Pants: Why I changed my mind

A few days ago I had, in reference to the Wear Pants to Church Day event, stated that I wouldn’t be joining the group, based on my own conceptions of equality and my disagreement with how the event was initially framed (the event description has since changed for the better).  My feelings on these two counts have not changed. 

However, the amount of abusive language levied toward those who have chosen to participate has caused me to rethink my former position about joining the group.  Let me explain.

After 9/11, the United States became a hotbed of antagonism towards Arabs, Muslims and anyone who slightly looked like they belonged to either of these two groups, including Persians and Sikhs.  The hijab, or veil, that Muslim women wear became a focal point of anti-Muslim feeling.  Within days of the 9/11 attacks, reports of widespread abuse of Muslim women surfaced. Women were verbally harassed and name-called. Some Muslim women told of being called “rag-heads” or told to “go home!”  Another woman was shouted at: “America is only for white people!” Many were physically violated and attacked (Ahmed, 2011, p. 204-205).

In response to these attacks, other women—many of them non-Muslims—began to organize campaigns against these assaults. The hijab, which had been the site of so much consternation, was taken up and publically worn by these women in order to show solidarity for Muslim women in the country.  Interestingly, The Feminist Majority Foundation issued a Scarves for Solidarity event, which started, fortuitously enough, on December 16^th (2001).  Their invitation was simply for women to wear scarves to cover their hair during Eid Muslim celebratory days as a “simple gesture of solidarity” meant to “communicate love and peace for women who wish to dress in a modest fashion.”  

One woman explained her participation thus: “I think it’s really important to speak out . . . because who’s going to be there for me.  Any sort of act of hate is an act against me.”  The slogan “Them equals Us” was taken up (p. 205).

Some of the women who chose to participate in these campaigns did so despite the fact that many hadn’t agreed historically with the hijab as a symbol.  Many of them had previously held complicated or even antagonistic feelings towards the hijab itself. But what they didn’t have complicated feelings about was protesting the abuse of women who chose to wear it, no matter their reasons for doing so.

One woman, after organizing such an event was criticized “for embracing a tradition that is viewed by many as a symbol of Islam’s oppression of women." She responded that her only intention “had simply been to reach out to let Muslim women know that they were not alone.”

One woman who had previously disagreed with the hijab as a symbol changed her mind because, as she explained, “I understand how it marks you as an object for someone else’s hatred….It’s still the same fight, but the symbol means something different” (p. 206).    

The women who have joined the Wear Pants to Church Day group have been called "dumb bitch feminists", "lesbians", "selfish", "stupid", "angry and masculine", "idiotic", "insecure", and "apostate."  They have been told to leave the church, and that they are not welcome. 

While I still have complicated feelings about the use of pants as a symbol of equality, for the reasons I’ve explained before, and while I may not agree exactly with how the event was initially framed or launched, or even (especially?) how it has been defended by the participants, I do not harbor any complicated feelings about now joining the event in order to extend love, compassion, and goodwill towards my sisters and brothers in the gospel who might believe differently than the majority, but who belong at church with us, regardless of what they wear or why they wear it.

I won’t be sitting there in pants thinking about anything other than how remarkable it is that Jesus and our Church leaders welcome everyone, regardless of their beliefs, motivations, actions, apparel, race or sexual orientation, to come and sit and be with us as we worship Christ, who loves us, and who can save us all.   

Ahmed, L. (2011). A quiet revolution: the veil’s resurgence, from Middle East to

America. Yale University Press.

Why I wear pants to church

I don't do it to be controversial. Some days I just don't feel like wearing a skirt or dress. Some days it's cold outside. Some days I'm helping with the Primary program and it seems like a hassle to keep my dress down while holding a kid on my lap. Some days it seems like a hassle to keep my dress from riding up while I hold my own kid on my lap.

Some days I think too much is made of what we wear, period.

Some days I like to tell people that the church actually made an official statement looong ago about it being no biggie for women to wear pants to church. 

Other days I think we take too seriously our cultural mores about dress. I'd like men to have more freedom to wear kilts or other cultural clothing that consists of something other than slacks to church and I'd like more women to know that it's okay to wear slacks to church. For me this isn't an issue of equality, which issue I take very seriously. Being able to dress like men, to me, is a pretty weird indicator for equality. I've read way too much feminist theory to fall for this one again. Does permitting women to wear pants to church equal more freedom and choice in dress? Yes. Does it indicate equality? No.

Normally it's easy for me to support my fellow MoFems. But the Wear Pants to Church Day group discussion is driving me crazy. In essence, I support what these fellow MoFems are trying to do: create more breathing room around cultural dress and make sure women who wear pants feel supported and less judged. But I haven't been able to understand or get behind the way it's been framed. I'll still wear pants to church to show support of my sisters who need it, but I don't think I'll be officially joining this particular group.

