Gender separation

[Anonymous]

I try to set aside my issues with the priesthood but I still see other gender issues that bother me. The rational side of me says to forget about it because nothing is perfect. It’s not like this problem is only in the Church. It’s just that for some reason I expect the Church to hold to higher standards and treat everyone equally.

The Church is causing harm in the long run by separating men and women in RS, EQ, etc. I think that this leads people to only be comfortable talking about certain things with member of their own gender. I think if you don’t feel comfortable talking about something with the opposite gender around you probably shouldn’t be saying it in public at all. Even if you think men and women are totally different, we should still share and respect each others view point.

They wait to ask for volunteers until after they separate husbands and wives. They ask the women to do some tasks and men to do others. Why do they get to decide what task is appropriate for me? Do they think there is a doctrinal reason why a women can’t set up chairs?

I suspect if I knew more about how they treated kids differently I would be pretty upset. I would love to hear someones opinion about how children are treated. I personally don’t believe you can give people totally different opportunities and then proclaim them equal.

It’s not like I want to rock the boat or anything, this is just the way I see it.

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

…Do they think there is a doctrinal reason why a women can’t set up chairs?…

I would love it if the women would take care of the chairs at church. I do it so they DON’T HAVE to, out of respect. In this particular example it’s called chivalry.

I understand your point though. I have a tough time with MANY of the traditions of our church, AND our country’s culture, in regards to women. I’m just glad we are as progressive as we are — after all, at least my wife and kids aren’t having to navigate the culture of the middle east where women are pretty well still treated like property in many countries.

One thing we have done in our branch, is we have the EQ and the RS meet together AT LEAST once a month,on the first and fifth sundays of the month.

things that bother me about the church and how they deal with females.

1. Why they have only men sitting on the stand. Let’s put the RSP up there.

2. Why they won’t allow women to exercise their priesthood at church or in the home. (where are the female bishops and GAs?)

3. That we sponsor boyscouts, but not girlscouts.

4. That we expect females to wear dresses or skirts, rather than slacks or dress pants.

5. That too many females still give up education and get married young – because they feel it is a commandment.

6. That we make females wait until they are 21 to go on a mission.

7. That we teach temple marriage is the cure all – end all to finding happiness in marriage.

8. That the church has never apologized for the pain and suffering they caused so many women during the polygamy years.

9. that too many members still view women as chattel – as nothing more than breeding stock to bare kids.

things I like about how the church has changed in regards to females:

1. Girls camp

2. General RSP and YWP speaking in general conference and world wide training.

3. Females speaking in church

4. Females praying in SM

5. Becoming acceptable for mothers to work outside of the home

6. Birth control becoming acceptable.

7. Priesthood interviews finally staying out of the bedroom of married couples.

8. Females finally being encouraged to get an education before marriage.

9. Females being involved in ward council meetings.

10. No more polygamy.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

after all, at least my wife and kids aren’t having to navigate the culture of the middle east where women are pretty well still treated like property in many countries.

Sometime I feel like people use this as a excuse. Like, why should it be any better? Isn’t this good enough? I am very grateful that I have the freedoms that I have but I don’t think that is a reason to stop working towards more equality.

cwald wrote:

3. That we sponsor boyscouts, but not girlscouts.

I my opinion girl scouts sucked. Some girls really like it, I’m sure. But this is what started all my gender issues. I don’t see why I was restricted to certain recreation because of my gender. In one of the other treads someone commented about how women are not interested in certain things. I think this is mostly do to what is socially acceptable and exposure. Camping, shooting, archery, kayaking, these are all things for boys apparently. In all my years of girl scouts, I only went camping once and rarely did anything outdoors. There are coed groups that do these things and it works fine but I don’t see the Church going that way anytime soon and it makes me sad. I’m just glad that I don’t have kids.

cwald wrote:

4. That we expect females to wear dresses or skirts, rather than slacks or dress pants.

Expect all they want. I wear pants.

cwald wrote:

3. Females speaking in church

4. Females praying in SM

I really don’t know how things are different in other areas. I guess I should feel grateful that these things happen in my ward.

[Anonymous]

Wow Pickles – you really shot down my attempt at being positive. I’m not use to trying to defend the church, but thought a little positive approach might be in order. My bad. 🙂

My personal opinion – I dislike the role women play in the LDS church. There – done deal.

