No, but she didn't die as a direct result of refusing blood. She made it through the surgery but the next day there was major swelling around the spinal column. The doctors said a blood transfusion could possibly prevent worse swelling and that the paralysis could be temporary. Without blood, they thought it would cause permanent damage.

She refused the blood and ended up paralyzed from the chin down. She couldn't eat, talk, or breath on her own. She was in and out of the hospital because of pneumonia, along with ongoing problems with her kidneys and liver. She needed 24-hour nursing care, had to have a suction tube stuck down her trach tube into her lungs every few hours to remove mucus, and was fed through a tube in her stomach.

After a few years of that she had a DNR order put in her medical records. She died near her 4-yr wedding anniversary. I guess we'll never know, but if she had accepted blood she might have made a full recovery after the accident.

The ironic thing is that it's usually not "blood" per se, that is needed in the case of massive blood loss (though massive blood loss wasn't her problem); it's blood volume expanders. This happened almost 20 years ago, when JWs would not allow separated blood components to be transfused, either. They pretty much allowed saline solution or nothing. Nowadays almost every single part of blood is allowed, alone or in concert with other parts. Basically you can remove some small portion of the blood (e.g., the albumin) and say it's no longer blood and get the transfusion. But back then they were much more strict.

I wonder how many pissed off JW parents are out there today who let their children die because they allowed the Society to tell them exactly what parts of blood they were and were not allowed to give their children, only to see a couple decades later that the very blood components they withheld from their children are now allowed.

Sorry, Coach did a very good job of not making this a "Rail against JW teachings" thread.

I suppose "better late than never" would apply, but I wouldn't hold it against someone if they were harboring a grudge (or felt betrayed, etc).

Ah, yes, “there were some” who were “overzealous” in interpreting what was written in the magazines. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that. My mother and grandparents have vivid memories of the time leading up to 1975. While the Society didn’t directly publish that 1975 was going to be the end, everybody living during that period understood the message. My grandmother wasn't alive in 1914 or the '20s, but she remembered later failed end-of-world predictions in the 1940s, and she remembered the fallout of the constant date shuffling of the 1920s and 30s (I think she was born in the 1930s—sorry, JWs are terrible with birthdays--to this day I have no idea when either of my parents' birthdays are). If you google the subject, you can see scanned copies of their literature, including statements in their JW-only newsletter from 1974 saying things like, ‘Many faithful brothers and sisters have sold their homes and all their possessions, to unburden themselves for the preaching work. What better way to spend the last few months of this system…?’

JWs believe that their door-to-door preaching is an important part of fulfilling Bible prophecies, and that Armageddon won’t come until they’ve given everyone on earth a chance to accept The Truth. In 1990 or ‘91 there was a JW article that said something like, ‘this worldwide preaching work, which will be completed before the end of this century…’ It caused quite a stir among me and my young friends. Older people didn’t get too worked up about it, but they’d lived through 1975 so in hindsight that was understandable.

I started making my exit shortly afterward, but I mentioned it to my lapsing JW brother a few years later. He pulled out the bound volume (a reprint of the 24 magazines for a given year, bound in hardcover so I can haz an impressive Watchtower library) and they had changed the wording from ‘before the end of this century’ to ‘before much longer’ (meaningless, because they’ve been saying ‘before much longer’ since the late 1800s). They also periodically release DVDs with a bunch of their literature on them. The wording had been changed in the electronic version, also.

Jehovah be praised!

BTW, JWs don't ever read anything into a statement from the leaders that isn't spoon-fed to them. There are a few very minor subjects that are called "conscience issues," but in every other area, once the leadership establishes doctrine, all JWs are to follow it to the letter.

When JWs talk about their interpretation of a scripture, or their take on an issue, they invariably talk about (what they remember of) The Society's take on it. Individual contemplation does not exist within the JW rank and file.

A JW bible study is a study of a book written by the Watchtower Society, with numbered paragraphs and questions at the bottom. The 'conductor' asks the question, and the 'study' gives the answer from the corresponding paragraph. During congregation studies, JWs are discouraged from quoting outside sources--even other Bible verses not mentioned in the paragraph and older JW literature (because you might not be interpreting it correctly, so just trust the Society to supply the correct information and interpretation for you.)

To anybody familiar with the group, it's laughable to think that in 1975 there were tens of thousands of JWs who spontaneously and independently came up with the same drastic interpretations of what they were reading. That kind of personal study and independent thinking is not part of the culture of JWs or other cults.

JWs are taught not strive after material things, or status in this worldly system that's about to end. The only cache witnesses have is their reputation for being "spiritual."

For some reason (I have theories), there are many times more JW women than men. I think I remember reading that the ratio was like 6:1 in the US.

