Epic Mormonism Live on Rosebud Accusations

[Lem]

No. You’re making the same stereotyping mistake, but now you are excusing yourself.

You're picking nits that aren't even worth picking. Most of us---not all, I know!---believed the Silliest Story Ever Told long past when it should have been obviously false. That ought to instill a little humility for the human capacity to cling to nonsense for emotional reasons.

Clearer now? No....no, of course not, is it? Because I think you just want to pick nits with me for some reason.

That’s a far cry from the complete stereotype you started with, so at least thank you for that.

It’s called “expressing my disagreement with someone’s stated position during a conversation because it’s a point that’s meaningful to me,” though, not “picking nits not worth picking for no reason.”

You’re really not getting my point. When I said “sneering mockery” doesn’t accurately describe how her posting history played out, I meant it in the same way you originally used it. You’re saying “sneering mockery” described how she was treated, I am saying no, that’s not accurate. Many, many people here listened carefully and thoughtfully to her story, gave her the benefit of the doubt for a long time, and interacted with her in good faith, a position she rarely reciprocated.

No, "sneering mockery" referred to the handful of posts made since this thread was resurrected. I was not referring to the entire reaction to her for the last decade, or even to the entirety of this one thread. I'm not really sure how it could have been interpreted otherwise, but now I've spelled it out.

Thank you. No it wasn’t clear, which I why I commented.

And yes, same rules apply. If you think I don’t think that, then you really haven’t been reading the thread.

Couldn't you mix it up a little? I know you are, but what am I? Takes one to know one? If you like it so much, why don't you marry it? Or are you just going to stick with: "You obviously haven't read the thread!"

If you want it couched as a playground fight, I’m not interested.

I don't think it would be fair or kind to treat him that way either, but I do think it's pretty weird and obsessive to be on such a rampage against your former employer for so long. Or to have expected your employer to tell you anything about his sex life in the first place. Or to contact the total stranger your boss had this affair with. Or to paper the Internet for years with accusations about your former boss.

It's weird. In some ways, much weirder than continuing to obsess over a former lover who dumped you.

I don’t agree, for the same reasons Drumdude mentioned. But if it is as you described, then he’s vulnerable, too, right? Calling women “vulnerable” but not men when describing such situations is just the flip side of the gendered commentary that you described earlier.

[The Stig]

All this sneering mockery of Rosebud is pretty damn rich coming from a bunch of people who believed well into adulthood that America was settled by Jews in 600 BC, and we know this because of the tingly feelings we got by reading a book "translated" from a nonexistent language off of plates nobody ever saw.

Most people figure out that fairy tales are just stories by about the age of 10, so I don't think any of us here have any business pointing fingers about gullibility or immaturity or the inability to let go of delusions.

Clearly, Rosebud has some mental health issues (the cutting, the grandiosity, etc.), but maybe she would have been able to let this go a long time ago if she didn't have her frenemies (Kwaku, Kate Kelly, James Patterson) egging her on. They're using and manipulating a vulnerable woman simply to further their own vendettas against Dehlin.

I mean, you want to talk about "can't let it go"? Patterson was employed by Dehlin years ago. Got pissed off because Patterson believed Dehlin owed him complete and honest information about Dehlin's sex life. Who does that?? Who asks their boss about his sex life and then feels utterly entitled to an honest answer---and then proceeds to hound that ex-employer for years? It's weird and creepy. Frankly, it's weird and creepy that Patterson then sought out contact with Rosebud. A healthier woman might have considered a restraining order.

Odd, how we never mock Patterson for being a pathetic bunny boiler who can't let it go. Just Rosebud, who at least has the excuse of being in love with Dehlin. But, of course, she's female and Patterson's male. He gets plenty of pushback for his lack of evidence, but he never gets degraded, called crazy and obsessed and compared to Glenn Close.

But, yes, she overused the word "fanciful." Ha, ha! What a crazy bitch! Isn't that hilarious?

Ugh.

In other news, the hasty generalization fallacy is alive and well.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

So your point is that James writing a handful of posts online criticizing his former boss is equal to Rosebud spending almost a decade of her life slandering a former lover across hundreds and hundreds of posts in dozens of places.

I think Lem is making a fair point that perhaps you don’t understand just how long Rosebud has been at this. It has nothing to do with James being treated differently because he happens to have a penis.

A "handful of posts" understates James' attacks on Dehlin by at least as much as you accuse me of understating Rosebud's attacks. He worked for Dehlin in 2014, so he's been at this about seven years now. Just look him up on ex-Mo Reddit. They pretty much groan when they see him coming the way this group does with Rosebud.

