Pioneer Trek season is here, and I just can’t let it pass by again without sharing my thoughts about the “women’s pull”.  For the uninitiated, the women’s pull is exactly what it sounds like (no, not that - get your mind out of the gutter) - the women pull the handcarts up the trail without any help from the men.  I have some problems with this. (more…)

Note: I was trying to post this soon after Derek’s post on Women in the Old Testament.  

A few nights ago, we were reading the Book of Mormon as a family and discussing Alma the Younger. My husband said something about Alma the Younger being the son of Alma who believed the words of Abinadi. One of my sons asked, “Well, who was his mom? What was her name?” And I (with just a tinge of bitterness) answered, “We don’t know. She was a woman”.

The lack of female representation in the BofM has always been a bit of a sore spot with me. So I was delighted to see a book called Women of the Book of Mormon: Insights and Inspirations by Heather B. Moore published this year. It is an easy read - 93 pages (but with pictures and blank pages, it is only 64 pages of text). Each chapter is about one woman or group of women. For each woman, Moore reviews what we know from the BofM, adds historical and cultural context, and then speculates or theorizes on what it might mean.

After reading it, I know . . . not much more than when I started. (more…)

Over the past year it has worked out where I have been able to attend some seriously jealousy inducing events. A retreat with the gals from the Exponent and Margaret Toscano and Lorie Winder Stromburg, Sunstone West featuring Claudia Bushman, A leg of the Our Visions Our Voices tour where I got to meet Joanna Brooks, and now a snacker with a private performance by Carol Lynn Pearson. It’s almost embarrassing. It’s like I’m in one of those grad programs where you make your own coursework and find your own mentors and mine happens to be Mormon Womens Studies.

This was a real personal highlight for me, because Carol Lynn has managed something I want with my whole heart to figure out. She appeals to everyone of any Mormon ideological stripe. The feminists love her. The gays and supporters love her. The most mainstream of conservative patriarchy supporters read her poetry and praise her name. She has never been disciplined, or even chastised. I want to walk that line. I want to have my radical feminist bean cake and eat my molly-made green jello too. (more…)

We Mormons talk a lot about being in the world, but not of the world.  That phrase (and the sentiment behind it) is not my favorite.  I happen to think the world is full of beautiful people with cool, interesting, sad, tragic, amazing life experiences.  I definitely don’t see evil (or Satan) lurking around every corner.  But I understand the sentiment:  we don’t want to be like “those people”; we want to be like us.  We like those public things that mark us as Mormons—garments, abstaining from alcohol, tea, coffee, cigarettes, and Diet Coke (just kidding, that one’s not for real, is it??), not seeing R-rated movies, wearing knee-length shorts, blacking out “bad words” in books (I actually knew someone who did this), eschewing The Little Mermaid because Ariel is immodest . . . (I confess that I do not actually KNOW the person who said this, but my very good friend told me as much, and it’s such a great story!)  (more…)

For this week’s Archive Sunday, I’ve chosen a fantastically written post of Artemis’ from way back. Yup, still fantastic.

“I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men- men, I tell you. But as I stood on the hillside, I foresaw in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of rapacious and pitiless folly. How insidious he could be, too, I was only to find out several months later and a thousand miles farther.”

~Joseph Conrad, ‘Heart of Darkness’

It’s one of those ‘famous’ quotes in English lit. classes and provides much fodder for discussions of ’strong devils’ vs. ‘weak devils’, strong devils being those who actively cause trouble and/or evil and weak devils being those who allow evil to happen, essentially spineless and happy with as much unthinking comfortableness as they can get away with. Given a choice, I think most people would prefer to be a strong devil rather than a weak one. I mean, if you’re going to be bad, why not be good at it?

Some people wonder why other people get involved in activist causes or, within the LDS world, why other people would question this doctrine or that policy (call it religious activism), especially when doing so seems, to the unquestioning, to be unfaithful, on the grounds that to question or doubt supposedly chases away faith. I disagree. In fact, I think it’s the other way around–that to stay comfortably cocooned in a security-blanket version of ‘faith’, unquestioningly accepting the pat, correlated, Sunday School answers and insisting on shelving the hard questions is not real faith. (more…)

In 2006, Jeffrey Skilling was convicted of fraud as the former CEO of Enron and sentenced to 24 years in prison.  Today, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated his conviction and Skilling will likely go free.  This was the right decision, and I’m pleased that the Court saw through the prosecutorial overreaching that convicted Skilling in the first place. (more…)

I don’t want to distract from the two awesome FMH snackers scheduled for this weekend - one in San Francisco and one in Idaho - but I wanted to get this put up so people can start marking their calendars.

