[ SECRET POST #1984 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #1984 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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13.
[Little Shop of Horrors]


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14.
[Sherlock BBC]


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15. http://i.imgur.com/Jxlnf.png
[sort of porny and possible underage; photomanip, Snape/Hermione]

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[ ----- TRIGGERY SECRETS AHEAD ----- ]












16. [SPOILER WARNING for Arrested Development]
[TRIGGER WARNING for incest]



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17. [TRIGGER WARNING for rape]



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18. [TRIGGER WARNING for abuse, suicide]



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19. [TRIGGER WARNING for sexual violence, rape, coercion, cult like mentalities, and violence]



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20. [TRIGGER WARNING for pedophilia]

[Let the Right One In/Låt den rätte komma in]


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21. [TRIGGER WARNING for body horror, gore]

[Parasyte]


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22. [TRIGGER WARNING for abuse]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #283.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

To be a cult requires a central authority with absolute control over believers, and a forced disconnect from all non-believers, with severe penalties for leaving the group and trying to rejoin society, both from within the cult and from society at large. And from what I've seen, the soulbonding community couldn't organise its way out of a wet paper sack with a map, flashlight, and GPS system. They just aren't organised or central enough.

It sounds like you had abusive friends, OP. And I'm sorry that happened. But people use all kinds of things to justify abusive behaviour. That doesn't make soulbonding inherently cultic activity. It doesn't even ping on the sociological radar as a new religious movement. You just got involved with some people with abusive, controlling, and harmful mindsets, who would have used any identity to construct harmful rituals and boundaries. In the late 90s, it was vampirism. These things happen. That doesn't make them less traumatic for the person who experiences the behaviour, but it does go a long way from painting a diverse group of people with the same problematic brush.

[(Anonymous)]

not op, but maybe they didn't tell us the whole story. we don't know for sure what happened, and for all we know it might have been more cult like than the stories floating around, it was a small group, after all

not everything of this sort makes the sort of social splash that it should, sadly

[(Anonymous)]

It doesn't have to make a social splash. What I'm saying is that from what I know of the soulbonder community, such that it is, there isn't the structure for all soulbonders to be in some kind of cult, as the secret implied. Soulbonders are generally harmless, the same way that most people with a fringe belief structure are -- they're non-neurotypical, they have a loose sense of community, and a mutable idea of identity that goes against standard Western ideas of the self. Much like any other group of such characteristics, it is possible for someone to use the soulbonder identity to create an abusive group under that header, but it doesn't take on cult status. Cults are very specific things. They have specific characteristics which the soulbonding community doesn't meet in general. And laying the accusation on the soulbonding community that they're facilitating cults and the identity itself is inherently harmful based on the behaviour of a group of abusive people who affiliated themselves with the community unfairly tars everyone who shares that identity.

The short of it is: just because someone is involved with abusive rituals, that doesn't make it a cult. And just because some people use a group's identity to forge an abusive sub-group, that doesn't make everyone with the larger identity marker abusive.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I get what you mean now. I agree, it's not fair to paint a whole group with the same brush just for the actions of some.

I do like that people warn about dangers (that aren't just inherent to soulbounders, as the linked sites in the first comment thread indicate), though.

[(Anonymous)]

So if it doesn't meet those very stringent requirements it's not a cult and the dynamics of the group couldn't possibly have anything in common with cult dynamics? What a crock.

From what OP said:

* The group was structured around the ideas of "soulbonding."
* Anyone in the group was judged severely, and frequently punished severely, based on how "true" they were to those ideas.

That's already within spitting distance of cult territory, so close that trying to deny that it's worth discussing in the same breath as cults comes across as nitpicky at best and cult apologist at worst.

