Y’know, I don’t want to be all about criticizing the CoJCoL-dS. I’d like to have some balance, like this post outlining positive things about Mormonism — because there are plenty of them. But I accidentally followed a link on this Mormon feminist post leading to a conference talk that made my jaw drop.

I somehow never heard about this talk — perhaps because I’m part of the class that’s too (spiritual? flighty? pedestal-bound? lactilicious?) to hear important leadership messages like this one:

Young women should not feel that they have a duty comparable to that of young men. Some of them will very much wish to go. If so, they should counsel with their bishop as well as their parents. If the idea persists, the bishop will know what to do.

I say what has been said before, that missionary work is essentially a priesthood responsibility. As such, our young men must carry the major burden. This is their responsibility and their obligation.

We do not ask the young women to consider a mission as an essential part of their life’s program. Over a period of many years, we have held the age level higher for them in an effort to keep the number going relatively small. Again to the sisters I say that you will be as highly respected, you will be considered as being as much in the line of duty, your efforts will be as acceptable to the Lord and to the Church whether you go on a mission or do not go on a mission.

We constantly receive letters from young women asking why the age for sister missionaries is not the same as it is for elders. We simply give them the reasons. We know that they are disappointed. We know that many have set their hearts on missions. We know that many of them wish this experience before they marry and go forward with their adult lives. I certainly do not wish to say or imply that their services are not wanted. I simply say that a mission is not necessary as a part of their lives.

Now, that may appear to be something of a strange thing to say in priesthood meeting. I say it here because I do not know where else to say it. The bishops and stake presidents of the Church have now heard it. And they must be the ones who make the judgment in this matter.

A Dec 2011 APA study is making its way through the news suggesting that mothers who work part-time are happier and healthier than stay-at-homes and full-time mothers, and they make good parents.  A good summary of the study can be found here.  Regarding the “mommy wars” or the debate in white feminist circles between working mothers and stay-at-homes, a simple middle ground seems to be part-time work.  (The reason I say “white” is because in many communities of color, not working full-time is not an option for economic reasons.)

One of the researchers of the study, Cheryl Buehler, notes that:

• A mother’s economic role is central to family life, and it supports her well-being and her parenting,
• Work offers mothers real important opportunities and resources to minimize social isolation and enrich their social development and well-being,
• It gives mothers tools, ideas, and strategies when raising a child.

I think we’re seeing how, in this economic recession and growing atmosphere of inequality, a “mother’s economic role” often means “the fact that a mother needs to work so that ends can be met.”

A policy hope is that from research like the APA’s, companies will start to offer more part time and flexible work arrangements, and also think about benefit packages for part-timers, since more part-time work benefits the economy, families and individuals.

I’m not going to mince words:  Mormonism’s “Proclamation on the Family” is classist.  It begins with an idealistic premise that certain “roles” are meant for certain genders, when it’s obvious for many families that a certain amount of income is required to meet those roles.

I’m slightly annoyed by people who are against pornography because of its offense to women, but also think female ordination is out of the question.

Specifically, on LDS forums, Mormon men sometimes rant about not watching pornography in respect of their wife who takes care of “the home.”  In my home, both of us are male, and we both consume pornography from time to time.  I’m not against people being against their partner consuming pornography, but I often wonder how frequently the pornography issue gets blamed for other actual “evils.”  For example, if pornography gets in the way of me and my partner’s relationship, when we actually sit down and talk about it, we pretty much agree that sexually we’re okay and want to give the other person freedom to explore fantasy, so the conversation often quickly redirects to the real non-fantastical problems:  whether housework is not being divided equally, or if there’s some shared financial burden.  In LDS relationships, the pornography basically disrupts the roles of “man does this,” “woman does this,” where the man isn’t respecting the woman’s “womanhood.”

Outside the Church, there are plenty of women consumers of the erotic industry — think of today’s romance novels or all the women who consume gay male pornography.  I can’t help but think that the Mormon abhorrence for pornography is wrapped up in the Mormon maintenance of patriarchy, a culture in which men are thought to be naturally lewd creatures tamed by virtuous women — even though for some reason the lewd creatures still are the ones who get to lead the Church.

