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Instead it was basically asserted that women have soft influence in the church through their marital and family relationships to men.
To me the biggest irony of this vision, is that both the top men married long time single women. Why those wives don’t speak up about being single is beyond me.
I would be representing my single brothers and sisters vocally. Reminding DH, what it’s like to be the breadwinner and homemaker at the same time. Sharing what it feels like to sit through meetings where “your faith will win out”. But maybe once you land a GA spouse, all the loneliness just disappears.
Ah to be the lucky ones.
Roy wrote:
When I heard this I thought of the well worn adages “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” and “Behind every great man is a great woman.” It is difficult that this question was not even answered by highlighting the small advances of women in the church in recent years and suggesting that more was to come. Instead it was basically asserted that women have soft influence in the church through their marital and family relationships to men.
QUASI-RANT (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)
I don’t want it to be indirectly implied my influence is the “soft” influence on my husband and children. Especially since any “influence” I theoretically have on them is challenged by them at every level and is not clearly visible to me. My “soft” influence does not get them to do their chores, become passionate about things, or teach them about the needs of others. At best, I drag them into my current project/passion when I do the things I am passionate about – and I get “heavenly” credit for that. I also get “heavenly” credit for when my 8 year old decides the situation is too crazy for her so she sits quietly staring out the window “so well-behaved” and then blurts out a statement with lots of three syllable words that is both quirky, charming, and accidentally applicable. My husband gets more mileage upgrading his behavior to match what he perceives is my level of perfection than me nagging at him on end (one of the first rules of marriage that I learned – say more with fewer words repeated, restated, and re-parsed as needed with compassion).
I feel the “soft influence” is a lot of emotional load carrying that is being hand-waved at and mentioned in general terms. I work full time, and I am going to school part time now, but I choose to remember when our daughter’s popcorn days are and make sure she has change for those days. I choose to keep tabs on the laundry and when it needs to be done. I choose to remind my husband that our children will mirror what we teach them – and make all sorts of twists on it. I choose when to remind him that our child’s apparent meltdown and non-functioning state may not be because she wants to be selfish and defiant, but something triggered a reaction that triggered the meltdown – and we will get farther in life learning to identify what the something was, and teach her protocols to identify and cope with it. (And then we deal with the selfishness aspect that is part of being an 8 year old.)
I have a husband who chooses to work on respecting and communicating with me and our family. He chooses to make delicious food for us, eventually value my opinion and implement my planning (or come up with his own), and he chooses not to make decisions that would self-destruct us. He is a good man who can be emotional, compassionate, expansive, generous, and stalwart. He lives in an eternal “now” which makes activities more fun, and most plans spontaneous. It also makes it easy for him to leave the past behind… after all, that was 5 minutes ago:)
We are not good at balancing the emotional load. Sometimes I ask him to take more of it on him due to circumstances in my life – and sometimes he can’t carry more than he already does (the “only now” complicates things). We simplify our lives as best as we can (eliminating extra social events/activities), establish lines of effective, respectful communication (that usually work), and strive to be grateful for what we have, our family, and the opportunities we have. If life happened to us and things get out of hand (it happens to the best of us), we strive to start from where we are and triage everyone’s needs/righteous wants.
Roy wrote:When I heard this I thought of the well worn adages “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” and “Behind every great man is a great woman.” It is difficult that this question was not even answered by highlighting the small advances of women in the church in recent years and suggesting that more was to come. Instead it was basically asserted that women have soft influence in the church through their marital and family relationships to men.
Yes. So frustrating. It’s not that those old adages are untrue, it’s just that some women will not be with a great man and/or will not rock any cradles. Or, some women will be with a man but they will not be able to influence him positively, or, they will rock cradles but maybe those babies will grow up and make lousy choices despite her best efforts. We can’t say women are valuable because they can do certain things if only SOME women can actually do those things. Saying “Women are powerful in the church because of their influence on men,” is just another way of reminding everyone that men are in charge, and that despite all the rhetoric, men and women are most certainly not equal.
I wish they’d have answered the question as you suggest they should have, Roy, citing advances and policy changes made recently. The way they answered it makes me feel insulted….like, “How stupid do they think we are?”
