Are Latter-day Saint Women Oppressed?

[Calm]

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

Find the best examples of women who have achieved great secular accomplishments in the standards of the world.  Their academic degrees, social status,  money, titles, ect are become worthless once they die.

But their life experiences contribute to their eternal progress just as do the life experience of LDS and others who devoutly follow God’s teachings.  Those experiences are not worthless or meaningless, especially since there is a good chance they have learned how to sacrifice, struggle against opposition and endure to the end in a different way that can then be expanded to be applied to acquiring gospel achievements, spiritual development.

Quote

those secular women become servants to her and the other exalted for all eternity. 

Only if they reject the teachings of Christ that they learn in the Spirit World, otherwise exaltation is also opened to them.  And if an LDS woman sacrifices all her life and then rejects the additional principles of the Gospel that we must comprehend in order to progress to exaltation as Joseph taught we would need to after life, then she will be the servant and these women who humble themselves and continue to be students, to learn, only with this time with God or his messengers as their teachers will become gods.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

I now understand why you’re so bitter.  

Probably not.  You likely understand how you might have gotten to a point where you would say such a thing at least in a vague, general sense, but highly unlikely you understand how others got there.

You know so little of her life and why she is now capable of saying that where years ago when she posted on the board she wouldn’t have.  I wonder how much of her story she has shared on this board you even remember (and that is a sliver of her existence).

Maybe you should consider what life experiences she might have had that would lead her to say that and don’t forget to include what she has shared before, including as a faithful member…because if you feel so entitled to label someone as “so bitter”, you should be investing some effort to understand her to avoid unrighteous judgment.

Edited October 20, 2023 by Calm

[Leaf474]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

Which one?

I think the first thing revealed to him it's a good place to start. Is it called the first vision?

[Meadowchik]

22 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

I now understand why you’re so bitter.  

I doubt it as that is an untrue assumption about me. Criticism is not bitterness.

[Meadowchik]

26 minutes ago, Calm said:

So are we victims, exploited, subjugated, abused, etc by schools and all cultures that indoctrinate, especially respect and security in those that are seen as authorities in your view?

Can you fix the question, after "especially?" The grammar doesn't make sense to me.

[Calm]

16 minutes ago, Leaf474 said:

I think the first thing revealed to him it's a good place to start. Is it called the first vision?

I don’t see why not.  It would be more complicated later when the Church needed to be organized under the priesthood.  I don’t see any reason a woman couldn’t have done everything up to translating the Book of Mormon.  I don’t remember anything doctrinally that prevents a woman from being a seer or revelator or a prophet in the sense of messenger/spokesperson of God.  But once ordinances come into play, then priesthood offices are required and at this point doctrine doesn’t support a woman performing those or organizing the Church.

Here are the various accounts:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng#p7

Edited October 20, 2023 by Calm

[Meadowchik]

25 minutes ago, Calm said:

Probably not.  You likely understand how you might have gotten to a point where you would say such a thing at least in a vague, general sense, but highly unlikely you understand how others got there.

You know so little of her life and why she is now capable of saying that where years ago when she posted on the board she wouldn’t have.  I wonder how much of her story she has shared on this board you even remember (and that is a sliver of her existence).

Maybe you should consider what life experiences she might have had that would lead her to say that and don’t forget to include what she has shared before, including as a faithful member…because if you feel so entitled to label someone as “so bitter”, you should be investing some effort to understand her to avoid unrighteous judgment.

Thanks. 

I was talking to my brother the other day. We both agree it's no coincidence that the sisters in my family have dramatically different financial outcomes than the brothers...not nearly as good, nowhere near as successful as any of them, yet we are no less intelligent or strong.

I love my children. They are my consolation. But the worse pain I know is not being able to care for them as much as I want to. 

But I see many of my loved ones who seem to find joy in the church and I'm glad they have it. I'm glad I have good pieces from Mormonism. I am still Mormon in lots of ways. I believe in goodness. I believe in kindness. I'm one of those people who will always be "too friendly" or cheerful even after I've turned it down by 90%

Edited October 20, 2023 by Meadowchik

[Leaf474]

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

Looking the long game, there is no other belief system out that places the eternal destiny of a woman as high the church does.  What other faith system has an equivalent to exaltation in the LDS belief system?

Great question ❤️ Were you asking it rhetorically? My answer would be... Hinduism.

 

I'm not advocating it, I don't think it's true. And it definitely has its share of oppression/marginalization as it plays out in Indian society.

 

But a common belief among Hindus is that we are all already God, we just need to realize it, or "wake up".

 

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

At best women spend their eternity as just angels I guess singing, playing harps and dancing on a pin.   Those who do not believe in an afterlife, well their existence of women ends at death.  That sounds like fun.   A faithful LDS woman becomes a god and has everything.   Find the best examples of women who have achieved great secular accomplishments in the standards of the world.  Their academic degrees, social status,  money, titles, ect are become worthless once they die.  They are less valuable than used toilet a few seconds after death.  However all that sacrifice and patients by the faithful LDS woman rockets her past those other women at death and beyond.   She becomes a god and those secular women become servants to her and the other exalted for all eternity.   Sounds like a great deal to me.   LDS women are not oppressed. They are making some short term worldly sacrifices for a great investment that pays out big time in the end.

