I never understood Mormon feminists. The term seemed like an oxymoron to me. I grew up as a Mormon and I just never questioned the order of things. It just seemed to me that the way things are run at church was just the way things are and should be. I loved the scriptures, I had a personal relationship with my Savior and I felt good when I went to church and enjoyed good comraderie there. Fast forward a few years to the past couple years especially as I have recorded somewhat on this blog the terrible experience of being shunned at church, and then finally understanding the nuances of Utah culture and realizing that I am very much on the outside of the dominant culture here even though I strive to live the gospel to best of my ability and I have a testimony of it.
Not feeling a part of your own religion, not feeling loved and acceptance at church is awful. People being mean, putting you down and ignoring you and your children is awful, and it is especially awful when they are the very people who should be supporting, loving and helping you. It is not just the absence of comraderie, but the feeling of having to defend yourself and your position constantly. So although, I have not had the same feminist concerns in the church that many feminists have had, I can relate to their feeling of being a "second class citizen" in the church, and not feeling a sense of belonging there. This is really hurtful because you know that that is not what Jesus would do, you want to have friends in the gospel and do the right things, but there is no way to voice concerns without putting yourself at jeopardy of losing good standing in the church which would lead to being even more on the outside and shunned or ignored even more. It all depends on the leaders of your ward. If you have good leaders who sincerely care about you and the other members of the ward, then you'll be alright, but if you have a bad leader-- and that doesn't mean they are all bad people- although there definitely are those-- just check the news-- then you are stuck. The only way out is to move away and hope to find a place with decent people in leadership positions. If you are not in a leadership position-- forget about having any influence as to the way things go at all. Even if the leaders make dumb decisions about things-- there is absolutely nothing you can do until they are released. And then you just have to wait and hope that the next leader will be better and will maybe care about you and the other members of the ward, and at least try to address any concerns you may have.
I really wish we could just pick which ward to go to. A healthy dose of competition and free market enterprise would be so good in this regard I think. Then maybe people would be nicer. I think people in the church are mean because they know there is nothing you can do about it. If you stop coming then you miss out on the sacrament and the good things at church and you are labeled an apostate, not valiant in the cause of truth. If you stay, you have to support them and not be offended. Anyway. the sense of a loss of power is huge-- and I think that is what the feminists are trying to change-- their focus is on giving women in general more of a say. However, even if women had more of a presence we would still be at the mercy of the individual leaders. If they are rotten-- bad news. Lay members would still have little say about any of the goings on at church.
The feminists thought that wearing pants to church one Sunday would be a way that they could show their wards that not everyone thinks about things the same way and that maybe people would start being a little more respectful of that and eventually be more willing and able to accept differences. What they didn't expect was the huge backlash and all the mean comments. The comments got so bad on the Facebook events page that Facebook themselves pulled the page!! I am embarrassed to be associated with such mean people-- it even got to the level of saying that the feminists should be shot in the face. Unbelievable!! I hope they bring the page back so we can all see the true colors of these commenters. These are not the actions and words of loving Christ like people. I am very disappointed.
My hope is that we Mormons-- leaders included-- will do some introspection and be more loving and tolerant of those who are different. There is nothing in the scriptures about what to wear to church. There is nothing in there that says we should go for 3 hours every Sunday and have all these programs. Maybe we need to go back to the bare bones basics of love, kindness and respect for each other for we are all children of God. I know that this is in God's hands. I hope that lots of good will come of this.