Your thoughts?

Wearing my Sunday best:

Grandma Phyllis

Today we honor and remember my Grandmother Phyllis Truman Hunt Bracken, a complex individual I wish I had been able to spend more time with.

As a budding adolescent I felt some comfort knowing that my height and my curvy figure came from my Grandma Phyllis. She would be, frankly, more than slightly disappointed in my skills as a housekeeper. The state of my kitchen floor and my bed would appall her. Her cleaning gene just didn't make it down the chain.

Friendship meant a lot to my grandmother. She loathed the ranch she grew up on, near Gunlock, Utah. It was simply too isolated. I think she must have been lonely growing up. When she was able to live life her way she did it with a close circle of friends and neighbors. I remember riding in the backseat once while she gossiped with her neighbor and best friend, Grace. "Now don't you repeat this," she said to Grace as she shared a juicy piece of information. Even as a kid I thought this was hilarious.

Secretly I loved that my grandmother swore and said things like "shut up" when she was annoyed with someone. The fact that she never told me to shut up made it even more enjoyable. She seemed so salty and world-wise. She was very rarely sentimental. She survived two husbands. Her first husband was brutally murdered and left her a widow with three small children. I never heard her cry or talk about it. She was practical and sometimes embarrassingly honest.  True to her generation, she didn't care for fat people, was suspicious of "Injuns", and was an unabashed sexist. Somehow, with her, it was funny instead of infuriating. Mainstream spirituality wasn't what I would call her greatest strength. She was simply too contrary to fit into the perfect Mormon mold, if such a thing exists. She may have passed this gene on to me, though she never knew it.

Her favorite word was "shit". She used this word in every imaginable way. To babies: "Well aren't you the cutest little shit".  To adults (my dad): "You look like shit".  The fact that it annoyed my mother made it even more funny and idiosyncratic.

 

She loved babies. She loved her family. She made the best potato salad anyone's ever tasted. She liked going for drives too. I never remember her getting angry with me, even that one time I picked every single flower in her yard.  I wish she could have lived long enough to hold my daughter. I know had she been able to, Phyllis would have declared her the cutest little shit yet.

I wasn't able to make it to her funeral, and I'll always be sad about that. 

 

Tonight our food offering for Phyllis consists of bacon, which my grandmother ate every single morning. She had excellent taste, yes? Also some tea, which she drank every day. No doubt she would have been disappointed with my choice, Lemon Zinger, instead of her very scandalous (in Mormon circles, at least), Black.

Art

When I tell people who aren't Mormon that Mormons take for granted that God is an embodied Woman (married to an embodied Man), I'm suddenly reminded of how very Pagan Mormons are and how very cool that is. Unfortunately, Mormons have barely scratched the surface of what this means and who She is, and historically haven't been too interested in delving deeper. Several BYU scholars have remarked at this oddity, and I couldn't more emphatically recommend that everyone read this review on their research. 

Because of many of the points in this article Mormons, despite their theological makeup, have been reticent to artistically imagine Mother God and to me this is a real shame.  However, female deity is hardly a new idea. In fact, it's one of the oldest ideas out there. Check it out. 

And so, lucky lucky me, I get to see how others have filled in the gap. Welcome to The Met, house of depictions of Mother God and Her daughters. 

Today I'm grateful for the belief I have in a Mother in Heaven who is mindful of Her daughters and sons. And for those courageous enough to try to bring her to life in the minds and hearts of others.

Beauty

Captured this image today, an older ward member caught the same subway car as us. She proceeded to play counting games with my daughter. She also happens to be a matriarch of Mormon feminism. Seeing her with my daughter was...simply beautiful.

Knowledge

Alright, who can look at this painting anymore without thinking of Buster and Papa Bluth? "Arrested Development", I will burn in hell because you make me laugh whenever I look at this once-holy depiction.

 

But let me focus for once and get the weightier matters of this post off my mind so I can get back to my homework.  

As a person of faith I've struggled at times. I've wrestled with doubts. There have been times when my faith has been diminished to near-extinction.   This isn't something we Mormons like to talk about a lot. We prefer uplifting stories that bolster us; and we prefer to feel that our faith in God is indomitable and unbreakable.  If someone has lost faith we often attribute it to some wrongdoing on the part of the doubter. I think we often feel the space of doubt, or even the space between doubt and faith, are areas God would never want us to occupy. Now I'm not so sure.

Early on in my own faith crisis, I realized that although I could respect others' stances as atheists or agnostics, I could never own the titles myself.  The truth is I am a deep believer in gnosis.  In short, I think to reduce the sum total of human knowledge and experience to nothing more than empiricism (as enlightening as it can be) is phenomenally limiting, boring, and sad; meaning that I believe that we as human beings can absolutely know things spiritually or internally that we can't know in any other way; meaning that I believe in so-called mystical enlightenment and that we can receive insight and guidance from unseen places; and meaning that I do actually believe that Truth exists (with a capital T!). 

