Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Roy wrote:
AmyJ wrote:[list]- Culturally and doctrinally, it is acceptable for a widower to be sealed to multiple women within his lifetime (he doesn’t have to choose which spouse to remain sealed to), but it is unacceptable for a widow to be sealed to multiple men within her lifetime (she has to choose which spouse to be sealed to).
[/list] [snip]
I hope to be there in heaven with popcorn to witness the conversations and introspective monologues when the consequences of what they were doing are laid out. I also entertain that that aspect of mortality may not be so important to actually be worth placing my attention on those conversations.
From Wikipedia:
“Eternity is a 2025 American fantasy romantic comedy film directed by David Freyne, written by Pat Cunnane, and starring Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen, Callum Turner, John Early, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph.
Premise
After death, everybody gets one week to choose where to spend eternity. For Joan, Larry, and Luke, it’s really a question of who to spend it with. Joan must choose between her first love, who died in a war, or the man she built her life with.”
My wife and I will join you in the theater with popcorn!
Plot Twist:
2 days into the week, Joan stumbles into Arthur, who insists that there is an “afterlife miracle” and Joan is supposed to spend her eternity with him. He can prove it via revelation.
I “judge” the men who restored or carried on with polygamy in our church as using polygamy to “scratch an itch to control” in their soul. – I think that JS was more interested in using polygamy as social glue and in legalizing emotional affairs and in essence “getting high” off of courting other women.
– I think that BY was interested in sex as well as empire-building (and protecting his proto-empire).
– I think that Wilford Woodruff used polygamy at the end of his lifetime to ensure that he was the instrument who “saved” women from post-life uncertainty.
I understand to a degree, their rationale behind it. I hope to be there in heaven with popcorn to witness the conversations and introspective monologues when the consequences of what they were doing are laid out. I also entertain that that aspect of mortality may not be so important to actually be worth placing my attention on those conversations.
The tie between patriarchy and polygamy is the kicker because they feed back into each other to give men and women different church experiences and amplify the “male domination optics” aspect as well as power/authority imbalances within the system(s). [list]- Culturally and doctrinally, it is acceptable for a widower to be sealed to multiple women within his lifetime (he doesn’t have to choose which spouse to remain sealed to), but it is unacceptable for a widow to be sealed to multiple men within her lifetime (she has to choose which spouse to be sealed to).
[/list] [list]- Communally, we keep coming back to “preside” and what it means. Deborah Tannen theorized that men talk [and I am adding “think”] in terms of hierarchy – with a lot of conversation going on in essence to prove “hierarchy placement”. She also theorized that women talk [and “think”] in terms of social network – which is focused on connection creation and needs-based analysis. The focuses of these 2 thinking and conversational styles are drastically different and come up with different conclusions, scope out different problems to be solved, and devote resources to different topics entirely. Our cultural answer to this continuous conundrum is “follow the man because he has the priesthood” which pans out as a man dominating a situation he may or may not have the desire to be in.
[/list] - Polygamy & Sexuality – The collective culture we live in assumes that polygamy was “about sex” (generally “polygamous sex=legalized adultery” and/or “procreation”). Part of our understanding and perception of the intersection of polygamy and sex has been informed about how much abuse happens between men and women in imbalanced power relationships. Most of our understanding is coming to us out of divorce research, domestic violence research, and hookup culture – but we as members collectively have some understanding that “if we would do it to each other in the here-and-now, we are likely to do it to each other back then (and hide it under the rug)” and that is not a good look for the organization. There are no good answers as there are a lot of active members from polygamous backgrounds and the sex-informed feminists are feared as potential enemies rather then useful allies.
[list][/list] Polygamy as a system worked for some men and women. The “Supporting a mistress” system worked for some men and women back in the 1850’s or so. The “TradWife” aka “Coverture” system of men covering for women worked and still works for some men and women. There are systems of “open marriages” and “group marriages” that are on the fringes that “work” in the sense that services are provided.
If I have a theory in all this, it is is:
[list]- Polygamy is culturally legalized relations between 1 man and multiple women over a course of a lifetime.
[/list] [list]- Our culture associates “marriage” and “sealing” as being interchangeable, ergo “a sealing” = “a marriage”.
