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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed] IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII ++++Message 3575. . . . . . . . . . . . RE: Re: "Little Red Riding Hoods" in early AA meetings? From: David Jones . . . . . . . . . . . . 7/18/2006 7:03:00 PM
women couldn't be alcoholics, much less that they deserved a place at the A.A. table. Although we now take for granted that the doors of A.A. are open to any alcoholic male or female this was not always the case. In Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America, William L. White describes the challenges faced by women seeking recovery in the early years of A.A. The following excerpts from White's book highlight the struggles and contributions of these female pioneers. The first women in A.A. The wives of early A.A. members--particularly Anne Smith and Lois Wilson--participated in and made immense contributions to this developing community.
seeds of
many key ideas that emerged within A.A. began in the pages of her journal and in her conversations with early members. Both co-founders noted the role that wives played in the founding of A.A., Dr. Bob even suggesting that there would have been no A.A. without these women.
first alcoholic women seeking assistance from A.A.: an unnamed Indian waitress; Sylvia K., the
"glamorous divorcee"; Jane, the wife of a wealthy industrialist; Lelia M., the heiress; Ruth T. of Toledo; Ethel M. and Kaye M., who came into the program with their husbands; and Nona W. There was also Florence R., whose story appeared in the first edition of the Big Book, and who objected to one of the book's proposed titles, "One Hundred Men." She later returned to drinking and died of alcoholism. Lil, the very first woman to seek help from A.A., got loaded with Victor, another early prospect, pioneering what would come to be christened "thirteenth stepping" (sexual or romantic involvement with someone whose sobriety is relatively new and therefore potentially unstable). Lil, like many of the women who contacted A.A. in the early years, did not get sober during this period. Marty M., who entered A.A. in New York in 1939 and went on to become the first woman to achieve enduring sobriety within A.A., noted that many of these women failed to get sober not because they were so much sicker, but simply because they were women.
Many early A.A. members did not believe women could be alcoholics. Some were not
quite sure how women could fit into this fellowship, while others stated openly that A.A. would not work for women. Some in the latter group prophesied that the inclusion of women could threaten A.A.'s future. Some women entering A.A. were given rude treatment. The first alcoholic woman involved in the Cleveland group was "thrown out of A.A. by the wives." The primary fear regarding the involvement of women in A.A. was of the potential disruptiveness of the sexual dynamic that might emerge within the groups. [This fear] imbedded itself within early A.A. folk sayings such as, "Under every skirt
is a slip." To manage this potential disruption during A.A.'s early years, women and men sat on
different sides of meeting rooms, and the first women were often sponsored not by A.A. members but by their wives. As more single and divorced women entered A.A., friction
between these women and the wives of A.A. men increased. This led to the creation of "closed meetings," attended only by alcoholics, in addition to "open
meetings," which were open to all. Stigmas and stereotypes Special problems facing women in A.A. were acknowledged as early as 1945, when a
Grapevine article noted the isolation of alcoholic women and their propensity to be involved with pills as well as booze.
should not be read as a blanket indictment of women--was filled with the kinds of stereotyping that women were likely to encounter in the A.A. of this period. The article made the following eleven points:
2) Many women form attachments too intense--bordering on the emotional. 3) So many women want to run things. 4) Too many women don't like women. 5) Women talk too much. 6) Women are a questionable help working with men and vice versa. 7) Sooner or later, a woman-on-the-make sallies into a group, on the prowl for phone numbers and dates. 8) A lot of women are attention-demanders. 9) Few women can think in the abstract. 10) Women's feelings get hurt too often. 11) Far too many women A.A.'s cannot get along with the non-alcoholic wives of A.A.
members. Women were often refused sponsorship by the male members and were viewed as suspect due to their frequent concurrent addiction to "goofballs." The special stigma that female alcoholics faced in the 1940s and '50s was reflected in some sensationalist [media] treatment. Newspaper articles about women in A.A. bore such titles as "Women Drunkards, Pitiful Creatures, Get Helping Hand."