The arguments against pornography for feminist reasons have to do with explicit monetary manipulation of young women and men.  This is still a huge problem in America and abroad.  But for a lot of women and men, sex work is a choice they make that should be respected.  If you’re arguing against an image for its exploitation of a woman (or man), and the woman (or man) in question says, “Um, I don’t feel exploited,” doesn’t that point to a kind of patriarchal guilt in the viewer, or if you’re a woman, a kind of blindness to one’s own being oppressed?

(PS:  I was curious what would happen if I Googled the two concepts together:  pornography and female ordination.  The search brings up how, a few years ago, the Catholic Church inadvertently categorized female ordination as a crime on par with child sex abuse and/or the consumption of child pornography when it added “pedophilic acts” to its list of offenses.  Of course, that official stance angered a lot of people. The juxtaposition of female ordination with pedophilia is telling.  In certain patriarchal ecclesiastical circles, women’s bodies are infantilized.  A young woman’s body needs to be protected so that she will become a mother and a wife.  She is not allowed to grow up to be sexy, because this is “dirty,” and she’s not allowed to be a church leader.)

This is not a review since the book hasn’t been released yet.  The book is intended to become a global phenomenon.

My mom sent me this link to the LDS Newsroom, figuring I’d be interested in Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society.  It’s a new book that’s intended to be for and about women — and as Julie Beck (the current Relief Society President) says in the video, “has global application” and would “appeal across cultures and languages.”  It’s about “the major themes in a woman’s life” and histories of women from the biblical era to the present.

Already my third-world feminism flags are up.

She talks about the book being about “the expectations Christ had for women.”  By this, does she mean as compared to men?  From every account of Jesus I’ve read, including my own interpretation, Jesus did not have separate expectations for the genders.  He treated women as individuals and he did not have separate expectations for them as women.

She says the book will hopefully break down stereotypes and myths about LDS women and she asserts emphatically that

…as people read and decipher this in the right spirit and understanding, they will learn that there is no second tier for the women of the Church.  That we are not an asterisk in this church, in our theology, or in the world.

Any thoughts on Julie Beck’s version of Mormon feminism?

Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run.

There are so many things wrong with Bryan Caplan’s reasoning outlined in this article. I think the first and obvious is that — even if extreme tiger/helicopter parenting is probably not a good idea — it doesn’t automatically follow that the opposite extreme is better.

But there’s another point that I’ve been trying to put my finger on ever since I read that article a couple of weeks ago. It’s that — by the same logic — staying home to raise your kids full time is a complete waste of time. And this recommendation is coming from Deseret News which is run by the same church that teaches that moms need to sacrifice their career ambitions to be at home for their kids. Thanks, Deseret News, for letting us know just how much you guys value women’s time and talents!

Since some of my very earliest blog posts I’ve been arguing that (contrary to popular myth) the feminist movement benefits SAHMs. When a woman has the option of supporting herself and her kids (if necessary), then she has more leverage in her relationship, even if she never takes that option. If a husband isn’t the one thing keeping your kids from starving, then bye-bye abusive husbands!

And then there’s the question of status and respect. Plenty of women (and even men) who have the talents and opportunity (or potential opportunity) to earn money and respect in the business and professional world choose nonetheless to stay home with their kids instead, demonstrating that homemaker is not just a role that one settles for but is a role that has value.

I recently read (via clobberblog) an interesting article giving some historical perspective on these same points. Read the whole thing, but let me just highlight a couple of quotes:

Contrary to myth, “The Feminine Mystique” and feminism did not represent the beginning of the decline of the stay-at-home mother, but a turning point that led to much stronger legal rights and “working conditions” for her.

Domestic violence rates have fallen sharply for all wives, employed or not. As late as 1980, approximately 30 percent of wives said their husbands did no housework at all. By 2000, only 16 percent of wives made that statement and almost one-third said their husbands did half of all housework, child care or both.

Most researchers agree that these changes were spurred by the entry of wives and mothers into the work force. But full-time homemakers have especially benefited from them.

From 1975 to 1998 men married to full-time homemakers increased their contributions to housework as much, proportionally, as men whose wives were employed.

