Willing to learn

I am currently in the middle of reading a lot of appalling things, where I worry about not absorbing enough. I needed to start a new document for notes.

There is some concern about writing some things too soon. That's not why I didn't write last week; that was just too much else to do. (Things have been less overwhelming this week, for now.)

My real worry - so there is a spoiler alert now - is that no matter how much of a foundation I lay for it, and as much as I write about the harm that patriarchy causes to women and people of color, that when I write that it harms white men by making them mediocre it will result in a big WHAT? FORGET YOU! and all other points will be for naught, despite their importance.

I am making my peace with that anyway, but it is a shame to not be able to move past things like this. Something I read recently gave me a way of approaching it.

One of the books I am reading is Backlash by Susan Faludi. Early on she recounts several points that could be considered to be failures of feminism and women's rights, coming out mostly in the '80s, so not long after the fight for the Equal Rights Amendment, Roe v. Wade, and other things that would have people talking about feminism. I remember hearing many of these things then, and some of then being trotted out again in the '90s.

I am going to focus on the one about college educated, unwed women and the precipitous drop in their marriageability, most dramatically stated as "A woman over 40 has a better chance of getting killed by a terrorist than of getting married."

That particular phrasing misrepresents the chances of getting killed by a terrorist and ignores that the original study was specifically about university-educated women, but still had some pretty good legs on it, showing up in movies like Sleepless in Seattle and The Holiday, and frequently being referenced by depressed singles, though I admit to not having heard it lately.

What was fascinating in the book - and Backlash was published in 1991, so this knowledge has been out there for a while - was that the original study was wrong and they knew it was wrong.

Jeanne Moorman, a census bureau worker who found flaws with the original data tried to work with the study publishers and did not meet with much interest. The actual data showed that education does tend to delay marriage. Therefore, women who only complete high school tend to marry shortly after high school, but women who go to college tend to marry after that.

The first thing that makes me wonder is whether that means marriage is bad for education. Would those women who married after high school have been interested in further education but found it impossible? We all know people who have combined marriage with formal schooling, so it can be done, but what works best? What helps?

Those are questions you can get to if you are open to the truth.

This is what Jeanne Moorman got from her bosses - not the scientists who refused to let accurate data spoil their conclusion, but her bosses:

The head office handed down a directive, ordering her to quit speaking to the press about the marriage study because such critiques were "too controversial." When a few TV news shows actually invited her to tell the other side of the man-shortage story, she had to turn them down. She was told to concentrate instead on a study that the White House wanted--about how poor unwed mothers abuse the welfare system.

Yes, of course it was Reagan.

Let's say that you are religious and that you know marriage is good, ordained of God. It could be possible to feel threatened by data that seems to argue against that. However, is the data arguing against that, or against some patterns in the way we do marriage?

The other introductory studies were about how divorce was economically devastating for women after women's lib (without bothering to compare to divorce before), an infertility epidemic affecting professional women, and a great emotional burnout affecting single and working women. In some cases they didn't even involve wrong data so much as assumption.

If you think marriage involves a man providing and a woman staying home with children, finding that professional women can be happy and fulfilled and can still get pregnant might be an existential threat. What if instead it's just the wrong idea about what makes marriage work and what marriage needs?

If you are committed to defending your idea, you stay wrong. That's all the worse if marriage is important. We could be doing it perpetually wrong because we are so willing to lie about it, and that leads to great harm and stagnation.

So a really big step forward is being able to resist your leap to defensiveness and learn. If you are willing to do that, everything else needed can follow.

It's not just about being able to bear discomfort, though that relates. This is about having a willingness to, based on a desire for truth.

Slowing down the forgiveness

Yes, I know this sounds rebellious. Hear me out.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we often talk about the steps of repentance. We do that because we know that it requires a change, and that change isn't going to come with automatically saying "I'm sorry". You can go through the motions and not mean it. Maybe some of those motions will help put you in a better position, but if you have ever been forced by your parent to apologize to a sibling, you probably know it is not foolproof.

A change of heart sometimes happens very quickly, where we don't have to spend a lot of time on the steps, but the goal of repentance is change, which is usually very hard and requires work.

Maybe we don't think about the goals of commandments enough, but it is generally possible to ponder a commandment and understand its purpose better, which then strengthens faith.

It is probably more obvious why we need to repent than why we need to forgive, but we should think about that.

Sometimes it can bring an attitude adjustment. We might get angry at people for things that are not their fault, or that are not even wrong. It is easy to take things personally that aren't personal. This can happen a lot with small children who have recently learned the word "No" or teenagers who have apparently forgotten how to be pleasant. Some parents may feel offended and have to find understanding and forgiveness for the sake of peace in the home and effective parenting. It is important for the relationships, but also, taking that time to understand the other point of view might be really helpful in reaching that peace and understanding.