FWIW —- about the girl scouts thing – obviously I was just trying to make the point that I think that the LDS church puts way more focus on the YM, and wish they would do something “similar” for the YW like scouts. I don’t give a hoot about girl scouts either – don’t even know what they do, but yeah, I wish we had a YW equivalent of the scouting program. i don’t know what that would be.

Another perspective – I have great respect for women and treat my teenager daughter like a golden child. I love her to death and spend lots of time camping and fishing and crabbing with her. I also like to spend time doing those things with my wife – and I spend a lot of time with just her. That being said, I also like to go out and spend time drinking and visiting WITH JUST THE BOYS sometimes to. Guys need time and activities to be alone and talk and cuss to one another about life without the pheromones distracting and getting in our way. I think women have the same needs – time with the girls, and I don’t fault the church one bit that they have separate programs for guys and girls. As a guy who spends every day of my life surrounded by 100s of teenagers, I can tell you they ACT VERY differently when they are in “mixed company.” Sometimes I take groups of boys and girls on trips, sometimes I take just girls, and sometimes I take just boys. There is time and place for all these kind of arrangements. I don’t apologize for my segregation of the sexes – its just biology in action.

My point is, yes, I wish girls could go on more camping trips. In our stake we have girls camp where they do that (they don’t go on as many camps as i wish they would though.) But I don’t think we need to ALWAYS include girls when we take the boys out camping. I just wish that we could spend the same amount of money and have the same amount of programs for both sexes to meet their needs. Such as, if we have father/son camp out, the next one should be a father/daughter camp out. I don’t think that is asking too much from the church

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

[

cwald wrote:

4. That we expect females to wear dresses or skirts, rather than slacks or dress pants.

Expect all they want. I wear pants.

I wish you were in my branch than. The whole dress and skirt thing bothers me — kind of like the white shirt issue.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

Wow Pickles – you really shot down my attempt at being positive. I’m not use to trying to defend the church, but thought a little positive approach might be in order. My bad.

I really wasn’t trying to put down your positive approach. Like I said I am grateful for the same things. I do spend time at least trying to see the good that there already is. I don’t see anything wrong with the way you said it. It’s just the other folks out there that ONLY see the positive side of things and refuse to acknowledge that more could be done. It came out harsher than I meant.

cwald wrote:

Such as, if we have father/son camp out, the next one should be a father/daughter camp out.

What I’m afraid of is them sending the father/sons camping and then saying the mothers and daughters should sit in a house and knit something. Then they just call the whole then equal.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

I also like to go out and spend time drinking and visiting WITH JUST THE BOYS sometimes to. Guys need time and activities to be alone and talk and cuss to one another about life without the pheromones distracting and getting in our way. I think women have the same needs – time with the girls, and I don’t fault the church one bit that they have separate programs for guys and girls.

I do realise that a lot of people feel this way. However, not all men or women have these same needs. I don’t find this necessary and neither does my husband. I respect that other people need to do things differently.

This gets a little tiring. I always am the one who doesn’t match everyone else. I spend my whole life conceding, standing one the outside, watching everyone else do what they want. It’s really draining to have to participate in a reality that wasn’t made for me.

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

This gets a little tiring. I always am the one who doesn’t match everyone else. I spend my whole life conceding, standing one the outside, watching everyone else do what they want. It’s really draining to have to participate in a reality that wasn’t made for me.

Yeah, actually I don’t think you are alone in that. Perhaps you should adopt an alien avatar like I have — it’s how I feel when it comes to church matters. Most of us here on this forum just don’t fit in the box, for one reason or the other. Nowadays, I’ve accepted that fact and I try not to get down about it. I will make my own box to live in. I think that is what we commonly call here – the Middle Way.

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

It’s really draining to have to participate in a reality that wasn’t made for me.

Amen! It’s been a while since I felt the need to use that word.

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

I suspect if I knew more about how they treated kids differently I would be pretty upset. I would love to hear someones opinion about how children are treated.

When my daughters entered YW, I noticed they sometimes complained that their activities were different than the boys’, and they were jealous about why they couldn’t do the fun things the boys were doing.

I took it upon myself to look into it, and I found in our ward it was because the YW leaders wanted it that way, and prided themselves in making YW activities “spiritual” and looked down on the YM activities that were just sports and “stupid fun stuff with no lasting values”.

In my experience, it comes down to culture and traditions…things like chairs are not doctrinal (I know you meant that tongue and cheek ) but are done out of respect assuming the women appreciate it, and most probably are not complaining about that issue.