Contrast this with the 1950′s, an era so often held up as an idyllic time for motherhood:

Typical of the invective against homemakers in the 1950s and 1960s was a 1957 best seller, “The Crack in the Picture Window,” which described suburban America as a “matriarchal society,” with the average husband “a woman-bossed, inadequate, money-terrified neuter” and the average wife a “nagging slob.”

Meanwhile, modern books are making it clearer and clearer that there’s no sharp dividing line between career women and stay-at-home-moms. Middle-class mothers these days (and fathers too!) typically sacrifice some career advancement for their kids and sacrifice some potential kid/family time for their careers. So, as I’ve argued in my series on women’s conflicting interests, the following is the wrong model:

There seemed to be a lot of posts (and exhibits) about feminism this past week. Topics included women’s bodies and what they choose to wear on them. Also, power dynamics between women and men, not to mention women’s speech, women’s invisibility, with a dash of discussion on race and transgender issues. A father wonders how he can be part of the feminist movement (hint: not this). Is it all somehow connected with all of the horror stories about Mothers’ Day? (Unless you didn’t go to Sacrament Meeting.)

It looks like the faithful are doing some “boundary maintenance” again. Huntsman described his Mormon membership a little too vaguely for some people’s tastes, leading other people to wonder why he can’t just be sorta Mormon. Y’know, like John Dehlin. Oh. Oh, yeah, this.

Next up, some insightful ideas and discussion topics! The prodigal son reinterpreted. Is religion “natural,” and — if so — what should we conclude about it? Does civility mean silence? What a disturbing parody. Let’s have more discussion of the fun doctrines! And answer me this: If the Book of Mormon is anti-Mormon dreck, is it better or worse than EFY and Thor?

Oh, and some folks are coming out!

What a wild week it’s been!! I hope you’re all having as much fun listening to the Book of Mormon soundtrack as I am, and that you’ll all tell us which is your favorite song!

Many Mormons understand their “orientation” to be to their spouse.  This is commendable, because it demonstrates dedication and fidelity.

However, a spouse for Latter-day Saints means “someone of the opposite gender.”  Homosexuality gets compartmentalized as an affliction that can lead to “selfishness” if not kept in check.

This selfishness is understood to “disorient” a person from their true “orientation”:  that of their potential or current spouse of the opposite gender.  Some gay Mormon men believe their affliction is a “blessing in disguise” because it teaches them to be humble.  Others begin to question the Church’s framing of homosexuality and of gender.

Because the selfishness has been gendered “male” (and selflessness gendered “female”), female homosexuality, in fact, threatens the Church’s patriarchal structure.  It is no coincidence that faiths that approve of same-sex marriage also ordain women.

When it comes to the reason why females don’t have the priesthood, one Mormon man, after asking his stake president, explained it this way:

The priesthood was given to men to help us learn how to do what to women comes naturally.  Everything we do with the priesthood is to help and serve other people—we can’t give ourselves blessings, we can’t seal ourselves to our spouses.  It is all about service to others!  So men were given the priesthood to help us become better people, to be more service oriented and less self oriented.  In other words—we were given the priesthood to help us raise ourselves up to the level where women are already at!

Of course, this logic fails on its face, because if women are “naturally” service-oriented, then they should have had the priesthood from the beginning.  Even if one believes the human experience on Earth is a classroom in which those who aren’t service-oriented (“men”) are the ones who most need to learn how to be (like “women”), this frankly results in a sexist pigeonholing of women as “selfless”—because of their ties to motherhood and so on.

When it comes to homosexuality, Mormon women are believed to be doing a better job at “naturally” keeping their “selfishness” in check (except those Mormon lesbians who leave the Church, who are thought of as acting like selfish men).  The lesbian Mormon in good standing with the Church might not even identify as lesbian or with her attractions, and might simply consider her orientation to be to her male spouse.

Thus, we hear about gay Mormon men who are “becoming humble,” but we rarely hear about gay Mormon women who are “already humble.”

Still, outside the Church, homosexuality is not framed as lending to selfishness, and more and more Mormons believe it doesn’t; I would think more and more Mormons are also beginning to question why there is no female ordination.  The two go hand-in-hand.