Sure, I'm often cynical. But I am very genuine about the things I do believe and feel. And the things I don't...I try to be mindful of them. I give myself permission to doubt. I've learned that God doesn't want me to force these things and God isn't always interested in giving immediate answers, and for that I've learned to be grateful. This is what faith is about, after all. Without doubt, why faith? 

God has taught me it's okay to wonder and to question, and sometimes to not believe. In literature studies there is something called "a willing suspension of disbelief". It allows you to plunge into a text, to engage in it and learn from it despite the fact that in most cases you don't believe or know the account to be factual.  You are open to the lessons you need to learn. You are humble. You are searching, always searching.  Most of all, you check yourself; examine your own assumptions, examine your disbelief; you leave your pride at the door.  It allows me to admit that my own knowledge is limited.

Limited, yes. Imperfect, yes. But gratefully so. After all, knowledge is still there, inside of me, in a way that can't really be explained. Knowledge is, above all, about your experiences, and if you've got one or maybe two, or  maybe three of those experiences that you can't explain wrapped up inside of you, maybe you- like me-believe in gnosis too. 

You are welcome to join me at the gratitude photo challenge. 

Clothing

Today I felt exceptionally grateful to come home and immediately rip off my skirt/belt/blouse/sweater straightjacket and reach for my lazy post-church clothes.Thank you, Lord.

sparing the rod

I've contemplated recording some, for me at least, formative family stories; recountings that seemed to define a quality of my family's, or that made me pause and think.  Here's a doozy for you, and I even have a contemporary equivalent to boot:

I was playing a card game with my inlaws the other night. This may seem archaic, but I was never, ever allowed to play with face cards growing up. I didn't learn what to do with a Joker, Queen, King or Ace until well after I moved out.  Like much of my family's history, the rule about not playing with face cards began somewhere in the not-so-recorded annals of Mormon history. I'm not sure exactly what General Authority spoke out against them (maybe a reader could enlighten me?), but my great-grandfather on my mom's side felt that playing with them lead to gambling and other forms of licentiousness. My grandfather and mom passed the tradition down, referring to obscure GA commentary on the subject of face cards.  So we played our games with Rook cards and I never really knew the difference. It was a deprivation without much fanfare or consequence.

I mentioned to my inlaws my former ignorance of the use of face cards, and told them a story my maternal grandfather tells with a glint of pride in his eye:

My grandfather grew up in Bicknell, Utah during the Great Depression.  My great-grandfather owned a cattle ranch and hired hands to do work for him.  One day, with my grandfather in tow, my great-grandfather checked on some of his hands who were staying in a tent out with the cattle. He walked into the tent unannounced and found them playing with face cards.  Apparently my great-grandfather had warned them at the outset to never play with face cards while they worked for him, or they would be dismissed. After all, my grandfather adds, my great-grandfather had quite a few children, and boys old enough to get caught up in a gambling habit. 

True to his word, my great-grandfather told the men they were fired. One of the men, my grandfather remembers, started crying, saying that he had a wife and children he was supporting with his work at the ranch. "I told you!" my grandfather remembers my great-grandfather saying. Both men were dismissed.

In Jordan this summer, I met a formidable Austrian who worked for a security company. His was the business of hiring and managing local Jordanians to do guardwork.  One man, he said, after a warning, fell asleep again on the job and my Austrian friend caught him in the act a second time. The man begged to keep his position, referencing his wife and many children as well. "What will I tell my children?" the Jordanian man asked. "Tell them they have a sh***y father who isn't willing to provide for them", my friend responded.  Interestingly, the Austrian had a glint of pride similar to my grandfather's when he told this particular story.

In response to my grandfather's story, my father-in-law responded, using choice words, that maybe my great-grandfather should've pulled the rod out of his butt instead of forcing other people to live the way he did. Derrick's grandma and I responded with an "but aren't people always the product of their time?" argument. 

You could argue that both sets of men getting the "pink slip" had been warned.  I can understand that argument.  The part that makes me most uncomfortable with both stories is the apparent pride and righteous indignation accompanying the utter lack of mercy. Justice or mercy? Spare the rod, spoil the child? or aren't we all beggars? What do you think?

Do any of you have stories in your family that have made you ponder your family's (and your own) rightness?

