Pants: Still a scandal in 2012.

1 Samantha 16:7
7 But the Lady said unto Samantha, Look not on her appearance, or on the manner of her attire ... for the Lady seeth not as mortals seeth; for mortals looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lady looketh on the heart.

You know, I've seen women wear pants to church numerous times over the years.  It hasn't been often, but it has happened.  When I was young, it always surprised me but I never commented.  The women always looked appropriate and put together.  Granted, I live in a very liberal area of the US that has a reputation for bucking tradition and the ward I grew up in was very loving and open, but the prevailing winds within the Mormon community have still leaned heavily to skirts and dresses.  However, pants were not looked down upon, to the best of my knowledge, beyond a few surprised expressions before everyone got on with their day.  Investigators and new members have generally been given a pass to wear whatever they want or have.

That being said, you wouldn't think this event would cause much of a ruckus, but the Event page on Facebook has been slammed by many orthodox members of the Church (and some random non-member trolls) for being disrespectful, sinful, daring to suggest that women are treated unequally, etc etc etc.  Because once you're in and experienced (and Heaven help you if you're a lifer and you should "know better") your free pass goes away?  God suddenly starts caring so much more about what you're wearing... even though we know that God very specifically does not look at the outside.

It calls to mind the many modesty lessons I've been given over the years in which some variation of this question was posed: Would you be ashamed by your clothes if the Lord came back and you had to bow before him?

No.  No I would not.  Not in a turtleneck.  Not in a V-neck.  Not in a skirt.  Not in pants.  Not naked as the day I was born.  Never unless my heart was out of place, and not even then because I know that is why I have a Savior who loves me enough never to shame me.  Instead, he suffered and died for me, to cover me with His grace and make Him and I at-one.  Where there is God-like love, there is no shame; Where there is shame, there is no God-like love.

Therefore, I'm going to wear pants to church on Sunday and speak as my father's High Council companion about the spirit of Christmas and radical love.

Joanna Brook and Jon Stewart are of good report

...and praiseworthy.  It made me smile on a day when I needed smiles.

Celebrating my feminista

I got asked tonight if I'm a feminist.


Best question ever. :D


So just in case anyone missed the memo: Yes, I am a feminist.

• I believe absolutely in the equal rights of men and women.
• I believe the genitalia and/or DNA any person possesses should neither entitle nor disenfranchise.
• I believe in respecting those who are different and protecting and uplifting those who are downtrodden.
• I do not hate men nor do I want to be exactly like one; I glory in my personal female identity.
• I work toward the day when femaleness and maleness are regarded with identical amounts of respect because of humanness.

Additionally...

• I believe absolutely in the right of anyone to be different.
• I believe that biological sex and expressed gender are spectra; everyone is a mix of male and female traits, genes, and tissues.
• I believe that what diminishes one, diminishes all.  What uplifts one, uplifts all.

And you should check out this link: Snopes--Red Hot Mamas (The truth about "bra-burning" feminists.)

Eternal perspectives

I have two things to talk about: My Mom, and men.

Mom

The way I miss her isn't the way I thought I'd miss her.  I went to visit her grave tonight for the first time since her memorial............. has it only been three weeks?  Damn.  It feels... longer.  Much longer.  And that's the thing.  It's like I've entered a new life since her death.  Rather than living a singular life in which there is now this gaping, unfilled hole left left behind in the mortal absence of my mother, another lifetime began in which she simply isn't physically present.

It's a little like moving away from home.  The memories of home are still with you when you move away, you still love it, it's still the root of everything you do and everything you are and ever will be; but you are in another place now, and in effect, another time.  You have another purpose, and while you will always and forever love your home, this new space you're in is the right space to be.  There's a feeling of being homesick, of thinking back on the life that was, but being present in the life that is.