If you're a young JW woman and not drop-dead gorgeous, it's hard to find a JW man interested in marrying you. If you want marriage prospects in the religion, you need to be seen as spiritually strong. Women cannot hold any type of position in the congregation, so committing to a higher level of hours preaching is about the only way to get this reputation.

If you're walking down the street and you see a fugly guy walking with a hot girl, the first thing you probably think is, "He must be rich." Among JWs it's, "He must be an elder (or above)."

As for guys, it's a stepping stone to responsibilities (prestige and a degree of power) in the congregation. If you're a young guy who wants to be a Ministerial Servant (like a junior elder, or deacon(?)), you greatly increase your chances if you sign up to auxiliary pioneer for a few months before the traveling overseer's visit, when recommendations for appointment are made. Same if you're a MS who wants to be an elder. If you sign up to Regular Pioneer (x hours for the entire year) you're pretty much a lock for appointment.

A publisher is someone who spends at least one hour per month preaching. The national average in the US is usually around 10 hrs/mo, so that is set as an unofficial goal, and if you fall short of the goal too often you can expect a shepherding visit.

Auxiliary Pioneers commit to 50 hours in a month (though for some reason it's only 30 in March and April). In my day it was 60 hours per month.

Regular Pioneers commit to 840 hours for the whole year, which works out to roughly 70 hrs/mo. I did it when the requirement was 1000 hours for the year. As I understand it, the requirements have gone down a few times.

Many older JWs do it because they really believe they're doing what God wants them to, and many have been regular pioneers for decades. But I'd guess that 75% or more of the young people who do it have an agenda; either to catch a husband or to gain responsibilities in the congregation and be able to choose from the finest sisters.

This might sound jaded, but IMO, it's even worse. I left some stuff out that would probably sound like cynical propaganda.

I want to read the cynical propaganda

+1, this is a fascinating read.

It might just be that I hung out with a particularly jaded group of friends. They had kind of figured out the system, that there weren’t enough brothers to go around. There were as many promiscuous girls as in any other group, but JWs have more desperate girls, I think, and they were often taken advantage of.

Understand, also, that most young JWs are socially repressed, and very sexually repressed. Masturbation and having sexual fantasies are no-nos. I once went to a wedding where they couple kissed after being pronounced Brother and Sister Whatever, and the elder doing the ceremony said, “You have just witnessed this couple’s first kiss.” I’m pretty sure they were being honest about it. It was the most chaste courtship in history.

Among JWs, it’s not proper to just date casually. If you’re dating a sister, it is supposed to be ‘with a view to marriage’. So if a guy asks a girl out (in a proper group setting, naturally) more than a couple times, it is understood that he is interested in a serious relationship. I knew a number of guys who strung girls along for a long time because of this unspoken understanding that he wouldn’t be doing it if he weren’t serious.

This usually meant no sex, but if you gamed the system you could get plenty of grinding, dry-humping, and mutual masturbation out of the deal. They had two rules: 1) Don’t stick it in, and; 2) If she says it’s starting to bother her conscience, you have to go to the elders first.

According to the elders, the biggest indicator of repentance among horny young JWs is whether you confess or if you get caught. So if a young sister starts getting bitter because she’s feeling used, she’s liable to go to the elders and say she feels bad about what you two have been doing. The young brother has to head this off at the pass, and go to the elders before she can, and claim that it’s his conscience that is bothered. (This triggers lots of late-night phone calls to elders who you think will be sympathetic to you, or are friends of your father, etc...)

If the elders believe (guided by God’s Holy Spirit) that you are repentant, you’ll get off with a public reproof, where they announce that so-and-so had been publically reproved. They don’t give the reason, but the JW rumor mill is a powerful thing. (There’s an old JW joke: What are three ways you can get a message from one place to another? Telephone, telegraph, or tell a sister. JWs are unknowingly pretty mysogynistic.)

If they don’t believe that you’re repentant, you get DFd and you’re an outcast for the next 12-24 months, minimum. (We often joked that the back room where these meetings took place was called the crying room, because so many tears were shed there, trying to convince the elders that you really were sorry for what you did. I used to be an MS, being groomed to be an elder, and I was once warned by an elder that the sisters will go back there crying their big crocodile tears, but you can’t fall for it.)

So if you’re a young woman in a group where females already heavily outweigh males, being branded with a scarlet letter and being taken out of the mix for two years is a lifetime sentence. Even when you get reinstated, the elders will clearly tell young men to stay away from you for at least 6-12 months so you can get spiritually strong again. This is in a community where if you’re still single at 25 you’ll likely never get married.

So plenty of girls got talked into doing things they believed were wrong. I know a guy who got reproved three times for getting frisky with the sisters, but he could tell when things went sour and confessed before they did. He ended up marrying a beautiful girl who should have been way out of his league.

Anyway, I don’t know how widespread that kind of stuff was, but this was among a group of guys who were generally considered to be pretty spiritual. I’d imaging among the “worldly-acting” set of JW men the same stuff went on, but they were sealing the deal with the girls.