 

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Can you fix the question, after "especially?" The grammar doesn't make sense to me.

I am trying to understand the nuances of your statement:

Quote

Abused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of LDS heirarchy over women. For the record, it can fit for everyone else too who are not in power positions. But for women, moreso…

My understanding is you see this as the result of women and others being subjected to a system “where their own thoughts must fall behind the thoughts of others, and basically to then model their whole lives on that”.

The school system often gets set up that way for individuals because of the type of people that are in the role of teacher and counselor to the kids.  Not only do they personally believe children, young adults will be better off by thinking how they themselves do, they can enforce it through grades and extracurricular activities***, which have the long term effect of setting the youth up for greater or lesser successes in life (as is shown on outcomes for minorities in the past, including the past bias I ran into against girls being good at/interested in science and more abstract disciplines like advanced mathematics and theoretical physics.  And children are required to be present in such situations by law.

The medical system was somewhat different, more like the Church in that we were in general taught to respect and trust doctors because they were the experts, the ones with access to the specialized knowledge (in the past, thank goodness the internet changed that aspect and has as a result imo, lowered the general esteem doctors used to be held in, also spread a lot of ridiculousness when people think they understand something medically when they don’t as well as allowing for even more scamming than there was preinternet).  If we did not accept the prescribed diagnoses, the vast majority of doctors either just ignored their patients (no follow up, requests were answered with “there is nothing I can do” which was definitely not true in many cases as further tests, even basic ones could have been run plus the research was out there in many cases, just would have taken a lot of effort to find) or actually enforced the indoctrination by dropping them or worse putting notes in their files that got them labeled with other doctors as hypochondriacs or looking for drugs (common anecdotes shared when I first joined an rls support group in the mid 90s and I have heard additional stories from those who are older, long term sufferers of fibromyalgia and other disorders).

Thus to me, my experience with school and the medical establishment as well as what I saw and learned of what happened to other girls and young women my age and those older and younger with complicated medical pictures I have known is that we were in situations where it was expected we set aside our own beliefs and ideas and instead we were required to “fall behind the thoughts of others” in ways that impacted our entire lives through career choices when it came to school indoctrination and impacted our ability to function physically, emotionally, and mentally when it came to medical indoctrination.  Both systems had strong enforcement methods too which had both long term and immediate effects.

——->So my question is do you see these types of experiences as demonstrating that “[a]bused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of” the school hierarchy over women in the past (I hope such bias and influence is not present systematically in American schools any more, but haven’t played close enough attention to make a judgment) and that “[a]bused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of” the medical heirarchy over patients/clients?

If you don’t, why not?

***even though I was the top student in all my math classes starting at grade 8 and one of the top in all my science classes and was the person the teachers would have tutor the students not doing as well, I was not offered opportunities like going to math contests and getting an internship at a lab until my senior year in high school while I was well aware that the boys had been doing this stuff for years.  There was another girl in my high school, my only rival, who was in the same situation, I believe. (My abilities were a result of genetics and parents who focused on academics rather than social plus being bored a lot by anything that didn’t make my brain work; this pinnacle of success as a student was not a result of hard work, I would go for months with not having any homework I had to take home.  My brother took a math class in college with me and says my brain skips steps…so a gift, which is nothing to brag about especially since little came of it).

Edited October 20, 2023 by Calm

[Leaf474]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I don’t see why not.  It would be more complicated later when the Church needed to be organized under the priesthood.  I don’t see any reason a woman couldn’t have done everything up to translating the Book of Mormon.  I don’t remember anything doctrinally that prevents a woman from being a seer or revelator or a prophet in the sense of messenger/spokesperson of God.  But once ordinances come into play, then priesthood offices are required and at this point doctrine doesn’t support a woman performing those or organizing the Church.

Here are the various accounts:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/first-vision-accounts?lang=eng#p7

Thanks for the input. Did translating The Book of Mormon require ordinances?

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Leaf474 said:

Thanks for the input. Did translating The Book of Mormon require ordinances?

Not that I know of, though some might view the translation itself as one (nonsalvific).  Joseph states he did it by the power and authority of God, but he had not received the Priesthood until partway though the translation***, so it seems that was a different type of authority.

***Aaronic Priesthood was restored in May 1829, while he started translating earlier in 1828, iirc.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Meadowchik said:

We both agree it's no coincidence that the sisters in my family have dramatically different financial outcomes than the brothers...not nearly as good, nowhere near as successful as any of them, yet we are no less intelligent or strong.

Don’t forget to include the wage gap for everyone’s area and age.  😛 

[tagriffy]

On 10/18/2023 at 9:31 PM, Calm said:

 

I once counted 12 lessons in the YW’s manuals on priesthood, none specifically on women in the YM’s manuals.