I think that's why I haven't been feeling as devastated as I had anticipated.  As a family, we released Mom, because it was the right thing to do and the right time for her to go.  We told her it was okay.  There's no sense of unfinished business: nothing left unsaid, nothing left undone, no injustice in her passing.  She completed her purpose on this Earth, and it was okay.

Granted, I am loudly sobbing and crying my eyes out as I'm typing this, but I'm also laughing at myself a little because I am typing while I'm wailing loud enough to make me glad my nearest neighbors are a few hundred yards away.  It's just release.  I'm super practical when it comes to letting it out, and even though I likely sound to the world like I'm an emotional mess, it's mostly physical.  Inside, I'm pretty peaceful.  And now I'm done crying.  It just needed to get out.

(Tangent: Mom's buried next to a guy that was in my class in high school who died in a car accident between our Junior and Senior years.  Always wear your seat belts.  Just saying.)

Men


A large part of my reason for being a feminist is a strong belief and hope for equality.  When I find this running up against the strong cultural dogma of male superiority in Mormonism  (however benevolent its stewardship may supposed to be) it puts me in some dismay about the eternal order of things as we're presented with them.

I have a really big, freaking problem thinking that two equally worthy, covenant-making-and-keeping people, bound together for eternity would be bound to being anything but equivalent to each other for eternity.  If it's not so, I have to look forward to eternity as Second in Command, instead of Co-Captain.  Eternity.  Forever.  Without end.  Never, ever, ever ending second citizenship.


How is that just?  How is that good?  How can that be acceptable and justifiable based upon the relative femininity or masculinity of an individual if all are alike unto God and God is no respecter of persons?  How can being (a beloved and cherished) Second for the rest of all out-of-time be okay?  It cannot.  It cannot be okay.  A man wouldn't stand for that being his lot, yet it's an implied expectation from the women.  Such a concept deeply, deeply disturbs me, to think that I could bust my butt through this super critical mortal probation we're all in, perhaps even out-righteous my Hypothetical Husband, and still end up as the Silent Partner, the Heavenly Mother that never talks to Her children and whom Her children are discouraged from addressing.  I find that idea incredibly unappealing, and it puts me in a position to wonder whether the effort is worthwhile if I have no guarantee of autonomy and personal worth outside the man I'm married to, forever.  This a big scary question for a woman who has been pretty dang invested in aiming for goddesshood her entire life.  So I have to think that we really just don't have the whole picture yet, that there's more, that the equality of the sexes will be seen as a central point of eternal doctrine at some time in the future, may Heaven make it soon.

But what if... what if I'm wrong.  What if God moves in (to me) truly mind-boggling and seemingly hypocritical, unjust, mysterious ways and eternity is sexist?  What if being more feminine than masculine lands you a spot just behind the shoulder of your more masculine eternal companion, to be protected and shielded and effectively silenced because you're somehow more sacred than anything else?  It's an idea that sickens me to my stomach, and the only way I can conceive of it being a tolerable system is if I could find a man who would not treat me as anything but an equal.  Where any "head"ship would be in token only, and irrelevant in practice.  If he must have the title, he can have the title, but that's all I could tolerate.  If I had to. If that's really the eternal order of things.

I don't think it is, though.  It just doesn't make sense.

I want the Priesthood, too.

And shouldn't I?

Boys are raised in the Church to want it.  To aspire to it.  To expect it.  They are expected to live in such a way that they have it conferred upon them at the age of twelve so that they can begin to administer and serve.  That expectation, that aspiration is considered a wonderful thing, a great thing.  Not a sin, not a power grab, not an itching to rule the world or exercise rule over others.  In fact, I'm not aware of any time when that's an idea ever put out in the open.  And yet, adult women who want as much (or more) authority as a pubescent boy are cast as unfaithful villains instead of anxious workers in the cause of Christ.

What?