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the levels of preaching, except that it was the alternative to try to catch a husband… you could either become a Regular Pioneer and trudge around in the hot sun for 90 hours every month getting doors slammed in your face, or you could give the guys what they want. The problem is that the loose girls often got passed around and nobody ever had any intention of marrying them… they could just sow their wild oats for a few years before settling down with a nice submissive Pioneer sister.

Fascinating stuff DeuceKicker, thanks for sharing.

Seems women always get screwed in a patriarchal system

It might help to appreciate why being disfellowshipped (DFd) can be so traumatic. JWs are to be no part of the world. This applies to every aspect of their lives. They take the ‘you can be in the world but you don’t have to be of the world’ thing to a whole new level.

This includes who you keep as friends, and how you view and treat family members. In short, you shouldn’t have any friends who are not JWs. If you do you’ll be considered spiritually weak. While you can’t control who your family is, you are expected to curtail association with them if they’re worldly, lest you be led astray, like Solomon was by his worldly wives. I almost never heard JWs talk about friends at work or school—if they did, they were gently (but quickly) corrected, “we don’t have worldly friends.” Instead, they were “worldly acquaintances.”

If you’re a mother who takes her kids to the park every Wednesday afternoon, and your next-door neighbor takes her kids at the same time, she’s not your friend Mary who you go to the park with, she’s your worldly acquaintance Mary, who just happens to take her kids at the same time. JWs quickly learn to offer an excuse for any time they spend with worldly people beyond what is necessary. (And why aren’t you taking your kids out in Field Service every Wednesday afternoon, instead of to the park? But I digress.) Young JWs don’t have friends at school; they have worldly classmates. Adults have worldly coworkers.

Like most cults, JWs have their own theocratic language. For some reason, the word “worldly” has to be inserted, even when it would have been assumed anyway. And the phrase “in the Truth” is often suffixed. “My uncle in the Truth is taking a trip to Yosemite next month.” If you don’t offer the information, it is often asked.

“My uncle is taking a trip to---“
“---Is he in the Truth?”
“Yes. He’s taking a trip to Yosemite next month.”

I think this is partly because all opinions by outsiders are vetted according to whether or not they’re in the Truth. “My worldly boss Larry Ellison said the next version of Oracle has some groundbreaking features, and now would be a good time to buy stock,” is likely to be ignored. “My brother-in-law who is an elder [and a window washer who has never traded a stock in his life] said you should sell Oracle,” will likely hold more weight. I’m exaggerating a bit, and few JWs invest anyway, but you get the point. This has some truly insidious implications, which I’ll try to get to in a bit.

The point is that JWs become a very insular community, and individuals depend on the community for all social interaction. This is why DFing is such a powerful threat. It’s not like, “Oh, this group of friends won’t speak to me, so I’ll go hang out with my other friends for a while.” If you’re any kind of JW at all, you’ve spent years keeping a distance between you and all worldly acquaintances. You don’t attend any office parties or school functions. All holidays are out. When you are expelled from the JW community, you often have literally nobody to talk to.

Definitely, but running to the elders worked both ways. Some young women threw themselves at guys, let normal teenage hormones take over, then threatened to go to the elders if the guy wanted to break things off. I guess that's the JW version of a shotgun wedding.

Are yoou still a virgin?

Me? I'm married with a kid. I left 20 yrs ago.

I can confirm everything that Deuce has said.

To add my own story to the whole dating scene, there was a time during my 9th and 10th grade years where I was very active and super involved in the congregation, doing everything I was supposed to do and more. Why was I doing it?

Because of a girl.

That really is the only way to get an attractive wife, increase your status in the congregation. The amount of so-called "immorality" in my congregation was probably much less than other places, but I had several JW cousins living in a very well-to-do part of the country full of young people, and I heard plenty of stories that line up with what Deuce was talking about.

I've done a lot of thinking about the reasons why I left, and I have to say that the reason someone leaves is just as important as the decision to leave in the first place. I really think that if I had gone out and fooled around with girls, did drugs, etc, I would've left the Watchtower in more of a 'rebellious teenager' mindset, just wanting to piss off my parents. The biggest downside of this would be that I would never have done the theological study and philosophical reading that I did that lead me to realize how messed up the JWs are. I would have remained in a 'one foot in, one foot out' state, doing what I wanted to do, while at the same time in the back of my mind believing that the JWs had the truth. Basically I would have stayed mentally chained up to the Watchtower, and that's something way more important to me than anything else.

Glad to read your story, Deuce. Following along with it, and typing out my own has really brought back a lot of good, bad, angry, and strange emotions and memories. But I'm glad I'm able to have this discussion in a place like this. It's very therapeutic, and hopefully interesting to the rest of you.