You should probably count that as a blessing, if the Priesthood meetings I've been in are any indication.

[tagriffy]

12 hours ago, Raingirl said:

We once had a RS meeting dedicated to a discussion on how can the women support the priesthood. It was ALL about helping one’s husband. Someone pointed out that not all of us are married.  That observation was summarily dismissed, and they went right back to the husband track. 

Ah. In a way that parallels the Priesthood meeting about supporting women. Women are supposed to have these roles. Someone (that would be me) pointed out that not all women want to be locked into those roles. The observation was summarily dismissed, and they went right back to the women's roles track.

[Diamondhands69]

1 hour ago, tagriffy said:

You should probably count that as a blessing, if the Priesthood meetings I've been in are any indication.

Agreed. Mind numbing and boring … also rarely does anything get accomplished. 
 

that is of course my anecdotal experience of fifty years and hundreds of meetings. Time I will never get back. 

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

Looking the long game, there is no other belief system out that places the eternal destiny of a woman as high the church does.  What other faith system has an equivalent to exaltation in the LDS belief system?   At best women spend their eternity as just angels I guess singing, playing harps and dancing on a pin.   Those who do not believe in an afterlife, well their existence of women ends at death.  That sounds like fun.   A faithful LDS woman becomes a god and has everything.   Find the best examples of women who have achieved great secular accomplishments in the standards of the world.  Their academic degrees, social status,  money, titles, ect are become worthless once they die.  They are less valuable than used toilet a few seconds after death.  However all that sacrifice and patients by the faithful LDS woman rockets her past those other women at death and beyond.   She becomes a god and those secular women become servants to her and the other exalted for all eternity.   Sounds like a great deal to me.   LDS women are not oppressed. They are making some short term worldly sacrifices for a great investment that pays out big time in the end.

VENGEANCE!!!!!!

[Calm]

23 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

I do. Follow the prophet (or bishop or local leader etc)…who always has been and always will be male…suggests to me an inherent understanding that women are missing something fundamental that is required for adequate skill or (what, exactly??) to receive and relay information from God. 

“Worthy priesthood leader in the home” is an aspired asset.  Many people don’t have that. What does that mean for them? 
 
Practically speaking, I think we all know that women are not missing a thing. I agree that there is more in actual interaction in church socially that shows  openness to ideas and opportunity than otherwise. 

I know you have pulled back or out of the topic, so don’t feel like you need to read or respond if you happen to see this.  Your comments just triggered some thoughts and it helps me organize my own thoughts when I make an effort to try and communicate them to others…

I do believe there are aspects of our church which inherently have a negative effect on how women are viewed, especially by women, such as being less necessary and less visible in roles can too easily be translated to less important, less valued.  Some may be able to be untouched by this, but I don’t see how any would be uplifted or inspired without significantly reframing what is going on (such as reframing the lack of info about Heavenly Mother as God protecting her, it’s a sign of great respect and love to not speak of her…these are not how we would normally interpret not talking about our spouses in our culture) and the reframing itself shows there has been a recognition of a negative impact and therefore a need for reframing.

But there are also aspects of the Church that have an inherent positive effect on how women are viewed, such as being literal daughters of God and what that implies about the quality of who we are and our potential.  And yet this ultimate empowering relationship can be hampered when we look on ourselves as not measuring up, wasting our potential, thinking of ourselves as rejected for some reason, not fit to be in our Parents’ loving exalted circle.

So to me to say something is inherently oppressive or empowering most often means we have stripped down an idea and removed it from the context of life and that may not be that helpful except in abstract discussions.  I see it as better to examine the ideas and behaviours that tend to get clustered around the basic principles and see the directions these point us in.

For an individual, my guess is it is impossible to say if the net effect of church life and principles has been a negative or a positive because there are so many other variables that play into self perception and behaviour choice and some of the most powerful influences are the ones we aren’t aware of, especially since exposure to church is more limited than many other things such as school or work, entertainment and recreation, and especially family life.  I would say that it is much more effective to look at the combination of church and family rather than just the Church on its own if we want to understand influences in an individual’s life because it is church principles as transmitted through the family that have a much greater effect on us imo than what we get exposed to in the several hours a week of actual church involvement, though I am not saying the influence of these hours are trivial.  I just think the variability of our response to these hours is going to be easier to understand in most cases if we look at family dynamics and the general environment the person exists in for most of their hours….and let’s not forget the individual themself as what might limit, shut down one person because of the negativity might release another because of their choice to resist it, to find a better way.

As a whole we can statistically compare church members to similar demographic groups to see if church involvement has a positive or negative effect.  Of course, then whether or not we find the methodology appropriate or not plays into the discussion.  There is also the issue of what we value and sometimes this isn’t made explicit and it is assumed values are the same, yet what one might see as oppressive, another might see as supportive and creating a safe foundation to explore life from…such as a parent’s curfew.

