One of the primary purposes of a Mormon feminist forum is to provide a safe space for women to express their concerns about gender inequity. These are the kinds of opinions that are often silenced elsewhere, so airing uncomfortable feelings of pain and angst is important and vital work.
That said, sometimes we all need a to come up for air a bit and enjoy some lighter fare. To help you find something fun to read at the Exponent, we have added Mirth to the topics menu of our website. (That is the green menu right up at the top.) Within the Mirth section, you can find satires like Cruelest Month’s Neckties: Priesthood Attire or Lucifer’s Lust Pointer, amusing personal essays like Heather’s Father’s Day Cards: When You Don’t Care Enough to Send the Very Best, questionably informative pieces like my Meaningful Dialogue between Mormon Feminists and Trolls: A Glossary or Libby’s What You Missed At Enrichment — Emergency Preparedness Edition as well as posts about entertainment, such as Deborah’s Women on My Bookshelf and East River Lady’s reviews of “Selma” & “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry”.
We have also added Series to the green topics menu to help you find completed and ongoing series at the Exponent blog. Series are planned groups of posts written around a common theme. Some series are time-limited, taking place daily over the course of a week or two, such as the Mormons and Death series, which was the first series I participated in as a new Exponent permablogger. Others are recurring features that are posted weekly, monthly, or sporadically over the course of a longer length of time, such as From the Backlist, an ongoing series of posts sharing conversations between Exponent bloggers.
Another new feature on the main menu (that’s the black menu under the Exponent logo) is the new Archives section. You can find it under “Exponent II” in the black main menu. The Archives include issues of Exponent II magazine dating back to 1974, as well as the archives of the suffrage-era Women’s Exponent that inspired Exponent II.
On a trial basis, we are also trying out some other menus with changing content. The white menu at the bottom of your screen highlights tagged groups of posts particularly relevant to current events, such as Reaction to the New Exclusion Policy, or of seasonal interest, such as Women’s History Month. “Our Bloggers Recommend” is a menu where permabloggers can post links to important posts at the Exponent as well as links to posts, news articles and podcasts from all over the Internet. On a desktop computer, you can see the “Our Bloggers Recommend” menu on the far righthand side of your screen. On a phone, you can find it in the black main menu under “Blog” or by turning your phone to horizontal position and clicking on the blue arrows icon to view the sidebar.