There are also things that cause real harm. Surprisingly, they are often not personal, and maybe even not intentional, but the harm is still real.

Yes, I believe in forgiveness. God chooses to forgive, and we are required. I also know that God can heal my pain. That gives some weight to the command, but also there is the desire for us to be healed which is important to remember for our role.

Taking a look at why people make certain choices and understanding agency and results can really help us gain greater perspective and grow in wisdom. I am all about that.

Continuing to cling to feelings of resentment and replaying the things that hurt you over and over in your mind can be unhealthy. I get that.

But rushing people through their healing - often by trying to get them to suppress their pain instead of working through it - that is something different, and we do that.

I remember how quickly the survivors and families from the Charleston church shooting expressed forgiveness for the shooter - who had not repented - and yes I guess they offered that forgiveness freely, but it also felt like there was pressure. Some of that may have been because they were from a church community, and religion asks you to forgive, but a lot of it was probably also that they were directly victims of white supremacy, and our society defers to power.

For an example of this you could look at all the non-apology apologies: I'm sorry if you were offended. They tend to come because of a use of language that is a slur for a marginalized group used by someone who is not part of that group, relating directly to power.

For a different example, I don't remember calls for forgiveness of Al-Qaeda after 9-11. I'm not saying there should have been, but I think it is worth thinking about when we demand forgiveness.

Though it may be easy to forget with the way I have wandered, this current series is about gender roles and prejudices. I am reading a lot about gendered violence. No, we don't usually specifically ask women to forgive their rapists (though that does happen, especially in cases of abuse from family members) but instead the women are questioned about all of the ways in which it might have been somehow their fault. This does not encourage healing. It does reaffirm male supremacy, and it is rotten to the core.

We have not thought enough about the process of forgiveness, but I imagine it might be somewhat like the process of repentance. What are those 5 R's?

• Recognition
• Remorse
• Resolution (to change, but maybe this should be Requesting forgiveness from God)
• Restitution
• Reformation

I don't know that they fit exactly, and some of this may be more about helping other people with their healing than healing yourself.

I believe that mental part - the recognition - means that we have to accept that a lack of harmful intent does not mitigate harm, and be aware of power structures and how they encourage patterns of abuse.

I believe that emotionally - the remorse - we should want people to heal and be whole.

After knowing and feeling, what do we do?

Sometimes that is going to involve working to change abusive power structures. It may mean adding protection, so that someone trying to heal does not have to be preoccupied with worrying about future harm. It may involve counseling or community engagement to reaffirm that person's value. So much about being hurt is the message that you don't matter. We should never be reinforcing that.

It can also take time, whether to grieve, or for physical healing, or for chances to talk or be silent and to work through the emotions, rather than pushing them aside. Sometimes making a person whole involves money or medical care or replacement or repair of something damaged. 

Can we promise the person in need of healing that they are safe, and that it won't happen again? If not, are there other ways we can help mitigate the potential damage? What can we do to make this a better world? What can we do to build Heaven on Earth? We probably can't get there all the way, but that is no excuse for making things more like Hell, and we do that a lot.

The last post was about being able to deal with the uncomfortable. Dealing with hurts that you personally can't heal is uncomfortable. Dealing with hurts you caused is uncomfortable. Challenging power structures is uncomfortable.

 Those things are also necessary to what we need to be.

Sitting with the uncomfortable

I am going to refer to someone else's words tonight, based largely on the recommendation of a friend:

https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/eric-d-huntsman_hard-sayings-and-safe-spaces-making-room-for-both-struggle-and-faith/

It came up in the conversation because we were talking about the way people resist knowledge that doesn't feel good, and she mentioned this theme of taking time to sit with the discomfort.

The talk has a broader range than I expected, with one point of annoyance when he refers to safe spaces and trigger warnings in a way that shows he does not understand their point. (His note refers to another author, but I am not bothering with it for now. I will link to this: https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2017/06/trigger-warnings-and-ptsd.html)

Moving on, I am currently reading about issues with reconciling abuses - especially via the Indian residential school system - in Canada. Some of the most interesting material was about the mythology that Canadians have maintained about being peacemakers, which was partly a way of defining themselves against their US neighbors to the South. It ignores some very literal violence, but also broken treaties and other bad dealing. (US mythology has often embraced the violence.)

There are bad feelings that happen when you go into this. People may feel guilty and disappointed, but they also may often feel hostile and resentful. The belief they had was a lie, but they don't want to lose that lie.