 

23 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

. But I was raised with a critical eye and learned at a pretty young age, not to take everything at face value. I do not think leader ship would approve. In fact, it probably has a lot to do with why my own children have left the church. I look at my friends whose children have all stayed, and I recognize that there is no dissent. There is no discussion of problems. There is no awareness of imbalance etc.  Everyone is fine with how everything is, and would probably be alarmed by this entire conversation. 

Maybe one of the reasons you see no dissent in these families is because where it exists they don’t feel free to talk about it.   I don’t see that as a healthier or happier situation.

My husband’s family never talked about problems (in general as well as with the Church) and all children are still in the Church and are very active, but boy, are there a lot of issues coming up now in the third generation (they are all good, loving people, there are just some extreme views and reactions popping up here and there) as well as hard feelings with a long history that are surfacing now and are not easy to deal with because the other person was clueless about them.  I married my husband in part because I liked the very upbeat nature of his family, always having fun and really enjoying each other’s company as I wished I had more fun and lightheartedness in my life and wanted to be sure my kids did instead of always being focused on what needed to be fixed (a side effect of the problem solving, critically analytical personalities of my parents).  I wanted our kids to know we liked being around them, that they weren’t just our responsibility or we just appreciated what they would become and not so much what they are.  And I love that my kids have more fun memories than memories of work days like me.  But the hardest part of my marriage relationship from my POV is my husband’s difficulty in discussing what is troubling him and coming up with ideas on how to improve things, especially together.  And I feel left on my own most of the time in trying to improve myself and my environment.  He is not a natural team player when it comes to the hard stuff even though he is thankfully there for the fun, the reverse of my parents.  When my daughter got sick, we had to kick him off Team Diabetes because it was such a burden to him, it was sucking the life out of all of us.  It was much better when he was back to doing what he always did, being loving and supportive in positive ways rather than dealing with the mucky side of life.  But that of course meant I spent more time in the muck, which made it harder for me to climb out when I could.

Understandably my view of life is we need some of both the critical view and the rose colored glasses in our approach to life.  We are going to keep repeating our mistakes if we aren’t willing to examine them and we won’t have much joy in our life if we focus solely on the problems…whether we are talking about ourselves, our families, or the Church.  And it is better overall if each of us is able to have some of both rather than specialized because that is when life unbalances.

I see a lot of the traditional families around me (friends, acquaintances, and through online exchanges) that appear to have never or rarely questioned or at least perceived themselves this way that are losing kids and doing so in highly negative ways.  They have lost their balance.

My own family were also taught to examine everything and my parents approached the world by looking for problems to solve and the Church was not given a pass.  There is only one sibling of 5 who has left and they are such an anomaly in so many ways I am not even sure what part family upbringing has on any of her behaviours (one of their two children is a devout and thoughtful member, btw; the other has many struggles in all areas of their life).  Of the 4 siblings who stayed, their families are much the same in terms of being analytical about the Church, though thankfully seem to be less focused on problem solving, and I am the only one who has a child who is not active and seemingly devout.  In my case, I don’t know if my daughter would have left if she hadn’t been hit with a lot of health issues where she learned not to trust her inner state.  My son is very active, very devout and thoughtful and we didn’t raise them much differently when it came to the Church nor do I think their church experience was much different up until 12 when my daughter’s life went sideways.

So I think what happened in both of our families is a lot more than just being willing to face the issues the Church has and discussing such with our children and to focus on that is more likely to mislead than inform us.  I would likely view it as what kept us in since that type of behaviour may have a protective, inoculative effect on our children from what I have often seen from the stories people have told me about how they have reacted when first confronted by negative claims about the Church or ran into problems themselves, but also up close with my son and it certainly has helped my daughter stay positive towards the Church as a nonbeliever where she most likely wouldn’t have in a no dissent family because that kind of one dimensional view attitude is one of the things she dislikes most about Utah.  She has said that my willingness to see the Church critically makes her more likely to trust the positives I say about it as well as saying over and over she realizes that the things she dislikes about Utah culture is not necessarily inherent in the Church itself, but is the local cultural variation.  She also has her experience of the Canadian ward to contrast, so that helps though her memory isn’t that great.

From my FAIR experience, there is a higher rate of drop out among non questioning families if someone hooks into something like the CES letter where they haven’t been trained to look at things with a critical eye…not saying that kind of stuff doesn’t take out those with a more self examined faith, just that it is less likely.  But of course what I get through FAIR is what parents, siblings, spouses and children have focused on, usually communicating it one dimensionally because that is all they have time for.

Maybe parents being openly critical of the Church even in positive ways contributes to a greater sense of freedom of choice or even less trust in the Church as a whole, which may make choosing to leave an easier choice, but it seems to me in that case it may be easier to maintain a more positive view of the Church overall and maybe even make it easier to return.  When one has a difficult departure from the Church, my guess is that difficulty creates a lot of baggage that gets in the way of returning or looking at the Church in positive ways for a variety of reasons.

