I
Now Liz has another very interesting post on emotional abuse. And as everyone probably realizes by now, what I most deplore about Al-Anon is its encouragement of self-abuse, and the way the 12 steps can drive people to question their own sanity. Here are two examples:
1. “Remember, the [alcoholic / addict / narcissist / abuser / insert relevant problem here] is sick. You must lower your expectations of them.” I call this making excuses for poor behavior, and coercing the victim of this behavior to stay. The problem is not that she is being mistreated, but that her standards for behavior are too high. The people of Darfur are not starving – they have only neglected to shrink their stomachs.
2. “What is your part in it? Stop blaming others! Take responsibility!” Once again, this is blaming the victim. One is discouraged from seeing the situation for what it is and leaving it, encouraged to see oneself as a major contributor to it, and told one can remedy it unilaterally by becoming a better person. That is exactly what abusers say, and I cannot emphasize this enough.
II
If you insist, rigidly and a priori, that the central problem in life is addiction, which you define as a “disease;” if you then convince yourself that perpetrators are merely addicts; if you believe that the people associated with these infirm individuals are “sicker than they are” and want to be there; you are bound to make many errors.
This point was driven home last month in Mexico when I met some indigenist activists, who were being interviewed by an American woman. She queried, “If there is so much alcoholism in this community, there must also be a great deal of domestic violence.” They said, “Domestic violence is another problem, coexisting with alcoholism but broader. Even if nobody ever touched a drop, there would be a serious problem of domestic violence here. Drinking facilitates, but does not cause this violence. Its primary cause is patriarchy.”
III
My most vocally Christian students are not my brightest, and they want and need to be led by the hand. They will nicely do what is required of them to finish college, but they must be told how like children. Some even ask to be walked through each step. Reeducation, including Al-Anon, wanted and expected me to be like that. To limit my life in such a way as it could be regulated through obedience, would have been proof of health.
Obedience and conformity are already overemphasized in alcoholic families. This is one more of the ways in which 12 step programs actually replicate, and do not contest alcohol-driven paradigms. And Al-Anon, remember, is one important piece, but only one, of Reeducation, that Bane. But also remember that I am not letting Al-Anon off the hook. It functions as an organ of our repressive state, and the 12 steps are 12 steps to the dark side.
We now return to our regular programming, namely, my very entertaining Self-Tagging Town Meme, my fascinating post on Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil, and Vicente Huidobro’s beautiful poem En vida [In Life]. At my other blog is a new and interesting post on writing.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 