by Annie B.

In conversations about gender inequality in the LDS church, the biggest point I’ve seen made from those who are comfortable with the status quo and against the LDS feminist movement is that the status quo is the way God wants things.  I’ve seen and heard this point claimed both in online forums and in person, concerning everything from the figurative burqa surrounding Heavenly Mother to male-only Priesthood.

My question is this: Why do you assume that a male-only priesthood (insert other gender unequal policy here) is a principle that comes from God and not from mankind’s limited understanding?

Priesthood was first given to men in a time period when women were basically seen as the possessions of men. Considering the cultural norms of Bible times, it’s not surprising that throughout the Bible women are almost invisible as spiritual leaders, and all our scriptural texts are written by men (as far as I know).

Guest post by Bethany

Bethany is a community activist in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on creating a healthy food culture in public schools.  In her spare time she works to create a healthier gender culture at church.  She’s finding that getting adult Mormons to say “Heavenly Parents” is a lot harder than getting kids to eat kale.  She mothers three young girls, loves to cycle with her husband, and digs cooking spicy vegetarian food to share with neighbors. 

I don’t know anyone who anticipates the unveiling of the General Primary theme for Sharing Time for the year.  I know I certainly never have.  This year, I happened to stumble upon it and was pleasantly surprised.  No, I was more than surprised. Elated–that’s a better description.  Have any of you seen it?  It certainly doesn’t get a lot of coverage.  I mean, who even thinks about the Sharing Time theme until early October when you’re trying to help your child memorize her part for the Primary sacrament meeting?  Well this year, I suggest we start thinking about it earlier, because it contains a gem.

For 2013, Primary children throughout the world will be celebrating the theme I Am a Child of God.  But the theme doesn’t stop with that typical Mormon mantra…it continues on with a phrase from the Proclamation on the Family, ““All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents”.  Did you catch that?  Heavenly Parents in the Primary theme?  Is it just me, or is that pretty remarkable?  I mean women in the Relief Society are studying Lorenzo Snow, but the kiddos in Primary get to focus on Heavenly Parents…I know where I want to hang out on Sundays.  But whether you’re serving in Primary or not, I think this is something all Mormon Feminists should jump on.

To me, the theme gently opens up the door to speak about our Heavenly Parents and/or Heavenly Mother whenever we feel inspired to do so…in sharing time, in Primary lessons, in talks, in fast and testimony meetings. So let’s raise our hands in Sharing Time and declare that Heavenly Mother was certainly involved in creating everything that is lovely in our world.  Let’s ask the Primary chorister if we can use the term Heavenly Parents as we sing some of our songs.  Let’s show the I am a daughter of God Mormon Message video in our classes and discuss specific qualities we have inherited from our Heavenly Mother.  And let’s initiate conversations with our ward and stake Primary presidencies on how to fully take advantage of this inspired theme.  Surely our children need to hear more about our Heavenly Parents…there is no better way for them to understand the importance of marriage and families and the ideal of equal partnership.  If we let this unique theme go by unnoticed, it will be a tragically missed opportunity.

Earlier this month, I bore my testimony in sacrament meeting about the Primary theme and how awesome it is that the restored gospel enables me to teach the 10 and 11 year old Valiant girls in our ward that they have a Heavenly Mother, that they have a divine role model and an example of their infinite potential.  It’s powerful stuff.  And my testimony was even well received by my rather conservative ward.  So go for it!…let’s get Heavenly Mother out of the Primary closet and into our Sabbath conversations and beyond.  If anyone gives you any trouble, just refer them to President Wixom, the General Primary President.

by Galen Dara

by Rachael Rose

One day, when talking to a lifelong Mormon woman about the church, she told me that she prays to Heavenly Mother all the time.

Surprised that an orthodox woman would admit this, I said “But your leaders would call you blasphemous.”

“I know,” she said matter-of-factly, “and I don’t care. She understands me.”

I was twenty at the time, and it was when I became aware of the variety of women’s relationships to the divine Mother–dynamic, living, and intimate. Church leadership would hardly encourage this reality, but even among the orthodox, Heavenly Mother finds Her way into our prayers, our questions, and our conversations.

