Gospel Doctrine Duscussion about Slut Shaming

We all agreed we would judge Daniel to be a wonderful example of everything we hold dear.

However, when you remove the inspirational, religious element of saving her people from death (about which neither she nor Mordecai knew until after she had become queen), Esther’s story would be judged VERY differently from the lens of orthodox, modern Mormon doctrine and culture.

Mordecai essentially pimped her out to the king to become, at least, a concubine (the fate of those not chosen to be queen) and, ideally, the queen. So, he sent her to the palace to be on the king’s revolving sex partner list, one way or the other. The only difference would be her prestige and privilege. She prepared for a year for a one-time audition that included trying out sexually with the king. Each contestant spent an evening AND night with the king. We all are adults, as I said twice in the class, and we all know that means.

So, in summary, Mordecai set up his ward-cousin to have sex with the king in the hope that she would be chosen by him to be the new queen – after the former queen refused to attend a party to which she hadn’t been invited and “strut her stuff” in front of the gathered dignitaries. Based on our modern cultural norms, Esther would have been seen as a money-grubbing, power-hungry whore who obeyed her money-grubbing, power-hungry cousin – right up until it became a story about courage and perhaps divine intervention in order to save the Jews.

We also talked about the fact that Mordecai didn’t send Esther to the palace to be a missionary of any kind. He explicitly told her to hide her religion from everyone in order to have a shot at becoming the queen. Finally, we talked about how Vashti was removed from her position specifically so the other women in the kingdom wouldn’t get all uppity and think they also could disobey their husbands (also stated explicitly in the story).

I told the class I love the story and I also hate it. The overall discussion was about why that is so.

I had to include the chapters the lesson skipped (1 & 2) in order to provide the full cultural context and discuss slut shaming.

I am fine with the manual skipping those chapters, since the “profit and learning” the Sunday School organization wanted to emphasize was, “If I perish, I perish”. However, I could emphasize that aspect AND emphasize, “We can be judgmental jerks when we apply our own standards to everyone,” only by including those chapters.

I chose to teach BOTH the lesson’s intended focus AND the other one I believed was important. Win-win, imo.