(no subject)
There's a new mexican restaurant in my town-of-residence. It had the best mexican food I've eaten since I lived in Texas with good portion sizes (rather then the enormously large ones you get from most traditional mexican chefs) as well as plenty of really good corn tortillas. I also got to babble in spanish to the server, who did not believe me when I told him that I learned spanish in Michigan. Well, I did, I just also kind of lived in South Texas long enough to really learn it, that's all;-).
My throat is kind of sore-ish but I refuse to be sick, especially this weekend. I will not be sick so you can just be quiet, throat, because I'm not listening to you.
I woke up at 4AM and wasn't able to fall back asleep (which isn't very surprising since I fell asleep on my couch at 7-ish and slept straight through). I spent time this morning reading more of Saints and it has me thinking, a lot. You know, my youngest brother, the Wrestler, says I think too much. He's probably right.
One of the reasons that Saints is hitting me so hard is because I'm so dang close to the source material. I'm a Mormon, something that the protagonist, the author and I all share in common. I'm also a feminist, two facts that I must constantly reconcile with each other. Dinah Kirkham, the protagonist, could be considered a feminist though she lived in a time that pre-dated that particular classification.
This is her story and yet, in some ways it is so much like my own that my heart aches. We (meaning society at large) really have no idea how patriarchal life was in the early nineteenth century. When we think of that era we think of Dickens or Twain, of David Copperfield or Huck Finn, of slavery or industry. We don't think about the women who were generally more educated then their foremothers had been and yet were trapped in the same legal and financial situations that kept them forever dependent upon the men that surrounded them.
It's no wonder that the driving force behind suffrage in both England and the US were middle class women. It's no wonder they rebelled against antiquated situations and laws that didn't even allow them to have individual legal rights over their own selves, let alone anything else. I look back on those women and see how far we've come since then, how equal we've become, and still recognize how unresolved the issue still is. I want, more then anything else, to be considered an intellectual equal, for my opinions to hold as much weight as anyone else's. We're at the most difficult part of the process, that of changing culture to reflect the legal inequalities that have already been addressed.
Here's where I'll start talking about religion. Before I say anything let me make it abundantly clear that I do not have deep-seated issues with any doctrine. While I may struggle with some social issues the fact of the matter is that I am deeply committed to my religion. I believe it, I have faith. While I will never follow anyone or thing blindly I will never deny who I am and I am a Mormon, for better or worse.
With that said, I have to tell you, a lot of Mormons have a hard time with feminism. In a lot of ways Mormonism and feminism do seem antithetical. In the church women only hold leadership positions over children and other women; women do not hold the priesthood. These are two things that will not change unless God Himself says they are to change (which, since I am a Mormon, is an act that I do not reject as completely out of the realm of possibility though not a very probably possibility, IMO). This leads to a very interesting condition in Mormon culture where on the local level you'll have men and women whose opinions are acknowledged with equal respect while the words and opinions of the general male leaders are acknwoledged with more gravity then those of general female leaders.
What is more frustrating, however, is the cultural emphasis placed on marriage. Marriage and family are very important doctrinal issues in the church hence it is not so very bizarre that one hears about it from the pulpit. It's the cultural practice of that doctrine that occasionally drives me insane. While the focus of the young men's program is that of missionary service, the focus of the young women's program is invariably marriage and family. I like marriage and family just fine, but the message it sends is that that's all girls are good for. Boys are supposed to go off and have big adventures in the world while girls are to support them and stay at home and prepare for that blessed day when the boys come home and they can get married and live happily ever after. It's a fairy tale that some girls are happy with (I suppose) but one that has never been particularly satisfying for all.
I can remember reading the reports of church leaders and being brought to tears by the talk of women and marriage. I can remember wondering why I didn't measure up. I've matured since then and come to terms with a lot of things but I still have a hard time feeling completely comfortable in the Relief Society portion of the Sunday meetings. I feel too much like an old maid when I'm in young single adult wards (congregations) and rather out of place in the family wards. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is.
And the amazing thing is, Saints gets to the heart of the matter. It's about a woman who is as stubbornly proud as I am on my worst days, a woman who is independent, a real woman who I could almost believe actually existed. I see so much of myself in her that reading her story brings up a lot of the things I've been (imperfectly) discussing.
