In Part II of our May conversation, Round Table members comment on what the mother-daughter conversations reveal about motherhood, and the ways in which their own experiences are both similar to and different from those of a generation ago. (20:00)
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The point that the girls make: “Even though she felt that the marriage was equal and didn’t feel any inequality, there were still consequences to the picture she presented. Similarly, LDS women who believe they are equal yet there are still consequences.” This is what is offensive to me about “feminism”—people who tell people that they are actually not equal, or shouldn’t feel satisfied, when they do.
The women participating in this discussion touch on a key point of the contention, or discomfort that arises between LDS women when the subject of Mormon feminism arises. Lisa points out that she was surprised that her mother felt that her marriage had been equal, while Lisa had felt that “it wasn’t what I would now call an equal marriage.” Another woman asked, “Ultimately, isn’t the feeling of being equal what matters most?” And someone answered, “Sometimes there are consequences, negative consequences of inequality regardless of whether or not you feel like, well, whether you can answer that question of, yes, . . . I still feel equal in my marriage. I still think that there is [sic] negative consequences of that inequality.” And then another woman took that point a step further, applying it to women in the church as a whole: “I think that if you ask most Mormon women are they equal within the church, they would say, ‘Oh, absolutely, I’m valued equally.’ While I would argue that, yes, I guess we are valued equally, but that’s different than having actual equality.”
You can see a disagreement here, among the participants, about whether a woman has the right to be her own ultimate authority on whether she is experiencing equality, both in her marriage and in the church. One participant seems to argue that it is how the woman feels that is most important, while others seem to propose that there may be an outside measure that, if the woman’s perceptions don’t jive with, should carry more weight, in terms of assessing and labeling whether or not the inequality exists. Here is the point of contention among LDS women: if you tell me that I am unequal when I feel equal, I feel you are saying that my own perceptions of my life situation don’t matter—and that it is in the very point of disagreeing with you about my situation that I have disqualified myself in your eyes from being a reliable judge about the situation of Mormon women in general. This is why many women feel silenced or defensive around women who call themselves feminists.