We are having our third Texas FMH snacker in six months (come on other regions, try to beat that!) This one is going to be the most fun of all. Stephen M (Ethesis) and his wife Win are graciously opening up their home to FMHers and their families (kids, too!) for a swim party and barbecue.

It will be Saturday, July 17 at 6:30 p.m. in Plano, Texas. Here is the invitation. Please RSVP there. Hope to see you then! 

 Dear fMh . . .
I’m a seriously inactive mom of 5 who occasionally contemplates returning to church.  I haven’t been to church since before my first child, 23 years ago.  My first 4 children (divorced from their father) were baptized in the Catholic church but are not practicing.  My youngest daughter is 8 and has been asking why we don’t go to church like several of her friends (not lds).

She seems very interested in everything spiritual and religious even though she has never set foot in a church.  My dilemma is this…my husband is Catholic and has stated that he would take our daughter to his church.  I’m not a fan of the Catholic church, at all, and I’m not interested in my daughter being raised Catholic.  I wouldn’t even know how to get started in bringing her to an LDS church and if I did then I know the pressure would be intensely on to reactivate.  I have so many lovely, warm memories of growing up in the LDS church in S. California.

We are in Seattle now, which is very liberal and I’m guessing that that liberal-ness is reflected in the local wards.  I know being raised Mormon in a non-Mormon family is difficult and she certainly couldn’t attend church herself.  I’m frozen, what should I do?

~Renae

The following is a guest post from one of fMh’s biggest fans, Mathew:

Deseret Media Companies recently launched imagineahappieryou.com. The site is aimed at women and currently focuses on family financial issues though it will later expand to cover fitness and, one supposes, a variety of other topics. Sheri Dew, chairwoman of the “Imagine a Happier You” Women’s Initiative, notes that money issues are not gender specific but that women make 90 percent of family purchases and often act as their family’s chief operating officer whether or not they handle the finances. (more…)

Mike Peterson lives in Alberta, Canada. He is 30 years old. He is married and the father of 2 young sons (1 and 4 years old). He currently serves as a Youth SS teacher in his ward.

I am not sure if a blog dedicated to Feminism is the most logical place to have a discussion on Male Abortion, but I do think that those that read and post on this blog will be able to provide a unique and important point of view on this topic and I am interested in seeing what kind of discussion we can have.

In 1998, Melanie McCulley, a South Carolina attorney coined the term male abortion, suggesting that a father should be allowed to disclaim his obligations to an unborn child early in the pregnancy. The concept begins with the premise that when an unmarried woman becomes pregnant, she has the option of abortion, adoption, or parenthood; and argues, in the context of legally recognized gender equality, that in the earliest stages of pregnancy the putative (alleged) father should have the same human rights to relinquish all future parental rights and financial responsibility — leaving the informed mother with the same three options.McCulley states: (more…)

It’s been awhile since we’ve had some poetry, so I thought I’d dig out this old one of mine, originally posted Sep. 12 2005.. The alternate title is Redemption, but someone’s put it in our Mother In Heaven category, which seems fitting as well. Enjoy!

A step from where the living fire burns deep,
her calloused fingers shape the flaky paste.
The starry night shines bright upon her peace.

A bottle breaks; the water slowly seeps
across the hearth and rinses off the waste
of ashes from a living fire burnt deep.

She molds the new-made butter in the heat,
its sticky sweetness streaked across her face.
The starry night shines bright upon her peace.

The thickened, amber honey slowly creeps
inside the earthen crucible’s rough space
that hardened where the living fires burned deep.

The risen dough escapes its linen sheath;
she sets it in the oven’s hot embrace.
The starry night shines bright upon her peace.

A quiet fireplace watches as she sleeps,
with smoldering coals heaped, pulsing at its base,
murm’ring soft of living fires burnt deep;
the starry night shines bright upon her peace.

Many thanks to all of you for your insight and advice. Here is the talk I’ll be giving tomorrow. I kept it short since I’ll be the concluding speaker and I imagine that a lot of time will be taken up corralling primary children. I hope you all have a wonderful Father’s Day, in whatever shape that takes for you.

(more…)

When I was about 10, my father abandoned his dental clinic and began to pursue full-time the more occult practices that interested him.

When I was 12, he disappeared for two weeks, with my older brother. They drove across the country, from Utah to North Carolina. My father claimed he was being led by the Three Nephites to a secret government facility where a powerful plant was being hidden. He was responsible for finding this plant and cultivating it. If he did so correctly, he told us, he could cure any bodily or mental illness, and personally usher in the 2nd coming of Christ.

