Seebach Exhibit 7

Domestic Discipline: Abuse by any other name

Someone started a thread on a "lifestyle" called Domestic Discipline. This is the term used for it by some Christian groups, although similar practices are found in some Muslim communities.

Basically, it's systematically organized and socially approved wife-beating.

People who know BDSM folks in Master/Slave relationships might think of this as a seriously dysfunctional Master/Slave relationship, with a lot more cruelty and genuine anger in the beatings, and no real consent.

Lemme give you examples. One girl was talking about how her father is beating her sister regularly because the sister might be masturbating, so the father comes into their room at night and beats her. Wives who fall short in any way are beaten. (Spanked, sometimes.)

This is justified, in the Christian groups, by the Biblical verses suggesting that husbands have authority over their wives.

I posted on the topic, and I don't know that the post will survive the rigors of editing at that site, so I repost here for posterity. I was responding to someone who told everyone to leave him alone, because he's not hurting them.

It is hurting us. Whenever any person harms another, it hurts all of us. It is an injury to the conscience to be asked to stand by while another does harm. It is an insult to Christ to compare His relationship to the church to that of a violent coward who, not content to beat up on someone too weak to defend against him, must lie about the Bible's contents to give the illusion of a moral authority so that the weaker party isn't even allowed to try to defend.

Christ does not beat us. Christ forgives every offense, sometimes before we even ask.

If the husband's relationship to the wife is that of Christ to His Church, the husband should not only refrain from beating his wife; he should make no record of the times when she hurts him, simply forgiving all and loving without condition or exception.

There is no point in sugarcoating this or pretending that it is anything but what it is. It is abuse, and it is cowardly abuse. It would take more courage to kick a puppy, which after all might bite back. It would show more love to kick a puppy, which may not be smart enough to understand the difference between good attention and bad attention.

It is bad enough to behave in a way which is in every way more despicable than kicking a defenseless puppy for no reason. But to describe it in terms that imply even the most tenuous connection between the love of Christ for His church, and this behavior, is blasphemy. It is not "like" blasphemy, it is not "almost" blasphemy, it is blasphemy.

Would you know the one connection that exists between this systematic and ritualized abuse, and the love of Christ?

It is that He can forgive even this.

That is the connection. Go you now and seek that forgiveness.

In All Things, Love

So, I started hanging around at another Christian BBS. It's called In All Things, Love, and it is a site run by Christian principles, not just a site run by Christians. No doctrinal purity test for membership. No 12-page rules documents. Just people who have agreed to be nice and treat each other decently.

Worth a look if you've ever wanted to see what Christian doctrinal discussions look like when they aren't busy condemning each other to ever more horrible punishments.

Okay, this is just pathetic.

So, a friend of mine does fanart. (And before you ask, yes, most anime/manga publishers actively encourage fanart.)

In particular, consider this picture:

Heartwarming Excel Moment

Another picture showed up, on deviantart. I'm not gonna bother linking, it's already been reported. But I snagged a copy.

And then I scaled it down in size from 866 pixels in height to the 826 pixels in height of the Excel picture. And I cut and pasted and overlaid, and guess what! I got this:

Now, a bit of commentary is perhaps in order. It is notable that the very first attempt at scaling the image got something close enough to be within a couple of pixels of the right height. All I did to align these was move the traced picture around until the faces were lined up; the rest came out pretty well.

First, start with the amazing similarity of the faces. Same eyes. Same nose. Same mouth, except that where Excel has a bit of a fang, the badly-traced Starfire has a sort of smirk. Oops. Pay more attention next time. Same bangs, same little fluffs of hair... Very impressive.

At the shoulders, we see our first major divergence. Our aspiring tracer doesn't know much about anatomy, and couldn't figure out how to compensate for Excel's ludicrous shoulder-poofies. As a result, her left shoulder seems to be rather impacted into her chest.

A little lower we find two excellent examples of how we know this is a trace. The left breast has a lump large enough to call for immediate surgery; it sticks out too far to the right. (The right breast, using a line actually found in the original, is fine.) But the beauty is the flipper/hand on the traced picture, reflecting the difficulty of tracing Excel's featureless black glove! With nothing to trace, our friend has to merely guess.

At the knees, and on the boots, we once again see careful duplication of many lines. Starfire's boots, in addition to exactly copying the style of Excel's boots (an unusual choice), have a black band right where Excel's socks change color. The distinctive calf-high split-side boots with thick cuffs with a V-point in the front are bad enough, but look at how precisely the positions of the feet are mirrored. The left hand seems pretty original, but you might want to ask yourself how closely it approximates the right hand flipped left for right...

Yeesh. Why do people do this? More importantly, why do they pretend its their own work, instead of just saying "hey, I found this excellent picture, and I traced it and changed a few things"?