I don’t agree, for the same reasons Drumdude mentioned. But if it is as you described, then he’s vulnerable, too, right? Calling women “vulnerable” but not men when describing such situations is just the flip side of the gendered commentary that you described earlier.

Perhaps he is. I certainly find his behavior just about as bizarre. And if this group were being cruel to him just for the fun of it, I would say that's pretty assholish too.

See, I really wanted to like James. I thought he actually cared about Rosebud (if maybe he was projecting a little too much, based on his own past). Then it became pretty evident that he's just using her to get back at Dehlin like all the others. Sexy stories get tongues a-wagging far more easily than combing through 990 forms and trying to turn public opinion based on some sort of alleged financial impropriety.

Am I saying they're EXACTLY the same? No. But the parallels are there.

Spending seven years and counting waging a public campaign to get back at your former boss for lying to you about his sex life....believing your employer's sex life to be any of your business in the first place....seeking out and contacting other former employees.... That stuff doesn't strike you all as kinda nuts??

No? Ok. But Rosebud overused a word! Ermahgerd! What a crazy bitch! HAHAHAHA!

[Cultellus]

Gorilla

[drumdude]

They pretty much groan when they see him coming the way this group does with Rosebud.

Go back over how we responded to James defending rosebud here. We did not treat him with kid gloves.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

They pretty much groan when they see him coming the way this group does with Rosebud.

Go back over how we responded to James defending rosebud here. We did not treat him with kid gloves.

No, he wasn't. But you sure don't mind minimizing his behavior when it serves your point now!

[drumdude]

Go back over how we responded to James defending rosebud here. We did not treat him with kid gloves.

No, he wasn't. But you sure don't mind minimizing his behavior when it serves your point now!

If he's been on exMormon reddit doing this since 2014 then I'll agree with you that he's approaching the same level as Rosebud. I don't follow exMormon reddit that closely.

[pistolero]

Clearly both have an axe to grind, one way or another.

There are few things that Rosebud did/does that stand out a bit more than what JP does. JP just looks disgruntled, Rosebud looks to be rather a bit more than disgruntled. Just off the top of my head, some things that she has done, which the regular disgruntled person, eg. JP, may not do:

• Rosebud wanted to take MS from JD.

• She bought a domain name to wage war on him.

• She's churned out essays on all types of topics which always seem to come home to what JD did to her.

• She's had forensic interviews.

• She plays the victim card to all and sundry.

• She seems to blame her financial predicament on JD.

• She claims to have had an affair with JD, emotional of otherwise.

• She has fund raisers to take legal action and put her kids through school, because JD ruined her life.

• She's already taken legal action (multiple times?).

• She has an extraordinary high opinion of her own special talents.

• Did she say that JD caused her marriage to breakdown, or was it already messed up and JD just gave her the coaching (or naked spooning) she needed to get out?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I think SV makes a fair point, as it relates to me personally, about Mormonism. I was ready to dip on the faith when I was a teen, but brainwashed myself back into a faithful narrative primarily due to social and familial obligations. I managed to stay in long enough to make a catastrophically bad decision to marry in the temple post-mission. I just didn’t have the internal courage to have and enforce boundaries until my mid-twenties, where I went inactive and then at 30 finally resign once I saw others were thinking and feeling what I was - shout out to recoveryfrommormonism.org.

Where I disagree with SV and align with Lemmie is Rosebud had a fairly sympathetic ear on this site until she decided to play games with regard to the claims she was making, to be wholly narcissistic, to ignore some excellent advice from people who were acting in good faith, and to determinedly destroy her personal and professional reputation by waging a Glenn Closian campaign against a dude over a fairly tepid affair. It was and is bonkers, and I don’t believe the board’s interactions with her had much to do with ex-Mormons being self-unaware and judgmental. The judgementalism was mostly post-facto our years-long interactions with her.

- Doc

edit: removed the ‘e’ from judgmentalism *tip o’ the cap to the qultist*

[Lem]

I think SV makes a fair point, as it relates to me personally, about Mormonism. I was ready to dip on the faith when I was a teen, but brainwashed myself back into a faithful narrative primarily due to social and familial obligations. I managed to stay in long enough to make a catastrophically bad decision to marry in the temple post-mission. I just didn’t have the internal courage to have and enforce boundaries until my mid-twenties, where I went inactive and then at 30 finally resign once I saw others were thinking and feeling what I was - shout out to recoveryfrommormonism.org.

