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I agree with Roadrunner, that this is lower than the cost of NOT being on a mission. Plus, it’s still less than I paid monthly in 1989. I think it depends on what we mean by “relationship.” If it means the person is active in your life on a regular basis, then I do think these run their course over time. If it means that we have a pool of mutual well-wishers with whom we occasionally connect, to me that’s more sustainable. My best childhood friend lives across the country from me. We stay in touch through FB, rare emails, and so on, but contact can be spaced over a year apart at times. In the 30 years since we haven’t lived in the same state, I’ve only been back there one time, but we spent every day together when I was there. She is more like a sister than a friend in some ways. There’s a tie there that doesn’t require presence or even ongoing contact to maintain. But if she needed me, I’d find a way to be there. Most “friends” though have a selfish component that can’t be separated out. We are friends with people like bosses, clients and employees partly because of mutual benefit and partly if we like each other. Even colleagues who are equal can have a benefits component (allies, support for our projects or goals, shared work product) that can make the relationship important at the time but then goes away. We each want to feel important and special, but sometimes, without the weight of those obligations and benefits, we simply . . . aren’t that important or special to that person.
Minyan Man: Kirton-McConkie would settle that thing so fast, your head would spin. The church would not want the bad PR. However, my guess is that one’s standing in the church would be jeopardized by suing it, if not officially, then certainly in some unofficial way. I heard a completely bootleg unofficial reddit story that a GA’s widow had put a bunch of furniture on a credit line and asked the church to pay it off (since her dead husband had been receiving a stipend while he was alive). Rather than get into some legal BS, they just paid it. That’s the story this rando shared on reddit anyway. He worked in the accounting department for the church. To me, yes, it does seem like it’s getting a little out of control the more time we are asking for, and I think the principle reasons are those listed by AmyJ. I’d add to that the complete lack of training, particularly for safety reasons. I’m sure the church would pay something if a person were injured or had an allergic reaction, although since these are volunteers, what if that impacted their livelihood? Would workman’s comp be paid out by the church for someone who had to miss a bunch of work as a result of an injury?
But I think the biggest issue is that there is some limit on how much we are going to spend time on service in the community or beyond and not just on our own church building. People don’t have unlimited time in their week.
So, I’m as prone as the next person to refer to “Millenials” as a monolith, but last week I watched a youtube of Adam Conover talking about how generations are myths and very misleading. Which actually is one aspect of Jana’s research that at first I found troubling (that so many Mormon millenials are very conservative, unlike their non-LDS same-age cohorts), but in light of his (kind of obvious) observation, it makes more sense. Yes. trends emerge over time, society progresses (or regresses) in its various ways, but what the “next Mormons” look like are only a subset of what the so-called “Millenials” are like. And these are all stereotypes. Every person differs, and we can’t treat them like a stereotype but like individuals.
Here’s a link to the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HFwok9SlQQ Sometimes it feels like people are trying to make a return at a store they know doesn’t take returns for pants they have worn for years that are ill-fitting or unflattering. I’m just not sure what the store clerk can reasonably be expected to do in this situation. nibbler wrote:
I know the thread went in an entirely different direction, but every time I see the topic title I can’t help but think:How much can the church remain the same yet still remain credible?
+1000Quote:We say that motherhood is a most important job in the world and that we as men would not be able to do it justice and we use that to justify limiting the choices of women.
I definitely agree that this happens, and as a woman who doesn’t have whatever these qualities are that supposedly come so naturally to all women, it’s hard to listen to the majority of church rhetoric to women because it’s (to me) so obviously BS and doesn’t really apply to me.
But, to the point of this post, the church does something really well in taking
fatherhoodseriously. Change definitely undermines a belief in infallibility which is why so many orthodox members rely on the weak sauce argument that a discarded policy was somehow “right for its time,” even when that time frame was incredibly narrow. But we don’t have to believe in infallibility to find something credible. That’s related to the weight of the thing being introduced. Nelson’s willingness to try nearly every idea that pops into his head is dizzying on some level because the pace is much faster than we are used to, but the changes are pretty clearly policies, not capital R revelation (despite what might be claimed). This is very on point with the post I did called The Progressive Fallout:
https://wheatandtares.org/2019/05/08/the-progressive-fallout/ Change is a problem when either the old thing or the new thing causes a lot of pain to people. When the new thing does, people don’t want to do it. When the old thing does, we feel so relieved it’s over that we start looking around for whatever else may be unnecessary pain.