 

Black History Month

As promised, Lissie and I are celebrating Black History Month by reading library books about black history. Take a gander at our take-home list:

Harriet Tubman and the Freedom Train, Sharon Gayle and Felicia Marshall
Martin Luther King Jr., Peter and Connie Roop
Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, Alan Schroeder and Jerry Pinkney
George Washington Carver, Tonya Bolden
A Lesson for Martin Luther King Jr, Denise Lewis Patrick and Rodney S. Pate
Sojourner Truth's Step-Stomp Stride, Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney *
Rosa's Bus: The Ride to Civil Rights, Jo S. Kittinger and Steven Walker
Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr., Jean Marzollo and J. Brian Pinkney

*This is my absolute favorite. The writing is lyrical and wonderful, the pictures are delightful. Check it out.

It's not the simplest task to find age appropriate books correlating with Black History month, especially in my white suburb neighborhood library. Some of the books I've listed are definitely above Lissie's age level, so I have to summarize a lot of the text and focus her attention on the pictures. But especially because I currently live in a white suburb, it's important that she hear these stories, even summarized, and see these pictures because the general white American populace is woefully ignorant of black history, and I'm determined that Lissie will not be.

A recent, abhorrent video featuring students at my school has suggested that Mormons are ambivalent about black history. As a generality, I think this is true of white Mormons. But I also think this is an American, not just Mormon problem.

Having said that, I have heard informal statements made by white Mormons (although hereby shortened to just "Mormons" for the purpose of this post, be aware that Mormons are represented by a wide range of races and ethnicities) that indicated that blacks should "get over" ugly, tragic things in their history; that this is something Mormons have done (i.e. religious persecution, extermination orders, houses burned down, property stolen, women raped, people murdered directly by mobs and indirectly by the effects of the Western trek, extreme poverty, etc.) and so it's possible for Blacks too if they'd only resolve to do it.

I want to address this misconception by pointing out several things: Mormons are not, in fact, "over" their painful history and it is very much present in Mormon memory despite the lapse of generations; and there are (need I say it?) very real, significant differences between Black American and Mormon experiences with persecution; by telling people to "get over" their history, we are suggesting, first of all, what seems to me a human impossibility and secondly, we are dismissing something that makes up someone else's, and our own, story and identity. Black history is my history too because historically and currently, black and white history is tied up together, whether we acknowledge it or not.

Let me quantify what I say about Mormons not being over tragedies in their history. I have listed some of the elements that made up a large portion of the persecution mounted against Mormons, which began even before Mormonism was officially founded in 1830. Pioneer Day, held in Utah and some surrounding states on July 24th, marks the day that Mormons entered the Salt Lake Valley and essentially escaped the persecution of the mobs (although that persecution would be perpetuated by the U.S. government in various ways). This is mostly a triumphant holiday, but pioneer stories circulate among families and over Mormon pulpits about the sacrifice of pioneer ancestors who faced massive amounts of persecution and suffering because of their religion. Some ancestors came out of it alive. Others did not. I have stories like this in my own family history, and believe me, Mormons have not forgotten why this suffering took place.

Memories of this persecution have worked their way into the outlooks and identity of Mormons like me, who live after the fact by almost 200 years. These memories have worked their way into our theological outlook. Both the Bible and Book of Mormon are replete with metaphors of "Zion" and "Babylon", and many Mormons, particularly because of the persecution they faced historically, identify as "Zion"; "Babylon" consitutes outsiders, or people Mormons assume to be antagonistic towards them. If you sit in any Mormon meeting, references to "the world", containing threatening or dangerous allusions, are made consistently. Apparently Mormons still view "the world" to be a threatening place. And according to the recent Pew report, 68% of Mormons believe they are not seen as part of mainstream American culture (1), suggesting that Mormons see themselves as religious pariah.

Persecution has also worked its way into Mormon folklore. Mormons are all aware of stories in which other Mormons (that they may or may not personally know) have faced some sort of ignorance or discrimination; in some cases, even job discrimination (2-this is a personal account of such discrimination and a wonderful talk given by a man I admire).

Also according to the recent Pew report, "Nearly half of Mormons (46%) say there is a lot of discrimination against Mormons in the United States today." I don't have statistics to back this up, but my guess is this rate has dropped sharply in the past few years. However, only 31% of Mormons believe that blacks face discrimination. So then, the majority of Mormons feel they as a group face greater discrimination than black people (compare 46% to 31%, you get it) (3). In the words of Joanna Brooks, "Brothers and sisters: get a grip."

This gap is indicative of general ignorance about the kinds of discrimination blacks currently or historically have faced. American blacks and other members of the African diaspora have discrimination built into their memory banks just as Mormons do. Except those memories include pain that current Mormons can only have nightmares about. There are too many differences to list between the pain documented in black history and that documented in Mormon history.

Examples of pain and memory not documented in Mormon history include, but are not limited to, enslavement, torture, systematic disruption of family life, systematic rape, lynching, forced abandonment of religion and culture and the forced adoption of new religious norms, miscegenation laws, Jim Crow, and ongoing economic/policy discrimination. The list goes on and on.