I think though that too often we inflate the impact we had as parents and deflate the impact the individuality of our children had on their decisions, especially when they were young.  I think we do the same to the Church, taking its problematic behaviour in isolation, not only from its other attributes, but from the world….such at treating local or even family culture as inherent to he Church.

Were we loving, did we try to be honest and moral and to teach these principles to our children?  Did we try to recognize how our parents messed us up as well as did things right and strive to do better with our children?  Did we invest our time and attention into our children?  If we can answer “most of the time” to these questions, perhaps it’s better for our relationships not to struggle so much with what we did that contributed to our children leaving.  They may not see it as helpful to them and it may make it harder for them to know we are punishing ourselves this way because we see it as our failure…which tends to get interpreted as them being failures from what I have seen.  I may be sensitive in this area because Mom kept apologizing for her perceived mistakes and second guessing herself and eventually I realized the response of us siblings was not being reassured or relieved of a burden somehow, but to start to see ourselves as damaged.  There is a balance that is needed in being open about our shortcomings and making those too much of a focus.  There were mistakes I wished Mom recognized and that got ignored or dismissed that I needed to process and never could, so I am not suggesting we should be pollyannish about our success as parents.   

Applying the personal to the Church again, I do think we could benefit if the Church discussed actual errors it made instead of ignoring them or perhaps admitting mistakes were made and then acting like that is all that needs to be discussed.  But I also think it would be damaging if we made past errors too much of a focus, the last thing we need is to get anchored to a past, whether in a positive or negative way,

That came out so much longer than I intended.  And there was massive rewriting, so hopefully there isn’t nonsense somewhere where I deleted part of a idea or stuck a new idea in the middle of something else.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Calm

[Tacenda]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

I am trying to understand the nuances of your statement:

My understanding is you see this as the result of women and others being subjected to a system “where their own thoughts must fall behind the thoughts of others, and basically to then model their whole lives on that”.

The school system often gets set up that way for individuals because of the type of people that are in the role of teacher and counselor to the kids.  Not only do they personally believe children, young adults will be better off by thinking how they themselves do, they can enforce it through grades and extracurricular activities***, which have the long term effect of setting the youth up for greater or lesser successes in life (as is shown on outcomes for minorities in the past, including the past bias I ran into against girls being good at/interested in science and more abstract disciplines like advanced mathematics and theoretical physics.  And children are required to be present in such situations by law.

The medical system was somewhat different, more like the Church in that we were in general taught to respect and trust doctors because they were the experts, the ones with access to the specialized knowledge (in the past, thank goodness the internet changed that aspect and has as a result imo, lowered the general esteem doctors used to be held in, also spread a lot of ridiculousness when people think they understand something medically when they don’t as well as allowing for even more scamming than there was preinternet).  If we did not accept the prescribed diagnoses, the vast majority of doctors either just ignored their patients (no follow up, requests were answered with “there is nothing I can do” which was definitely not true in many cases as further tests, even basic ones could have been run plus the research was out there in many cases, just would have taken a lot of effort to find) or actually enforced the indoctrination by dropping them or worse putting notes in their files that got them labeled with other doctors as hypochondriacs or looking for drugs (common anecdotes shared when I first joined an rls support group in the mid 90s and I have heard additional stories from those who are older, long term sufferers of fibromyalgia and other disorders).

Thus to me, my experience with school and the medical establishment as well as what I saw and learned of what happened to other girls and young women my age and those older and younger with complicated medical pictures I have known is that we were in situations where it was expected we set aside our own beliefs and ideas and instead we were required to “fall behind the thoughts of others” in ways that impacted our entire lives through career choices when it came to school indoctrination and impacted our ability to function physically, emotionally, and mentally when it came to medical indoctrination.  Both systems had strong enforcement methods too which had both long term and immediate effects.

——->So my question is do you see these types of experiences as demonstrating that “[a]bused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of” the school hierarchy over women in the past (I hope such bias and influence is not present systematically in American schools any more, but haven’t played close enough attention to make a judgment) and that “[a]bused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of” the medical heirarchy over patients/clients?

If you don’t, why not?

***even though I was the top student in all my math classes starting at grade 8 and one of the top in all my science classes and was the person the teachers would have tutor the students not doing as well, I was not offered opportunities like going to math contests and getting an internship at a lab until my senior year in high school while I was well aware that the boys had been doing this stuff for years.  There was another girl in my high school, my only rival, who was in the same situation, I believe. (My abilities were a result of genetics and parents who focused on academics rather than social plus being bored a lot by anything that didn’t make my brain work; this pinnacle of success as a student was not a result of hard work, I would go for months with not having any homework I had to take home.  My brother took a math class in college with me and says my brain skips steps…so a gift, which is nothing to brag about especially since little came of it).

Smartie! ❤️ My high school counselor said I was only good enough to be put in basic math, she didn't even give me the opportunity to take algebra. She made me feel like I was a lost cause sometimes. I'd like to say it's because she went to high school with my dad and they didn't get along or something. Well, it could happen, lol. My dad wasn't too happy with her. But times were different then, and maybe algebra wasn't a requirement in college. Because I was able to go the U of U, for a semester and then went to LDS Business college. 