Tomorrow marks a few milestones for me. My son turns 1 1/2, and despite his frighteningly early birth and warnings from doctors that we could be dealing with a lot of delays and health issues, he’s pretty close to normal on the developmental chart and is healthy (robustly so) and strong (he handles the stairs in our second-and-third-floor condo at now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t speed). It’s the 23rd anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, something seared into my brain because I’d spent several weeks the previous summer in what was then the Soviet Union, and despite people talking in cafes about independence and our translator’s curiosity about free markets and the nuts and bolts of owning a small business, Eastern Europe still looked like an unpickable lock. It’s the birthday of a few friends, one in particular whom I’ve known since childhood.

Tomorrow also marks a year since I signed myself into a psychiatric ward, suicidal, untrusting of family, resentful about church, furious with my husband, feeling desperately alone. I stayed for a week and a half, waiting for a new combination of medicines to work, waiting to trust myself around sharp objects and empty spaces. I slept a lot, went to workshops and meals when I felt I could, put together jigsaw puzzles and then pulled them apart again.

While I was in the hospital, one of the occupational therapists on the ward handed me a list of events that could trigger post-partum depression. Nearly all of them applied to me. Unexpected pregnancy? Check. Complications during pregnancy? Check. Early delivery, baby in NICU, long-term separation of mother and baby? History of depression? Recently stopped breastfeeding? Check, check, check. I hadn’t chosen any of these things. No wonder I was feeling that my life was in freefall, that nothing I did had any effect or meaning.

I think I re-emerged from the depression seven or eight months later. I couldn’t give you a day when I knew I was going to be all right; I still have afternoons that yawn at me like enormous sharp-toothed beasts. For the most part, though, I am myself again, and I am grateful.

About that post-partum checklist: Everything on it represented either an outside stressor or an internal hormonal shift. We are good at recognizing stressors for what they are, but hormones are stealthy, and they are serious. Men are subject to them too, of course, but the word “hormonal” conjures up a specter of a wild-haired, wild-eyed woman at the end of her rope, screaming at her children and threatening her husband with a carving knife or cast-iron skillet. It’s chiefly a female attribute, and it stands in for unstable, unbalanced, irrational, emotional — the opposite of what men tend to pride themselves on being. Label a woman hormonal and she is immediately the other, the unknowable, an embarrassment.

I have a lot of resentment about this, but other than pointing out that hormonal changes are actually normal, I’m going to leave the men-have-hormones-too, emotional-is-neither-better-or-worse-than-analytical arguments for another time. Because yeah, hormones have huge effects on me. I knew that I was pregnant each time — taking a pregnancy test was only ever a confirmation of something I’d already known from fatigue, nausea, and blurred vision. I can feel it when I ovulate. I know when I’m too weepy or too angry or too withdrawn (or maybe just more weepy or angry or withdrawn than usual) that my body is marinating in some new chemical mixture.

And I guess what I really want to say with this post is, first, that sometimes our bodies betray us. We secrete chemicals that change our reaction to the world around us, that alter our lens on reality. I think it must be inherent to mortality: these bodies of cells, dependent on DNA copying over and over correctly, dependent on chemical messages, dependent on small electrical charges lighting up parts of our brains, have constant failures. It’s in the design. It’s miraculous that it works at all, so none of the failures are surprising, and some of the failures are bound to be distorted messages that say “null” instead of “whole,” “harm” instead of “bless.” Things break down. It doesn’t mean that the universe has betrayed us or that the presence of God has withdrawn. It just means that we are mortal and our bodies fail in infinite small ways. Sometimes, like starfish, we are self-healing. But sometimes, because we are social beings, we need someone else to help us heal.

The second thing I want to say is that things do regrow and heal, and that we are not alone. You are not alone. Someone — a visiting teacher? — made a list of people who knew me and loved me, people I could turn to when I felt most helpless and most unloved. Phone numbers. E-mail addresses. I left the list hanging on my refrigerator for months. I rarely used it, but when I did my friends never failed me. Even reading their names made me feel safer. Following this blog and hearing other women’s stories made me feel less “other.” I spent hours reaching out to my Mother in Heaven, asking her for help and feeling her beside me, whispering to me that I would be all right someday, that the only way around was through. I read and re-read Sara Burlingame’s Prayer for a Friend Contemplating Suicide and thought, Other people have been through this, and they have survived, and I will too. It has been a year, and I am still here, and I made it through, and I will keep making it through.