It is hypocritical for Mormons to suggest that blacks "get over" their history when in fact we have not gotten over our own. Nor should we. Certainly there are some toxic elements of remembering tragedies. But there are benefits too. It is my personal belief that Pioneer Day shoud be a U.S. holiday, not just a day celebrated by Mormons; why not impress upon national memory a day that commemorates the threat of extermination and persecution of religious citizens-turned refugees? Isn't there an important lesson in there for everyone?

In a way very few Americans understand, Mormon history is their own. Just as few Mormons understand that Black history belongs to them too.


Works Cited:
1) Acceptance of Mormonism: http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/mormons-in-america-mormon-moment.aspx#acceptance
2) http://www.lds.org/liahona/2002/03/the-currant-bush?lang=eng&query=currant+bush
3) Anti-mormon Discrimination: http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Mormon/mormons-in-america-mormon-moment.aspx#acceptance

Meeting Laurel

I doubt anyone remembers this post in which I despair that "I may never meet [Laurel Thatcher Ulrich]". You may only remember that I've referenced her in several posts, one about a study done on Mormon women and higher education and another on Mommies and their dreams. Clearly, I'm a big fan of this woman and have been inspired by her life and work. And on Tuesday, thanks to a Mormon feminist sister-friend, I discovered she was doing a talk in Salt Lake Thursday night. Lots of sister-friends were in attendance, some of whom may even read this blog (I love you).

Ulrich briefly referenced the first book she has written about Mormon history called A House Full of Women, which won't be published until next year. But the focus of her talk was a new church manual, Daughters in my Kindgom, and hearing a review of the book from a bona fide historian was fascinating to say the least. Her review was actually quite positive, until she cited the timeline on pages 182-184. It includes momentous deeds accomplished by the Relief Society until, of course, 1969, where the timeline actually seems to be recording the disappearance of Relief Society. To fully get her meaning, I'd recommend you read the book Women of Covenant, which also covers the history of the Relief Society.

The question and answer period permitted me to pick her brain a bit. The greatest piece of advice I gleaned (and that's saying something!) was when she said, "I try to be the same person at work as I am at church. I try to be honest about who I am." I'd like to be more like her in this regard.

Thanks, Laurel, for being one of my heroes.

traditions II

If you participated at all in my post about traditions-how to celebrate them or how to make them work for you and your family-get a load of this tradition started by one of my professors.

In my political economy of women class on Wednesday we talked about...drumroll...periods. Can you sense why I freaking love this class? We talked about historical and current views of the menstrual cycle and why it has been viewed as "yucky" or "unclean"; we talked about how little women are trained to know their own bodies and what signs to look for during their menstrual cycles; we talked about what the negative effects of the pill can be and how natural family planning works and there were guys in the room listening all the while. It was amazing.

But the thing we talked about that caught my attention most was how women can be affected by their introduction to their own menstrual cycle. Understandably, there are women who hate their periods. Cramps, messiness, expensive measure to control it; these are all things many women deal with on a monthly basis.

Our professor talked about the importance of coming-of-age rituals. For instance, in my church boys of 12 traditionally become deacons (which allows them to pass the sacrament, collect fast offerings, and visit members in their homes with their fathers; girls are given no such service opportunity). I don't see it this way, but some members of my church (my professor is one of them), view menstruation and reproduction as the female equivalent of deaconhood/priesthood. Members will often celebrate their son's transition as a deacon by giving them a gift, such as a set of scriptures, or throwing them a family party. It is something to be celebrated.

But do many Mormons have an equivalent celebration for girls who have recently menstruated*? No. At least not among the white Mormon families that I ever knew growing up and none that I know now.

My professor decided she wanted her daughter's experience to be different. So when her daughter started her period at age 14, she had a plan. Her daughter's only condition was that her friends not be involved. Okay. Said professor had her daughter think of the women she admired most in life (one of them is a co-professor in this class). Mother and daughter wrote up invitations for a celebration at the house in the daughter's honor and these women were invited to come-the only condition was that they had to bring a gift that symbolized what womanhood meant to them. Mother/professor made her a special necklace. Red velvet cake was served at the party (hahaha!).

I was impressed and motivated to do something similiar for my daughter(s) when the time comes. I don't want my daughter to be ashamed or embarrased by her biology or to view it in other unsavory ways. After all, because of my own period, I was able to receive the greatest gift of my life-her! Any comments? Would you be inclined to do something similiar? If so, how would you change it to accomodate your family?