Humans sure are a frustrating and fascinating bunch, aren't they?
There, now that I've purged all of that I am now ready to be distracted by pretty things all weekend.
My throat is kind of sore-ish but I refuse to be sick, especially this weekend. I will not be sick so you can just be quiet, throat, because I'm not listening to you.
I woke up at 4AM and wasn't able to fall back asleep (which isn't very surprising since I fell asleep on my couch at 7-ish and slept straight through). I spent time this morning reading more of Saints and it has me thinking, a lot. You know, my youngest brother, the Wrestler, says I think too much. He's probably right.
One of the reasons that Saints is hitting me so hard is because I'm so dang close to the source material. I'm a Mormon, something that the protagonist, the author and I all share in common. I'm also a feminist, two facts that I must constantly reconcile with each other. Dinah Kirkham, the protagonist, could be considered a feminist though she lived in a time that pre-dated that particular classification.
This is her story and yet, in some ways it is so much like my own that my heart aches. We (meaning society at large) really have no idea how patriarchal life was in the early nineteenth century. When we think of that era we think of Dickens or Twain, of David Copperfield or Huck Finn, of slavery or industry. We don't think about the women who were generally more educated then their foremothers had been and yet were trapped in the same legal and financial situations that kept them forever dependent upon the men that surrounded them.
It's no wonder that the driving force behind suffrage in both England and the US were middle class women. It's no wonder they rebelled against antiquated situations and laws that didn't even allow them to have individual legal rights over their own selves, let alone anything else. I look back on those women and see how far we've come since then, how equal we've become, and still recognize how unresolved the issue still is. I want, more then anything else, to be considered an intellectual equal, for my opinions to hold as much weight as anyone else's. We're at the most difficult part of the process, that of changing culture to reflect the legal inequalities that have already been addressed.
Here's where I'll start talking about religion. Before I say anything let me make it abundantly clear that I do not have deep-seated issues with any doctrine. While I may struggle with some social issues the fact of the matter is that I am deeply committed to my religion. I believe it, I have faith. While I will never follow anyone or thing blindly I will never deny who I am and I am a Mormon, for better or worse.
With that said, I have to tell you, a lot of Mormons have a hard time with feminism. In a lot of ways Mormonism and feminism do seem antithetical. In the church women only hold leadership positions over children and other women; women do not hold the priesthood. These are two things that will not change unless God Himself says they are to change (which, since I am a Mormon, is an act that I do not reject as completely out of the realm of possibility though not a very probably possibility, IMO). This leads to a very interesting condition in Mormon culture where on the local level you'll have men and women whose opinions are acknowledged with equal respect while the words and opinions of the general male leaders are acknwoledged with more gravity then those of general female leaders.
What is more frustrating, however, is the cultural emphasis placed on marriage. Marriage and family are very important doctrinal issues in the church hence it is not so very bizarre that one hears about it from the pulpit. It's the cultural practice of that doctrine that occasionally drives me insane. While the focus of the young men's program is that of missionary service, the focus of the young women's program is invariably marriage and family. I like marriage and family just fine, but the message it sends is that that's all girls are good for. Boys are supposed to go off and have big adventures in the world while girls are to support them and stay at home and prepare for that blessed day when the boys come home and they can get married and live happily ever after. It's a fairy tale that some girls are happy with (I suppose) but one that has never been particularly satisfying for all.
I can remember reading the reports of church leaders and being brought to tears by the talk of women and marriage. I can remember wondering why I didn't measure up. I've matured since then and come to terms with a lot of things but I still have a hard time feeling completely comfortable in the Relief Society portion of the Sunday meetings. I feel too much like an old maid when I'm in young single adult wards (congregations) and rather out of place in the family wards. It's not perfect, but nothing ever is.
And the amazing thing is, Saints gets to the heart of the matter. It's about a woman who is as stubbornly proud as I am on my worst days, a woman who is independent, a real woman who I could almost believe actually existed. I see so much of myself in her that reading her story brings up a lot of the things I've been (imperfectly) discussing.
Humans sure are a frustrating and fascinating bunch, aren't they?
There, now that I've purged all of that I am now ready to be distracted by pretty things all weekend.