I believe next week I am going to write about forgiveness, and I may not be completely traditional in how I do that. However, if we want to get to a point where wrongs are truly healed, that is going to require puncturing the myths. It will have to require acknowledging wrong beliefs, often wrong actions, and accepting times when we have gotten benefits that we did not deserve. That is uncomfortable.

I do think a normal reaction to learning about a wrong is wanting to fix it. When that seems impossible, there may be a certain logic to resisting that knowledge. The logic falls apart under closer examination. While the past cannot be changed, the present can, and those can be really good changes that bless us all.

Last week I mentioned being overwhelmed at times. When I am retaining presence of mind, I let that overwhelming feeling wash over me, like a wave crashing. I feel it, and then I move on.

That technique started for me when sometimes my mind would balk at eternal concepts, literally like eternity and infinity and things that are too far outside a mortal frame of reference. I would feel sick to my stomach, and push the thoughts away, often with really shallow pop music. That did not feel quite right, and I started just letting the feeling wash over me. I don't comprehend it, and that's okay. I will keep going.

Just as there are times when we can fight uncertainty or embrace it; we can do that with discomfort as well.

I know which one has resulted in more peace.

Hang in there

I don't necessarily mean hang in there and stick around for my slow progress in breaking down gender constructs, though I hope you do.

What I mean for now (and it is an interruption in the gender series) is that I want to take a moment to acknowledge that things are hard out there.

Between financial issues and my mother's health, I am always running pretty close to empty anyway, but this week was worse. It was worse on a personal level with some distressing news and tests needed. They probably aren't even going to turn out that horribly, but the efforts required and the dread that certain words inspire was enough to make a difference.

On an external level, news of racism and natural disaster took an emotional toll as well. I know there is always news like that, but that's exactly the problem. If you care about things and are aware, this is a much more discouraging world than it was a few years ago, and it could be pretty discouraging then.

If there is one thing I have learned through the blog it is that I am not the only one who feels this way. Therefore, I know that there are other people who are sensitive and down, and today I want to throw out some words of encouragement to you.

It isn't just you.

There is room for all of it under the Atonement.

Hang in there.

I also want to share a story.

I pray a lot. I try not to get so overcome with my needs that I forget to count blessings and express gratitude, and that is often very helpful. When I am overwhelmed I try and find just the next thing to do (out of many possibilities). Last night, though, I tried to have a prayer like that, and I stumbled and I was just "Send food. Send money. Send ."

He sent food right away. He sent food through two different sources. I still have leftovers of the food that was sent.

Also, part of that was that I really could not deal with cooking then. Tonight I finally did get around to cooking and it went better than I thought it would.

That was incredibly encouraging.

I don't want to read too much into it, assuming that the money and the other request are on their way. I also don't want to read too much into the people who brought the food getting things that were close to what I would have gotten, but were not in fact the things that I would have gotten. It was enough for then.

Sometimes all you need is a bump to get you through to the next moment and it comes. Sometimes the answers are just comfort and guidance and sufficient strength, all of which are really wonderful things. I understand the good in things not always being easy.

It also really helps that every now and then something is easy.

I hope that for all of you too.

Where credit is due

Last month I had a post - "The special gift" - that argued against women's intuitive understanding of men's needs being a special quality given from God:

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-special-gift.html

(Yes, I know I am going slowly.)

That post was in large part a reaction to a talk, and a use there that struck me as profoundly incorrect  Then last week's post was about how there isn't really a scriptural prescription for strong gender differences.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2019/01/this-may-be-stating-obvious.html

I hope those two can be building blocks as I briefly go over three specific harms that come from incorrectly attributing various skills and behaviors to God-given gender differences. There could be more to be said about these specific harms, and they are not the only harms that come from the current structure, but I think they are nonetheless important and need to be said.

The first is on a very simple level that we are not seeing reality clearly, which matters a lot to me.

A good analogy might be how we often talk about gifted musicians. Perfect pitch may have a real hereditary element, and there are a lot of genetic factors that can help or hinder. For example, having larger hands (especially with longer fingers) can help you reach notes that are further apart, but can get in the way of playing speed, at least on piano. At some point, though, what matters most is the actual practice time involved. An early inclination can help, a family can nurture that inclination, a home full of music can create a powerful background, but being good at music takes becoming a skilled musician, with a lot of time spent developing that skill. It is not just accepting a gift. 

Crediting large-scale accommodation to women's intuition leads to underestimating women, and not crediting their actual experiences and abilities. "They're supposed to be that way" does not really appreciate the work that goes into it, which frankly is often exhausting.

Perhaps it is inevitable that the other side of not given women credit for their labor (or exhaustion) is not offering support.

I have thought of this more since reading Rene Denfield's Kill the Body, the Head Will Fall: A Closer Look at Women, Violence, and Aggression, inspired by Denfield's own foray into boxing.