Who and what do you turn to when you feel alone? What are the things that help you see more clearly or feel more connected?

Adam and Eve by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel

Adam and Eve from the 2011 LDS Gospel Principles Manual

by Barbara

Adam and Eve, by Masolino, fresco in 1425

Adam and Eve by Jan Gosseart

Young Mormon feminists fill me with awe. Intelligent and well-educated, they have or are working towards fulfilling professional careers—even if their current role is SAHM. Not so my generation. When I graduated from a small high school in Utah County in 1959, only five of the 55 girls in my high school class went directly to college. And why should they? The only jobs for women we knew about were teacher, nurse, and secretary. Smart girls took typing and shorthand during high school, went to work in a local bank or business, and saved their money for a trousseau. Girls who preferred filing fingernails to filing folders went to beauty school. Of course, many girls married within weeks of graduation. Only a few of us with no immediate matrimonial prospects opted for college.

It wasn’t that most occupations were closed to women in those days—it was mostly because we didn’t know any women in professional fields.  We also weren’t prepared for higher education. When I chose to enroll in Algebra II as a high school junior, the counselor asked why a girl would take that class. Those of us who did attend college mostly majored in elementary education—so we’d have “something to fall back on, just in case.” A few super-brains majored in English, but elementary ed or, at BYU, Human Development and Family Relations (HDFR) was preferred because we could use what we learned with our own children.

Although ERA failed to pass in the 1970s, the discussion changed American culture. Separate laws banning gender discrimination in the work place passed. Jobs opened—telephone operators and nurses could be male. Radio announcers could be female—it took a few more years for women to break into TV.

The ERA debate stirred reaction in Mormondom. Rhetoric ramped up on the sanctity of the home and women’s roles as homemakers and caregivers. Sonia Johnson was seen as an example of what happens to women who let Satan distract them from their divine role as mothers and followers of the Priesthood. In the mid-70s, I took a group of bright, talented14 and15-year-old girls from my Seattle ward out for ice cream. Every one of them had the goal of attending BYU and majoring in HDFR.

Yet, even the Church cannot resist outside change forever. One of the most influential laws passed in the ERA period was Title 9 which mandated equal funding for girls’ and women’s sports in schools and colleges. The YW sports program expanded to accommodate girls who learned competitive team sports in school. The ‘70s was also a time of serious last days’ speculation and angst in the Church, and the YW camping program was expanded to teach Mormon girls survival skills.

I doubt Church Authorities anticipated the effects of young women competing in sports and learning to survive in the wild. Girls who defeat opponents on the basketball court are not afraid to tackle male-dominated science and math classes. Girls who build a snow cave and sleep outside in sub-zero weather know they can go abroad and serve missions. When our oldest daughter received her mission call 19 years ago, she was the first girl ever to serve a mission from our ward. Within the next few years five other girls from our ward chose fulltime missions.

Pandora is out of the box. No way can these capable, confident young women be content in the kitchen and nursery. How can they not question a role that relegates them to “help meet?” They have much to offer, and they want that opportunity.

Mormon feminists are not trying to undermine men. They’re asking for participation in ordinances performed for their children—for the opportunity to hold their own baby during a Church blessing—for the opportunity to give a “Mother’s Blessing” to their children without criticism. They see the contradiction in a proclamation which states that husbands and wives are equal partners, but the husbands preside. And, in a Church that proclaims ongoing revelation, Mormon women long to hear more about their Heavenly Mother as their role model.

In the modern world, men have learned to work with and for competent women. Many young Mormon men recognize that the Church would benefit from hearing from the other half of the congregation in decision-making councils. Elderly leaders, however, lack these experiences. I suspect their wives and daughters are generally satisfied with the status quo—and I doubt many elderly gentlemen listen to their granddaughters.

Change in Mormon Church structure doesn’t always come from the top. Sunday School and Primary were begun by individual members who saw a need and acted. I suspect women’s role in the Church will be changed by individual women who are willing to speak their mind in meetings, who talk about Heavenly Mother, and who are even willing to show up in church wearing nice pantsuits.