It did strike a chord with me as well. I once used the term “delicate sexism” to describe what I had observed. I noticed that there were still a LOT of sexist assumptions about men & women in the church, and yet, at the same time, Mormon men are more emotional, sweet, and kind (on average), and IMO much better partners in parenting. I’d stack Mormon men up against Evangelical men (or any other religion) any day for being willing to co-parent, change diapers, etc. Our focus on gender roles doesn’t (usually) get actual men off the hook for involvement in their kids’ lives, at least not people in my age group and younger. I do frequently cringe when GAs or apostles share stories about being out of their depth in parenting moments and everyone gives them a courtesy laugh. Roy wrote:
I recently watched “On the Basis of Sex” the biopic of RBG. It is surprising to me that 50 years ago the US government did not see anything wrong with sex based discrimination. Because there are legitimate differences between the genders both physically and historically – all laws that discriminated on the basis of sex were seen as A) common sense,
protecting society, and C) defending the family. Just 50 YEARS AGO.
What RBG did that was so clever is that she selected for her first case one in which discrimination was hurting a man (BTW, that case is exactly what is meant by toxic masculinity, but taken to its logical legal conclusion–nobody had even considered in creating that law that a single man might be a caregiver to an aging parent which is why his benefits were denied). When she demonstrated that it was common sense and that it was hurting men, not just women, and hurting a family (he couldn’t afford to care for his aging mother without the benefits he was owed), then everyone said, “Oh yes, this is obvious.”
dande48 wrote:
I was referring to the modern wave of feminism. It has, in my experience, extensively belittled men, by using terms such as “toxic masculinity” in order to further their cause. I think it’s counterproductive. By using terms, like “toxic masculinity” (among others) we are doing exactly what the book discusses. It is assigning the trait “toxic” (comprimising a variety of traits, all bad) primarily to the male gender. It makes men feel ashamed for being men.What we really want, is to do without toxic behavior in all its forms, wherever it comes from. Calling a male “effeminate” for tearing up with emotion is counterproductive. You can be 100% a man, and still show emotion. You can be 100% a woman, and still be aggressive. If both men and women can posess a trait, and should feel comfortable in posessing a trait, why apply those traits primarily to a single gender? Assigning a label to a trait which conflicts with the trait-barer’s identity, will not make them more self-accepting. Which is what we all really want, isn’t it?
The point of the term “toxic masculinity” is not to belittle men, but to point out how patriarchy harms both genders by belittling men who don’t fit whatever society deems “appropriate” male behavior (and crying doesn’t make that list). Women didn’t invent this societal trend or the gender role assumptions behind it. Feminists are just pointing out that it is harmful (“toxic”) to men to tell them that they are not manly if they express feelings. That’s why it’s called “toxic masculinity.” There is no claim that “masculinity is toxic,” which is how you seem to be taking it. I think this is a case when you are literally saying the same thing feminists are saying, but you are mad when feminists are saying it because you have made a wrong assumption about a term they are using. We are all on the same side here.
OON: On Own Now wrote:
I don’t believe that either “masculine” or “feminine” traits are inherently better or closer to God. Therefore people who have primarily masculine traits (mostly, but not exclusively men) and people who have primarily feminine traits (mostly, but not exclusively women) all bring important social and individual elements of themselves to our shared world. Are traits such as these elevated or suppressed by gender roles and narratives during upbringing? Yes. Are they also part of our natural makeup before our environments affect them? I believe yes and I allow that others will disagree.
I don’t think there’s disagreement between these statements and what Robert Greene was asserting (nor what I’ve been saying). The only clarification is that when we are encouraged / forced / shamed into repressing parts of our natural traits, there are negative consequences (I used the term “toxic” because the term is prevalent in gender discussions, but it wasn’t specifically his term). The more extreme this suppression, the more extreme the negative consequences. The less well suited we are to the roles we are forced to play, the more we will resent those roles.
I would also clarify that men & women have more in common than we don’t. We aren’t two different species! In my case, the traits that are associated with “feminine” (caring, emotional) don’t generally fit me as well as the so-called “masculine” traits (aggressive, assertive, logical), although I am more cooperative (inclusive) than competitive. I can’t say (nor really can any of us) how much of that is because my earliest experiences taught me that masculine traits were more valued in my family and in society (school, etc.) and I adapted to that or how much of it is because I am naturally more that way. But being aware of both types of traits, accepting our capacity for both, is helpful to becoming a more balanced, effective person.
dande48:
Quote:“I cannot support a movement that belittles another group in order to further their cause.”
