What's up with Mormon women?
The Associated Press broached a subject on the minds of many Mormon women: What will the changing of the LDS guard mean to their status in the church?
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last century and a half, you know that Mormon women are not permitted to be priests —whereas every Mormon man is a priest. And the concept of "working mother" is a LDS cultural oxymoron.
The article says that while the LDS Church "is years removed from open hostilities over feminism, passions still run high over the role of women in a patriarchal church. ...But women could still emerge as stronger voices of the church."
Unless you've been living under a rock for the last century and a half, you know that Mormon women are not permitted to be priests —whereas every Mormon man is a priest. And the concept of "working mother" is a LDS cultural oxymoron.
The article says that while the LDS Church "is years removed from open hostilities over feminism, passions still run high over the role of women in a patriarchal church. ...But women could still emerge as stronger voices of the church."
"My feeling is that things are not going to change much, that the church is going to keep its very conservative positions on women's roles," said Margaret Toscano, a self-described feminist activist who was excommunicated in 2000 and teaches at the University of Utah.
14 Comments:
Of course nothing will change. The suppression of women in the Mormon Church is based, as most suppression is, on fear. Fear that the suppressed are smarter and better equipped to run the Church, the government, the corporation, etc. The smart, but cowed Mormon women stay. The smart and indignant ones leave.
Seriously, now. Ask any Mormon Bishop: Who wears the pants in your family? They will all say it is their wives. The Church teaches that husband and wife are equal partners in this life and the next. They are counselled to consult one another with everything. You may want to research what Church leaders have said at www.lds.org. Search conference talks for "roles of men and women"...you may learn something new.
Too bad those equal partners can't give their children a "name and a blessing", hold the priesthood or marry more than one man in the temple.
Regardless of what church leaders say, (to quell the outrage) the proof is in the doing not the saying.
Maybe one could find someone besides a bitter excommunicatee to quote about church policies. :)
OH Oh My Im so glad to be told how oppressed I am as a Mormon woman . Of course Im not intelligent enough to figure these things out for myself. The Church has kept me under a rock. Giving me opportunites to learn grow in so many areas encourageing me to gt a good education. WOW that is oppressive.
Okay, so here’s the thing, I am a 37 year old single Mormon woman, and I have come to realize that it works better if men and women play their natural roles. By nature women are softer and gentler. I want a protector. What’s the big deal? He can hold the Priesthood and I can support him in that. Sounds good to me! For those of you that don’t understand the Mormon faith we are all equal in Gods eyes, women are mothers! I’ve never heard a man complaining that he can’t give birth. Am I missing the point here?
Really, why in the light of Miriam of old, the right to the promises of Priestesses, the fact that women do officiate in temple, why don't they let women hold the priestesshood in this church? I mean I want a reasonable answer.
Toscano, whom is quoted on the blog, has written fascinating and scholarly articles about the concept in Mormondom of a Mother in Heaven. It's a concept that makes perfect sense to me, and to my mother and her mother as well. Why wouldn't we all have a mother in heaven, if we have a father? Anyway, it may sound off-topic, but it's a question that goes to the heart of women's second-class citizenry in the LDS Church. And it's the reason (though officially the church said otherwise) that Toscano was ex-ed several years ago.
I don't understand why people feel the need to berate Margaret Toscano. She is a good person with a good heart and I think she has a very honest perspective on church policies because she was victimized by them in what was more or less a witch hunt by GA's.
That said-- the Church is an extremely oppressive environment for women _and_ men. Just ask anybody who's spent a few years in a singles ward. Or gays and lesbians, for that matter. The dominance of the family doctrine quite often supersedes the real acceptance of God's children.
Combined with an inability to
tolerate dissent of any kind-- such as Toscano's, and a scorn for personal career accomplishment by women... I can't understand why people stay.
Here's the deal:
1. The LDS is True...then you'll have to ask the Lord "why" He set it up that way.
2. The LDS Church is not true, then who the freak cares is women hold anything. Cause it don't matter.
3. In case #1 is right, the you got a problem, cause the Lord Jesus Christ gave the instruction to his Apostles that it be this way. You'll have to take it up with Him when you seem him. The Apostles are gonna do what the Lord tells 'em to do. Period.
4. Tell me where the Lord called one of his beloved female followers (whom he obviously held in highest esteem) as an Apostle. He didn't. So, again, you find yourself in opposition to the creator of all. Not a good place to be, just because "you" don't understand His will.
Do we all have the same "Mother in Heaven"? What was He doing while She was gestating over 10 billion pregnancies? What were we all doing during that time? Is she still having them? Will She ever stop having children? Is that when this world ends? What then for Her?
Shirley Jo: Yes, you are.
I was taught that we do have a Mother in heaven, and that God doesn’t tell us about Her because He doesn’t want us to take Her name in vain. There are many mysteries of the universe and that’s one of them. But I do know that in the end every knee will bend and every head will bow.
As an ex-Mormon woman who left voluntarily, I can say there IS oppression, which is one reason (of many) I CHOSE to leave.
Women who start to question the discrepancies are harassed or scared into silence; women who have to work AND be mothers end up on Prozac since the condemnation and guilt heaped on them makes them so depressed; women who choose to obtain higher education before having children are accused of making immoral choices.
My younger sister quit going to church because her singles ward was only about marriage and pressure to marry, while she was single and getting her degree, and she couldn't take it anymore.
I'm not a bitter excommunicated person, and think it's up to individual people to believe what they want, but to deny that there is oppression is to deny that the world is round.
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