*There are exceptions to this, notably among Mormons that are Navajo. Some of them celebrate female menstruation with a well-worn and beautiful tradition called Kinaalda. There may be other groups that have similiar traditions, but they are in the minority in the wide spectrum of what is known as Mormon culture.

stereotypes

Is it just me or has there been a lot of talk of Mormons lately? I really don't want to delve into the nitty gritty of the exchanges bouncing around. All I want to say is that the few times I've clearly been misunderstood or stereotyped as a Mormon it has been really annoying at best and hurtful at worst.

Scenario one: I must have been in high school. I was on a trip home from somewhere, by myself in an airport. I honestly don't remember much of the details. But I do clearly remember striking a conversation with a middle aged woman. Somehow the conversation came around to me being a Mormon. I don't remember much of the conversation, but I do remember that she proceeded to describe Mormon girls as primarily domestic. She told me that Mormon girls must transition easily into marriage because they are good at sewing and cooking. What? I began to feel that perhaps Mormon girls, and consequently, myself, were being slightly misunderstood and falsely categorized.

Scenario two: My husband and I found ourselves in Las Vegas for our anniversary this year. We got sucked into a sales pitch for time shares. We vehemently told the woman talking to us that we were not interested for lots of reasons, finances being an excuse, but really time shares don't seem very appealing. She then said something like, "Well, you two are from Utah, so I'm assuming you'll be having quite a few more children". Again, what? I'm not even sure what this statement had to do with the larger context of the conversation we were having, but again I felt falsely categorized.

Scenario three: This summer in Arizona I attended a conference given by an expert on gifted education. I'm sure the man giving the presentation was talented in many ways, but when he found out my research partner and I were from BYU, he must have made a few assumptions. Later he was discussing how important it is to take culture, race and ethnicity into account when approaching education. He loudly drew attention to me and my research partner and said something like, "even these girls from BYU...". (First of all, girls?) I honestly don't know if or how he finished the statement, but his intent was clear. People from BYU (Mormons) are ethnocentric, racist people who don't care about people of other races or cultures. Huh? Sigh. I think I've made my point.

The bottom line: stereotyping is unfair and rude. Being on the receiving end...well, let's just say it isn't fun.

Local Study Hits Home

Photo from theacademicmom.com

A recent study highlighted in the Deseret News last week made me feel both pleased and discouraged. The article pointed out that Utah women lag behind in higher education, much more so than women in other states. The study indicated that Mormon women in particular have a difficult time reconciling higher education with family. The article left me feeling pleased because women in this area, most of whom are of my faith, place high priority on family and child-rearing. It upset me for a few reasons. Before I go further, however, let me make it very clear that the purpose of this blog post is not to admonish all women, and especially Mormon women to pursue educational and career goals, whatever the cost. There are so many considerations to be made depending on the woman, her interests and her family, that I have absolutely no interest in making broad statements about women and what they should or should not do.

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That being said, the article did discourage me because so many women feel, rightly or wrongly, that pursuing an education and raising a family are mutually exclusive pursuits. That may be true of some women and their families, but certainly not all. One quote in particular resonated with me. Susan Madsen, business management professor leading the Utah Women and Education Project, stated: "LDS young women get that it's important to go to college. That's not the problem. . . They don't see options. They do not see that one evening a week they could go to class and their husband could watch the kids. It's all or nothing." As the article outlines, many Mormon women do begin college, and it's highly encouraged; but finishing is given less emphasis and consequently, many of those women don't graduate. Anecdotally, I know several women who've waited until their children leave home to finish their degrees. A woman in my Navajo class is 69 and finishing her degree in Political Science. Props to her! But it doesn't have to be that way.

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Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Mormon woman and professor in Harvard's History Department had finished her bachelor's degree in English shortly after getting married and before having children. After moving to Boston for her husband's education and having several children she says:

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"By that time I realized that there was life after marriage. . . We were just getting started out. I had these little kids and not much money. It occurred to me that I could do a lot with small amounts of time if I was organized. It was very hard at first, but I became disciplined. The whole experience convinced me that I could handle taking a class or two, and eventually I started thinking about the long term. So Gael and I came up with the money for me to take one course. We thought that if I got a masters in English, at some point I could teach part-time. That seemed like it would be a nice outlet while my kids were growing up. It was a one-year masters program that took five years for me to do" (Kimball 94).

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Ulrich certainly is a success story for women who decide to abandon the "all or nothing" fallacy. She continued her education, won a Pulitzer, and landed the teaching position she now occupies while raising four children she describes as "terrific people. They can do anything" (98). And guess what? Her marriage even survived the transition she discusses above. In fact, her marriage became stronger and more interdependent. I'm confident that many women in Utah Valley who harbor regrets over not finishing their degrees could have equally happy stories to tell in a few years' time.

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Works Cited:

Kimball, James. Mormon Women: Portraits and Conversations. Handcart Books, 2009.

