Yeah, I have plenty of secondhand knowledge of cults myself, due to my life partner having escaped the Jehovah's Witnesses. She's living her best life now and I hope you are too ❤️

But yeah, while they're nowhere near as bad as the ones you and my partner escaped, that doesn't make Mennonites not a cult 😉

[–] ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social 2 points 4 months ago

Of course, I only meant on a day-to-day basis it doesn't affect my life much, I look queer as hell and I think I get about the same treatment from Hutterites and Mennonites as anyone else around here. I prefer not to compare so I don't mean to suggest that anyone has it better than me, they're just different. Escaping any cult means you have quite a nice bit of religious trauma to deal with in any case. Jehovah's Witnesses I'm moderately familiar with and I'm sure there's some shared experiences, I used to watch this channel Telltale, the creator being ex-JW, and I spotted many similarities to my own experience being Mormon.

I'm past most of it now, but something being so baked into your upbringing leaves you with a lot of growth to be done to say the least.