[/list] [list]- Marriage Expectations around partners have expanded dramatically over the last 50+ years (household provision, emotional provision, friendship, healthcare case management, financial unit, sole sexual partner, best emotional companion, etc.) as the family support structure has folded into the nuclear family structure. One of the major newspapers put out an article about it awhile back that I only got to peruse the summary for.
[/list] [list]- It likely wasn’t as pretty a situation as our most white-washed stories make it out to be or what our religious culture sterilizes it to be.
[/list] I have gotten the sense that the upper leadership fully believes that if people are taught correctly, people will behave correctly (purify their behavior and stewardships) and those correct behaviors will solve the world’s problems. This means that a lot of social justice initiatives aren’t actually discussed but are more about the member self-improvement mini-programs. It’s the “wear your garments more so that our communities qualify for blessings” model in fancier words. I also suspect that there are a lot of church organization politics at play here. How much social justice can a church promote and still be a conservative church? How much attention does the church as an organization want to draw to itself that may draw fire in the current administration. This is the same administration that has gone after DHS, PBS, the treasury, and numerous other organizations and individuals.
I’m not sure that I want the First Presidency to “get angry” here – mostly because of what it might do to their health:) Humor aside, I suspect that their perspective and what they pay attention to in General Conference topically is based on a) a more global church, and b) topics they feel qualified to speak on as ambassadors of Jesus Christ (as they understand Jesus Christ and feel they have revelation about). For the most part, they do dump some words into the situation but they are not here to be the United Nations, or facilitators between humans.
Back in day (1990s I think), the key demographic of members that threatened the organization of the church was the “feminists, gays, and scholars”. The church organization hasn’t done anything that shows their most feared list has changed appreciably. Women are disengaging from church activity – to the point where more women then men left the church in surveys. People left the church because of the 2 year POX situation. Scholars are providing information/facts about different aspects of history and policy that members are learning about and resolving trust issues about. The SEC scandal and the sexual abuse normalization stories are eroding the trust of members who see a double standard of ethics at play here where the members are being taught to hold themselves to a higher standard then the church organization wants to hold.
The ongoing problem with polygamy is that it is an umbrella term for whenever 1 man is in a relationship with multiple women (including teenagers). The nature of the relationship is “marriage” (civil ceremony or sealing ritual) and/or “having sex [consent undefined]” (mistresses/girlfriends/proto-girlfriends).
It covers widows “re-marrying for eternity” in this life (Russell M. Nelson), powerful men who thought it was a good idea to repeatedly undergo a ritual binding them to hundreds of women and girls to ensure that he looked good in the next life and that these women and girls had access to to the highest kingdom through him (Wilford Woodruff), other men who saw an interesting/pretty woman or girl and thought, “there is the answer to my problems” (many men including JS).
In terms of community structure, it might have worked in some instances and it is possible that it provided the most security and hope to the community (which varied/varies from family to family).
In terms of optics, polygamy as a familial-community structure has always looked lousy and hasn’t aged well at all because it looks like a means of controlling less powerful men, all women, and indirectly a lot of children.
The way I see it, there are 2 points to the equation…. A)
Potency of Violence/Capacity to Harm– Whether it’s drugs or guns or whatever, we live in a time where our objects have greater capacity/range/potency to harm us. Americans by and large have lived with these objects with greater capacity to harm and less foresight into how to use them in our current environments. Most of the time, I get the sense that other countries consider us borderline lawless because we don’t have more stringent gun laws and the enforcement varies. It feels like the narrative is that our police and military forces need guns with higher capacity to cause harm in order to protect the citizens while a segment of the citizenship feels that it is their entitled right to have guns with higher capacity “for protection” that may or may be being used or stored responsibly. It’s a thorny issue because I suspect that quite a few world citizens would like to be entitled to access of individual firearms the way that Americans do without seeing American gun statistics in their countries. 
