FMN, a frequent and intelligent commenter, wrote about Dr. Danielle Roberts, as a comment in response to the article, Alanzo Defends Dr. Danielle Roberts in Her Quest to Get Medical License Back.
By FMN
What needs to be acknowledged is that people make mistakes. We all do. And when we do, we tend to hang our heads in shame and feel the need to jump off bridges. This is akin to “slut shaming” and revenge porn. Evil ways to destroy women.
Societal shaming is horrible.
But for some reason, people like, well, politicians get shamed all the time, and just brush it off.
Dr. Roberts can do this, too. Reinvent herself.
But in my humble, humble opinion, this WAS a cult, and no one can progress forward until that is acknowledged and dealt with.
Until it’s dealt with, followers remain harem members of a defunct organization. And harem members are stuck in a downward trajectory until they figure it out for themselves. When the rest of the world sees a cult, and a small family of sex partners don’t, one of the two groups –the world, or the harem – needs to look in the mirror to see if perhaps their judgment is skewered.
That process is awareness, healing, redemption, reinvention.
She can do this.
Allen Alanzo Stanfield
Alanzo had this comment in reply to FMN.
I’m going to challenge some of the assumptions in your comment, FMN.
I hope you don’t mind.
You wrote, ”When the rest of the world sees a cult, and a small family of sex partners don’t, one of the two groups – the world, or the harem – needs to look in the mirror to see if perhaps their judgment is skewered.”
“The rest of the world” is not actually the rest of the world. It’s a particular culture: US mainstream culture.
For instance, the Hare Krishnas are straight-up Hindus, a religion with 1.35 billion adherents, four times bigger than the population of the entire US.
Hare Krishnas, or the Society for Krishna Consciousness, study and promote the Bhagavad Gita, one of the principle texts of Hinduism, and one of the most enlightened spiritual scriptures ever written.
Have you read it?
Here in the US, Hare Krishnas dress funny, eat funny, chant and behave in ways North American society deems a “cult”.
A. C Bhakitvedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the Hare Krishna sect or is it a cult?
So it isn’t “the rest of the world” who thinks Hare Krishnas are a cult.
It’s North American society, which is dominated by Jews and Christians, mostly, who believe that there are, per their teachings, “false prophets” who lead you away from their Gods, such a Yahweh and Jesus. Because of this, they target Hare Krishnas as a “cult”.
And so you use the term “harem” to describe Dr. Danielle Roberts, which is a term from Islam, from their practice of polygamy. Islam comprises 1.9 billion adherents, six times the population of the United States. But was Dr. Roberts actually part of a harem, or has your culture only presented her that way?
Dr. Roberts practices yoga, a Hindu practice.
Your conclusion that Dr. Roberts ‘needs to look into the mirror’ is based on assumptions that US society is somehow world society, and when a member of a minority subculture like NXIVM is faced with US mainstream persecution, as Dr Roberts has been, what you ask her to do is impossible.
Remember, our culture is supposed to be a free society. That moral value CAN be assigned to our culture. That is a yardstick or a standard, that can be used to criticize the actions of people and institutions in our culture when they fall short of it.
And in this case, what was done to Dr Danielle Roberts, because we pretend to espouse freedom in our culture, was completely condemnable.
And because you believe that “the world” is only mainstream US culture, you are missing this incredibly vital point if we wish to uphold freedom in our society, as so many of us pretend we do.
