{"id":95142,"date":"2022-05-19T20:58:05","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T02:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=95142"},"modified":"2022-06-05T08:31:50","modified_gmt":"2022-06-05T14:31:50","slug":"entitled-cogitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/05\/entitled-cogitations.html","title":{"rendered":"Entitled Cogitations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Manhattan<\/a>
A view of Midtown Manhattan as it appeared in August 2015
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For some reason, I got to thinking along the following lines while I was on the flight this afternoon from Salt Lake City to JFK:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Much is said about the allegedly patriarchal and misogynistic culture imposed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> upon its members and upon those who have the misfortune of living in areas that are strongly under its baneful influence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I get it, of course.\u00a0 An all-male priesthood is bound, in our time, to draw that kind of objection \u2014 although I like to point out, when the issue arises, such (to my mind) strongly mitigating elements such as the fact that priesthood ordination isn\u2019t required in the Church for preaching or teaching (both of which assignments are commonly given to women), that women serve on leadership councils and in other important roles, and that, unlike the all-male priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, bearers of the Latter-day Saint priesthood are almost always married (when they\u2019re of marriageable age) and are almost as likely to have daughters.\u00a0 And they live in ordinary neighborhoods rather than in monasteries or rectories.\u00a0 Which is to say that they are not even close to being hermetically sealed off from feminine insights, concerns, and input.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In any event, there are definitely also some strong positives for women in the teachings and moral expectations of the Church.\u00a0 I think, for example, of the intense emphasis on chastity before marriage (which, I would think, definitely relieves at least some of the pressure that young women commonly feel in today\u2019s dating or, perhaps even more to the point, in today\u2019s \u201chook-up\u201d culture) and on fidelity to marriage vows once they\u2019ve been undertaken.\u00a0 And there\u2019s this, which \u2014 according to an article that just swam across my radar screen \u2014 seems to be a rather bigger matter than I would have imagined:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Toxic Tradition Of Your Fianc\u00e9 Going To The Strip Club For His Bachelor Party Needs To Die\u2014Here\u2019s Why\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t help, when reading that article, but be reminded of Sister Sharon Eubank\u2019s very well received August 2014 remarks at the annual FAIR conference:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis Is a Woman\u2019s Church\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Such a custom \u2014 of even sober, let alone drunken, bachelor parties at strip clubs \u2014 is essentially unthinkable within the community of faithful and committed Latter-day Saint men on the eve of a temple wedding.\u00a0 And that, I expect, represents no major loss for women.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think, in this regard, of a training workshop that my BYU department (the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages) was obliged to put us through every few years over the last decade and a half or so that I taught there.\u00a0 The workshop, mandated by some federal policy or other, was devoted to discussion of sexual harassment in the workplace.\u00a0 I always got a bit of a kick out of it, although, along with my colleagues, I also always behaved with solemnity and decorum during the several hours that the workshop claimed.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because I understood that, if it were to become known that I were violating the standards that the federales<\/em> were laying out for us, litigation would, in some ways anyhow, be the least of my worries.\u00a0 I would probably already have been fired from my very seriously Church-related job.\u00a0 My marriage would be over.\u00a0 And I would be facing likely Church discipline and perhaps the loss of my membership altogether.\u00a0 The federal guidelines were much more lenient in crucial ways than the expectations of my faith (to say nothing of my own personal expectations of myself) were and are.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, to generalize from my own case, I think that\u2019s not a bad thing for women.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another illustration:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many, many, many years ago, while I was in graduate school, we lived in UCLA family student housing.\u00a0 One of our neighbors, and undergraduate and very sweet, was a very young woman with a husband and a small child.\u00a0 We liked her a lot.\u00a0 Her husband, though, who was not a student, was a lout.\u00a0 We never got to know him very well, because he was seldom around.\u00a0 But, when he was around, he was loud and coarse, and definitely not her intellectual equal.\u00a0 And, so far as I could tell, he paid relatively little attention to either his wife or his son.\u00a0 Sometimes, he would vanish unexpectedly for several days and, when he returned, it was none of her business where he had been or what he had been up to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was astonished that she put up with such behavior, and I was more than once sorely tempted to advise her to get out of the marriage while her son was still very small.\u00a0 (I never did.)\u00a0 I was also surprised to learn that, for her, this was simply to be expected in a husband, from a man.\u00a0 As we got to know her, we also learned that her father had been at least somewhat like her husband.\u00a0 She had, for example \u2014 and I thought this a fairly telling detail \u2014 grown up around what would once have been called his \u201cgirlie\u201d magazines and his pin-ups and his crude jokes.\u00a0 I was a bit astounded; such a thing would never, ever, have happened in my family\u2019s house.\u00a0 But she took it for granted.\u00a0 It was the way things were fated to be.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve wondered since then whether her marriage survived.\u00a0 I would be surprised, frankly, if it did.\u00a0 At this distance in time, though, I can\u2019t even remember her last name.\u00a0 But it seems pretty obvious to me that wives, daughters, sisters \u2014 women \u2014 have a right to demand much more from the men in their lives than she felt herself entitled to ask.\u00a0 More respect.\u00a0 A recognition of their dignity and worth.\u00a0 Certainly more than mere exploitation and objectification.\u00a0 And I think that, on the whole, the teachings and values of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints move things measurably in that direction.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, please don\u2019t read me as complacently saying that things can\u2019t improve, or that every Latter-day Saint man is a paragon or that every Latter-day Saint family is perfect.\u00a0 I definitely know better than that.\u00a0 And I\u2019m also not saying that the little girls should just shut up and be grateful for whatever scraps we privileged patriarchal misogynists deign to toss their way.\u00a0 But I am<\/em> saying that, even in the calculus of unbelieving critics, there are some very positive things about the culture of the Latter-day Saints that ought fairly to be taken into account as regards the status of women.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And tomorrow I\u2019m gonna wake up in the city that never sleeps to find that, having been born male, I\u2019m still king of the hill, top of the heap.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from New York City, New York<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 For some reason, I got to thinking along the following lines while I was on the flight this afternoon from Salt Lake City to JFK: \u00a0 Much is said about the allegedly patriarchal and misogynistic culture imposed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints upon its members and upon 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