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Sister Dalton’s talk at BYU last week, “Young women you will be the ones who will provide the example of virtuous womanhood and motherhood. You will continue to be virtuous lovely praiseworthy and of good report. You will also be the ones to provide an example of family life in a time when families are under attack, being redefined and disintegrating. You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights.” I do not even know what to say in response to this talk. It is so depressing that these young impressionable women just starting out in discovering who they are, will now feel bad, unrighteous, and “not virtous” if they have feelings that go against the programmed church model of what and how a female should feel and behave. Can you imagine if there was a talk similar to this but directed to black members when they were wanting the priesthood! (and no I don’t want the Priesthood)
Forget the fact that this is a world wide church were women are still “lobbying” for their right to an education without acid thrown in their face or have their genitals mutilated, but Sister Dalton talk is detrimental to even middle class, educated women in America. Basically it is the old church motto of just sit here, be quiet and look pretty…but not to pretty because then you are just walking pornography and poor men can’t control themselves and your responsible for our thoughts and actions.
So sad this is were we are at in the church today.
I was wondering when this would show up at staylds. I’m sure this was in response to pantacolyspe and women pray in GC Facebook groups. But…the statement should have said so, because the membership will see it as all encompassing civil rights statement.
This is sad and the entire concept goes against my morals, ethics and teachings to my children.
So I guess Dalton just countered Urchtdorf’s talk this week.
Who will win the culture war? Dalton has 50 years of history and church quotes on her side.
One step forward, two steps back.
Dalton needs to apologize and clarify her statement….because this will cause more hemorrhaging.
Very sad.
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I agree that this statement is disappointing and disturbing, but I see what’s happening as two steps forward (or, in some cases, three or four steps forward), one step back. 
Anyone surprised by that?
😆 I have been reading this on other sites and waiting also. I think the majority of members have no problem with this way of thinking and BYU would be the place to deliever it. After all the kids had to complete four years off seminary to go there. I have a big problem with This, but again I have a lot of problems with some things at church. I personally believe that the leaders are not doing this to cause heart ache but they are saying thinks that they were tought and that they believe and that they think will be good for the church. I think it is our responsibility to call them out and also let our voices be heard but we need to do it with understanding, love, respect and with enough force to get their attention. Not sure how to do that yet but I would be opened to any ideas. I’m not much of an in your face type of guy. Dax wrote:You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights.”
Recently saw the movie “steel jawed angels” about the agitators that pushed the issue of getting women the right to vote nationwide during WW1. They protested, were beaten, spit upon, and arrested. While in prison for “disturbing the peace” they staged a hunger strike and were force fed. Are these women the enemy, role-models, or something in between?
I’m just wondering where all of this falls within Elder Oaks instruction that “it is wrong to criticize leaders of the church, even of the criticism is true”? Does this only apply to Priesthood leaders? 😈 Statements like those of Sister Dalton confirm the lack of moral legitimacy in church leadership. The church actively lobbies (-ied, perhaps) for supression of rights of gay people, but it’s not acceptable for a woman to lobby for women’s rights? The church’s unholy alliance with Phyllis Shafley in sh%%-canning the ERA is an example of institutional stupidity and intolerance of the idea that anyone might be ‘equal’ to the male dominance hierarchy that runs the show.
We have an obligation as members and as humans to sustain LDS leadership in some way. In my humble opinion, the notion of ‘sustain’ is something different than blind compliance. When Moses’ arms tired in the mythical account of the crossing of the Red Sea, Aaron and Hur held up his arms. Symbolically, we have an obligation that when our leaders stumble and say patently stupid things, we have an obligation to appropriately disagree and sustain the position of the leader when the individual holding that position screws up. If this means swearing at the altar of god eternal hostility against all forms of tyranny over the mind of man (and woman), then so be it. It means to sit idle in the face of injustice is to side with the oppressor, and we morallly cannot do that as Saints. period.
Quote:You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights.
I heard someone interpret this to be significant because it was in the future tense. In the future Young Women will not need to lobby for rights because they will have the roles and responsibilities that God intended for them. Hopefully that future will come soon, but it is not here yet.
wayfarer wrote:Statements like those of Sister Dalton confirm the lack of moral legitimacy in church leadership. ... Symbolically, we have an obligation that when our leaders stumble and say patently stupid things, we have an obligation to appropriately disagree and sustain the position of the leader when the individual holding that position screws up. … It means to sit idle in the face of injustice is to side with the oppressor, and we morallly cannot do that as Saints.period. This quote from Dalton is the kind of quote that is going to haunt the church for a long long time. It will be a deal-breaker and final straw for many…especially women who are struggling.
The church needs to
apologizeand rescind the comment NOW. But they won’t. They can never do so because of the hole they have dug for themselves. So instead they will ignore it and hope it finds its way down the memory hole. But they forget…with the advent of the internet and bloggernacle, those days are long over. Yeah, this will be right in the cannon with so many of Packer’s and BRM’s infamous mess ups.
