I can’t believe I’m wading into the abortion debate, but Steve’s and Jay‘s recent posts on the topic at BCC and Elder Nelson’s October Ensign article (not yet available online) have inspired me to tackle an anti-abortion argument that’s long bothered me. In this post I’ll confine my comments to a particular story I’ve seen in arguments against abortion. (And, let there be no mistake, the omnipotent if site-specific Bouncer will also confine your comments to that issue. If you want to discuss the narrative and implicit arguments I examine here, to favor or oppose or express your utter indifference to them, I will read with great interest. If you want to discuss various ways we value life based on assessments of intelligence, beauty, or other such factors, I will read with equally great interest. But please refrain from rehashing familiar pro-life and/or pro-choice arguments, knocking down straw or actual men and women, and making blanket generalizations about pro-lifers and/or pro-choicers, and engaging in the abortion or culture wars more generally. If this thread disintegrates into yet another debate over the legalities of abortion, I–ahem, that is to say, of course, the Bouncer–will shut it down.) Read More
Cruelty to Boys
For most of my life I’ve found Mormon-girl and Mormon-woman culture infuriating and alienating. I despise passive-aggressive triangulation and insincere niceness and gossipy backstabbing, in others and especially in myself. I’m all for greater assertiveness and directness and less apology for one’s existence and neurotic hand-wringing over one’s perceived sins, chief among them the sin for which no woman can be forgiven in this life or in the life to come, failure to be nice. Read More
How Do I Change Who I Am for Myself?
When your life is tightly entwined with the lives of others, you adjust who you are to meet their needs and expectations. For example, spouses make small, daily adjustments so that they don’t push their partners’ buttons. Parents postpone their desires in order to tend to those of their children. When not taken to an extreme, this is a good thing.
The past couple years, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about to what extent we should bend who we are to make our relationships with others work. While I still have a lot of unanswered questions about the outer limits of sacrifice, I’ve learned to embrace the ways that relationships can refine us and transform us into better versions of ourselves. But now my life circumstances have changed, and because I want to continue a process of transformation, now I’m wondering: how do I change who I am for myself? Read More
Documenting Changing Church Rhetoric on Gender Roles
My impression is that Church rhetoric defines women by their roles more often than it does men. Women are wives and mothers. Even if they aren’t technically mothers, women are mothers, because that’s just who they are. Men, on the other hand, sure we’re admonished to be good husbands and fathers, but those roles are discussed as being much less central to who we are. I would be shocked, for example, if someone gave a talk titled “Are We Not All Fathers?” in General Conference.
When this difference in the centrality of women’s and men’s gender roles is discussed, one hope that is often held out is that the Church is changing. Women are coming to be defined less by their roles and more as people of worth even if they don’t take on those roles, and men are being reminded more often that our roles as husband and father should be central to our lives.
It occurred to me recently that I could easily test for whether such a change is actually occurring by looking at how often different words are used in articles archived at LDS.org. Read More
The Inspired Call: Overstating the Case?
A couple of months ago, I received a new calling. I’d sufficiently recovered from certain previous callings to feel that I could yet again give church a chance and make my availability known. In many respects, I was extremely fortunate in the way that process played out. A woman I know and like had recently been called as RS president, and one Sunday I happened upon her in the foyer and explained both my willingness to serve and the limitations of my current situation. Because of circumstances involving my own health and my husband’s inactivity, I can’t fulfill a Primary or weekly teaching calling right now and probably won’t be able to for the next couple of years. So I suggested that a Relief Society committee might be appropriate. Read More
Bad Kids
Awhile ago, during one of my long stints in nursery, a new couple was called to serve with me in the older children’s room, and I watched a painful dynamic gradually unfold between the wife and one of the children in the class. Read More
On Asking to Be Released
I know we’ve talked about this subject before, but since I’m currently debating with myself over it, I decided to bring it up again and let the rest of you debate with me.
I’m currently the leader of the wolf den in cub scouts (with another woman) and the teacher of the 6-7yo primary class (with my husband). I hate it. I’ve been doing them both about 9 months, and I’ve hated them pretty much the whole time. I guess the primary class was okay for two or three weeks, but that’s about it. I knew I wouldn’t like the callings when I accepted them, but I’m a big believer in accepting any and all callings, so I did. Read More
Crises of Faith
A topic that came up several times at Sunstone this year, and generated some thought-provoking discussion, was that of crises of faith. This got me thinking about the kind of standard “crisis of faith” narrative. Such a crisis might be set off by any number of things–disturbing information about Church history, prayers that remain unanswered or blessings that go unfulfilled, troubling experiences in sacred spaces, negative encounters with Church leaders, and so forth. Whatever the catalyst, it causes a person to re-evaluate and question her or his previous beliefs. She or he wrestles with these demons until finally reaching a resolution of some kind. Some find a way to stay in the Church as believers; others find a way to stay in the Church despite their doubts; others opt to leave altogether. Read More
How Has the Bloggernacle Changed Your Experience of Church?