I was listening to a Mormon Stories episode on the way to the temple earlier today.  The interview featured the man who started Agitating Faithfully, Dane Laverty, a site that collects names of women and men who support the implementation of gender equality in the Church.  Dane said something that really struck me as he was describing the inspiration for the site name.  The context begins about 28:39 and he rambles for a bit, but then he says this:

[President Hinckley's] response wasn't, "We don't have revelation for that."  His response wasn't, "The doctrines prevent that from happening."  His response was just, "We don't hear anyone in the Church asking.  We don't hear any movement in the Church for women to be priests."  And so the way I read that is, "Yes, we'd be more than happy if we found the need for women to be priests, if we found that there was a desire out there for women to be priests, that's something that could happen; but we're not seeing that desire, so it's just not an issue that we're going to address right now."

And he's right, in a way.  Granted, President Hinckley was an extremely shrewd media personality, and the way he answers moves all responsibility for the inequality to the membership, rather than the leadership.  I will let my readers think of that what they will and move on.  There isn't agitation, or at least not very much.  There is anti-agitation, as with so much about the Church, the large and disapproving fraction of the population who insists on things the way they are and that they're perfect and wonderful and we shouldn't want one thing that the Lord doesn't hand down to us from the Throne of Heaven itself.

Doctrine and Covenants 58:26  For it is not meet that I should command in all things; for s/he who is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and an unwise servant; wherefore s/he receiveth no reward

 Hm.  Well, that's problematic.

 27 Verily I say, wo/men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;

 28 For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as wo/men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward.

 29 But s/he that doeth not anything until s/he is commanded, and receiveth a commandment with doubtful heart, and keepeth it with slothfulness, the same is damned.

So, if an Earth-rocking revelation were unveiled between 9:15 and 9:30 AM PDT by President Monson, unveiling the nature, power, and duties of Heavenly Mother, and commanding that women be ordained to the Priest(ess)hood, beginning immediately and would President Beck and her Counselors please come forward so they can be sustained and ordained... how many brethren, how many sisters would be prepared to sustain President Beck in her ordination?    How many would get up and leave, and never return to the Church?  It's a sobering thought.

But how many would cheer?  How many would offer their heads to have hands laid upon them?  How many are prepared to receive, when we put so much emphasis on it being wrong to even want the Priesthood because we are women?  I do believe it will happen, I believe it will happen in my lifetime, even if I have to live to the age of 100 to see it.  I believe it just as much and as surely as I believe we will learn more about Mother, but as a people, we must be prepared to receive, and I feel that we generally are not.  We have shot ourselves in the foot by insisting that we don't care about or want these things.  We are limiting the spirit of revelation in the name of conservation.

A quick sampling of things I've commonly heard about women not having Priesthood, generally from women...
It's so much more work!  Why would you/we want that?
--Why do the men want it?  Don't many hands make light work?  Is our only work really only supposed to be among our husbands and children?  I'm off the hook!  Awesome!  ...except that I want to serve. In the past several years, there have been numerous Conference talks praising the sisters for their hard work and encouraging them to greater heights of service.  I've heard many women groaning under the strain, though.  There's only so far people can be encouraged before there's nothing else they can do.  If the Priesthood gives power to do the work of the Gospel more effectively, it would be a mercy and a help to everyone to ordain women.

I hold the Priesthood when I hug/dance with my husband.
--You married the physical embodiment of the Power of God?!  Holy crap!  Oh, you meant that you married a person who has been ordained to the Priesthood.  Gotcha.  Wouldn't it be nice if your husband could say the same thing, though?  Also, once again, this is discriminatory.  I, as an unmarried woman with no children, don't have the option of hugging a husband.  Eventually, I won't have the option of hugging my father, either.  Please stop using such an exclusive platitude.  It gives no value or power at all to women like me.

Women don't miss out on any of the blessings of the Priesthood.
--This has always required considerable mental gymnastics for me, even years before I considered myself a feminist, but I went with it for a long time.  I mean, the absence of a worthy Priesthood holder can be circumvented if necessary; I've done it, but how many women (or children) know how to do it?  It isn't something you'll find in a lesson manual.  What if circumvention was unnecessary because women and girls received ordination and advancement just like men?
Even if we don't miss out on any blessings, saying so would come off in a much more genuine way if we also didn't miss out on the cultural benefits and respect that come with administration and authority that men enjoy while they're about the same Work women are.