I think this quote from the good Bishop Kloosterman pretty well says it all, IMO. Thanks. Quote:MESSAGE TO CHURCH PUBLIC RELATIONS:
This talk is a disaster. You are going to need to do some major damage control if you haven’t already picked up on this. I have some evidence that at least one LDS woman I know who was already struggling is pretty much done. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If you want the church to continue to lose members by all means continue to promote completely outdated gender roles and more comments such as this. As someone who cares deeply about the church and its future for myself and my family, I would ask that you please do some damage control on this in the short term and in the longer term some changes need to happen on the issue of gender roles and feminist concerns. This talk and some of the quotes are really out there and very damaging and clear evidence that change is clearly needed.
That is a fantastic quote from the bishop Cwlad, thanks for sharing it. Rebeccad….I unfortunately do not think Dalton was speaking in the future, if she was she was implying that the new “virtuous” future women will know their place. I agree with you that it would be great if women could even get the small step of saying a prayer in GC.
As Ray stated there have been small steps forward such as the change in curriculum for young women and age change. However I still find that almost every talk/lesson is peppered with modesty and virtue. As if a girl/woman’s body is such a evil thing to always be controlled. Why do we not talk about the principles behind the standards and who decided that modesty was going to go backwards? When did shoulders become immodest for the unendowed?
Wait I forgot…if I want to be virtuous I need to know my role and responsibilities and be silent….ahhhhh!!!
How am I going to teach my daughter her worth if she is constantly being told that what she feels, thinks and desires is not important and even evil unless it is approved exactly by church culture/doctrine?
Dax wrote:“You will understand your roles and your responsibilities and thus will see no need to lobby for rights.”
I wonder if Sister Dalton enjoys voting. I wonder if she enjoys speaking in public. I wonder if she enjoys driving an automobile. I wonder if she enjoys choosing her own marriage partner rather than having her father choose for her. I wonder if she enjoys going out in public without a male member of her household to escort her. I wonder if she enjoys feeling a breeze blow through her hair while outdoors, or feeling the warm sunshine on her face. I wonder if she enjoyed going to school. Because there are women in the world, right now, who enjoy none of these things. Should those women just take comfort in their “roles and responsibilities” and not bother “lobby[ing] for [their] rights”?
Unbelievable.
Exactly Kumahito! This talk was heartbreaking. It’s like it was written in 1955, buried as it should have been, then dug up and read now. I’ve been reading the Feminine Mystique (which was first published 50 years ago this year). Author Betty Friedan goes through in painstaking detail the history of why women (in the wake of WW2) were sold the idea that motherhood was the only path for a true woman, that a woman working in a man’s world would make her masculine and unfulfilled, and the chronicling of the actual impacts to both men and women from this shift: 1) women who were not committed to contribute in a meaningful way to world beyond the threshhold of the home – a brain drain on American innovation, 2) women who were apathetic about their education and either didn’t finish it or never pursued it seriously, 3) the rise in crafts and volunteer work among housewives – to fill their empty days, 4) the rise in consumerism for women, including how advertising manipulated women into seeing themselves as domestic “experts” to sell more products to them, 5) female depression and lack of identity, 6) male resentment at female domestic domination (nagging), and a host of other outcomes. If you haven’t read it, it’s a must. Let me go out on a limb for a minute. Pres. Dalton was speaking to college students, men and women. If a woman is not supposed to contribute to the world in any larger way than within the home, what is the point of her higher education? Why is she there? Just to have meaningful conversations with her husband and sons whose contributions will be made outside the home? So women are only permitted to live vicariously through their male relatives? As illustrated in the Feminine Mystique, this simply results in cognitive dissonance and identity crisis for women when their brief window of childbearing years has ended.
Lack of meaningful creative work is what leads to lack of identity, for both men and women (and believe me, many men also suffer from this). How this model of total female dependence fits into a plan of happiness is a mystery to me. What about the women who can’t bear children, those who marry men who can’t support a family on their own, those whose husbands cheat on them or leave them? They are abandoned and have no control over their future in this supposedly ideal scenario. Pres. Dalton is fortunate that she married someone wealthy, intelligent and kind. Not everyone does. She wouldn’t give this advice if she had married someone who appeared to be all those things but turned out to be a charming scoundrel.
I have a hard time believing that this came out the way she intended. But setting the incendiary comment aside, I was concerned about the reference to age. I took her to be saying, Don’t let anyone tell you you’re too young to marry. (Maybe I’m mistaken.) I get the same feeling as when I hear that missionaries returning home are told that Job #1 is to get married. Very young people can marry well, but there shouldn’t be blanket advice that translates into pressure and overrides good judgment. But maybe this is partly just middle-aged me. I’m so “over” this style of talk. Somewhere else the hypnotic quality of it was mentioned – “You will….you will…..you will.” I know it’s a speaking technique, but it rubs me the wrong way.
I feel sorry for anyone public speaking in the church now. The internet makes everything high def. – we see all the flaws.
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