I’m not making this up. (more…)

We’ve had to make some changes from the original plan that was posted at the end of May, but now we are ready to announce the revised San Francisco Area fMh “reading and snacker” with Carol Lynn Pearson!  Carol Lynn has agreed to open her home in Walnut Creek to us for a special group reading of her play, “Mother Wove the Morning,” followed by discussion and a snacker.

“Mother Wove the Morning” is a one-act play that Carol Lynn wrote and performed over three hundred times, portraying sixteen women throughout history in search of God the Mother.

(more…)

OZ:  We should figure out what kinda deal this is.  I mean, is it a gathering, a shindig, or a hootenanny?

 CORDELIA:  What’s the difference?

 OZ: Well, a gathering is brie, mellow song stylings; shindig — dip, less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage; and hootenanny, well, it’s chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny. (more…)

If all goes according to plan, in about six and a half hours, five men with guns will stand opposite Ronnie Lee Gardner and shoot him to death. It’s been more than 25 years since Gardner killed attorney Michael Burdell inside the old Salt Lake County Courthouse, where he was being held on suspicion of another murder.

The appeals are basically done, and it appears that there will be no stay of execution. Gardner will die for his sins, a bullet for a bullet, a life for a life. Gardner was given the choice of how to meet his end, and he chose the firing squad, saying, “I guess it’s my Mormon heritage. I like the firing squad. It’s so much easier … and there’s no mistakes.”

Utah is one of only four states that has ever used the firing squad as a means of execution (Idaho, Nevada and Oklahoma are the other three), and if I have my facts right, the Utah law was changed several years ago, but not made retroactive, so there are still one or two additional death row inmates out there who may choose it as the means of their death.

While he may have just wanted his death to be a sure thing, Ronnie Lee Gardner’s upcoming death seems to highlight the inhumanity of all executions. While the end result of an execution is a dead body, whether the person is shot to death or has their veins shot with paralytics, barbiturates, and potassium, death by firing squad feels less like putting an old dog to sleep and more like murder. Even Burdell’s family wants to block the execution. Has the death penalty outlived its usefulness as a method of punishment in the United States?

By Stephanieeeeeee (who is filling in for Lula while she wields her non-hierarchical superpowers at Girls’ Camp),

The first time my husband heard, “When our leaders speak, the thinking has been done” in Sacrament Meeting, he was horrified.

“Do you really believe that,” he asked incredulously. “The prophet could tell you to do anything and you’re all just supposed to follow blindly?” (more…)

Anyone who has been reading my comments for very long knows that I am not a big fan of cub scouts. The main reason is that I don’t like being a leader. I don’t like opening up my house to 10 little boys to trash while I try to keep them entertained and my other kids alive for over an hour (my 2 year old’s split lip was a casualty of cub scouts one time). Another reason is that I am not a fan of the BSA. I don’t like the never-ending trainings or the uniforms or the tour permits.

That said, there are a lot of things I like about cub scouts. (more…)

Many of you know Exponent II from its fabulous website, but did you know Exponent II started with a print magazine in the early 1970s?  Laurel Thatcher Ulrich and Claudia Bushman spearheaded the efforts of many faithful Mormon women who worked together to give Mormon women a voice through publishing their stories in the Exponent II magazine.

Today, Emily Clyde Curtis and Aimee Hickman are carrying on the tradition of giving Mormon women a voice as editors of the new and improved Exponent II magazine.  Read the history of Exponent II here, and the current issue of the magazine here.   Be sure to check out past issues of the magazine for stories written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Julie Berry, and Margaret Blair Young.  Excellent stuff!

I usually space out my posts more than a day, but there was a lot of popular demand for a discussion about birth control, so here you go!

The following scene is a common one in my home: We’re lying in bed, about to fall asleep, and then one of us freaks out, sits up with a start, and says, “Have you/I taken your/my pill?!”

We’ve been married over 3 years now, and I’ve been taking the pill this whole time. Sometimes I think about how long I’ve been artificially regulating my hormones and it kinda freaks me out. But overall, I’ve had a very positive experience with the pill.

I’ve heard the horror stories of many friends related to the pill - sudden weight gain, dark depression, uncontrollable emotions, etc. I’ve been really lucky to be spared any of those side effects. I adore the pill for what it’s done for me - I know the hour of the day my period is going to start, my flow is almost always very light, cramps are a thing of the past, and all the other yucky period symptoms have decreased significantly. Most importantly, we’ve successfully prevented any of those pesky bundles of joy from showing up unexpectedly. I’m a poster girl for how wonderful the pill can be.

But it still feels terribly… unnatural. (more…)

This is an old post from I wrote back in June 26, 2008, deep in the midst of the same-sex marriage debate/debacle. I’m still amazed at the positive offhand comments I get about it. Since the closing arguments in the prop 8 trial are scheduled for this week, it seemed a good time to republish it. Enjoy.