Where I disagree with SV and align with Lemmie is Rosebud had a fairly sympathetic ear on this site until she decided to play games with regard to the claims she was making, to be wholly narcissistic, to ignore some excellent advice from people who were acting in good faith, and to determinedly destroy her personal and professional reputation by waging a Glenn Closian campaign against a dude over a fairly tepid affair. It was and is bonkers, and I don’t believe the board’s interactions with her had much to do with ex-Mormons being self-unaware and judgmental. The judgementalism was mostly post-facto our years-long interactions with her.

- Doc

edit: removed the ‘e’ from judgmentalism *tip o’ the cap to the qultist*

Yes, it's been a very, very long ride with Rosebud on this forum. When she doxxed herself here, I gave her my best professional opinion, ex-tbm woman to ex-tbm woman, and now that stuff is indexed (thank you Gadianton, Dr. Moore, mods, Shades, and all others!!!), I found the post.

Note the date on this comment, four and a half YEARS ago:

http://[in real life link]

oh boy. Fell free to tell me to **** off, but, speaking as a woman with a BIC- tbm background who has gone through this process of extricating oneself from LDS influences, may I say that going forward, you will want to have a professional footprint that can be taken seriously. It is nice, as candygal said, to get to know each other, but linking your in real life professional data with the type of posts you leave here does NOT help your professional image.

....there's something about me that makes me vulnerable. My vulnerability is my problem, but to some extent, it comes from Mormonism. I've started to sort that out...

Right. Since 2011, yes? Get it done. Sorry to be so abrupt, and I know it's not fair but you are not setting yourself up for a future where you are taken seriously as a professional woman if you continue to publicly wallow in this. I am totally sympathetic to the long period of time it takes to get over stuff like this, but think about your professional image and work on yourself in private, maybe in a therapist's office.

I'm really pissed that all these transitioning Mormons, who I care about, run into John Dehlin first thing (and his female counterparts) and get sucked into a new set of problems that is a repeat of the trauma they're trying to escape. Over the last 5 years I've seen such positive development and a maturing of the post-Mo community. I'd like it to develop beyond its dependence on its charismatic leader.

Come on. Again, I know you won't like this unsympathetic stance, but as a grown woman how professionally do you think you will be treated if you continue, for years and in public, to lament over the "power" a "charismatic leader" has had over you during your adult years? Plenty of women, post-Mormon or not, find themselves enjoying a community with no need for a dependence on any sort of leader. That you define a community in terms like that is still that old Mormon way of thinking.

I've resigned all my positions. If I ever get back into any projects, it will be with one of the few solid, grounded leaders. They're harder to find because they're not screaming from mountaintops as often.

Or, radical idea, be your own solid, grounded leader. I understand the Mormon background in this process, but professionally, you just come across as never getting over the need to keep looking for a man to pull your life together for you. You're an adult. Pull your own life together!

Maybe someone needs to put together a blueprint for not being deceived by the creeps in the transitioning Mormon landscape.

There are thousands. You don't need one just for Mormon transitioning because although it feels so unique to you, it's really not a unique problem at all. See a psychiatrist or therapist and discuss the various options you have for learning how to finish growing up.

Now I'm just frightened for new members of his communities....

The church creates a dependent people, disappoints them, then abandons them to these jerks and very few seem to safely navigate the weeds. I certainly didn't. But what can the church do to protect people from John Dehlin besides what they've already done?

Again, no offense, but we are talking about adults, right? Not helpless children. I empathize because I went through all of this myself, but honestly, you have to do the work yourself. No one is obligated to protect you from life.

I know I sound harsh, but it's still not a clear sailing path for professional women to be taken seriously. I went through my similar battle while attending graduate school in Manhattan. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire. :rolleyes: You just have to grit your teeth and grow the hell up, as fast as you can, all the while behaving as professionally as possible.

And last, you have to present yourself in the best light you can. It's not fair, I know, but there are still plenty of people who will discriminate based on gender. You can't fix each one, or run out of the room crying every time, or vow revenge online in traceable posts or you will never get any work done. You just have to personally hold yourself to the highest standard you can, and then ignore the rest. Assume virtually no one in the professional world wants to hear you discuss your gender-related vulnerabilities, and just let them know you can do the job. Period. Whatever your gender.

I have posted different things here at different times to have a different affect on John Dehlin

Really? He still has that much power over you that you feel you need to demonstrate publicly that you have an effect on him?

Anyway, just consider this post my approach to how to have a professional life, as a woman, after growing up in what I consider to have been a cult-like environment. I'm not trying to tell you how I want you to be, as you mentioned in a recent post to me, it's just irritating to see a woman go on and on like this so I am sharing how the process worked for me.