Perhaps most outlandish was a 1954 on A.A. in Confidential Magazine entitled, "No Booze But Plenty of Babes." Jack Alexander's 1950 article on A.A. in the Saturday Evening Post noted: "More than one group has been thrown into a maelstrom of gossip and disorder by a determined lady whose alcoholism was complicated by an aggressive romantic interest."
alcoholic women from seeking help and led to such other unusual events as Sunday drivers in Minnesota passing Dia Linn (Hazelden's treatment unit for women) in hopes of seeing "wild woman drinkers."
women who followed them. Women's groups within A.A. began springing up during the early 1940s in Cleveland and other A.A. strongholds. There, female A.A. members were free to talk about many issues (sexual abuse, intimate relationships, family problems, menstruation, abortion, menopause) that they would not have been comfortable addressing in mixed-gender meetings.
early work of the General Service Office, as they continue to conduct much of that activity today. The percentage of women within the total membership of Alcoholics Anonymous has
risen steadily since its founding. In 1955, A.A. reported that 15% of its members were women; by 1968 that percentage had risen to 22%; and in the 1996 survey, women
constituted 33% of members. From Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America
by William L. White (Chestnut Health Systems, 1998). Used by kind permission of the
author God bless Dave --- In HYPERLINK "mailto:AAHistoryLovers%40yahoogroups.com"AAHistoryLovers@-yahoogr oups.-com,
> > Looking for an explanation of the term "Red Riding > Hoods" as used in the text below. It came from the > book "Slaying the Dragon" by William L. White on > page 135, paragraph 1, lines 20 to 28. > > There were also tensions regarding the proper relationship > between A.A. and the informal club houses that were > springing up around the organization. An early report > on an A.A. Clubhouse in San Francisco made note of the strain > from "over-crowding at meetings" and the problem of "drunks, > panhandlers, wolves, and Red Riding Hoods upsetting the > meetings." All of these situations reflected A.A.'s growing > pains.
> It might be a reference to women whose vulnerability is a little more calcuated than genuine. I have a vague recollection of someone who looks at children's stories through a psychoanalytic lens remarking on the oddity of the setup in Red Riding Hood. Who would send a lone, small child into wolf-infested woods? Either her mother exposed her to danger deliberately, or RRH is not as innocent as she appears.
____________-_________-_________-___ Note from Glenn C. (moderator): Cora, this was Eric Berne, in his book "What Do You Say After You Say Hello?" It's a brilliant book. He argues that fairy tales and other childhood literary motifs often offer good metaphors for describing the psychological games that adults play, and the "life scripts" (an idea that he developed) which shape the course of our lives.
Prince" all their lives, taking a real disability which they have, but using it as a phony excuse for avoiding responsibility in all sorts of other areas where it is not relevant. Alcoholics sometimes play this game with their alcoholism. In parts of this book, and also in parts of Berne's "Games People Play," he describes women who play "vulnerable" and "helpless," as you describe, while simultaneously pretending to show sexual availability in a flirtatious manner, in order to manipulate men into doing the things they want. In the context of Bill W.'s remarks, I suspect that a "Little Red Riding Hood" was a woman who came into AA meetings talking about all the "big bad wolves" who had abused her, and batting her eyelashes at one of the men in the meeting, in an attempt to convince him that he was "a bold woodsman" who would step in and play hero and "save her" from all the big bad wolves.
enough to fall for that con game, to enable a Little Red Riding Hood to get into numerous sick relationships within AA. It was Eric Berne, as far as I can tell, who basically developed the idea of "rescuing" and "enabling" behavior as a kind of psychological con game which some people play, and he pointed out that alcoholics in particular are experts at playing that particular psychological con game. So a "Little Red Riding Hood" is a woman who is looking for a man who will play Rescuer and Enabler, in the way in which Bill W. seems to have been using the metaphor.
based on Berne's original ideas about Persecutor-Victim--Rescuer con games, which came along a decade or so later. I think Berne's original language is much more precise and much more useful than the somewhat amorphous concept of codependency, which attempts to include far too many different kinds of psychological game playing. But that's just me. Tom P. (below) talks about the flip side of the Little Red Riding Hood game, namely men who try to chat up women newcomers to AA, and convince them that they are the big bold heroic woodsmen who will "protect" them from the wolves and "carry their basket of goodies for them."
____________-_________-_________-___ From: "Tom P." Download 13.83 Mb. Share with your friends:
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