In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: of the need for female mentors

Alice Walker, famous author of The Color Purple and Pulitzer Prize winner, had a problem. Before she had won that well-earned Pulitzer, she faced an existential crises of sorts. Her way out? A much-needed mentor. She begins her essay, "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" thus:
"I became aware of my need of Zora Neale Hurston's work some time before I knew her work existed." But it wasn't just Hurston's work Walker needed, it was Hurston herself. Attempting to research "voodoo practices among rural Southern blacks of the thirties" for a story, she discovered that there seemed to be little to no research she could trust. "A number of white, racist anthropologists and folklorists of the period had, not surprisingly, disappointed and insulted me. They thought blacks inferior, peculiar, and comic, and for me this undermined, no, destroyed, the relevance of their books."






How fortunate that she then came across Zora Neale Hurston's book, Mules and Men. Hurston, trained at Barnard College, was an anthropologist and a respected writer interested in black life in the American South. "Because she immersed herself in her own culture even as she recorded its 'big old lies,' i.e., folk tales, it was possible to see how she and it. . .fit together." Walker was soothed by Hurston's "assurance that she was exposing not simply an adequate culture but a superior one. That black people can be on occasion peculiar and comic was knowledge she enjoyed. That they could be racially or culturally inferior to whites never seems to have crossed her mind." In short, Zora Neale Hurston provided Alice Walker with the confidence and inspiration to pursue her then-current direction. Walker wanted to be a great African-American writer and she is.

Like Walker's unexpected but welcome discovery of Hurston, I began to discover a need for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich before I knew who she was. I was a little familiar with her work. After all, I had purchased her book, A Midwife's Tale, more intrigued by the title and the fact that it had also won a Pulitzer than by Ulrich's personal story, of which I knew nothing. It wasn't until I had purchased a second book, Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, and began to read that I thought she might be the mentor I had been in search of. Reading in the introduction, Ulrich reveals a little of her own story:

"I was not only a thirty-six-year-old housewife enrolled in a graduate seminar in early American history. I was a thiry-six-year-old wife and mother who with a handful of friends in the Boston area had helped to found an independent periodical devoted to the "twin platforms of Mormonism and feminism."

Obviously, this unexpected interest of hers in Mormonism intrigued me. She continues, "Both 'isms' mattered: despite my flirtation with the women's movement, I too went to church even when it snowed." So I looked her up on (where else?) Wikipedia. Guess what? She's an active member of the Mormon church, teaches institute in Cambridge, and has an illustrious position in Harvard's history department. She's also a self-identified mormon and feminist. Fancy that. When I read about her that day, my eyes watered with gratitude and relief. No joke.

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Her balance more than anything else is incredible to me. Embracing not only feminist ideology and an active church membership, but also a career and family makes her a wonderwoman in my eyes. But, like Alice Walker, who never met Hurston (who had died years before, buried in a pauper's grave Walker found and decorated with a gravestone), I may never meet Ulrich, having moved away from the Boston area unaware of her existence. We may go back, at which time Ulrich and I will become bosom friends. (hollow laughter) But until then, I'm just grateful to know about her, read about her and read from her.

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Walker and I had different backgrounds, experiences and interests that led us to our need for additional feminine support and validation. Walker was a southern black woman who wanted to be a writer, I'm a mormon white woman who also desires something outside of the established norm. However, I think the differences between us are irrelevant; we found what we needed, after all.

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So I'm curious. What mentors have you needed or found? Why and how?

Me? A misogynist killer?

Tonight, after watching some profiles of Mormons on mormon.org, I jokingly said to Derrick, "Hey, maybe one day they'll do a profile on us because we're so diverse and nontraditional (Yeah, right)." He replied, "Yeah, I can see it now: 'My name is Jen, I've killed over fifteen misogynists, and I'm a Mormon.'" Oh, my husband. He knows me so well.

Sacred Spaces

"Church Going", composed by Philip Larkin, modernist poet, is full of conflicted feeling: a mental tug-of-war between the sacred and the secular, the practical and the ideal, a desire to believe cast against a disgust for superstition. Larkin's speaker in the poem pauses, as is his wont, by a simple church with "matting, seats, and stone, and little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut for Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff up at the holy end; the small neat organ; and a tense, musty, unignorable silence". Compelled by a reverence not quite understood by the narrator, he "signs the book, donates an Irish sixpence" (worthless currency) and reflects that "the place was not worth stopping for". Yet he must admit that he did stop and often does stop, and afterwards always wonders why. But he adds later, "for though I've no idea what this accoutred frowsty barn is worth, it pleases me to stand in silence here".