 

[Calm]

38 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Smartie! ❤️ My high school counselor said I was only good enough to be put in basic math, she didn't even give me the opportunity to take algebra. She made me feel like I was a lost cause sometimes. I'd like to say it's because she went to high school with my dad and they didn't get along or something. Well, it could happen, lol. My dad wasn't too happy with her. But times were different then, and maybe algebra wasn't a requirement in college. Because I was able to go the U of U, for a semester and then went to LDS Business college. 

 

There are other things I am proud of because I had to work for them. Math came to me like language does, it just made sense to me. 

Lack of quality sleep over the years and aging has silenced that part of my brain to a great extent.  I miss it. It was fun. 

And I admit to being thoroughly pissed off at those who made me doubt its value and worse, made me doubt that I was good at it.  It wasn’t until I was a mom and saw my son playing with square roots as a kindergarten and being told he wasn’t gifted by one of his teachers because he hadn’t taught himself to read (he qualified easily when he actually got tested) and then saw how other kids approached math that I realized I had been pretty remarkable.  But so much is expectations and bias, just as my son was excluded for a bit because he didn’t excel in reading as well.

It is very easy for me to extrapolate to how some women feel about the Church’s expectations and biases about women and how that limits opportunities even though I never saw myself that way as I am not a good leader, can’t delegate at all, not when it came to housework even to my kids and husband…everyone else has so much to do, how can I ask them?  And then there is the difficulty of conveying the message I want something done a certain way….somehow even if I think I communicated just fine, it never worked.  I think people’s eyes glaze over because I include too much detail.  Shocking, I know, lol.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Calm

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

I know you have pulled back or out of the topic, so don’t feel like you need to read or respond if you happen to see this.  Your comments just triggered some thoughts and it helps me organize my own thoughts when I make an effort to try and communicate them to others…

I do believe there are aspects of our church which inherently have a negative effect on how women are viewed, especially by women, such as being less necessary and less visible in roles can too easily be translated to less important, less valued.  Some may be able to be untouched by this, but I don’t see how any would be uplifted or inspired without significantly reframing what is going on (such as reframing the lack of info about Heavenly Mother as God protecting her, it’s a sign of great respect and love to not speak of her…these are not how we would normally interpret not talking about our spouses in our culture) and the reframing itself shows there has been a recognition of a negative impact and therefore a need for reframing.

But there are also aspects of the Church that have an inherent positive effect on how women are viewed, such as being literal daughters of God and what that implies about the quality of who we are and our potential.  And yet this ultimate empowering relationship can be hampered when we look on ourselves as not measuring up, wasting our potential, thinking of ourselves as rejected for some reason, not fit to be in our Parents’ loving exalted circle.

So to me to say something is inherently oppressive or empowering most often means we have stripped down an idea and removed it from the context of life and that may not be that helpful except in abstract discussions.  I see it as better to examine the ideas and behaviours that tend to get clustered around the basic principles and see the directions these point us in.

For an individual, my guess is it is impossible to say if the net effect of church life and principles has been a negative or a positive because there are so many other variables that play into self perception and behaviour choice and some of the most powerful influences are the ones we aren’t aware of, especially since exposure to church is more limited than many other things such as school or work, entertainment and recreation, and especially family life.  I would say that it is much more effective to look at the combination of church and family rather than just the Church on its own if we want to understand influences in an individual’s life because it is church principles as transmitted through the family that have a much greater effect on us imo than what we get exposed to in the several hours a week of actual church involvement, though I am not saying the influence of these hours are trivial.  I just think the variability of our response to these hours is going to be easier to understand in most cases if we look at family dynamics and the general environment the person exists in for most of their hours….and let’s not forget the individual themself as what might limit, shut down one person because of the negativity might release another because of their choice to resist it, to find a better way.

As a whole we can statistically compare church members to similar demographic groups to see if church involvement has a positive or negative effect.  Of course, then whether or not we find the methodology appropriate or not plays into the discussion.  There is also the issue of what we value and sometimes this isn’t made explicit and it is assumed values are the same, yet what one might see as oppressive, another might see as supportive and creating a safe foundation to explore life from…such as a parent’s curfew.

 

Maybe one of the reasons you see no dissent in these families is because where it exists they don’t feel free to talk about it.   I don’t see that as a healthier or happier situation.

