Coercion: Stop it

One of my first posts at ZD was about what I called my “feminist awakening.”  I pinpointed it to a particular summer, the first of my graduate studies.  But, I don’t think it really explained the bigger picture of what really was happening.  That summer wasn’t the beginning of my discomfort with gender inequality, it was just the first time I named it.  And, it was the first time I really dealt with something I came to term “gender coercion.”  And by gender coercion, I mean:

The forcing of another party to act out gendered expectations in an involuntary manner (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, or some other form of pressure or force. Read More

LDS Undergraduate Women: “Major” Decisions

Being a woman in a male dominated major at a school with a large LDS population can be difficult.  Although many of the male students won’t treat women any differently, there are some who will act threatened by or uncomfortable with women in these programs.  It is not that uncommon for women to be told that they are “taking up the spot” of a potential breadwinner, or asked what in the world they are going to do with their major once they are a stay at home mom.  Generally, the stereotypes of women in male dominated fields is that they are career oriented and thus are not interested in having a family.  There is also an assumption that women in male dominated majors must be planning on using the major in a stereotypical female way by going into teaching or part-time work. Read More

Nacle Notebook 2011: 15 Posts I Loved

For the past few years, I’ve posted lists of some of the funniest comments I read on the bloggernacle in the previous year. One reason I do this is because I love to laugh. But another reason is that I hate to forget. The bloggernacle is full of all kinds of great writing on interesting topics and fascinating discussion (yes, I know, not always), but it’s also ephemeral. Today’s interesting post is a vague memory tomorrow, and will likely be forgotten by the end of the week.

So in my ongoing effort to promote remembering what is great about the bloggernacle, allow me to present a list of 15 posts from 2011 that I loved. (It was going to be 10, but I could only reduce my list so far.) With each post, I’ve included a quote that will, I hope, draw you in and lead you to want to go (re)read the whole thing. Other than the last one, which actually appeared first, the posts are listed in the order they were published.

Read More

Distal Effects of Missionary Age Changes

Kent Larsen at T&S has a great list of possible effects of the changes in minimum missionary ages that President Monson announced in Conference. Many of the effects discussed are straightforward and closely tied to missionary work (e.g. enrollment at BYU), but others are more weakly tied and more speculative (e.g., divorce rate). I want to push things out even father, and guess about other possible changes in the Church that are completely unrelated to missionary work, but that might be made more likely by the missionary age change. Read More

…More Stuff We Haven’t Posted

In the past, ZD has posted titles of unpublished drafts for your consideration and perusal. Currently there are a whopping 933 unpublished drafts in our queue. Here are the titles of a few:

  1. When Correlation Becomes Causation
  2. Niche Blogs
  3. What would a feminist temple ceremony look like?
  4. In Defense of Otterson
  5. Boundaries, Abundance, and the Tyranny of Sameness
  6. More on Modesty/Moron Modesty
  7. 5 Books that are Truer than the Book of Mormon
  8. Optimally (un)reasonable commandments Read More

The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin

. . . the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

You probably remember Princess Leia saying this to Governor Tarkin right before he started trying to impress her with the size of his battle station. But I’m not here to talk about battle station size or who might be compensating for what. Instead, I’m interested in Leia’s point about unintended consequences: sometimes pushing directly for some outcome can actually make that outcome less likely.

Read More