Virtual Oases
“So, what have the Feminists been up to this week?” asks my husband quite regularly. Now I just show him this post and he learns for himself!
- The Research Information Division of LDS Church HQ conducted a survey to 1,000 randomly selected church members. The topic of the survey? “the roles, responsibilities and treatment of women in the church.” Did you get one?
- The release of Neylan McBaine’s book, Women at Church, and the simultaneous launch of the companion website, has generated a buzz about the “moderate Mormon woman” in the bloggernacle and beyond. Listen to Neylan’s interview, read an interview, read the BCC review of her book, read the Exponent review of her book, and check out Jana’s response to the book and the frilly pink poster. Julie M Smith writes an analogy of how the suggestions within the book may run into resistance.
- Speaking of the frilly pink poster advertising a women’s meeting but showing only the faces of men, here’s some more of the story about that.
- An important post about the visibility of Women in the LDS church and ways to improve it, even globally.
- BBC news ran a story about the aftermath of the excommunication of Ordain Women founder, Kate Kelly. Brother Otterson of the Church PR department was also interviewed. Though he labeled Kate an apostate, the Church PR dept declined to label OW as an apostate group. These are important stories to follow. Our friend, RJH over at bycommonconsent posted this interpretation.
- The September 2014 Ensign publishes a talk given last year by Elder Ballard about “Men and Women and Priesthood Power.” Again, Jana analyzes.
- What do women get? Have you all already seen the youtube video of Sheri Dew explaining that? Beatrice over at ZD writes a satirical response, “What do LDS men get?“
- Mormon women’s issues occasionally get picked up by mainstream media. Fighting BYU’s slut-shaming stance in Cosmopolitan, gender inequalities in the mission field by PRI, and stories of fear and hope in Chicago public media.
- Parents might like checking out the Mormon Therapist’s article about teaching kids about pornography.
Enjoy the weekend reading, everyone!
I am not as upset as some over the frilly poster, because I wonder if they might be piggy-backing off a prior arranged trip by the leaders rather than organizing a Women’s Meeting from the ground up.
In my stake, when a member of the Q12 was coming to our stake for a daytime business meeting, the stake RS took advantage and organized a stake-wide sisters meeting with him for that evening. As it happened, the men of the stake got grumpy since his reason for coming involved less than a dozen local members and they thought it was unfair that sisters got this opportunity. So they got to come along. (I know this will seem ludicrous to some, but we don’t get apostles out our way very often.)
When we got there, he only spoke for five minutes and then took questions from the audience, live questions unfiltered, for the rest of the time. And he announced that since this was an RS activity, only sisters in the audience could ask questions:)
It was a special experience, I didn’t mind not having a female speaker, and I would have been sad if people made fun of our activity and insisted that someone without a penis have a part in the program, taking away some of his time.
A lot of these things are not black and white, nor pink and blue.
I agree; the European tour for the Q12 has probably been in place a while. I think of the meeting as a step in the right direction because usually when an apostle visits an area, he sticks to Misson/Stake Presidents/Coordinating councils without speaking to the women (except if he also makes an appearance at a youth fireside or Stake Conference) so this seems a nice move for parity in that regard.
I’m also a little confused. Do you mean to imply that you value the words of the male GA’s more than those of a female leader, and that the men are more deserving of time at the pulpit? If that’s the case, I disagree. I’ve heard people joke about how the female speakers at GC are a good time for a potty/snack break before coming back for the “heavy hitters.” Sentiments like that bum me out.
Our stake hosted a special meeting earlier this year and Elder Oaks was in attendance. First time in 20+ years an apostle has been to our stake. The highlight talk of the meeting, for me, was by the Stake RSP; she spoke eloquently about the story of Mary and Martha, and how valuable it is to sit at the feet of the Savior and learn of him and his words. Elder Oaks was taking careful note of what she said and when his time came, he spoke completely off the cuff (a super strange experience to hear him speak without a well-organized script like he’s so good at doing for GC!) but based a large portion of his comments on the Stake RSP’s talk! (The SP and Temple Pres from our stake also spoke, Elder Oaks did not reference their remarks nearly as much.)
While I tremendously value the counsel and words of our Prophets, in this particular case, it was the words of the female speaker that absolutely resonated within my heart. I was so grateful for her contribution and didn’t feel the slightest bit ripped off that Elder Oaks didn’t speak longer.
As far as the funny fonts and color scheme; the Church normally sticks with their dignified, approved fonts (Palatino, anyone?) so this particular poster struck me as slightly comical. I saw posted online (can’t bring it into the comment, danggit) a re-gendered version of the poster with dark, bold lettering, little basketballs and the outline of a necktie with photos of the 3 Relief Society General presidency calling for a “General Men’s meeting.” Seeing it from the other side made the original frilly poster even stranger to me. (kinda like those Bic pens marketed just to women — it’s a pen! It doesn’t need a pink package.)
“Do you mean to imply that you value the words of the male GA’s more than those of a female leader, and that the men are more deserving of time at the pulpit?”
Well no, but great way to smear and put me on the defensive.
For one thing, I think that it is a good thing to take advantage of a visitor who is rarely there. If my department at the university brought in a big name and then had a local professor speak for part of the time, I would feel like, okay, but I can always go talk to this person, so why are we using the visitor’s time this way?
I also “mean to imply” that there are many kinds of meetings that will have profound meaning to women. I’m glad you appreciated the meeting you attended. In the case of that Q & A session, it took a while for people to warm up to the idea that they really could ask whatever and it would be met with patience and kindness. One of the toughest questions came in the last 10 minutes from an African American convert, about race. Had we not had such a generous helping of time for questions, that query would likely not have been asked, so I am grateful that we had the entire time that we did.
This is great Violadiva, I am excited catch up on the important things I missed tomorrow.