Communal Impact– We watch a lot of anime that include a variety of different interactions of the individual in their community. One of the things that is interesting to watch is a sense of obligation to “community” that I just don’t see in American culture. Like if a high school kid misses class due to being sick, another kid is nominated/nominates themselves to stop by with the homework. The art of “getting along with each other” is something that gets brought up as a class-wide skill that is demonstrated in ways that I usually don’t see here. From an LDS perspective, I think that an individual’s perspective on guns and gun violence is just going to be one more data point about different values and politics. I tend to lean liberal and find the optimization of capacity to harm to be frightening. I have libertarian friends who are pro-gun and believe that a highly armed society of individuals with low gun statistics is possible through each individual being super responsible for their guns. I have a sister who is active in the church and recently got her concealed carry permit.
Your story reminds me about how my husband was wary of marrying/dating a RM – and ended up with me (a respectfully opinionated, threateningly outspoken RM) 😆 I vaguely remember the spouse checklist and all that type of stuff.
To me, the most important trait for a future partner of either of my children is, “Do they fight fair?”.
Conflict with a partner is inevitable, but not all conflicts are created equal and not all conflict patterns are created equally either.
It sounds like a good start to an ongoing conversation:) If it comes up, I think it is fair to your son that if this is something he wants to do, you would like to have the specific role of completing the ritual of blessing him with that power and authority from an organizational perspective. I have no idea what language you would use to convey that meaning to him, but that is the gist of my suggestion.
Based on your post, you would feel better if he knew that this is a wish of yours without it binding him to automatically choosing to gain the priesthood (and the other stuff) because of your wish. I haven’t had this exact experience, but I have had similar conversations where I add the aside like you did on what the boundaries to my choices were because they mattered so much to me. For me, it was a verbal/thought process flag that came up whenever I wasn’t being fully honest about why I still was giving a care for something I was striving to be more impartial about. It usually means that I need to go back to a conversation and add a bullet point or footnote to clarify something and satisfy an internal requirement I have of myself.
Roy wrote:
As if to say, “We are not equal but what if being unequal is even better for women than being equal.”
The church as an organization on a doctrinal level does not believe that men and women are equal. The church assumption is that women need “presiding over” and “covered for” [with the accompanying authority “over” and being over-ruled, spoken over, and dismissed] that men do not (at least not to the same degree). The priesthood is the symbol used to bring that point home regularly. Not expanding priesthood authority to women is in part a way to keep gender-based roles front and center. There are a lot of words to mask the premise as women are “more spiritual” then men, women “nurture” better then men (which is really about women doing the hard kin-work that men don’t want to do to anchor future generations), etc.
What I also think is happening is that men are left without protections or power and are bribed with access to women as the prize of sorts. It winds up looking like, “Your sacrifices on the frontier here with minimal or less then minimal supplies will be rewarded in town” for our men who take on the most hazardous jobs. I think we hear about in church culture most starkly when talking about our male missionaries. There are always the canned stories that male missionaries who complete their missions are more likely to get a hot(er) wife because of their church service.
I know when I served a mission back in the day, I wound up closing an area to sisters because it wasn’t safe for the sisters anymore (maybe hadn’t ever been actually), but was “safe” for the elders who took it over. This was the same area where I arrived and found that the rooms themselves noticeably needed painting. I wound up getting paint from the apartment manager and the senior missionaries helped me paint the rooms that needed to be painted. NOTE: I am not usually the one who notices decoration stuff, so the fact that I noticed it needed to be done was pretty telling.
nibbler wrote:
Again, I’m not a fan of the mindset that portrays members as angels and non-members as demons. The WoW can help with many things that get people into trouble but the church still has domestic violence, poverty, substance abuse, sexism, etc. We’re not immune to it and we may even see the same averages that non-members see. I’m just not a fan of the implications that this article makes about people outside the church.
We aren’t immune to domestic violence and abuse, poverty, substance abuse, sexism, etc. We just tend to have “dry” versions of it:)
As a people, I think that what bonuses we gain in terms of community, industry, and clean living, we lose in individual guilt & shame, in self-righteousness and mis-judgement.
nibbler wrote:
I’m also not a fan of the other argument the article makes. I don’t know how to articulate it, but it goes something like, “It’s not a problem for this one woman so I don’t know what you are complaining about.” The environment is fine for that one woman, or some subset of women. That doesn’t mean it’s not an issue forallwomen or the general membership of the church. My wife isn’t interested in holding an office in the priesthood but that doesn’t mean that women that
wantto hold an office in the priesthood shouldn’t be given an opportunity. In the church we have men that aren’t interested in the PH but it’s quasi-obligatory for them to have it and we have women that do want the priesthood but can’t have it. It’s kinda nuts.