One thing I’ve been reading about recently is the split in the 1970s of white feminism from feminisms of color.  One of the main sources of the split comes from the topic of domestic servitude.  While white women wanted to get out of the home by the 1970s, the gendered division of labor for working-class homes, including many immigrant and households of color, did not quite exist.  Men of color often did not earn a family wage so that women and children needed to earn income; by the 1970s, feminists of color were very much interested in how to create more time for the home.   [A lot of what I'll say below will be quoted from Evelyn Nakano Glenn's 1992 essay, "From Servitude to Service Work:  Historical Continuities in the Racial Division of Paid Reproductive Labor."]

The truth, of course, is that the 1970s feminist split was decades, even centuries in the making, because white women and women of color have historically occupied different spaces in society.  The question of race, gender and domestic servitude is still extremely important today.  Go to any hotel in the Southwest, and you’ll find Latinas and/or Filipinas doing the domestic work.  Here in Seattle, you’ll often find African immigrants (men and women) in custodial jobs.  It’s not just a question of education.  Often migrants have high education levels, but they’ll be placed in these jobs anyway.  While whites [in Arizona] complain that “immigrants are taking our jobs; it’s not about race,” one must wonder why there is such a racial hierarchy in terms of  the jobs  that “no one wants to do.”

These jobs that no one wants to do — taking care of the elderly, cooking, cleaning, etc — have disproportionately been worked by people of color, particularly women.  Marxist feminists use a term to describe these tasks:  social reproduction — which includes the array of everyday tasks required to maintain a society on a daily and intergenerational basis.  After the industrial revolution, many of these tasks have been institutionalized to the extent that, as a society, we’ve “forgotten” how to do things that we normally would have done for ourselves.  (For example, how many of us have ever winnowed rice, the necessary process of removing the grain from its husk?  More appropriately, how many of us “don’t know how” to cook?)

In her book Domesticity and Dirt, Phyllis Palmer talks about how the use of domestic servants allowed white women to resolve contradictions in the middle-class domestic code of mid-century.  Domesticity required creating a warm, clean and attractive home for the husband and children, which required physical labor and meant contending with dirt.  However,  the virtuous woman was defined in spiritual terms, refinement and the denial of her physical body, distanced from dirt.  By the 1930s, the modern wife needed also to be attractive and intelligent to be a good companion (and not just “property”).  If the heavy parts of household work could be transferred to paid help, the white housewife could distance herself from the dirty parts of domesticity to focus on herself — eventually on her own freedom.

The white woman was blinded to her own oppression by the privilege afforded to her from being in a relationship with a white man.  Women of color were very conscious of this power structure.  Consider this powerful quote from Nancy White, a black servant:

My mother used to say that the black woman is the white man’s mule and the white woman is his dog.  Now, she said that to say this:  we do the heavy work and get beat whether we do it well or not.  But the white woman is closer to the master and he pats them on the head and lets them sleep in the house, but he ain’ gon’ treat neither one like he was dealing with a person.  Now, if I was to tell a white woman that, the first thing she would do is to call you a nigger and then she’d be real nice to her husband so he would come out here and beat you for telling his wife the truth.

Rather than challenge the inequity in the relationship with their husband, white women would push the the burden onto women with even less power.  They did this in part by denying the domestic workers’ womanhood, by ignoring the fact that women of color had family lives, too.  The 1970s split between white feminism and feminisms of color was merely an extension of this nonrecognition of other female lives.

Now how does the Mormon woman fit into this story?  This is where I need your help to fill in the blanks.  We know that the 1970s saw a feminist split not just between white women and women of color, but also between progressive and conservative [white] women.  Early Mormons were against slavery, but were they against having domestic servants in the twentieth century?  Glenn’s essay tells the history of domestic servitude in terms of white/black relations of the South, the white/Latino relations of the Southwest, and the white/Asian relations of Northern California and Hawaii.  But where does Utah fit in?  Is Utah an extension of the Southwest, in which Mormon families would have had Chicana servants, or has the Mormon woman been expected to do all the dirty work, too?  The point of these questions is to get at the extent to which the woman of color has had to and continues to shoulder the burden of idealized Mormon middle-class gender “symmetry.”

