\u201cBYU professor: Women can\u2019t be a mother and have a career<\/a>\u201d \u2014 Dr.\u00a0Hancock never actually said any such thing \u2014 \u201cThe Progressive Mormons\u201d not only take my colleague\u00a0to task but, pretty plainly, seek to silence him.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the passage that, they declare, \u201cdirectly stated women can\u2019t be a mother and have a career\u201d:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut today\u2019s easygoing feminist assures us that women can have it all, that there is no need to choose between a more traditional, family-centered role and a more emancipated, self-fulfillment model. Ah, if wishes were horses! In fact, the wish to have it all, the best of motherhood and the best of \u2018liberation\u2019 on an equal footing with liberated men, is precisely the feminist-lite delusion that both radical feminists and conservative non-feminists contest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
A direct statement that women can\u2019t be mothers and have careers?<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hardly. \u00a0It says no such thing, neither directly nor indirectly.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rather, it points to the obvious fact that balancing motherhood and career is difficult, and that being a full-time mother in anything like the traditional sense while, at the same time, successfully competing as a corporate executive, trial lawyer, physician, or theoretical physicist against those not bearing the burden of traditional motherhood is effectively impossible. \u00a0It\u2019s just not feasible, for most women, to \u201chave it all.\u201d \u00a0Something has to give.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is simple realism.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not uniquely a woman\u2019s problem. \u00a0Any man who\u2019s served as a bishop, or who\u2019s devoted weeknights and weekends to Church youth assignments, or who tries to be a devoted father faces professional challenges unknown to those who devote all their waking hours to climbing the corporate ladder at the expense of marital and family commitments and community service. \u00a0Time spent home teaching, coaching a girls\u2019 soccer team, working at the welfare farm, attending ballet recitals, serving in the temple, and helping with youth camps is time that\u2019s unavailable for single-minded career advancement.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I find the \u201cProgressive Mormons'\u201d comment that Professor Hancock\u2019s article was \u201cdisparaging towards women\u201d more than a bit strange. \u00a0Perhaps they read a different version of it than I did. \u00a0Curious, too, is their remark that the column\u00a0\u201cwas all over the place, forcing the reader to read it several times over just to follow the wild bounces.\u201d \u00a0Or, perhaps, not so much curious as revealing. \u00a0I had no such problem, and I noticed no \u201cwild bounces.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Candidly, I think that they were too eager to be indignant at Professor Hancock to put much effort into understanding what Dr. Hancock actually wrote.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thus far, I might simply scratch my head, bemused by the seeming inability or unwillingness on the part of some ideologues to understand what their opponents say.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But then the \u201cProgressive Mormons\u201d take a sinister turn.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame female students at BYU will be taking classes,\u201d they say, \u201cfrom a professor who made these comments.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In other words, Professor Hancock is victimizing young women, our sisters in the Gospel. \u00a0It\u2019s not enough to disagree with him. \u00a0He must be demonized.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s unsurprising, given that implicit view, that these \u201cProgressive Mormons\u201d seek to stop Ralph Hancock\u2019s\u00a0evil actions and to put an end to his doubleplusungood crimethink.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
So they close with an exhortation to their readers to contact a high ranking BYU administrator and assistant to President Kevin Worthen, as well as BYU\u2019s Title IX administrator and Professor Hancock\u2019s academic department. \u00a0They helpfully provide names, email addresses, and telephone numbers for each of these.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is\u00a0a pretty shameless attempt to intimidate Professor Hancock (and anybody else who dares to deviate from Progressive orthodoxy), to constrain the public expression of opinions of which \u201cProgressive Mormons\u201d\u00a0disapprove (and which these two \u201cprogressives\u201d don\u2019t seem altogether to understand), and, as the saying goes, to have a \u201cchilling effect\u201d on free speech.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strikingly, Professor Hancock\u2019s article is entirely consistent with the teachings, on this complex of topics, of the prophets and apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> over the past very nearly two hundred years.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m going to be helpful, too:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The first two contacts supplied by the \u201cProgressive Mormons\u201d will work for me, as well. \u00a0However, I\u2019m not in Political Science but, rather, in the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. \u00a0So that\u2019s anel@byu.edu, or 801-422-3396.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 Back on 13 June 2017, my colleague and friend Ralph Hancock, political philosopher that he is, offered a thoughtful piece about feminism in the pages of the Deseret News: \u00a0 \u201cAren\u2019t we all feminists?\u201d \u00a0 I\u2019m very sympathetic to what he wrote \u2014 no, let me just come right out and say that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>