Last Day?
Guest Post September 13, 2024 15 Comments
I thought about the lines from the opening song.
“Welcome, Welcome, Sabbath Morning”
That’s the last thing I felt.
“Now we rest from every care”
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Women should be in places where decisions are made. Women have been left out of too many equations for too long. Sometimes I say I’m a radical feminist because I want the people around me to think about it and maybe feel uncomfortable.
Top male church leaders frequently assure Latter-day Saint women we are loved and respected by the men in our church. But is simply saying that enough, if women are never given a permanent seat at the table with them? This is called benevolent sexism, and both men and women in the church have been socialized to believe that it is the highest form of honor a woman could ask for - but it's not.
Reading Fifty Years of Exponent II, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be in a state of wonderment. You. Will. Feel. Rich and Sundahl give a very approachable yet detailed history of how the women in Boston started the then-newspaper and its subsequent successes and challenges to the present day. The book includes a compilation of 103 newspaper, magazine, or blog entries paired with introductions from each editor’s era.
Blogger Heidi Toth was prepared for some light TV and maybe heavy conversations when she sat down with friends to watch "The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives." She wasn't prepared for how undercurrents of the show reflected her own deconstructing experience back to her.
Rather than airing grievances that these women used a title that the church disowned, I think the kinder, wiser action is to recognize the complexity and diverse ways that women cope with objectification, the church’s history of polygamy, and the current threat eternal polygamy poses for the modern LDS woman and her felt sense of safety in her marriage.
Top Mormon male priesthood leaders in the 1800s led very sexually promiscuous lives. We’ve always called it polygamy and said it was commanded by a loving Heavenly Father, but I don’t believe that. Men who were already married with children continued to take more and more women and girls as additional sexual partners under the claim that God had told them (or their prophet) that they were free to do so. Women were rewards given to men for their obedience and loyalty to the church.
What do you do when family members or friends don't feel safe in the church?