Your later comment makes it sound like you read the OP's comment as "The entire soulbonding community constitutes a cult" and were trying to deny that this could be so because the entire soulbonding community isn't an organized group. Problem for you is, OP never said that; they said that the group they were in were cultiic, and she feels that soulbonding might breed cultic mentality. Argue against their second claim if you want; don't try to argue their first, because you have no basis on which to judge that her friends were "only" abusive friends and didn't constitute a cult in any sense.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not a "cult apologist." I'm a religion scholar. And the concept of a "cult" is a very specific thing. In fact, many scholars don't use the term, except in limited contexts, because it tends to blow any discussion about a group and whatever they're doing out of the realm of reasonable discourse and understanding. Branding a group a cult tends to mean that people want to get law enforcement involved and shut down any and all activity relating to the group. Which may in fact be appropriate in some situations, but not all. Many scholars stick to "new religious movements" when discussing emergent small groups, and sometimes talk about them as being in tension or prone to abuse, or being marginal and violent, but rarely as a "cult." That's my point. It's a term that doesn't have a lot of currency, and is associated largely with things like Jonestown and the Satanic panics of the 90s. It's also highly specific when it is used, and so is used sparingly, because rarely do abusive groups meet the criteria typified by Jonestown.

I don't have the means to judge the OP's former friends, but I also don't think I'm wrong in saying that because the idea of the cult -- the central worship of a singular figure or group of people with absolute authority given to them through divine revelation, unable to be questioned at any time, with emphasis on recruitment, isolation, consequences for leaving, and divorce from any and all associated not involved in the group, as well as a physical isolation from non-participants, usually in a remote location or group housing set apart from society at large -- is really unlikely to have happened here, and the idea of the "cult" is so specific when it can be applied, that it's better and more accurate to talk about abusive people/groups. I don't think the soulbonding community, more than any other fringe identity, is prone for cults, or abusive behaviour, but any fringe identity can be used by abusive people.

Short point: the term "cult" is my objection because of its technical usage. Abuse is more descriptive and likely, and just as bad. Calling something a cult doesn't make it dramatically worse, nor does calling people abusive negate the damage they've done. "Cult" is a term with a specific meaning, ought to be used only when applicable, and scholars cannot agree even when that might be. Ergo, I think its use here is probably off the mark.

[(Anonymous)]

We're going to have to agree to disagree, because your objection to the use of the word "cult" seems like it would be entirely appropriate in an academic discussion, and entirely inappropriate in this discussion, where OP is trying to explain what happened to her and why she's afraid it might happen to other people and you're trying to police whether she's using terminology in accordance with academic definitions.

Is "a circle of abusive friends" just as descriptive and just as bad as "cult," making "cult" an unnecessary word to use in this context? I don't think so. Here is the key element that "a circle of abusive friends" lacks that's crucial in the context of OP's story: loyalty is theoretically not to the group, but to the ideals/ideas around which the group is supposedly centered. What difference does that make? A huge difference. If you turn your back on a circle of abusive friends, you are turning your back on people. If you turn your back on a group that has convinced you that only they know the real will of God / the real truth of the astral plane / the secrets of complete inner peace / etc. you are turning your back on something much, much more than just a small circle of people.

Even if I accepted fully your claims as to the stringent requirements that must be met before a group can qualify as a "cult" in the academic sense, I would be opposing your attempt to censor OP's descriptions of her own experience. As it happens, I don't accept your definition, for multiple reasons, not least of which is that it makes the faulty assumption that only religious groups can be cults, pointlessly excluding numerous political cults, therapy cults, and pseudoscience cults. It does not read like a definition that was produced for the benefit of social scientists trying to understand a spectrum of group dynamics which finds Jonestown at its farthest end; it reads like a definition produced for the benefit of groups who find themselves on that spectrum and want to convince others that no, there is some important if vague factor which makes them really, really different from Jonestown, not comparable at all. "Why, sure, we tell everyone who joins our group that our therapy is the only thing which can possibly salvage their damaged psyches, psyches that we explain at length just how damaged they are, and we tell them that if they abandon the group, they will without question go insane and destroy everything they ever loved in their insanity - but, our teachings don't have a religious basis and we don't physically isolate people, so of course we're not a cult!" Even if I didn't know that the very restrictive definition you cite is hardly uncontentious within the academic community, I would still view it as completely wrong-headed to say that OP's group not meeting all elements of that description means there is no meaningful similarity and she should only think of them as "abusive friends."