Since a number of my siblings and co-bloggers are involved in more exciting activities than I am (going on vacations, attending Sunstone without me!) or more exhausting activities than I am (packing and moving in the blistering heat), I’ll take it upon myself to keep the blog afloat. Read More
Self-Motivation
Like all of my family, and most people I know, I get easily addicted to computer games (currently it’s various word games on facebook, but it changes). I can also get very into TV shows, a few video games, and all sorts of books. All of this combines, at times, to make me incredibly unproductive. And then I have to think of creative ways to get myself to do something other than play stupid computer games. I’m kind of like a little kid that way. Here are some of the things I do (or have done): Read More
Know Your Naccle I: Match the Comment to the Commenter
By our reckoning, it’s time for a well-earned break from aggregator politics, Proposition 8, and the finer points of topless-male-missionary-calendar excommunication. Following are nine excerpts from posts and comments–some quite recent, some positively antique–made by nine well-known denizens of the Bloggernacle. Can you identify the blogger who said each of the following? (Hint: each blogger listed is represented by exactly one comment. That is, no blogger on the list appears more–or less–than once.) Read More
Abraham and Milgram
(Disclaimer: I’m not really attempting in this post to give a plausible read of Genesis 22, as I realize that my speculations about Abraham have little basis in the scriptural text. Rather, I’m hoping to use the story as a way of raising general questions about the potential consequences of obedience vs. integrity situations. And, of course, what’s the fun of blogging if not to engage in a bit of wild speculation?)
In the 1960s, social psychologist Stanley Milgram did a study on obedience that has since become legendary. Participants were told to administer electric shocks to people, ostensibly as part of an experiment on learning. What was fascinating–and disturbing–was how willing participants were to continue inflicting higher and higher levels of shocks, despite cries of acute distress from those apparently receiving them (though this was of course faked; the “learners” were confederates in the study). The participants expressed discomfort, but ordered by the experimenter to continue, the majority of them did so–65 percent went up to the highest setting of 450 volts.
Venting (about medical issues)
This blog isn’t usually about kids or medical issues, but sometimes we all need a chance to vent. And since I know the posters/readers here deal with a whole slew of medical issues, I figure someone besides me probably needs a place to vent about them.
I’ll start. Read More
Women and the Priesthood, Fifteen Years Later
Maxine Hanks’s 1992 anthology Women and Authority includes a chapter by D. Michael Quinn, provocatively entitled “Mormon Women Have Had the Priesthood Since 1843.” Quinn makes it clear that he’s not arguing simply for what I’ll here call “soft” claims about women’s priesthood status, for example, that women hold the priesthood only “through temple marriage or through the second anointing” (368). On the contrary, he’s arguing a “harder” claim, that women actually held–and therefore, by the successive conferral of authority that authenticates Mormon ordinances, continue to hold–the Melchizedek priesthood completely independent of marriage, on the basis of temple endowment alone. Read More
‘Nacle Numbers: Notes
In this (probably last) installment of ‘Nacle Numbers, I’ll try to answer a few more questions about the 11 blogs in my sample. (If you haven’t read previous installments, Part 1 describes the sample, Part 2 discusses blogs, Part 3, bloggers, and Part 4, commenters.)
How do posts differ by gender? (ECS asked this question.)
Demoted to Mrs.
Marriage is at once the most public and the most private of institutions. On the private side, although we can both be incredibly stubborn, my husband has never treated me with the slightest hint of condescension or domineering. Even in the early days of our marriage when he was still a believer, it would never have so much as crossed his mind to pull priesthood rank, which is of course one of the reasons I married him. But as ECS’s excellent post about the cultural blind spots in which women reside recently reminded me, whatever private arrangements husband and wife make, for women, marriage can mean social invisibility. Read More
Renaming the “Priesthood Ban”
Today, by way of celebrating thirty years since the lifting of what’s commonly referred to as the “priesthood ban,” I wonder whether we can come up with a phrase that’s equally economical but more descriptive. To my knowledge, the “priesthood ban” comprised the following policies: Read More
Stuffed Animals and the Transmigration of Souls
I have a small stuffed bear by the name of Juliana (named after the dashing Dr. Julian Bashir of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). I got her as a birthday present about ten years ago, and she quickly developed a unique personality. She has a somewhat sad look to her, which has led to much speculation in my family about her possible involvement in a life of crime. It’s a well-known fact among my siblings that Juliana is very interested in money. But does she belong behind bars? When I was studying at a Catholic university a couple of years ago, I maintained that whatever her previous history might have involved, Juliana had now reformed and was planning to become a nun. But this assertion was met with serious skepticism by certain of my sisters. Juliana’s true character remains a source of much dispute. Read More
The Evils of Email
May has been a month of email trauma. Read More
Tracting: Is It Worth Doing?
We tracted a lot in my mission. It was the activity we defaulted to if we had nothing else to do, and we frequently had nothing else to do. But nobody I ever met through tracting was ever baptized. I’m sure this is at least partly a reflection on my (lack of) skill as a missionary. But I’ve also wondered if tracting is worth doing at all, even if it’s highly skilled missionaries doing it. Read More