SeN: "the crazy woman school of anti-Mormonism"

[Tom]

As usual, Gadianton, you’ve given us much good food for thought.

Deborah Laake’s best-selling 1993 memoir, Secret Ceremonies, is a book that I suspect that Peterson and his close friends purchased and read eagerly to locate what they viewed as the most sensationalistic and bizarre passages. Perhaps Peterson and his chums shared the most amusing sentences to uproarious laughter in between bites of taco salad in the Cougareat. Further, they may have shared the “best bits” from the “crazy woman” in a spate of emails on Skinny-L for the entertainment of buddies residing outside Happy Valley.

It’s not at all implausible that Peterson and his pals also sent a spate of taunting letters to Laake, demanding proof for various assertions in her book. Perhaps they did so two or three times after she did not respond to their initial spate of correspondence.

Introvigne, of course, reviewed Laake’s book for Sunstone.

[I Have Questions]

This is a multibagger betrayal. While I realize most won't have sympathy for this angle, it's still important to cover for the sake of a full review of the incident. This is a betrayal of the guys. What's said in the company of other guys stays within the network of the guys, even if the guys don't know each other or even like each other. This is a bond as deep as the strong nuclear force. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing to a reality. In the company of the guys, if an off-color or inappropriate humor takes place or if sins are admitted to -- short of participation in a serious crime and even then who knows-- in the natural order of things nobody is going to say anything to the wrong people. Like, let's say apologist B told an off-color joke in the presence of his fellow apologists. Perhaps apologist J, for instance, heard the joke and told it to his cousin and said, "yeah, I got that one from Hamblin," and the cousin shakes his head and laughs. He tells his buddies, one of them is a closet apostate and thinks the guy is a hypocrite but isn't going to say anything. It's highly unusual for a guy to rat out another dude with no pressures or real benefits on the table. Assuming the account is accurate, it's a major betrayal to the principles of male bonding. You have to be quite unwell mentally to say publicly in front of everyone including Bill's wife, "I have to tell you all this hilarious dirty joke Bill told me the other day." Or putting it on the Internet attributing it to Bill for everyone to see. This just doesn't happen within 2 standard deviations of normal psychology.

You are quite right Dean. That’s the societal norm within a group - be it males, or females, or a golf society etc. “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” sort of thing. What this unprompted betrayal of a longstanding social protocol shows, is that Peterson cannot be trusted to hold a confidence. People should be careful what they say around him, because he will betray you if there’s a few lines of padding needed in a blog post to get the word count up.

Imagine if there was a social media outcry against Massimo, people labelling a sexist etc. him losing a position over it etc. would Peterson care?

[Doctor Scratch]

I finished The Texas Murders very, very, very early this morning,

I gather that he's trying to show that, yes, actually, he *does* sometimes read female authors, and that, even though he went out of his way on the 4th of July to undermine Indigenous contributions to US governance, he reads about Native stories and characters, too! (He's a fan of Dark Winds!) Except, if that's the goal, then why not read books by actual Native authors? For example: Silko and Erdrich are pretty solid. And if he wants to avoid women, then what about Alexie, Welch, or Momaday? He's basically adopting an approach that would be akin to someone wanting to read about Mormonism and going with Krakauer, Bloom, and Conan Doyle.

[Gadianton]

Thanks for the links, Tom. I read Massimo's stuffy dismissals of Laake's book. It read like a "hit" piece from a paid outsider feigning objectivity. The New York Times article about her is much better. First of all, Laake appears to have serious issues. She doesn't deny her history of psych problems. She might be incorrect that her oppressive upbringing is the main factor in her troubles, but then again, she might be right. She might be right for reasons a little different than she herself perhaps relates. Assume she had some psych issues that began in childhood. It happens. One of the last places a person with serious mental health issues is going to get anything close to basic treatment is within a conservative religion. From what I've gleaned she is essentially correct that the Church teaches to apply simplistic principles and it will all be okay, and it seems like she took this advice as literally as anyone. And of course, things aren't going to be okay because the Church doesn't have any real answers, but a person with psych issues may not be able to navigate those failings the same way a better socially integrated Mormon does.

Massimo comes across as a bit of a clown casting the book as a serious work of anti-Mormonism and advising one won't learn any Mormon doctrine from it. The book sold more copies than all of Interpreters published books from now until eternity. The charm of the book appears to be shameless recounting of everything a person is supposed to keep private. That's what people wanted to hear. I think most people would see that they are getting Mormonism from the lived perspective of somebody who had a lot of problems.

All of the ingredients for a successful book are present. Apparently, the reading public is still eager to learn about "secret ceremonies" in the Mormon temple, the peculiarities of Mormon women's sex lives, and the psychiatric disturbances suffered by young Mormon women, all of which have been popularized in fiction and documentary format.

Pretty dismissive. I mean, why not that vs. something else? I find the accounts of cult survivors fascinating myself, Netflix had a string of really good documentaries a few years back. It never occurred to me to take any survivor account as the full picture for what the religion believes, but it does give you a slice of that religion you won't get elsewhere. Massimo is incorrect as he tries to laugh off Laake's fascination with the occult and spirits (recall that Massimo himself is obsessed with vampires (as a cultural construct but give me a break)). Dan apparently believes in lot of the same nutty stuff. The book Return from Tomorrow which was a hugely popular seminary book in my time legitimizes the basic idea of what Massimo summarized -- the idea that spirits are all around us trapped in their ways and trying to influence people. If you go by what Mormons believe as a culture she's not far off the mark even Dan agrees with a lot of it.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

What about Carol Lynn Pearson? I think she focused on a Heavenly Mother that brought her some negative attention from the LDS patriarchy, no? I don't recall off the top of my if she was excommunicated, though.

[Kishkumen]

Huh. What were these "recent books"? Who were the authors? Just a bunch of anonymous "women" who deserve to be dismissed in this way? It may be worth pointing out that this recollection is tied to a series of links that the Afore also posted, two of which involve alleged crimes--one of which seems to be pretty clearly related to someone going through a severe mental health crisis. You have to wonder: what was his intention in tying these various, women-related threads together? And why did he decide to share this particular recollection with his readership?

Hopefully he'll clarify which "very poor books" he had in mind.

Undoubtedly this was a reference to right-wing kook Candace Owens, who made some very conspiracy-theory-laden anti-Mormon statements recently.

https://youtu.be/TZRpJLGQxXA?si=id_kWV5D-3gXmZj1