Blog Tag: #hearLDSwomen gaslighted
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#hearLDSwomen: My Bishop Ecclesiastically Abused Me, and My Stake President Refused...
Name Withheld
A year and a half ago, my husband and I were called in to meet with our bishop. I had been released from my calling a few months before and was excited to finally be given a new calling. Instead, he started asking questions about my testimony and any associations I might have with “apostates.” I was utterly confused and gave every assurance of my loyalty to the Church, but he proceeded to pull out a “revelation” he had written down that he said he received from God about me six months earlier while he was...
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#hearLDSwomen: When President Nelson Blew Off the Reporter’s Question About Women...
After President Nelson became prophet, he was asked at a Q and A Press Conference, "what about the women?" he said, "we love them." He didn't answer the question. Instead, he and President Eyring talked about how their wives raised wonderful sons who later became bishops. So basically, it's our job to raise boys to be lifted up in status. I don't think so.
- Sarah Bridges.
AND he publicly reduced the Cornell-award-winning journalist who asked it (the brilliant Peggy Fletcher Stack) to her "proper role" as daughter and mother of "good missionaries" and then FORGOT HER QUESTION because it was...
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#hearLDSwomen: When I Asked a General Authority About the Temple Changes,...
I had a general authority (70) come to my Young Single Adult ward just this past February. I was the Relief Society president in my ward and was invited to the stake leadership training.
My husband (then fiance) and I had some really strong, pending questions about the recent changes for women and the temple. I thought that maybe this GA could give me some insight. I approached this Elder after the leadership training and asked, making sure I was kind and respectful in my tone: “Do you know why the changes were made? Was it because of revelation or...
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#hearLDSwomen: As Stake RS President, I Was Reprimanded by My Stake...
My grandmother wrote a manuscript for a book about Emma Smith decades before any of the more recent, honest biographies while she was Associate Editor of the Relief Society Magazine. She was told that if she published it she would lose her job and be excommunicated. She needed her job, so she handed over the manuscript, and for years it was hidden away in the Church Archives, with no one allowed to see it. It was finally moved to BYU Special Collections, and she'd donated her notes to U of U, so the information has since been used in...
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#hearLDSwomen: My Bishopric Didn’t Call the Person I Requested to Fill...
As ward music chairman, I submitted a name for choir director. It took them ten months (ten months!) to call her, and the first counselor was really lukewarm about my pick. I told him the names of 5 other people who would be good, but they all had big callings. I invited him to make other suggestions, but said I felt confident this sister would do a good job. While waiting for her to be called, I worked with the YW president and the bishopric to start having the YW lead the music in sacrament meeting since our choristers...
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#hearLDSwomen: I Asked to Be Released and My Branch President Verbally...
When I was 21 I wanted to serve a mission. I had a timeline for when I was hoping to get a mission call because my parents lived in Russia at the time but were taking a temple trip to Spain several months after I started the process of putting my papers in. I had some medical issues so I knew it would take longer to get all the needed paperwork and that it might take longer to get my actual call. I met with my stake president for the first time coming straight from class and was not...
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#hearLDSwomen: The Letter I Wrote to My Area Authority About My...
I had a number of problems with a previous bishop. I had gone to the stake president multiple times and was ignored. It finally got to the point where I wrote a letter to our area authorities, which got send to the presidency of the seventy. I received a letter back from the presidency and it of course, got sent back down to the stake president. My husband was called into a meeting with the stake president and the bishop. When he got there he found out the meeting was about MY letter. I wasn’t invited to the meeting,...
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#hearLDSwomen: When I Was Relief Society President, My Bishop Would Never...
One that comes to mind is when I was called as a Relief Society activity committee person. Every year we asked for a budget and every year it took them months to get back to us. We would submit our budget with $5 per attendee and it would be rejected. Everything we tried we got denied for and was told spend as little as possible. The Young Men would get to do a lot of fun things and we were expected to spend nothing on planning activities for women. Once they told us that we weren't allowed to buy...
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#hearLDSwomen: I Was Yelled at By My Bishopric and Told My...
One of my ward callings was doing the Sunday bulletin. I wasn't allowed a key to the library to copy it, so every Sunday morning I had to interrupt PEC meeting to get a key from a member of the bishopric.
One Sunday I walked in to hear them congratulating themselves over the fact that a deacon in the ward had made his entire family late to Sacrament Meeting - and miss the sacrament - because he needed a white shirt. I happened to know the family and knew that they had picked him up from a friend's house and...
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#hearLDSwomen: I Was Released From My Calling Against My Will
A few months ago, my friend asked me to sub her Gospel Doctrine class. I did, and the lesson went really well. After class, the Sunday School president cornered me and said he hadn’t been there, but four people had already told him what a great job I’d done, and would I consider making this a full-time gig? To my surprise, I found I really wanted to teach. I'd been thinking about taking a step back from church, but I thought maybe this was God's way of telling me I should stick around. I said yes, that teaching once...
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Exponent II provides Mormon feminist forums for women and gender minorities across the Mormon spectrum to share their diverse life experiences in an atmosphere of trust and acceptance. Through these exchanges, we strive to create a community to better understand and support each other.
Exponent II was founded in 1974 by a group of Mormon women in Cambridge, Massachusetts. These women were inspired by the original periodical, “The Woman’s Exponent,” to create a forum “posed on the dual platforms of Mormonism and Feminism.”
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