AmyJ wrote:I don’t want it to be indirectly implied my influence is the “soft” influence on my husband and children.
I don’t think Roy meant “soft” as in “weak”, but “soft” as in “indirect”.
Both men and women can powerfully influence others and have profound effects on others’ behavior. But men in the church are given authorization to do it directly, though Priesthood authority. Women have to do it through men.
Men can influence their spouses and kids, and that is a very powerful means of bringing others to Christ, but no one is going to say THAT is the manner by which men have influence in the Church. That would be absurd.
squarepeg wrote:
Yes. So frustrating. It’s not that those old adages are untrue, it’s just that some women will not be with a great man and/or will not rock any cradles. Or, some women will be with a man but they will not be able to influence him positively, or, they will rock cradles but maybe those babies will grow up and make lousy choices despite her best efforts. We can’t say women are valuable because they can do certain things if only SOME women can actually do those things. Saying “Women are powerful in the church because of their influence on men,” is just another way of reminding everyone that men are in charge, and that despite all the rhetoric, men and women are most certainly not equal.I wish they’d have answered the question as you suggest they should have, Roy, citing advances and policy changes made recently. The way they answered it makes me feel insulted….like, “How stupid do they think we are?”
Here is the other thing that bothers me. If we are so great at “influencing” the men in our lives (which I don’t believe), isn’t that taking over their agency indirectly? And wouldn’t they have issues with that and handle their own agency?
I can see our “soft influence” being the environment we put up with and what we set up. I like having a clean house enough to do something about it regularly – I recognize that everyone is happier in an clean environment, but I do it for myself. I hate chaos mode, so I take on emotional load responsibilities to handle it on my own terms – if I handle it, at least I see the storm on the horizon if I screw it up otherwise it would bowl me over. In my family, I usually have the resources to spare to identify what needs to be done and figure out how to get it done in theory. But you know, this is not a role or gender specific issue. There are men out there who handle emotional logistics better than I do (that’s not even that hard to find) – I don’t have a better emotional load regulator built into my female DNA – or if I do, it is socialized through my childhood to be a part of my nature.
The irony is the more I talk about the “soft influence” of females, the more it looks like grit and tempered words….
AmyJ wrote:
But you know, this is not a role or gender specific issue. There are men out there who handle emotional logistics better than I do (that’s not even that hard to find) – I don’t have a better emotional load regulator built into my female DNA – or if I do, it is socialized through my childhood to be a part of my nature.The irony is the more I talk about the “soft influence” of females, the more it looks like grit and tempered words….
Yep. Women AND men can have the “soft” influence. But ONLY men have Priesthood authority. So….yeah….
squarepeg wrote:
AmyJ wrote:
But you know, this is not a role or gender specific issue. There are men out there who handle emotional logistics better than I do (that’s not even that hard to find) – I don’t have a better emotional load regulator built into my female DNA – or if I do, it is socialized through my childhood to be a part of my nature.The irony is the more I talk about the “soft influence” of females, the more it looks like grit and tempered words….
Yep. Women AND men can have the “soft” influence. But ONLY men have Priesthood authority. So….yeah….
Well, we as women do have priesthood authority – but only in very specific (limited) assignments and circumstances. And men have actual priesthood authority in specific assignments and circumstances. This is progress – unhampered by the idea that woman don’t get priesthood authority because we can give birth to human beings. There is also the undercurrent that when a LDS man walks into a church room he has “the priesthood” that gives him greater something because he automatically has it (unless proven otherwise by worthiness or age) whereas if a woman walks into the room, the undercurrent is only there IF it is a temple MAYBE. This is a cultural issue that is slowly changing as general authority females are added to more councils and leadership (ward and family) transitions less from tradition-based to resource/load management/priority based leadership.