I'm fascinated by his unbelief, and yet his desire to participate in the sacred; his desire to remove himself, if for only a moment, from the outside world. Sometimes we go to church or stand in sacred places out of habit. Sometimes we don't. It's my belief that the spiritual is an intrinsic element of what it means to be human; some of us take our spiritual lives very seriously, and actively engage and participate in spiritual development. I believe that to ignore the spiritual is to ignore an essential and important part of the balance we are all trying to meet and maintain.

Respect for sacred space and overall continued religious dedication, whatever the religion, is something I like about America. In"Church Going", the narrator wonders aloud what will happen to the church he visits and others that have fallen out of use, as is likely to happen. A friend of mine who happened to be in my modernism class was able to partially answer that question. Having served her LDS mission in Holland, she frequently entered former churches that had been converted into apartment buildings. Ambivalence towards religion isn't necessarily universal in Europe, but it does seem to be epidemic. Figures in the most recent Economist show that "60% of Czechs say they avoid religious services". One wonders if their churches have begun to be converted into housing.

I believe sacred places are important. In my few years as an adult, my place of ultimate spiritual guidance and growth has taken place inside Latter-Day Saint temples. For Mormons like myself, these buildings are so important in our quest to find answers to tough questions, seek guidance from a loving God, and gain perspective during difficult times. I have been and continue to be thankful for my church and my faith.
But sacred places certainly aren't limited to Mormon temples. My aunt who lives in Henderson Nevada, sits on her porch/overlook every evening, and while watching the planes land, gives thanks for her blessings. It's her ritual. I enjoy praying more while on a solitary walk, than on my knees in a carpeted bedroom, but like Larkin's narrator, I find that buildings constructed for the purpose of worship are somehow awe-inspiring.

The narrator ends:

"A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in..."

So, I hope in each of our quests to find wisdom- as parents, children, siblings, friends, coworkers or perhaps just as individuals- we might not neglect the spiritual, nor discourage it in others.

Mormon Women and Career Preparedness

Because I'm a dedicated member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a self proclaimed "Mormon", my blog may highlight aspects of my life or attitudes that can be attributed to Mormonism. One of these, and one I think is very admirable, is the idea of Provident Living. The sum total of this idea can be found in self-reliance and emergency preparedness. For those of you who are mormons or who know mormons well, you may already know that this includes food storage: a surplus of food consistently kept in the home in case of catastrophe, economic or otherwise. This also includes a 72-hour kit in case of environmental disaster. But Provident Living also details the necessity of wisely taking care of our personal health, spirituality and finances while also taking advantage of employment and educational opportunities, thus lessening our chances of being reliant on others. What a great idea, right? But because so many women who share my faith are dedicated homemakers, the idea of further education and employment can seem out of reach, exhausting, or even oppositional to their familial goals.

I recently heard this startling statistic from one of my BYU professors: about 80% of mormon women are single, either because they haven't had the opportunity or inclination to marry, are widowed or divorced. I was shocked (though this statistic hasn't been verified by the reliable source itself, so until I see it with my own eyes let's just say I was shocked but dubious as well). So it seems women in my church, either out of choice or necessity have had to do some serious re-thinking in terms of career-preparedness.

Though I haven't received a lot of verbal flack for my tenacious pursuit of my undergraduate degree and ambitious preparation for graduate school while also caring for a small child, I've wondered at times how many unspoken thoughts have trailed through others' minds about whether or not I have my "priorities straight". Perhaps I shouldn't even waste the energy it takes to think about this, but it nevertheless happens from time to time. All I can say to those who may think this is: what a crock!

To me, a woman pursuing her education and heightening her earning power is just another extension of provident living. Why wait for undesirable, tragic events to impell us to become breadwinners? And since the unthinkable likelihood of my husband dying in a traffic accident is on par or much greater than some cataclysmic natural disaster causing me to pull out my food storage or 72 hour kit, I think I'm doing my part to become a "provident liver". Of course, just like other emergency preparations, a desire to increase one's earning power can be taken to extremes ("work double shifts? why, yes!"), and, of course, getting multiple college degrees isn't the only or most important way to become a provident liver, I think it is important, appropriate and completely justified for women to pursue their educational and career goals in order to benefit themselves and their families.

Felicity's baby blessing

Our beautiful baby girl was blessed July 19th in Page 3rd ward. We were so happy to be able to do the blessing in Page, and having so many family members there, even though some had to travel long distances, was wonderful. Felicity didn't cry at all during the blessing (every parent's fear) and Derrick did such an amazing job.

We feel really blessed to have so many wonderful family members and friends, it meant a lot to us to be in Page for the event, it's still home to us in so many different ways, though our future childrens' blessing might take place in other locales. Felicity is so lucky to have other people around who care about her besides her parents, another reason why being in the West again is so fantastic!

I should also mention that some close friends also drove long distances. My friend, Nancy drove up from Phoenix so she could be there. Thanks Nancy! You're wonderful!