I Was a Child Bride: Dr. Tamara MC on the Language of Manipulation (Part 1)

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2023

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

When she was only 12-years-old, Dr. Tamara MC had a secret wedding ceremony in the middle of the night. Shrouded in pitch black and with no one present but her new husband, a much older man who could supposedly guide her to the kingdoms of knowledge and heaven, this night further cemented Tamara’s place in a highly abusive religious cult. Above all else, men wielding black leather whips forced females to surrender their “nafs”—the Arabic word for “self.” As she put it in an article for Mother Well Mag, the girls in that cult “didn’t know where [their] bodies stopped and the perpetrators' bodies began.”

Now, Tamara has earned a Ph. D. in Applied Linguistics, specifically studying how language can be used to manipulate vulnerable populations. She advocates against gender-based violence and has written prolifically about the nightmarish experiences that punctuated her youth, d0ing as much as she humanly can to prevent this from happening as frequently in the future.

Dr. Tamara's Website

Dr. Tamara's Twitter

Dr. Tamara's Instagram

Dr. Tamara's Facebook

Please note, this series includes details of sexual abuse. Listener discretion is strongly advised. If you, or someone who know, is a survivor of sexual assault, abuse, grooming, child abuse, or human trafficking, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers support at 800.656.HOPE (4673).

Also…

Hear Ye, Hear Ye:

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The views and opinions expressed by a little bit cultier, those are the hosts and don't reflect the official policy or position of the podcast.
0:06.6	Any of the, quote, fire content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors of the opinion and are not intended to malign a religion, a group, a club, an organization, business individual, anyone or anything unless they're...
0:20.2	You're a douchebag.
0:21.0	Yeah. We're not doctors, psychologists, therapists, licensed counselors or shamans, even though you kind of think you are sometimes.
0:27.4	I'm like an urban shaman, okay?
0:29.1	Good talk.
0:39.1	Hey everybody, Sarah Edmondson here.
0:41.6	And I'm Anthony Ames, aka Nippie, Sarah's husband, and you're listening to a little bit cultier.
0:48.0	AKA, a LBC.
0:49.6	A podcast about what happens when devotion goes to the dark side.
0:53.0	We've been there and back again, a little about us.
0:55.7	True Story, we met and fell in love in a cult.
0:59.1	And then we woke up and got the hell out of dodge.
1:01.5	And the whole thing was captured in the HBO documentary series The Val.
1:05.1	Now, in its second season.
1:06.8	I also wrote about our experience in my memoir, SCART.
1:09.9	The true story of how I escaped Naxiom, the cult that bound my life.
1:13.7	Look at us.
1:14.7	A couple of married podcasters who just happened to have a weekly date night.
1:18.3	We interview experts and advocates and things like cult awareness and mind control.
1:22.5	Oh wait, wait, this does not count toward date night bait.
1:25.3	We got to schedule that that separate.
	...

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