I know that there are many women out there who genuinely don't want to be ordained and that's okay.  For most of my life, I didn't either.  It wasn't until I realized that ordination made sense to me that I said "Okay, I understand.  Yes, we should be ordained."  That wasn't even until after working in the temple.  I wish I had understood better during my time there that the day I was Endowed, I left with the same Priesthood potential as any man, short only the formality of laying on hands.  I held and exercised religious authority there to perform ordinances.  I wielded Priesthood, as do tens of thousands of women working in temples worldwide, and the Church hasn't collapsed; in fact, it relies on female Priesthood users to do proxy work for the dead.  The only difference is that it doesn't happen outside the temple in every day life to do the work of living.

Why?

I want to serve.  I want to work.  I want authority and power to be more effective in the Church and in living the Gospel and to be taken seriously.  This is my little agitation.  This is my Yea vote.  This is my siding with women and men to whom ordination for all worthy Saints makes sense.  I also want the Priesthood.

(Happy Mother Fast Day!)

Media literacy and modesty: How one could affect how we treat the other

It started with this post at FMH, which led to me watching through this YouTube Channel, and landing on this video.  Between 2:00 and about 3:10, she talks about the Japanese ad campaign used to promote the video game in question, and how it involved the public literally stripping an image of a naked woman bare of the little cards that covered her.  Classy...  It got my wheels turning.

There's been a lot of high profile controversy lately about modesty in Mormon culture and particularly at Church schools.  BYU-I and BYU both had incidents in recent months of young women being singled out for some manner of harassment over their state of dress being considered improper: first by boot cut jeans being confused for skinny jeans, and second by... I'm actually not certain.  I think these incidents are an embarrassment to our people, frankly.  Remember last year when a prominent player got taken off the BYU basketball team for breaking the Honor Code by sleeping with his girlfriend?  People thought it was weird, but many also respected that BYU was a campus that would hopefully be sexually safe for their children  Yeah, I don't think anyone would look at the pictures of the two girls and go "My daughter will have to dress more modestly than that to avoid sexual harassment?"  The mixed messages do not help our case in the eyes of outsiders.  Or insiders.

Sorry, I digress.  To be clear before I proceed, I don't have a problem with modesty in general.  I have a problem with the way it is discussed and taught as a woman-centric problem, and how that turns women into objects: sacred objects, but objects nonetheless because it has little to do with our wants or desires as human beings.


When we talk about modesty in the Church, the emphasis has less to do with respecting one's body and the power and holiness thereof, and more with the idea that men seeing women's skin means men will lust after women.  Rarely do we talk about women lusting after men, and modesty as an element of behavior or attitude toward God suffers from a functional silence.  Discussion of modesty is almost always about how much skin is or is not showing; the tightness of clothing might also be mentioned.  There is tremendous concern about virtue and modesty expressed from the top of the Church but these topics are taught and talked about in a manner that horribly disempowers both sexes.  Telling Mormon girls over and over to cover up does nothing about what Mormon boys see at school, around town, at events, and in the media.  I have heard numerous young men, from the age of 12 and up, say how much they appreciate it when girls at church dress modestly and how they can't respect girls out in the world in the same way, but I'm not aware of an addendum to the teaching that they should "give proper respect to women, girls, and children," excluding those  who bare their arms, midriff, back, or legs.

