Priesthood, Patriarchy, Power, and the Penis

I am reposting this re-edited article from June 2013 in response to the recent release of the church’s essay on Women and the Priesthood.

The Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites: ‘A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period…If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding.”  Leviticus 12.

In Mormonism our great social dividing line is our biological sex .  How the church will ever deal officially with intersex I have no notion as yet but needless to say in the world of  Mormonism’s  strict binaries  our biological sex means everything.   So I’d like to discuss biological sex because I’ve long thought that it must be our genitals that determine our place in the church.   There can be no other explanation.

In Mormonism the penis  is powerful.  The vagina is not.

From beneath those dark, conservative polyester and wool suits, the Mormon penis is regal and authoritative – a mighty scepter that exceeds  all of my spiritual capacities,  and  renders me institutionally subject.  In Mormon discourse my anatomical fate at conception is the very thing that has and will govern my place through time and eternity.

And the opposite is true.  In  the church  my spiritual capacities and sphere of influence is  rendered ‘less than’ by virtue of my vagina.  I may not call on the powers of heaven and provide spiritual leadership – because of my vagina, I may not process tithing – because of my vagina;  I will never know the liberation of not having to ask for permission, of not being subject to some mechanism of patriarchal approval, simply because I don’t have a penis.   This male organ, necessary for copulation and urinary excretion is apparently necessary also for ecclesiastical governance, pastoral care of the church, and the administration of the holy rites of worship.

Perhaps, I’m wrong and unfairly point the finger at the male organ as the receptacle of religious power when its not the  penis that sets men apart  but the attendant hormonal function that affirms the right of male leadership.   Could it be that it is testosterone that heightens spiritual capacities? Perhaps it is the masculinization of the brain resulting in increased activity in the left hemisphere that causes God to assign a level of spiritual authority to males?

Or is it indeed that there is some biblical justification for the masculine right to perform religious rites , and all of this priestly exclusiveness does indeed come down to one scripture.

 He that is wounded in the stones (testicles), or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD.  Deuteronomy 23:1

But of course, if we are going to go down the Sola Scriptura track, then we need to invite all of the other prohibitions and domestic prescriptions that gave rise to the cultural traditions of ancient Levant living.  I feel pretty sure that the threat of sudden death for ‘spilling ones seed on the ground’ instead of impregnating one’s brother’s widow might raise some protest about being too biblically literal.

Whatever the case, my sense is that, penises aside, the reluctance to renegotiate the place of women in the church spaces is quite simply about the maintenance of gendered power, and the protection and defence of patriarchal privilege.  So lets call it what it is shall we?  Misogyny.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of the penis.  I don’t have penis envy, I don’t wish all men emasculated, I’m perfectly content with a vagina.  I’ve been the happy recipient of all of the matrimonial delights that a well-used penis can bestow.  But I have to draw the line somewhere.  If supreme spiritual power is, and has been wielded by virtue of the penis then its time for an explanatory revelation – from a woman would be my preference.

Those painful and confounding gendered renderings that have me culturally subject in a patriarchal system, are in stark contrast to the searing vision I have of holiness and sanctification as something that stands apart from the sensitive issue of genitalia.

One’s use of ones genitalia has spiritual implications and the practice of restraint and governance over one’s personal members, I believe, has a divine origin.  But the notion that the possession of one genital form ipso facto becomes a justification for hogging the right of all ecclesiastical affairs is both absurd and incongruous and to my mind more a Western cultural legacy than the will of God.

Does this mean that I am in favour of woman’s ordination.  Of course it does.  But I’m inclined to believe that female ordination is merely a means to an end – the end being a religious organization whose offering to humanity heals rather than divides, elevates rather than subjugates, privileges scriptural exegesis over cultural conservatism,  restores the sex balance to its rightful and divine place, and more importantly is not deathly afraid of the extraordinary, glorious and frightening spiritual capacities of its women.

The essays do little other than establish the fact that the church had a chance to be different, to grow a doctrine that spiritually empowered and authorized women to lead.  But it didn’t.  As with their evolving historical response to race differences the church leaders confounded the full spiritual expression of a population of people because it made more political sense than it made spiritual sense.   And now the LDS church is losing women and men who see gender inequality as  a social problem that is too unsafe and potentially damaging  for their daughters.  Today our church appears backward in comparison with many other  religious  traditions who acknowledge how ridiculously arbitrary it is to place limitations on any of God’s children by simple virtue of what appeared between their legs in utero.