My husband’s family never talked about problems (in general as well as with the Church) and all children are still in the Church and are very active, but boy, are there a lot of issues coming up now in the third generation (they are all good, loving people, there are just some extreme views and reactions popping up here and there) as well as hard feelings with a long history that are surfacing now and are not easy to deal with because the other person was clueless about them.  I married my husband in part because I liked the very upbeat nature of his family, always having fun and really enjoying each other’s company as I wished I had more fun and lightheartedness in my life and wanted to be sure my kids did instead of always being focused on what needed to be fixed (a side effect of the problem solving, critically analytical personalities of my parents).  I wanted our kids to know we liked being around them, that they weren’t just our responsibility or we just appreciated what they would become and not so much what they are.  And I love that my kids have more fun memories than memories of work days like me.  But the hardest part of my marriage relationship from my POV is my husband’s difficulty in discussing what is troubling him and coming up with ideas on how to improve things, especially together.  And I feel left on my own most of the time in trying to improve myself and my environment.  He is not a natural team player when it comes to the hard stuff even though he is thankfully there for the fun, the reverse of my parents.  When my daughter got sick, we had to kick him off Team Diabetes because it was such a burden to him, it was sucking the life out of all of us.  It was much better when he was back to doing what he always did, being loving and supportive in positive ways rather than dealing with the mucky side of life.  But that of course meant I spent more time in the muck, which made it harder for me to climb out when I could.

Understandably my view of life is we need some of both the critical view and the rose colored glasses in our approach to life.  We are going to keep repeating our mistakes if we aren’t willing to examine them and we won’t have much joy in our life if we focus solely on the problems…whether we are talking about ourselves, our families, or the Church.  And it is better overall if each of us is able to have some of both rather than specialized because that is when life unbalances.

I see a lot of the traditional families around me (friends, acquaintances, and through online exchanges) that appear to have never or rarely questioned or at least perceived themselves this way that are losing kids and doing so in highly negative ways.  They have lost their balance.

My own family were also taught to examine everything and my parents approached the world by looking for problems to solve and the Church was not given a pass.  There is only one sibling of 5 who has left and they are such an anomaly in so many ways I am not even sure what part family upbringing has on any of her behaviours (one of their two children is a devout and thoughtful member, btw; the other has many struggles in all areas of their life).  Of the 4 siblings who stayed, their families are much the same in terms of being analytical about the Church, though thankfully seem to be less focused on problem solving, and I am the only one who has a child who is not active and seemingly devout.  In my case, I don’t know if my daughter would have left if she hadn’t been hit with a lot of health issues where she learned not to trust her inner state.  My son is very active, very devout and thoughtful and we didn’t raise them much differently when it came to the Church nor do I think their church experience was much different up until 12 when my daughter’s life went sideways.

So I think what happened in both of our families is a lot more than just being willing to face the issues the Church has and discussing such with our children and to focus on that is more likely to mislead than inform us.  I would likely view it as what kept us in since that type of behaviour may have a protective, inoculative effect on our children from what I have often seen from the stories people have told me about how they have reacted when first confronted by negative claims about the Church or ran into problems themselves, but also up close with my son and it certainly has helped my daughter stay positive towards the Church as a nonbeliever where she most likely wouldn’t have in a no dissent family because that kind of one dimensional view attitude is one of the things she dislikes most about Utah.  She has said that my willingness to see the Church critically makes her more likely to trust the positives I say about it

I think for some of us this is true in so many areas of life.  Insulin pumps have been around for a long time. Every time I asked someone about them they would just gush about them.  It wasn't till I heard someone willing to say anything negative about 7-8 years ago that I was willing to trust the positive. Now I tell people I have a love hate relationship with my pump - it is so much more work, but I haven't had a single seizure since having it. My husband can sleep peacefully at night and go on business trips without worry. 

Discussing my pump with him has made things better. He is an electrical engineer. Sometimes when I discuss a problem with him because of his engineering knowledge we work out how to live better with it. When traveling my supplies take a lot of room because of the packaging. I gave him one item and told him the problems before our last trip.  He looked at it and thought about it and was able to modify it in a way that took so much less room. 

Being willing to discuss the negatives helps people to see the positives for some of us because it helps us know someone is willing to see the negatives enough that they will work on fixing them. If you won't speak about the negative then in feels to me that you are blind to them or are not willing to work with making them better. 

There is a difference in just being critical and looking at things critically to access needs.

2 hours ago, Calm said:

as well as saying over and over she realizes that the things she dislikes about Utah culture is not necessarily inherent in the Church itself, but is the local cultural variation.  She also has her experience of the Canadian ward to contrast, so that helps though her memory isn’t that great.

From my FAIR experience, there is a higher rate of drop out among non questioning families if someone hooks into something like the CES letter where they haven’t been trained to look at things with a critical eye…not saying that kind of stuff doesn’t take out those with a more self examined faith, just that it is less likely.  But of course what I get through FAIR is what parents, siblings, spouses and children have focused on, usually communicating it one dimensionally because that is all they have time for.

Maybe parents being openly critical of the Church even in positive ways contributes to a greater sense of freedom of choice or even less trust in the Church as a whole, which may make choosing to leave an easier choice, but it seems to me in that case it may be easier to maintain a more positive view of the Church overall and maybe even make it easier to return.  When one has a difficult departure from the Church, my guess is that difficulty creates a lot of baggage that gets in the way of returning or looking at the Church in positive ways for a variety of reasons.

