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Diversity training - one of the reasons I left my former, large corporation job.

When I was at Rainier Bank back around 1991 we attended one put on by the anti-defamation league. I countered every claim they made that was nor rational. And they made a lot. If I attended one today they’d kick me out.

I was in a class called Learning to Live, Learning to Love, designed specifically for abusive husbands back just before my divorce. No, I was not abusive, but it didn’t matter. I went to “save my marriage” (and it didn’t work).

But I was in the class where men who had been forcibly separated from their wives were talking about their “trial date” with their wife the weekend before. They would say that it was going great but then they “blew it” and had to leave their wife’s house.

Now, these men were like me: They didn’t hit anyone but were accused of being abusive in all the other ways that human beings can be “abusive”: They were too quiet. They were too loud. They yelled and then apologized. And on and on.

So anyway, sometimes I said, in front of the group, as the “lay” leader told them how they could do better next time, “You were not the problem there. Your wife was, and here is how...”

One by one they all opened up to me privately and I gave them private advice. I told them where they were wrong and where their wives were wrong. Thing is, I’d read “Men are from mars...”, I’d read “The dance of anger”. I’d read a lot of stuff from the woman’s perspective and these men were all going to a class specifically designed for men who seriously and physically abused their wives. It applied to not one single member of that group.

And yeah, I was kicked out by the teacher that was a psychiatry wannabee that could not support what he was doing. He even voiced strong concern that I only remembered my mother spanking me once and my parents never argued. He accused me of supressed memories.

I called my mother and she said, with no coaching from me, that she only spanked me once (the time I remembered) and they NEVER fought in front of the kids.

There is alot of pseudo science around these days. It’s not just global warming.

Epilogue. That class was at my church of 18 years that I left shortly after.