My mother once told me that Mormons “accept” a lower standard of living to maintain the ideal of having someone at home to raise the children.  But I argued with her that if it is not possible for someone to be at home (and that both parents must work), then you’re looking at a false ideal — unless we live in a society in which every man has a middle-class job.  The truth is, Mormon women work outside the home as much as other American women, which I take to mean that (A) 1970s feminism had more of an effect on Mormon culture than Mormons would care to admit and/or (B) the theology centralizes the middle-class [white] family, and not all Mormons are [white and] middle-class.

In any event, what Marxist feminists have shown is that particular kinds of labor have been considered “feminine,” but that middle-class femininity did not have space for  dirty labor.  Glenn ends her essay by showing how the system in hospitals historically developed along the same lines as the white household:  white men at the top (physicians), white women in the middle (nurses), and women of color at the bottom (nurse’s aides).  Nurses argued with nurse’s aides concerning questions of “skilledness” and therefore pay.  Although the nurse’s aide had a great deal of insight and dealt a lot more with direct care, she got paid much less and her labor was deemed “unskilled.”  Mothers and caretakers are also deemed “unskilled” and paid often nothing.  Much of the problem of American society is that certain time-consuming, highly skilled, necessary and exhaustive labors are deemed feminine, unskilled and therefore lesser.  Other industrial societies do it differently by giving government stipends and providing money for free childcare (although in France, for example, there’s still the question of race in terms of who is actually doing the labor of childcare and for whom and why:  a fear of racial suicide so the French government is interested in the production of white babies).  Mormon society seems to appreciate these labors, but maintains the labors as feminine and “essentially” so.

When Republicans read the United States Constitution in the House of Representatives, they censored the embarrassing passages of the document, you know, the part about slavery and African American being 2/3s people in Article I, Section 2.

I am glad that people are ashamed of slavery. On the downside, the efforts to depict the Constitution as perfect strike me as idolatrous.

I admire the founding fathers because they were human beings with warts and flaws that achieved an extraordinary feat.

Covering up their errors is not doing them a favor. More importantly, the United States Constitution is not the tower of Babel. It was not supposed to reach into heaven but it was a pragmatic compromise to address existential challenges of the American people.

Therefore, the Constitution requires permanent adaptation to a changing environment and the changing needs of the American people. Furthermore, the Constitution can also be improved. It was not meant to be perfect and it is not perfect.

The genius of the founding fathers was, in part, that for all their passion, principles, and insights, they could compromise with each to address the problems of the day.

Slavery was part of that compromise. It was the price for consensus. As a result, millions of Americans suffered exploitation, torture, and deprivation. 500,000 Americans had to perish during the Civil War before slavery was formally terminated.

It’s disrespectful to those who suffered to pretend that their fate and their lives were not codified in the United States Constitution.

Tragedy is as much part of the United States Constitution as glory. Acknowledging that not only celebrates the inclusion of those who were once left out, women and African Americans, but it also renders those who opposed inclusion more humane because it helps us to appreciate their misguided but sincere notion of virtue.

This week’s question: (courtesy of the new LDS Wave) Is Mormon Feminism an oxymoron? (Are they real Mormons?) Molly offers a list of small changes that would be a good starting point. Oh, and the ERA is back. In other questions about women’s roles, some SAHMs are feeling angsty about the cushiness of their role, while others aren’t thrilled about the commodification of personal growth.

Some folks of Outer Blogness have been contemplating feelings and reasoning, the human brain, and their own thoughts. Here are some things that move us: familiar music, phrases we’ve heard a few times too often, fear and relief, bonding with friends; growing up and moving on. A “traditional” marriage goes sour while a non-traditional (or perhaps hyper-traditional???) family claims marital bliss.

We also have some theological points to contemplate: Tired Road Warrior claims that “Robert Kirby is by far and away the best theologian that the LDS Church has. His insights are always thought-provoking and his columns are much more interesting than the correlated Sunday School lessons” — see if you agree. On the other side of the coin, the Bloggernacle Back Burner claims that Meridian Magazine just sold their soul. Both Mormons and early Christians have questions about how later editors treat older texts. (And what’s up with those Democrats and Republicans?)

Plenty of food for thought for the week!