Feminist Inroads Into Mormonism

[why me]

Shrug, inequality will always be there as long as we tolerate it. I have always preferred a Margaret Thatcher who demanded equality and respect to a Paris Hilton who laughed it off. Both are successful in their own right, and perhaps women and their attitudes reside between the two. I do respect one much more than the other.

Margaret Thatcher was certainly no respector of equality at all. During her office as prime minister inequality increased across the board. And Paris was born into money. She has no reason to worry about inequality.

[Jeff K.]

Inequality? You mean from the stultifying nothingness that Great Britain had become, where everyone was equal and equally unimportant and there was no spark in the Kingdom beyond the que line where everyone was on the dole? And yet, the UK, through Margaret Thatcher revived its spark of greatness, not known since Churchill in which they became the international financial center of the world with London only rivaled by New York?

You mistake equal opportunity for equal results. Read Harrison Bergeron

[juliann]

Wow, anyone who reads this thread can see why there had to be a women's movement. When there is such resistance to another's needs and human rights (accompanied by self-righteous disdain) laws become necessary. That pretty much sums up the Civil Rights movement and Gay Rights movement as well. Unfortunately, laws come with unintended consequences. It is a conundrum when you can see down the road but have to acknowledge that classes of people are being denied what others take for granted...to the point that some of those who benefit can't even begin to understand anyone else's experience. It is clear where the blame for the unintended consequences resides and it isn't with those who aren't willing to sit at the back of the bus anymore.

[Deborah]

Read Harrison Bergeron

Should be required reading for everyone so they can understand the ultimate result of "making" everyone equal.

[asbestosman]

I'm feeling all the positive energy being sucked right out of this thread so I'm going to find some shiny, happy people to talk to.  (Where's Bluebell and Nehor?) 

I have it on authority from the Voldeboard that the Nehor sucks the positive energy out of things. That is, of course, precisely why I decided to start the new year back here where Nehor et al are.

Personally I do think there is a societal double-standard on what counts as funny on TV or movies--one which changes with the times. However, I won't complain about someone who is able to laugh at both sides. It's kind of refreshing. The only thing I worry about is D&C 59:15; 88:121.

[Cobalt-70]

I agree. T.V. is horrible in the way they portray men. Just look at most sitcoms: the man is usually an overweight, lazy, idiot while the wife is thin , capable, and overbearing.

Blame The Honeymooners. It all started there. But I can understand why, because the obnoxious husband/earnest wive combo is such fertile comedic ground. It wouldn't be nearly as funny the other way around. But I don't think people should get their feathers too ruffled over this, because everybody knows it is comedic and ironic. Nobody uses Homer Simpson/Ralph Kramden/Fred Flintstone/Archie Bunker/Doug Heffernen/Jim Belushi/Tim Allen as an actual role model.

[Cobalt-70]

As to feminist inroads into Mormonism, I think it is mistake to focus on the question of equality. After all, women have always been placed upon such a pedestal that men were considered to be lesser than women. Yet women could not vote or hold property. The issue with respect to Mormonism is whether or not women are confined to roles. And for that reason, feminism will never make further inroads into Mormonism until the LDS church backs off from its current "men are made to lead, women nurture" ideology. If the Proclamation on the Family gets canonized, that day will be 100 or more years from now. If not, maybe official Mormon feminism could emerge within 50.

[Duncan]

Blame The Honeymooners. It all started there. But I can understand why, because the obnoxious husband/earnest wive combo is such fertile comedic ground. It wouldn't be nearly as funny the other way around. But I don't think people should get their feathers too ruffled over this, because everybody knows it is comedic and ironic. Nobody uses Homer Simpson/Ralph Kramden/Fred Flintstone/Archie Bunker/Doug Heffernen/Jim Belushi/Tim Allen as an actual role model.

I think it started earlier with some the '40's radio programs, like The Life with Riley

[BlueDreams]

But, as a measure of "progress" or "equality" a degree has one use: all college degrees are counted (rightly or not) as equal. If men and women had roughly the same levels of academic achievement, we could say they are treated equally by "society". But, as there is such an enormous discrepancy, it is obvious that women have the upper hand in many areas that lead, eventually, to college.

Just an aside, but there are probably multiple reasons that there are far more women in college than men. Especially with the black community. I think with that one your seeing less gendered stereotypes but racial stereotypes, prejudices, and disadvantages still having a major effect on the population.

