Zelophehad's Daughters

Our blog is a little slow lately, and I’m feeling a little bad about that, and like I should do something about it. I have a number of post drafts in-progress, but none that are currently interesting enough to me to be worth the energy to finish them. So I thought I would approach our lovely readers. Are there any subjects that you’ve always wanted to discuss? Anything you wish we had a post on? Anything that’s currently on your mind that you wish there was a current post about? I’m taking requests. I won’t guarantee anything (since that’s practically a guarantee that I won’t manage to do it), but if you want to see a post on a particular subject and I can come up with something quasi-intelligent to say on the matter, I’ll try to do it. So, fire away. I aim to please.

Don’t miss Dane Laverty’s Mormon Stories interview on the genesis of
his feminist convictions and his hopes for his new site, Agitating
Faithfully.  It’s well worth a listen.

While I don’t hold with the idea that you can magically change yourself and your habits by setting goals as New Year’s rolls around, I still find it useful to occasionally stop and look at how I’m doing in various areas of my life, and try to figure out how I can improve. New Year’s and my birthday (which happens to fall in July) always work out to be good times to re-evaluate and try to change some things, and this year is no different.

I set some goals last year, like I do every year, and (as in most years) I achieved some and didn’t achieve others. I’m okay with that — my general philosophy is that I’ll never be perfect, but better is always good. Since I didn’t get as far as I wanted to on some of my goals last year, I decided I should try something different to help motivate me this year, and I had a brilliant idea — a spreadsheet. (I know, it doesn’t sound that brilliant, but really, it was. For me at least.) Read More

Judith Dushku and Eliza Dushku are attempting to raise $30,000 to build a healing center for former child soldiers in Uganda. For more information, including how you can donate (and be entered in the ultimate Feminist Mormon Housewives raffle), see fMhLisa’s post.

First: What happens on the bloggernacle, stays on the bloggernacle.

Second: The latest comment will be more controversial than the original post.

Third: The current post is more important to us than whatever we said last week.

Fourth: If the prophet leads the church astray, the bloggernacle will be sure to point it out. (Also, even if he doesn’t.)

Fifth: The commenter is not required to have any particular credentials or training in order to call the original poster to repentance.

Sixth: The commenter does not have to say “This is just my opinion” for it to be just her opinion.

Seventh: Whether you need to know it, or want to know it, or wish you’d never heard it, you can find someone on the bloggernacle vehemently defending it.

Eighth: The feminism of the bloggernacle  is not limited by men’s reasoning.

Ninth: The bloggernacle  can start flame wars on any matter – temporal, spiritual, ontological, ecumenical, grammatical, fiscal, or edible.

Tenth: The blogger may be involved in your local congregation. (Little do you know!)

Eleventh: The two groups who have the most difficulty following the bloggernacle  are the proud who are Correlated and the proud who still have dial-up.

Twelfth: The bloggernacle will not be popular with the popular.

Thirteenth: The bloggernacle and its blogs make up the unwashed masses – the lowest quorum in the church.

Fourteenth: Threats will get you nowhere.

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post titled “Why I Don’t Want to Believe In Heavenly Mother.” Basically, I argued that our teachings about Heavenly Mother in their current form raise more feminist problems than solve them, and I concluded, “I sometimes think I might rather deal with the difficulties of no Heavenly Mother at all, than with the challenges posed by the doctrine of a Heavenly Mother who is irrelevant to the Plan of Salvation, and who is either unable or unwilling to communicate with her children.”

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We are excited to announce that after several years of discussing whether we should add new bloggers but never getting around to it (in classic ZD fashion), we have recruited two new bloggers: Apame and Petra.

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In the past couple of years, I’ve presented at quite a few Mormon Studies kinds of conferences. Almost all of them have been recorded–some just with audio, but some with video as well. (I’ve found this far more common in the Mormon Studies conferences I’ve attended than ones in my academic field more generally, which is why I mention them specifically.) I can appreciate why this is done; there are a lot more people who are interested in hearing what happens at these events than are able to actually attend, and from that perspective, it’s great to have the material available. Read More