There was a video running around my Facebook a few months ago, "Should Christian women wear bikinis?" [here] in which the man (<--) presenting to an auditorium of teenage women (<--) cites and reads from a recent Princeton study on men's brain activity. He points out that when viewing men and women in various states of dress, images of a)women b)in bikinis c)with their heads/faces cropped out of the photo were not only the most memorable but also lit up the part of the brain linked to tool use, and turned off the part of the brain related to empathy and consideration.  He then goes on to argue that if girls want to be seen as full human beings, then they need to dress modestly, so men don't look at them like objects and in turn take them seriously.  While I do think there's some validity to that, I'd like to suggest that men have been carefully trained over the past several decades to see women this way.  "Woman=object/property/incubator" has been around for thousands of years, but the experience of "See Jane.  See Jane be sexy.  See sexy Jane sell you something.  Sell, Jane, sell." becoming absolutely pervasive is relatively recent, within the past couple generations.  It's insulting to men to claim that this is a biological absolute; that when they see a woman with less than 66% of her body covered, they see that body solely as a procreative and/or recreational tool for their sexual fulfillment, one with diminished humanity, feelings, or intelligence.

If the Church is concerned about keeping men's brains out of the gutter and making sure women are respected, why not put more effort into media literacy?  It's a good and necessary skill to have these days anyway, but wouldn't it help with wading through the mire of soft porn that constitutes many media offerings?  The media is largely what teaches boys that the most desirable experience in life is intimate (and often dominant) contact with a female body, or an experience like it, whether through cars, alcohol, cigarettes... or a cheeseburger.

I'm lookin' at you two.

So why aren't we teaching our young women and men to see through the smoke and mirrors?  Imagine the impact if, on a Sunday or a Mutual night when they walk into their meeting and after opening exercises, they hear something along the lines of,

"Our media literacy lesson today is about the use of objectification, infantilization, and sexism, and how it affects men and women's views of themselves and each other.  After that, we'll discuss how to resist those effects personally, and how to combat them publicly."

Ideally such lessons would taught in age-appropriate, engaging ways throughout the school years.  Even more ideally, parents would also be having similar lessons and being given resources based on the best current science available in order to integrate this knowledge at home.

This is as much a spiritual matter as secular.  This applies in a Church context.  I appreciate the relative level of hands-off-edness that has come along in recent years with telling the membership to exercise their judgment on what is and isn't appropriate media, rather that outright prohibitions.  However, there has been very little solid guidance on how to differentiate between healthy messages and morals, and destructive messages and morals.  By making it part of the curriculum we could educate our people and put them on the alert to police themselves and to advocate against the gross--yet widely accepted--misrepresentation and objectification of women that plagues our society far more than any excess of visible skin.  Such education empowers men and women alike not to simply be the victims of whatever runs across their field of vision.  It begins to teach them how to respect a woman and see her as a human being, rather than an object, no matter what she is or is not wearing because that is what they will need to do out in the world in their everyday lives, whether they go on a mission, get a job, go to school, or pursue any other endeavor that involves interesting with women.

Hopefully.  In theory.  They're still out in the world, inundated by these messages, but as with anything taught in the Church or at home, we hope that an ounce of prevention will equal a pound of cure.

Thanks to Katie for her glorious outdoor BF pic, and Jhavia for the fabulous belly dancer.  Please feel free to download and share this image.

Awake and Arise update

So... nobody entered the contest!  No one!  It's kind of funny, actually.  Oh well, moving on with life.

So, the next step is making my own edits and transcription, followed by practice and recording.  I'm not sure how this is going to go, but let me know if you're interested in volunteering for it!  Whether it'll just be audio (almost certainly, to start) or video eventually(?) I haven't fully decided yet.  I guess I'll start with audio and go from there.

"Awake and Arise": a feminist anthem--Super Update!

Holy crap!  My communal music project got mentioned today on Exponent!! *gasp!* I had a total geek out moment when Heather told me.  The post overall is really great and interesting (so go read it!) and I'm just thrilled to have this project mentioned. :D

Submissions are now open until Monday, October 31st with a decision made by Monday, November 7th.  Please send them to likeuntoeve(at)gmail(dot)com!

Also: This is my 50th published post!! WOO!