Overall the reason for the gender gap in education may have something more to do with the expectations and reality many women face today IMHO. 4 out of ten 10 children today will be born into a single parent home...most of those being born into female homes. Divorce is a strong reality for most. Families, in general, face a lot of instability and women will often become the ultimate means of support within households. Education, therefore, would become a form of security....a necessity if you really want to thrive in this world. I'd assume this would be a driving force for most women. Education is not seen as an elective choice, but a serious one that could forever alter your outcome in life.

As for sitcoms, honestly I've never noticed. In general I find stereotypes flying on both ends fairly equally. And I wouldn't exactly pull out role models from any sitcom anyways. They're all supposed to be some shade of moron.

Just some random thoughts.

With luv,

Bd

[BlueDreams]

As to feminist inroads into Mormonism, I think it is mistake to focus on the question of equality. After all, women have always been placed upon such a pedestal that men were considered to be lesser than women. Yet women could not vote or hold property. The issue with respect to Mormonism is whether or not women are confined to roles. And for that reason, feminism will never make further inroads into Mormonism until the LDS church backs off from its current "men are made to lead, women nurture" ideology. If the Proclamation on the Family gets canonized, that day will be 100 or more years from now. If not, maybe official Mormon feminism could emerge within 50.

Cobalt, honestly...did you ever sit back and wonder that it's not the church itself but your perspective of it that's problematic. Your concepts and assumptions made are ridiculously foreign to me as a member of the faith.

With luv,

BD

[Loran Blood]

Wow, anyone who reads this thread can see why there had to be a women's movement. When there is such resistance to another's needs and human rights (accompanied by self-righteous disdain) laws become necessary. That pretty much sums up the Civil Rights movement and Gay Rights movement as well.

"Needs" and "human rights?" Whatever this may actually mean with regard to Second and Third Wave feminism and the so-called Gay rights movement, "needs" and the rather nebulous concept of "human rights" (beyond, apparantly, mere civil rights) are only one part of the social and political dynamic, as to "rights" that exist between a people and a state, and between people and other people within it. The entire concept of homosexal or woman's "rights" as rights inhering in various identity groups specifically and ideosyncratically linked to specific unifying attributes (such as femaleness and desire for sexual relations with those of the same sex) is unknown to the Founding documents of the nation, and to the Constitution, which knows nothing of groups.

Woman and homosexuals, of course, have no "rights" of the unalienable kind in any sense beyond what anyone else can legitimately claim under the Founding principles of the American experiment. Homosexuals have a right not to be physically attacked for being homosexual, just as I have a right not to be attacked for being a conservative or a Mormon. The two cases are indistinguisable and derive their moral and philosophcal force, not from the identity group within which I can be pidgeonholed (Caucasion, male, LDS, conservative, heterosexual etc.) but from my humanness itself and the unalienable rights inhering in me (as a divine endowment) as a human being. "Gay rights" are, as their very name implies, like "woman's rights," by definition group rights, a form of rights unknown to the Constitution and the classical liberal intellectual patrimony of the Founding (but well known within other traditions), and, indeed, logically incoherent as "rights" at all.

I've seen no "resistance" to the "needs" and "human rights" of anyone in the comments made in this thread. What the "needs" of homosexuals are, beyond the same unalienable rights and derivitive spcific civil rights that inhere in all equally, is anyone's guess. The same is the case for woman. Speech, press, assembly, religion, association, property rights? What else? We can make a list but nothing in that list, so long as it is legitimately within the constitutional/classical liberal framework, will apply any more to woman than to me.

And it should be pointed out, yet again, as far as the homosexual rights movement and the civil rights movemente is conerned, that no two movements, and no two sets of aims and goals could be farther apart, if only for the reason that black skin is an intrinsic genetic attribute over which there is no control. Homosexuality is a behavior, lifestyle, and culture.

Hardly anologous.

It is a conundrum when you can see down the road but have to acknowledge that classes of people are being denied what others take for granted..

And who might this be?

It is clear where the blame for the unintended consequences resides and it isn't with those who aren't willing to sit at the back of the bus anymore.

In what ways are, for example, homosexuals, sitting in the back of the bus?

Edited January 15, 2012 by Loran Blood