But other things are done out of traditions that aren’t right, and should be challenged, IMO. I think the genders can be different but equally valued and important. I don’t like building crafts and my wife doesn’t like playing basketball…but we include woman ballers that like to play…including an 8 month pregnant woman (who was very good but made us nervous about the health of the baby 😯 ). I like differences, and don’t want more conformity in the church.

Having said that, pickles, I totally respect your unique self. I have a feeling if we were in the same ward, we’d be friends.

[Anonymous]

I’m pretty certain that I’d want pickles in my ward and have her in ward council. 😆

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

I my opinion girl scouts sucked. Some girls really like it, I’m sure. But this is what started all my gender issues. I don’t see why I was restricted to certain recreation because of my gender. In one of the other treads someone commented about how women are not interested in certain things. I think this is mostly do to what is socially acceptable and exposure. Camping, shooting, archery, kayaking, these are all things for boys apparently. In all my years of girl scouts, I only went camping once and rarely did anything outdoors.

I’ve had two daughters in Girls Scouts. They did all those kinds of things. Maybe it was a factor of the time (now vs. however long ago), location or leaders. My girls’ head leader is an awesome lady who builds custom homes with her husband as a business … and I don’t mean she stands there wearing a parasol and bonnet directing the workers. She swings a hammer and usually showed up to meetings right from work with sheet rock mud on her boots.

Also, there were activities sponsored by career women, and a cool annual even they went to hosted by a sorority of women engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Anyway … just wanted to say that my limited experience as a dad with girls in Girl Scouts, Girl Scouts ROCKED! This was in the past 5 years though, and in the Georgia / Atlanta area where the overall regional community at large really supports both Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

[Anonymous]

Brian Johnston wrote:

I’ve had two daughters in Girls Scouts. They did all those kinds of things.

I think I just had some bad luck for the most part. But it still doesn’t make it feel all right to me. If racial segregation isn’t ok, why should gender segregation be alright? If African Americans were sent to their own scouting program it wouldn’t be acceptable even if it was exactly the same.

[Anonymous]

pickles wrote:

I think I just had some bad luck for the most part. But it still doesn’t make it feel all right to me. If racial segregation isn’t ok, why should gender segregation be alright? If African Americans were sent to their own scouting program it wouldn’t be acceptable even if it was exactly the same.

I don’t really think it is fair to compare racial segregation with gender segregation. Seriously, the only difference between a black guy and a white guy is the amount pigment in his skin. The difference between males and females is the entire biochemical makeup of the creatures. They are made differently down to the cellular level in the DNA, the code of life. Life is chemistry. Males and females have different chemistry.

Another thought on this. I don’t let my daughter go stay with friends where there are boys of similar age living, and I don’t let my boys go stay with friends where there are girls of similar age living. For obvious reasons, I think. Am I being unfair?

I think we need to provide more opportunities for the YW and give them the same amount of money and resources as we give the YM — but I probably would limit my kids participation in some of these activities, like camps, if girls and boys were both attending. I’m just thinking about how I was as a teenager, and I would have LOVED if girls would have been accessible during scout camps. In fact, I looked at my first playboy on scout camp, and we actually plotted once how to sneak down out of the canyon and hook up with girlfriends on more than one occasion.

Anyway, I will bow out of this thread now, and just politely agree to disagree on this one.

[Anonymous]

cwald wrote:

I don’t really think it is fair to compare racial segregation with gender segregation. Seriously, the only difference between a black guy and a white guy is the amount pigment in his skin. The difference between males and females is the entire biochemical makeup of the creatures. They are made differently down to the cellular level in the DNA, the code of life. Life is chemistry. Males and females have different chemistry.

I think it is completely fair. Race and gender are both physical differences. Males and females have different chemistry, so what? Why should chemistry matter in the grand scheme of things? Different skin pigment is different chemistry. Since I don’t think all males are clones, they will have differences in their DNA. If a person is depressed and has different brain chemistry should they be segregated? How about we are all just humans. There is a large variation in chemistry among the whole lot of us. I think if you are worried only about chemistry I think you need to look at a bigger picture.

cwald wrote:

Another thought on this. I don’t let my daughter go stay with friends where there are boys of similar age living, and I don’t let my boys go stay with friends where there are girls of similar age living. For obvious reasons, I think. Am I being unfair?

Of coarse you are not being unfair. They are your children so you make the decisions about what is best for them. Above everything else I believe in an individuals right to make decisions about their life. As a parent you get use your judgement about what is right or wrong for your childen. I’m not attacking anyone’s choices. I just think everyone should have more options in life.

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