I think though that too often we inflate the impact we had as parents and deflate the impact the individuality of our children had on their decisions, especially when they were young.  I think we do the same to the Church, taking its problematic behaviour in isolation, not only from its other attributes, but from the world….such at treating local or even family culture as inherent to he Church.

Were we loving, did we try to be honest and moral and to teach these principles to our children?  Did we try to recognize how our parents messed us up as well as did things right and strive to do better with our children?  Did we invest our time and attention into our children?  If we can answer “most of the time” to these questions, perhaps it’s better for our relationships not to struggle so much with what we did that contributed to our children leaving.  They may not see it as helpful to them and it may make it harder for them to know we are punishing ourselves this way because we see it as our failure…which tends to get interpreted as them being failures from what I have seen.  I may be sensitive in this area because Mom kept apologizing for her perceived mistakes and second guessing herself and eventually I realized the response of us siblings was not being reassured or relieved of a burden somehow, but to start to see ourselves as damaged.  There is a balance that is needed in being open about our shortcomings and making those too much of a focus.  There were mistakes I wished Mom recognized and that got ignored or dismissed that I needed to process and never could, so I am not suggesting we should be pollyannish about our success as parents.   

Applying the personal to the Church again, I do think we could benefit if the Church discussed actual errors it made instead of ignoring them or perhaps admitting mistakes were made and then acting like that is all that needs to be discussed.  But I also think it would be damaging if we made past errors too much of a focus, the last thing we need is to get anchored to a past, whether in a positive or negative way,

That came out so much longer than I intended.  And there was massive rewriting, so hopefully there isn’t nonsense somewhere where I deleted part of a idea or stuck a new idea in the middle of something else.

 

[Calm]

17 hours ago, Rain said:

There is a difference in just being critical and looking at things critically to access needs.

Exactly.  Sometimes people don’t see the difference.

Edited October 22, 2023 by Calm

[teddyaware]

13 hours ago, The Nehor said:

VENGEANCE!!!!!

Leave it to a Nehor to put the worst possible spin on the undeniable fact that greater spiritual rewards are going to be bestowed on those humble, meek and charitable souls whom the Lord will judge as being valiant in the testimony of Jesus.

[The Nehor]

2 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

Leave it to a Nehor to put the worst possible spin on the undeniable fact that greater spiritual rewards are going to be bestowed on those humble, meek and charitable souls whom the Lord will judge as being valiant in the testimony of Jesus.

I was mocking the greater spiritual reward of *checks notes*:

“She becomes a god and those secular women become servants to her and the other exalted for all eternity.“

Yep, the desire to rule others is definitely a spiritual reward.

[bluebell]

On 10/20/2023 at 12:31 AM, Meadowchik said:

Abused, maltreated, subjugated, and exploited all reasonably fit the model of LDS heirarchy over women. For the record, it can fit for everyone else too who are not in power positions. But for women, moreso:

 

We'll have to agree to disagree that "not being in a position of power" automatically equals "abused maltreated, subjugated, and exploited.  That makes no reasonable sense to me.

Quote

People are entering into a system where their own thoughts must fall behind the thoughts of others, and basically to then model their whole lives on that. And women are the subjugated population within that population. 

I could not disagree with you more.  But that's ok.  We definitely do not have to agree on this.

[bluebell]

On 10/20/2023 at 12:02 AM, Meadowchik said:

There can be different ends of a scale/spectrum where the definition still holds.

 

Sometimes, yes.  But there is a point where the differences mean that the definition no longer holds.  

Quote

It's not about an individual not getting called not a few types of callings. It is about all women being excluded from all callings that have authority over them in the church at the ward, stake, and general church level, because they are women.

The church discriminates against women when it teaches that according to the gospel of Christ they cannot be ordained (at least no currently).  I understand that you see that as oppressive.  I've explained why I and many others do not.

Quote

That's a misunderstanding of a basic definition. 

It's the basic definition that comes up when you look up "sexist".

Quote

 

Of course it is. 

There are different ways people manage uncomfortable facts. 

 

And there are facts that make some uncomfortable but not others.  

Quote

And if a woman believes the prophet, stake president, bishop, her father, and then her husband can speak for God to her, she has much more than her own individual perceptions to manage.( I think she even will struggle knowing her own thoughts in the first place especially at a young age. )

Three reasons I don’t find this persuasive to your argument:

1), if she believes that the prophet, stake president, bishop, her father can speak for God to her and that all of those supercede her own responsibility to speak to God herself and learn directly from Him, then she isn't understanding how the gospel or personal revelation works (and that's probably causing a lot of pain and issues for her).

2), No woman's husband has any authority over her because of the priesthood.  She has as much right to receive guidance from God on her husband's behalf as he does on her's.

3), In terms of God speaking through those priesthood holders when we are serving or living (such as with a father) under their jurisdiction, it is the exact same for men.  They also have a prophet, stake president, bishop, and father who can receive guidance in their behalf, but only in the sphere that those men have responsibility for. Men have the same number of individual perceptions to manage as women do in that regard.

 

Edited October 22, 2023 by bluebell