I agree, Amy; changes are occurring in the right direction. Eventually it will be just a tiny leap to make us all truly equal, at which point it will probably ruffle only a very few feathers. :thumbup: I watched these questions and responses; to me it mostly sounded like they don’t really know of any good way to solve some of the most common problems and challenges facing the Church nowadays so they are just going to keep on doing and saying the same things they always have for the foreseeable future. And to be fair, from a TBM perspective it is supposedly God himself that set the Church up this way with these commandments and this specific structure and that is directly calling these top leaders. So I can understand why Church leaders would feel like they can’t just “ordain women”, openly approve of homosexual behavior and lifestyles, etc. But if that’s the case then why don’t they just come right out and say it and leave it at that in a clear way instead of apparently trying to tap dance around and obfuscate the issues by talking about how much they have a special place in their heart for Peggy Fletcher Stack, love women and the poor people in Mexico, the Philippines, etc.? What was the purpose of some of these responses to fairly simple and straightforward questions? Was it an attempt at some kind of PR spin and damage control? To me it sounded like a lot of this mostly ended up adding fuel to the fire for anyone seriously questioning what the Church is doing and came across as condescending, flippant (“now what was your question?”), sexist, and out-of-touch with the real-life concerns of many rank-and-file members nowadays. The most interesting questions to me were about trying to retain and attract millennials and the trend of many members falling away often due to historical issues.
Personally I didn’t hear anything in their responses that made think anything is going to change any time soon with the trend of so many members falling away from the Church. For example, Oaks claimed that marriage was a supposed solution to help retain young adult members. While it is probably true that a higher percentage of married members stay active in the Church than those that are single, in many cases all the focus on eternal marriage and worthiness actually compounds the problems when temple married members end up losing faith anyway and it results in mixed-faith marriages that are put under significant stress sometimes to the point of divorce which doesn’t reflect very well on the Church. It seems like many of the most committed critics of the Church fit this category (temple married) and they now provide a sort of constant anti-missionary force. In other words, I don’t think it’s that simple to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of any one factor that correlates to increased Church commitment in isolation and pushing ideas like “just get married” can easily backfire in several different ways.
Marriage for retention is just another slap on the face to me. It’s no surprise that singles leave the church more often than married couples when the church (perhaps unintentionally or indirectly) marginalize singles. That and only one person has to be convinced to leave rather than two. There are also undertones of not being proactive enough or not having the faith to get married younger. I don’t get it much from younger leaders, but many leaders over the age of 60 seem to love making a point of how young they were married and how we can do the same. The dynamics have changed, and yet the leaders like to pretend that they should be the same and we should be going on dates all the time. Believe me, it’s not that I don’t want to get married. If I was okay with marrying the first girl who would take a ring, I could definitely be married, but I wouldn’t be happy. I just haven’t found a girl who is a good enough fit for me. Nothing more.
Beefster wrote:Marriage for retention is just another slap on the face to me. It’s no surprise that singles leave the church more often than married couples when the church (perhaps unintentionally or indirectly) marginalize singles.
IMO, Church
culturemarginalizes singles, and encourages many members to do the same. Church leadership at some levels speaks out against it, but in broad terms, not outlining specific steps for how local leadership and individual members need to act to actually stop doing it. Personal example; midsingle magnet ward, where the host ward puts the singles back in the overflow seating, out of the way of the “good” people. Singles Sunday School classes are in a spare classroom used mostly for storage because its HVAC ducts have some sort of problem, requiring fans in the doorway to keep it tolerable during class, even though there are perfectly functional empty classrooms of sufficient size available.
Another’s personal example;
“Thank you for this post. I can recall being almost 30 and attending the temple to do baptisms for the dead. I hadn’t yet received my endowment and the Brother at the recommend desk told the “youth” to stand aside while he took care of the “adults.” By that time in my life, I was graduated from law school and the “adult” that I had to step aside for was a pregnant 21 year old. It was at that point I realized that no matter how much I accomplished, I wouldn’t fully be an adult to many members of the church until I found a husband. It hurt a lot at the time and is still a sore spot. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone in those feelings.”And another:
“I’m a single in my early 50’s. I used to sit in the chapel, but found that no one would sit on the same row. In a few cases, if I sat on the end of a row partially occupied by a family, they would get up and move. And I shower every day! Now I sit in the foyer, and it’s a lot quieter than the chapel.I have noticed that when being greeted in a group of other adults, it goes like this, “Hello Brother Smith, Sister Jones, Mark, Brother Brown”. I’m referred to as though I was still a little boy.