The bloggernacle is awash with posts on same-sex marriage, the First Presidency’s upcoming letter and the demise of traditional marriage. Over and over I read comments about how ‘traditional marriage’ is under attack. How gays and lesbians marrying will ‘destroy marriage.’ How we have to fight to defend ‘traditional marriage’ and the family from variously: the homosexual agenda, the evils of the world, the forces of Satan, etc. etc. etc. But the sad (glad) news is that Traditional marriage is dying or dead in much of the world and has been for a long time. And its demise has nothing to do with gays or lesbians. It was us women who killed it, forced its reinvention and started us down this ’slippery slope’ to where we are today. (more…)

Wanna talk about sex? Read on. Don’t wanna talk about sex? Don’t hit that little “more” button, and take your offended eyes elsewhere. Cuz we’re gonna talk about sex. It’s been a while. (more…)

MSNBC’s Erin Burnett on Mormons in business, a.k.a, the Mormon Mafia. Violence and RICO violations aside, the gender roles in The Godfather movies are pretty similar to the gender roles in the Mormon Mafia. Take a look after the jump.

(more…)

By Stephanieeeeeee

The previous discussion of Chapter Six is here.

Yet again, we see a familiar pattern emerge: women wield some power/authority quite freely in the early church only to have it gradually restricted, then eventually stripped away altogether. But perhaps we’ve dwelt on that enough…instead, let’s focus on natural spiritual gifts. (more…)

You may have heard this tale before, a person joins the church, or becomes active (after a long stretch or for the first time) in church in a ward in one of them liberal states in New England or perhaps in some college town full of those fruity a-typical intellectual Mormons.  They like it.

Then they move here, where testimonies about Obama’s wickedness are born, many of God’s beloved children are referred to as ‘the gays’, and the obvious benefits of blind-obedience is endlessly extolled (even up to and including killing your only son and/or genocide).  Crisis ensues.  (more…)

By: Aerin

about me: I am a working mom of twins. I was raised Mormon but left the church in my late teens due to doctrinal disagreements. I enjoy commenting on FMH and also enjoy that this blog gives a different perspective of Mormons and Mormon feminism than I was raised with. I blog at a cranberry blog and at Main Street Plaza .

I was surprised by the (now not so recent) addition of a male permablogger to this site (Feminist Mormon Housewives). Then I was trying to put my finger on why exactly I was perturbed.

It’s not as if I’m a permablogger (or want to be a permablogger) here. While I could be considered culturally Mormon, I haven’t been an active Mormon for most of my adult life. (more…)

In a delightful bit of synchronicity, I am now the third perma who has been asked to speak in sacrament over the last few weeks. Here’s my dilemma: I get to speak on Father’s Day.

I agreed because I really enjoy speaking, but I’m a little panicked and kind of hitting a wall.

My own father was not a positive figure and hasn’t been in my life for over ten years, and my husband has only been a father for two years. They did ask me to relate it to a gospel principle and discuss Heavenly Father, which I can do standing on my head. I have a lot to say about that. But I would like to say something that actually honors father’s on their special day, without getting into gender essentialism or by going on about how grateful I am that those big strong men go out into the world to take care of little old me.

What do you think? Is it possible to give a Father’s Day talk that doesn’t skirt the issue or use the word preside?

***SPOILER ALERT! I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT LOST!***

So I’m not going to give a full, in-depth, rational review of one of television’s most popular series. I know there’s a lot that was great. There were astounding mysteries and a wonderfully complex plot. There were believable characters and versatile allegories. There were beautiful themes of redemption and growth.

Yeah. I get it. I watched the whole thing.

What I’m gonna do here is RANT. (more…)

Here’s something I stumbled across from the early days (original post):

It’s been a while since I followed my muse off into a totally off-topic story for your entertainment pleasure. I was just off reading The Great Padded Bra Incident of 1982 at Chubby Girl Brigade and was reminded of my very own Evil Boy.

I went to school with Evil Boy from kindergarten until the day I graduated. Lucky me. (more…)

The previous summary of Chapter Five is here.

In this chapter the author uses an organizational dynamics business-like model/approach to ask and answer several questions that peeked my curiosity and held it tight:  What are some of the consequences of women not having the priesthood, or in other words, how does the lack of opportunity affect behavior?  If priesthood powers were expanded to include women in some form would the nature of priesthood change? (more…)

So I have four nieces and nephews graduating this year.  I’d like to make them something useful, or I could buy them something if it’s not too terribly expensive.  But I’m drawing a total blank!  Ideas?