By Aimee Hickman

The beautiful cover artwork for this quarter’s issue of Exponent II speaks directly to my own emotional state on the eve of what may be an historic General Conference for the LDS Church. Although it was likely not artist Corinne Geertsen’s intent, I see in her painting, “Coin-Op,” an allegory of this particular moment in the long history of Mormon feminism. For me the woman appears as an early twentieth-century Mormon suffragette. Her sly smile and stoic posture as she sits side-saddle suggest a woman whose expectations for what will happen when coin meets machine seem confidently set. I see a woman whose efforts to promote the suffrage agenda, to fulfill the measure of her feminine creation by expanding the possibilities for her sex, have been galvanized into the coin she holds so gingerly in her fingers. She’s ready for the ride. The tiger’s expression is what makes me nervous. Though our lady can predict that her coin will earn her a ride, it’s artfully unclear whether she’s in for a bouncy little jaunt, or a thrill ride that will see her soon abandon her side-saddle pose and have her wrestling the tiger, fully astride.

The parallel between her moment and ours as Mormon feminists is not lost on me. As a Mormon feminist, I can’t help feeling a bit like that woman perched precariously on the tiger’s back, coin in hand, ready for a ride. Never has the time to use this hard-earned currency felt more tempting. Mormon feminism’s emergence as a powerful voice during the Obama/Romney presidential campaign has emboldened our movement in ways and on a scale I would not have thought possible a year ago. Seeing a rising generation of Mormon feminist activists merge with a path that was trail-blazed by previous generations has been exhilarating, nerve-wracking, and thrilling.

The growth of Mormon feminism in the last year has meant engaging in spirited and sometimes dispiriting discussions about what methods, rhetoric, and ultimate goals will best serve a Mormon feminist agenda. As a community, our handling of these discussions hasn’t always lived up to our own ideals. Nevertheless, I feel grateful for a growing community of women who have entered the fray. I feel gratitude to my foremothers who have laid a groundwork that has helped a new generation of Mormon women find a community in the midst of their own feminist awakenings. I feel grateful to that new generation and the boldness of their ideas and actions that are contributing to a great Mormon feminist tradition. Each of us who has written an article, or read a blog post, or made a Facebook comment, or shared our struggles in church, or silently sought out other voices in our own loneliness, has earned a coin for this ride.

But at the end of the day, we can’t really know what our coin will purchase. Will this tiger reward our efforts with the thrill we seek, putter out after 10 seconds, or race off out of control, leaving us in a heap? Unlike most democratic social movements, the changes we seek in the Church can’t come about just by swaying public opinion. The LDS Church is an institution—a machine all its own. The cogs and gears are individuals within that structure who direct the entire mechanism with their unique interpretations of God’s will. Yet the membership as a whole provides a metaphorical shot of WD-40 to move those directives forward or slow them down. And that is where Mormon feminism is doing so much good.

I don’t know if this weekend’s ride will reward Mormon feminists with an exhilarating thrill or an “out of order” message, but I’m dropping my coin in the slot anyway. I hope that however the ride goes this weekend, we can all find a way to come back on Monday and say “again, again!”There’s no one I’d rather be on this ride with than all of you.

Aimee Hickman is Co-Editor of Exponent II. She lives in Baltimore, MD with her husband and three coin-op ride-loving children.

When I found out I was pregnant with my new daughter, Linda, I was in shock. I wasn’t planning on becoming pregnant so soon and I spent the first trimester in a depression that allowed me to only play video games.

Labor was hard and it’s difficult to bond with a newborn: they don’t smile; they don’t do much of anything. You can’t tell if they actually like you, even a little bit. When I was 3 weeks postpartum, my husband took our two oldest to Disneyland for a weekend so that I could get a break from having three kids underfoot. However, having a single colicky baby without a partner to pass her off to when you’re tired is difficult, too. It was in those three days of solitude with my daughter that I tried very hard to “bond.” I felt bad for not wanting to be pregnant 9 months earlier. I didn’t want her to feel unwanted.

When my husband came home from the Disneyland trip I told him, “I want to hold her for her baby blessing. I want to make up for not being happy about the pregnancy. It’d be like a public apology to her, a reconciliation.”

The culture around baby blessings is such that if you have the blessing at home, the family has a lot more freedom in how it is done, however, if you do it in a church, there are more restrictions. I was split: I wanted to have the freedom of a home blessing, but wanted to share it with our whole ward.

When people ask me why I stay in the Church as a feminist, I often begin with a favorite scripture from 1 Corinthians 12:21, “And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee.”

I love the analogy in this passage, where Paul says that the members of the Church make up the body of Christ, and that like our body parts, our individual spiritual gifts have a particular contribution to make the body of Christ live and breathe.

As a Mormon feminist, some days I feel like I live in a church full of eyes. As part of a hand, I feel like I have contribution to make with my spiritual gift–the knowledge that women are often unable to claim their own spiritual authority because of inherent inequality in the current structure of the Church.

(Let’s be clear, many days, I wonder if “gift” is an accurate descriptor of this knowledge.)

The internet has been abuzz recently with discussion of a new form of feminism developed by Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg. In her new book, Lean In, and in a now famous TED talk, Sandberg argues that women need to do a better job advocating for themselves in the workplace, in taking opportunities even if they may conflict with a future reality, sitting at the table and expecting more from the men in their lives. As she says,

We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives – the messages that say it’s wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve.

Sandberg has received criticism, including from other feminists, that she does not fully account for the systematic barriers in place that limit women’s equality in the workplace and in society. A lot of that criticism has been unfounded but regardless, in order for women to achieve true equality, there needs to be both systematic policy change and women leaning in and demanding their rightful place.

Last week we attended the mission homecoming for the son of one of my dear friends in our ward. Because it was over 100 degrees and the old houses in downtown Denver have notoriously bad ventilation I chose to wear a sundress to stay as cool as possible. The sleeves of this dress covered the garments I was wearing but it would probably still be considered a sleeveless dress. As we were heading out the door I grabbed a cardigan only to be stopped by mr. mraynes. When asked what I was doing I explained that though the dress covered my garments it was still sleeveless and I didn’t want to feel uncomfortable around my fellow saints. mr. mraynes argued that the dress was perfectly acceptable, that I was covering what I had covenanted to cover and that reasonable people like me needed to stand against the increasingly pharisaical dress code for Mormon females. He was right and it was such a hot day that I left the cardigan at home. But the whole time we were there I tugged on those thick straps, wishing they were just a little bit longer. Nobody said anything and I really doubt anybody cared but it didn’t stop me from feeling uncomfortable.