A couple of weeks ago one of the older men in my ward (he’s known me for several years) asked why I never brought my wife to church. It was easier for him to assume I had a non-member spouse than that I had never married.”
Oh sure, it’s definitely the culture that’s the problem, but it’s not spoken against super strongly by top leadership, if at all. If anything, the anti-singles culture is indirectly a result of the way the FP and Q12 (especially Nelson and Ballard) talk about dating. I mean the fact that we have to separate young single adults off into their own wards to make them feel welcome should be a red flag. Stake YSA activities and interest-based meetups should be enough IMO. YSA wards simply didn’t exist 50 years ago (I’m shooting from the hip here. From what I gather, they were invented sometime in the 80s, though they may have existed around BYU before that) and I suspect a lot of that has to do with the dating scene not even remotely resembling what it was 50 years ago. Nowadays, we’re derided for “hanging out” instead of going on dates and it bugs the crap out of me, especially when the advice I get almost universally from those who have been married less than 5 years ago is to
hang out firstbecause then you’re friends. And you know what? For the one girlfriend I had, that’s how it worked. We hung out for a month or two before we realized we had feelings for each other. We didn’t go on a proper “date” until two weeks after we were de-facto in a relationship. Point is, most of the people that are part of the singles stigma are out of touch with 21st century dating.
I want to be treated like an adult. It shouldn’t matter that I’m single.
There is a thought that I am having that I am trying to frame in a respectful way. I am in toastmasters and have done some workshops on professional speaking – press conferences, crisis response, and the like. There is a way to respond and present yourself in the corporate world. This press conference is jarringly different.
It feels somewhat like if your great grandfather called a press conference at the family reunion. Peggy: “Great Grandfather how do you feel about the increased levels of diversity and roles for women in the modern world?” Great Grandfather: “Peggy, bless your little heart, What was your question … oh yeah … I love everyone. I am an optimist about the future. You rising generation are good and wonderful. Women are great and hold together families as the bedrock of civilization. God bless you.”
Some of that is tongue in cheek but I think it conveys the impression I get. I am trying to be respectful and charitable. I imagine if the FP were all business like corporate CEO’s they would take criticism for that. What does a modern day prophet look like? How should they act? I do not know – I am just struck by the impression of Great Grandfather holding a family press conference.
They’re in a difficult position. Their theology has placed limits and constraints on the kind of answers they can give to the questions asked. They’re going to have to receive new revelation to give answers that are any more satisfying than the ones they gave. Until then, they are painted into a corner. Phrased differently, they’re stuck answering 21st century questions and concerns with 19th century answers.
Beefster wrote:Point is, most of the people that are part of the singles stigma are out of touch with 21st century dating.
The one improvement I’ve seen was putting the Single Adults program (mostly) into the hands of single adults. When I joined, our stake single adults reps were an elderly couple who’d been married since a couple months after he got back from his mission. Stake single adults activities looked like night out at the nursing home, with maybe 15 people, nearly all of whom were 70+. Aside from one socially – and hygienically – inept fellow, I was the only person there who hadn’t been sealed to anyone, so even had I been in the market for a cougar with a senior discount, nobody was looking.
About a year later, (and apparently long after the word had come down from Salt Lake to stop that) a single sister in her 50s was called as stake SA rep. It took her a while to convince the SP that monthly potluck/fireside meetings really should have speakers and topics of direct relevance to singles, (And maybe 10 firesides a year about Emma Smith was…well, dumb. If it hadn’t been for Christmas and Easter, we might never have had a break from his odd obsession.) but once that happened, things started picking up. Now, even the monthly stake activities have 20-40 singles show up with a pretty good mix of ages. The stake is also part of a multi-stake group that shares out larger annual events, and we’ve had a couple hundred turn up for one of the full-day multi-stake activities. In fact, we lost the SA rep for the next ward over when she married a guy she met at the first multi-stake activity we’d hosted, and last I heard, another that vanished unexpectedly was engaged to someone from the other side of the area.
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