Standing when a woman enters a room

[Anonymous]

I remember as a missionary in South America an investigator asked about something that president GBH had said. The quote was to the effect that a wife is the husbands most valuable possession. The investigator wondered if maybe the word “possession” means something different in English than it does in Spanish. Nope. Not really. Sounded innocuous enough (to my missionary brain) until you try to reverse it. The husband is the wife’s most valuable possession? It just sounds off.

In addition to the reference to standing (or feeling like it) when a woman enters a room President RMN also says the following:

Quote:

I am inspired by each husband who demonstrates that his most important priesthood responsibility is to care for his wife.4 (the footnote is to D&C 131:2-4 that basically lays out that you need your wife if you want to be exalted [Never mind that it may have been talking about polygamy])

This is good, positive and probably needful in many relationships where there is not adequate care given. However, I am having a hard time imagining the reverse. Her most important responsibility is to care for her husband? It sounds strange.

Old Timer wrote:

Old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist men gonna condescend to women through old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist stereotypes based on growing up believing in old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist praise.

Yeah, I suppose a bigger problem is when Old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist men create, maintain, and defend old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist policies that masqurade as the gospel of Jesus Christ.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I suppose a bigger problem is when Old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist men create, maintain, and defend old-fashioned, well-intentioned, sincere, good-hearted, benevolently-sexist policies that masqurade as the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That sounds like my favorite Uchtdorf quote:

Quote:

Sometimes, well-meaning amplifications of divine principles—many coming from uninspired sources—complicate matters further, diluting the purity of divine truth with man-made addenda. One person’s good idea—something that may work for him or her—takes root and becomes an expectation. And gradually, eternal principles can get lost within the labyrinth of “good ideas.”

I liked how this female writer put it:

Quote:

When women still face a lifetime wage gap of almost half a million dollars, is it absurd to be concerned with well-meaning men who don’t want wives and mothers to do the heavy lifting?

It’s true that men and women are biologically different. So should they be treated as such? Part of me feels that, with the monthly pains, likely childbearing and perpetual double standards of womanhood, I am owed some grocery lifting, pedestal placing and occasional spider killing by the men in my life. Likewise, certain gendered behaviors have such deep roots in romanticism—he pays on the first date, he gets down on one knee—I would truly be sad to see them go.

The danger, however, is if gallantry begets the notion that women are less than or need special favors in order to succeed. Men and women might subconsciously receive that message and carry it with them to their schoolyards, workplaces and marriages. If your girlfriend is too “delicate” to change a tire, is a female manager too “weak” to run your board? And if you believe that he should pay for dinner, are you more willing to accept a lower salary?

Because I would answer yes, that would be sexist.

[Anonymous]

Yes, and while people are off complaining over the use of pronouns, the gig economy has taken over and younger people of any gender can’t get proper regular paid work most of the time. We may be looking in the wrong places for who exploits who.

Politicians lead by example. Many of their employees are not even paid a dime.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely, Roy. Culture always shadows the pure Gospel to some degree. “We see through a glass, darkly,” is universal, although the clarity differs widely.

[Anonymous]

In a way this gets back to the age old question of how much in the church is culture and able to shift and how much is doctrine that is core and unable to shift without fundamentally altering the eternal effectiveness of the church. Is there a point where culture that is emphasized and taught as though it was doctrine becomes in itself a sort of counterfeit gospel with a counterfeit salvation. Do we “look beyond the mark” or is the mark itself subject to the shifting of cultural change. How would we know?

I recognize what President RMN said as cultural because 1) it does not reflect the culture I swim in day to day and is therefore easy for me to identify as not fitting in. It is outside of the cultural assumptions that I have accepted and to which I am partially blind. 2) I can recognize his comments as reflecting the earlier time period of RMN’s upbringing. 3) The sentiment that is expressed in the comments does not have origin in the LDS faith or within the history of Judeo-Christian belief formation. There is no possibility that this was a heavenly truth revealed to the people of God through a prophet at some point. I am tempted to label the standing when women enter the room thing as Victorian though that may be painting with a very large generalization brush.

Therefore, when the brethren make pronouncements regarding gay marriage to the extent that the standards of the Lord do not and cannot change are they really citing unchanging law or are they referencing the unquestioned assumptions of their culture? When brethren state that gender is eternal, existed in the premortal realm, and is an integral part of our eternal destiny is that doctrine or cultural assumptions? When DHO says that this eternal gender corresponds to genitalia at the time of birth and that ‘male and female,’ binary creation endures through each estate or stage of probation – is that doctrine?

Old Timer wrote:

Culture always shadows the pure Gospel to some degree. “We see through a glass, darkly,” is universal, although the clarity differs widely.

How much can I trust the brethren to help me sort through and distill the pure doctrine from the culture when they themselves seem similarly limited in their ability to see past their cultural assumptions? Worse still, for my purposes is that the brethren have portrayed near absolute confidence on matters where they have later been proven to have been mistaken. This means that I cannot use the brethren’s portrayed confidence level or testimony to help in distinguishing the truth from the error – the pure gospel from the cultural assumptions on my own

As with everything, I cannot help but interpret the world I see through my own filter and my own experiences – my own “glass, darkly”. There was a time when I craved the sense of confidence, direction, and perception of self control and self determination that the church leaders provide. Now it grates my ears to hear confident promises that I feel to be over reaching and unverifiable at best and manipulative or deceptive at worst. I now crave pulling back from all the things that we (I) have claimed to “know” and a more humlbe reflection on things that we do not know but can hope for.

[Author]

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