Our religious community uses the priesthood authority to determine who makes decisions – who sets up the legacy that is passed onto future generations. Patriarchy sets up the explicit official channels to be male-coded (hence priesthood-coded). It seems to be a catch-22 in my mind these days. If the priesthood power/authority is needed so much to perform miracles – then we need to expand the priesthood franchise to be a more powerful and influencing group of individuals. If it is a more limited power/authority that has been overstepping off and on for as long as it has been around, then we need to decrease the amount of attention and rationalization it generates (and eventually make it more available for everyone explicitly).
nibbler wrote:
I think rising generations are seeing the inequality more and more with each passing year. The contrast between the roles women are filling in the wider community (the dreaded non-LDS people out there being all destructive:angel: ), the roles women can fill in the church, and the gulf between the two. I’ve heard anecdotes on that end, that the church is the last remaining place in many women’s lives where they are told, “No, you can’t because you’re a woman.” Propping up women that say, “That’s okay, I don’t want to anyway.” is not a solution.
About 1x a week or so, I get a ringside seat in the “rising generation calling out the gender-based inequality” in conversations with my female children. Some of it is because my husband functions best/is at his healthiest with some accommodations that are perceived as “gender-based” but are situation based. Some of it is because I still practice practice some levels of gender inequality mostly subconsciously still.
The family has an uneasy truce over “modest clothes”. The specific rule is that clothing is a) activity appropriate, b) follows garment lines while in the common rooms (the girls got the sleeveless garment upgrade last year), c) doesn’t cause visceral pain for the viewer (this was after the neon unicorn jacket, faded flower shirt, and bold graphic striped pants/skirt/shorts ensemble situation popped up).
[list]- My husband hates that this system is imposed to respect his preferences (he wanted it to come from God).
[/list] [list]- My eldest just thinks it is dumb and would like to wear cropped shirts and off-sleeve shirts. She also wants him to get over the fact that shorts will always look revealing on her because her upper legs are longer then the average female’s.
[/list] [list]- My youngest would love to wear sleeveless sundresses more and is outraged that she cannot combine all the patterns at once.
[/list] My husband has always stayed at home with our girls. He stays at home now because they still need him and the nature of his autoimmune illnesses, his skill set, and general disposition do not lend themselves to him being out in the workforce. [list]- The sisters at my branch were always supportive and had a “you do you” approach whenever it came up. They have also by and large believed us about his pain and had empathy to us.
[/list] [list]- The brethren in the branch largely left him to his own devices. There is an older, fairly fit branch member who thinks my husband would be better served by working – but he manages to be both blunt and actually minister to us (he is still our friend, I believe) – and also speaks his peace and then treats us the same as he had before.
[/list] The funny thing is that the power/authority differential between my husband and myself has an inverse relationship to how church engagement is going for us. When I was at my most “active” and believing, I let myself be treated as less equal and powerful in relation to my husband. As I drifted away from church commitments, I walked myself back into believing and treating myself as an equal, a decision-maker full of power and authority in my family. I have observed that when my husband is participating in more spiritual practices as taught by the church culture, he wants to “protect” me more and take on more of the decision-making – which omits my perspective and leadership (this is also problematic because sometimes he misses his female audience with his male perspective or hasn’t ever experienced PMS firsthand to viscerally understand when it is at play).
DarkJedi wrote:
That’s a great thought, Amy. I believe the reason we “feel good” when truly serving/helping others is actually the Holy Spirit “connecting” with us. I do indeed agree with you – loving one another is probably the best way to love God and come closer to God.
I gave the most thought to this concept when I was in a more atheist frame of mind:)
I figured that if I was more compassionate and helping others (balanced against helping myself and setting boundaries), then if there was a compassionate God, they would see that OR if there wasn’t a God, I would still be able to die peacefully because I had lived within my personal value of serving humanity in my own way.
I have had a few interesting conversations when I pose the question as to whether it is possible to invert the order of the statements, to love others in order to get to know God better… I had always wondered why people were startled by the concept as a possibility. I was taking the words at face value and not assigning additional meanings to that.