I don’t know what movement you are talking about here, nor what group you are saying this movement is belittling. The post is about a book that describes childhood development as relates to gender roles. It’s not talking about any movement, and I didn’t find anything in the chapter belittling to any groups.
OON:
Quote:“I find this to be a gross exaggeration of the way that men work within structured organizations as a way to advance achievement. It conforms with what I have heard on this site many times, that men “need” hierarchy.”
I can’t defend of decry Greene’s description as by very nature, any male organization I’m in is one I can’t see that closely, being a woman. But I have seen some of these trends in male organizations. I have also seen some of the trends of female organizations he describes. If I were to describe the female organizations I would have said “indecisive and too focused on feelings to achieve results,” a negative descriptor. But to your point we really don’t encounter many organizations that are all one way or the other since they tend to be a mix of both styles. The church is, IMO, the closest I’ve seen to the male descriptors. My time in corporate was much more a mix of both.
dande48 and on own now: I recommend you read the whole post I linked (or much better, the book) so you can improve your understanding of what Robert Greene is saying. Both so-called masculine and so-called feminine traits exist in ALL people, and they are all good qualities (or not inherently bad). It’s only when you tell men & women to suppress traits that are naturally theirs (that society and/or their parents have assigned to the opposite gender role) that toxicity happens. When you shame boys for being “feminine” or “not manly” (for traits that every child possesses) or you shame girls for being “masculine” or “not feminine” (for traits all children have), that’s when these negative and extreme behaviors come out. The reason “toxic masculinity” and “toxic femininity” don’t look exactly the same is because it’s a patriarchal world we live in (built on traits deemed “masculine” like competitiveness, aggression, logic) and women have less direct access to power in our social structures. It’s not a matter of “adopting” traits one doesn’t possess. It’s undoing the suppression of our traits that we learned to hide as very young children. It’s regaining some balance we lost along the way. Babies and toddlers of both sexes cry, fight, yell, are contented, snuggle, are selfish, are affectionate–until we start teaching them that only (roughly) half of those things are (more) acceptable for their gender.
Sambee: from the post:
Quote:So what, if anything, is toxic femininity? First, there are some Men’s Rights Activists who claim “toxic femininity” is a byproduct of feminism, that women want to blame men for violence while enacting violence themselves, then playing the “woman card” to get away with it. That’s not what Robert Greene’s book is talking about (and he avoids the term Toxic Femininity as well as the term Toxic Masculinity) nor is it what this OP is about. The negatives that we see leaking out when women are forced into a “feminine” role are:
“The hyperfeminine woman will often be concealing a great deal of repressed anger and resentment at the role she has been forced to play. Her seductive, girlish behavior with men is actually a ploy for power, to tease, entrap, and hurt the target. Her masculine side will leak out in passive-aggressive behavior, attempts to dominate people in relationships in underhanded ways. Underneath the sweet, deferential façade, she can be quite willful and highly judgmental of others.”
When you have to pretend to be nicer and less aggressive than you really feel, the natural byproduct is to weaponize your niceness. You can couch an insult as a compliment, for example: “Usually girls your size can’t pull off that type of outfit, but you really look great in it!” Manipulating men through childish behavior is the entire premise of the book Fascinating Womanhood, a book that was popular in Mormon circles in the 70s and 80s. In the book, women are encouraged to act helpless, use a baby voice to get their way, and to stamp their foot during an argument to seem more “feminine” and dependent which is supposed to boost their husband’s ego. It’s all a play act designed to help a man who is insecure feel more masculine.
This enforced femininity can also create other problems for women, such as eating disorders, depression, or even mental illness like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy which disproportionately affects women and is also a form of child or elder abuse.
To me, there’s a lot of that I recognized from the Relief Society.
Roy, exactly! Also from the post:
Quote:Second wave feminists know very well that to succeed in these environments, women must suppress their “feminine” traits and bolster their “masculine” traits to succeed and get ahead, and yet, they pay a price for doing so, both internally and also within the group because they are seen as acting “unfeminine.”
I do think arrogant is more apt than shady, but I get where dande48 is coming from. Psychologically, though, it is incredibly hard for anyone to truly internalize the feeling of being wrong because once we know we were wrong, we are “right” about having been wrong in the past. We never know what it feels like to BE wrong.
