Confessions of a Jack-Mormon: Escaping the Patriarchal Pigeonhole

“Knowledge is important for young women. It’s important for women to get an education so they know how to cook, and clean, and sew.” 

This is not an excerpt from a 1950s housewife training manual. This is not an exaggeration. These were words from a talk given by the president of an Especially For Youth program to a group of teenage Mormon girls in 2007. I was in that group, listening to that talk, and it was the first time I was hit hard in the face with the blatant patriarchal reality of the LDS church. My face burned. My heart raced. My fists clenched. In my soul I knew, even as a deluded 16-year-old who had never had even a brush with the real world, that there was something intrinsically wrong about the words coming out of Brother Andersen’s mouth. I resisted the impulse to get up and storm out. If this scenario was repeated now that I am a much more assertive and self-aware 21-year-old, I would have not only obeyed that impulse, but also delivered a caustic feminist monologue in front of God and everyone, sprinkled with only the finest Betty Friedan tidbits. I mean, the audacity of this guy…

“Girls, please don’t wait to get married. As soon as you turn 18, get out there and start looking for your eternal companion.”

Verbatim.

Let me make it known that I am not a feminist. I am not a gender activist, or a even a liberal, and I only took one sociology class. But I try to be hyperaware of stereotypes and have more or less dedicated my life to defying them. In my Mormon upbringing, I was especially sensitive to the fact that by virtue of being a woman I was also being pigeonholed into “traditional” roles, but I never took a stand against it. Sometimes after yet ANOTHER lesson in Laurels about celestial marriage I would go home and laugh about it with my parents, but it never occurred to me that the gender roles being forced upon me were socially constructed and completely disharmonious with the fundamental idea of religion.

In fact, these facts didn’t occur to me until I had to start explaining obscure Mormon practices to the friends I made at college. Like missions. And baptisms for the dead. And pioneer trek (try explaining THAT one). It was like,
 “What do you do at church for three hours?”
“Sacrament meeting, which is kind of like communion with sermons, and then Sunday school, and then the men and women split up and go to separate meetings.”

“Why do the men and women have to split up?”

“Well, because men and women are different and need different instruction.”

Men and women are different. MEN AND WOMEN ARE DIFFERENT? Am I really saying these things? Do I actually know this to be true? That men and women are “different?” It never seemed odd to me that men and women went to separate classes. It had been like that since I was 12. Men go to priesthood class and learn about how to use their priesthood and women to go relief society and learn how to….what? Raise children? Support our men? Be nurturing? Basically how to NOT have the priesthood?

Separate but equal. This principle that the LDS church is STILL operating on, even though it has been proven in countless real-world scenarios that separate but equal ain’t hardly ever equal. I read an article many many years ago that stuck with me about a feminist Mormon who proposed that women should have the priesthood and was excommunicated. She said it was “like getting gang-raped by the Care Bears.” Let me be clear that I am NOT insinuating that women “should” have the priesthood. I don’t believe that many Mormon women would “want” the priesthood or the responsibility that comes with it.  We have been bred to be passive. All I’m saying is that the church should disband its claim that men and women are equal if men are given God-like powers of revelation, leadership, and healing and that the “separate but equal” power that women have is….child bearing.

So our special “gift” is our uterus? A mere body part, that according to the church, we don’t even have ACCESS to without a man? Extramarital sex and gay partnership are forbidden, and single motherhood is strongly discouraged. Basically the rights have to be sold. To a man. With a penis. Your lady parts are portrayed as a magical chamber of feminine mysticism that have to be “unlocked” by a man.  

The rich, enchanted wonders of your womb are only accessed through marriage. Therefore the only way to reach your full spiritual potential as a woman is by waiting for some returned missionary to come snatch you up. This was always a sore point for me because every since I was 15 I’ve had this intuitive feeling I wasn’t going to end up getting married. Which honestly, is fine with me. When I tell people this and they say “don’t worry, it’ll DEFINITELY happen” I always feel the need to  explain AGAIN that not being married is not a nightmare. It’s a lifestyle. When I expressed this to my Institute of Religion teacher at Oxy, he told me that if I don’t get married I’m not necessarily accountable for that because it’s not my fault if no one “pursues” me. If a man doesn’t get married, he’s a bad boy because he could have just picked one and put a ring and some garments on it.

“That’s a little old-fashioned, don’t you think?”
“Yeah I guess it is.”

Those were the last words my institute teacher and I ever exchanged in person.

I don’t want to go through my single life believing that I’m unfulfilled because I couldn’t find anyone desperate enough to marry me. I see insecure 19-year-old Mormon girls smearing shit on their face and dyeing their hair and getting plastic surgery trying to make themselves desirable to men because they’ve been told every Sunday for their entire lives that being someone’s wife is all they’re good for. That it’s their “divine nature.” 

As if girls’ self-esteem wasn’t precarious enough already, the weird, twisted repressed sexual culture of Mormonism makes it a kajillion times worse. The “dressing modestly” bit Mormon girls get bombarded with every day, even in their PUBLIC schools, is based on the idea that all women are, at heart, Jezebel. A little too much thigh, a little glimpse of cleavage, a bare shoulder? Shame on you, you little harlot. You know that boys can’t control their imaginations. Cover your knees. Put on one of these abominable lace camisoles. You’re going to lead boys right down your slippery slut slope…

Maybe instead of making wholesome young girls feel like common whores, we should teach our boys to KEEP THEIR DICKS IN CHECK. It doesn’t matter how much clothing a woman is wearing, a man is going to imagine her naked anyway. It’s no one’s fault. Being straight about sex and not making teenage boys and girls ashamed of their biology would be a lot more physically and psychologically healthy for both sexes. Teaching kids that sex isn’t “evil” might end the slut-shaming. Putting blame on girls for being “provocative” is one of the most sexist, patriarchal practices of all time.

The world is trying to move beyond these archaic practices. Church policies, such as the disbandment of polygamy, allowing non-whites to have the priesthood and lowering the age to serve a mission are proof religion is still flexible in a changing world. The Mormon church has the potential for malleability. Patriarchy is rooted deep, but I don’t believe that it is “central” to the religion. I don’t believe that uprooting male privilege in the church would cause it to come crumbling down. But how do we go about it?

I think the idea of male privilege in the Judeo-Christian tradition starts with the classic Judeo-Christian conception of God as man. Mormonism claims that God is our “Heavenly Father” and that he has a body of flesh and bone (not blood for some reason because f**k science). So necessarily if God is a man, He also has a Heavenly Penis and Heavenly Testicles. The existence of a Heavenly Mother is acknowledged, but she doesn’t appear in any scripture, isn’t prayed to, and is scarcely mentioned. Some old white Mormon man told me once that we don’t talk about Her because “She is too sacred,” but I think we don’t talk about Her because it is just assumed that She is pregnant and barefoot in the celestial kitchen making sure Her man is well-fed and sexually satisfied so that He does a good job running the Universe.

Sound blasphemous? I didn't start it.

If Mormons are going to perpetuate this claim that ALL of us are made in Heavenly Father’s PHYSICAL image, they are going to have to drop this parasitic idea that God is a man. Is the idea of a gender-neutral, or even hermaphroditic God really that heretic? It took me about a year to adjust to praying to a gender-neutral God, and honestly, it makes God feel…bigger. It gives He/She/It the magnificent, omnipotent qualities He/She/It is worthy of.  I would argue that trying to put a concept like God in a gender box is limiting. It’s demeaning. So let’s start there, because gender is socially constructed and has no place in religion. Religion is about all-encompassing truths, and truth doesn’t depend on what’s between your legs.