did seed parents actually start straight? The ways the program changed seems to have accommodated them more so it seems likely to me. You could put your kid away longer, it sounds like kids had less days off in the program even towards the end and they had parent meetings, which I am pretty sure the Cleveland seed never had.
My parents were almost as irritated by having a seedling daughter as they were by having a delinquent daughter. I embarrassed them by refusing to talk to a girl at church who burst into tears. I would only wear polyester pants. I was a tyrant about following the rules. ?I can?t say your not home to the caller on the phone because I must be honest at all times,? or ?Mom you can?t run out to get milk and leave me home alone.? My mother was always complaining about how seedlings riding in her car would hush each other for saying anything that happened in group, in front of her?anonymity. ?Why shouldn?t I be able to hear?? She?d say, ?I am straight.?
How were people restrained at Straight? Was being, sat on, considered a restraining method? Who did it kids, staff or both? Was it just one person or many?
Did they say love you all the time. Did you sing jiggle bells?
Anonymous:
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?to ... 34&forum=7
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2005-11-20 05:43:00, NOT12NOW wrote:
"Antigen I am sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your post.
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No problem.
--- Quote --- Your answers and links were very helpful to me. I understand how straight worked much more clearly now.
--- End quote ---
Cool.
--- Quote ---
Clearly, growing up with the seed helped you to survive straight; unfortunately you probably end up slapped into straight because the seed was so fungal in your family.
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Funny you should say that. I used to refer to the Seed as "the Spore". But I wasn't just refering to Straight and LIFE (the only spin offs I knew of) but to the toughlove hategroup's pervasive influence in society and public policy.
--- Quote ---
I wonder, from what you wrote, if part of the reason straight became more physically abusive then the seed (at least the seed I experienced) was because the straightlings were more encouraged to make other kids do things.
--- End quote ---
Well no, as you note, Seedlings were also encouraged and/or required to enforce Program rules and standards on each other and on their parents at home. Giving credit where credit is due, I think Art was just not as big an asshole as, say, Newton or Sembler or Peterman. I can easily visualize Seedlings chasing down and tackling splitters or even doing restraints (good description there at that link in the previous post). And I can imagine some staff, like Lybbi, enjoying the hell out of it and getting very hands on about it. But I can't imagine Art dragging a little girl around by the hair.
See, the Seed was a lot more like a personality cult. In Straight, we were required to worship the rules, the Group and the dogma, but (until Virgil came and until he got the bum's rush) we were not really focused on any individual on any permanent basis. Just their status. So someone who was on staff one day would be above reproach but if they got started over the next day, well then they ate shit along w/ the rest of us.
--- Quote --- Make newcomers motivate; you even mentioned a stage where you were intended to serve as an extension to the staff.
--- End quote ---
They didn't do that at the Seed? What would happen if you just decided you didn't care to relate?
--- Quote ---If you take a lot of freaked out kids and give them permission to blow off steam on other kids. Someone is going to get hurt. I was mean to my newcomer, because I was trying to prove myself through her progress but deeper down because I was angry and yelling at her was an approved way to express that anger. If I had been encouraged to be physical I am sure I would have hit, pulled hair and pushed her while I yelled at her.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, that was the gist of it. We were not only allowed, but very much encouraged to vent all of our anger (or make some up) toward all people, ideas and objects un-program-like. But that's how I remember the Seed too.
--- Quote ---We used to hear about Straight. Art and sometimes staff would talk about these arrogant seed parents who thought they knew how to help kids and were starting a program using some seed ideas they didn?t understand. Did seed parents actually start straight?
--- End quote ---
Well, that's his story and John and Ft. Lauderdale and others are sticking to it. It wasn't just a little like the Seed. It WAS the seed with only minor differences. Same mindfuck, slightly different structure and verbage. And I have to say if Art fully understood what the fuck he was doing, he's a bigger monster than most. I honestly don't think he did. I think he was just a self deluded megalomaniac trying to create his own little Chitaqua.
--- Quote ---The ways the program changed seems to have accommodated them more so it seems likely to me. You could put your kid away longer, it sounds like kids had less days off in the program even towards the end and they had parent meetings, which I am pretty sure the Cleveland seed never had.
--- End quote ---
No, the Seed didn't have any formal parent groups that I can recal. Virgil Newton introduce parent weekend sometime in the very early `80's. They already had open meeting review when I turned up in St. Pete in Oct of `81, though. That was where the parents did their twice weekly group rap while the kids, at the opposite end of the building (out of earshot?) had the worst come down raps of the week.
--- Quote ---My parents were almost as irritated by having a seedling daughter as they were by having a delinquent daughter. I embarrassed them by refusing to talk to a girl at church who burst into tears. I would only wear polyester pants. I was a tyrant about following the rules. ?I can?t say your not home to the caller on the phone because I must be honest at all times,? or ?Mom you can?t run out to get milk and leave me home alone.? My mother was always complaining about how seedlings riding in her car would hush each other for saying anything that happened in group, in front of her?anonymity. ?Why shouldn?t I be able to hear?? She?d say, ?I am straight.?
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:rofl: Well, careful what you wish for! That's the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks!
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Did they say love you all the time. Did you sing jiggle bells?
"
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Constantly, till it was comin' out your ears and every pore and the phrase, when said just so, is sullied and dirty for all time.
We had most of the same songs, too. Row your boat, killing me softly, I am Straight, grand old fag and a whole lot of others.
Don't laugh when you leave this courtroom, thinking you have beat the system because you have looked these things up yourself. We are going to get you down the road.
Washington Superior CourtJudge Rebecca Baker
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