One of the examples involved a mother with a colicky baby who was having a hard time dealing with the negative feelings this caused, including frustration and anger with her child. She even sought psychiatric help, but was only assured that her maternal instincts would keep her from harming her child.

It can be convenient to think that something is wrong with any mother who harms her child, but that philosophy left this mother who was not harming her child feeling like there was something inherently wrong with her. If the unwomanly thing is not acting on the feelings, but having the feelings in the first place, all that could leave her with was more stress and feelings of failure, with a vicious cycle. If you can admit that crying is stressful, and more stressful when you can't comfort the child but feel you should be able to (because of the power of a mother's love), and we can look at things like sleep deprivation and providing support to new mothers, and finding better treatments for colic, all of that is more helpful. It seems glaringly obvious, but then you hear the things people say on Mother's Day, and it clearly is not. This is not really doing mothers any favors.

But it also isn't doing men any favors to say that they lack emotional intelligence, or that they can't help themselves, and to excuse it all as boys being boys. That is the kind of thing that encourages men in mediocrity. That has no place in a church that believes in eternal progression.

And it is terrible to have smugly mediocre people in charge so much of the time.

This may be stating the obvious

This series is focusing (if somewhat circumspectly) on the harm caused by gender dogma. I realize that it may be hard for some people to give that up, because it feels so essential and right: men are supposed to be strong and women are supposed to be soft and we totally respect both of them but they are eternally different and YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT!

To which I pose this question: is it women or men who are supposed to pattern themselves on the Savior?

Are men not supposed to be compassionate? Are women not supposed to have integrity? Are any of us supposed to be cowardly or prideful?

I don't see a strong scriptural basis for gender differences. There is definitely representation of existing cultural traditions, but if the best you can offer for proof is the Pauline Epistles (which I read, but I take some of it with more than a grain of salt) you are not making a convincing case.

I have referenced racial prejudice before for comparison; let's remember that people - including church leaders - accepted the prevailing beliefs of the time, even though we know it was wrong now. Part of their ability to do so related to the deep roots of those prevailing beliefs. There is a structure that is accepted, and there is social conditioning that reinforces the structure.

Looking at the gender structure for our day, sometimes that results in women judging other women and being catty to them. This is a way of exerting dominance in a culture where the men have dominance, and it totally isn't ladylike to exert physical dominance anyway, so all you have is gossip and insinuation. That happens, we all know people who were very successful at that and people who were hurt by it, but is it Christ-like? Absolutely not. Not even when the gossip and insinuation is about sluttiness which makes it seem like a Christian concern. It is a terrible thing to do, and should not be done.

What is the point of Christianity if it leaves us sniping at each other and contending for power? What is the point if we look at the world through the exact same eyes as those who don't believe in him?

Think about the belief that men are naturally bigger and stronger. There are averages, but think of the tall women and short men, the women who are more physically powerful and the men less - sometimes through working out or not, but genetics plays a role - and is there a problem with that variety?

There is a similar natural variation of temperaments and inclinations. Foolishly labeling specific traits as masculine or feminine primarily serves to make a lot of people feel like there is something wrong with them. Again, if you want to be sniping and grasping for power, that is a helpful system, but that is not for followers of Christ.

Perhaps most important point here is that we don't get there automatically when the structure is so pervasive. Even regular scripture reading and church attendance will not get you there. Those beliefs need to be ruthlessly examined and evaluated against those things that we truly know to be important rather than simply customary.

My circumspection is not so much a fear of offending; some days there is so much crap out there I want to offend people, though I would still question its usefulness. However, the real reason I drag things out slowly, taking a long time to make a point, is that hope that the quiet chipping away will do the work better. That if enough stories and verses and points get out there, it will be self-evident before I say it.

But let me make one more point back on that original question: who is supposed to try and be like Christ?

From Matthew 23:37... "How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!"

That is feminine imagery, and Jesus was not afraid or uncomfortable to apply it to himself. If his tenderness is feminine, then all men should be feminine, but maybe it is just better to quit obsessing over gender.

Possibly the thing I hate the most

Our general topic is still sexism, but I am going to approach it via racism.

From 1849 to 1978, Black men were not allowed to hold the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That meant that they were not able to participate in temple ordinances and affected their ability to hold callings.

I was only 6 when that ended, but it sounds like it was not common knowledge that the ban did not start until 19 years after the organization of the church. There were people who expected it to change - even Brigham Young (who started the ban) said it would end - but there were also people who were not ready to accept that. I have heard that my own father said that if Black men were ever given the priesthood he would leave the church. (He did, though it took a few years and did not seem to be directly related.)

In 2013 the church's web site put out a number of gospel "topics" about things we don't talk too much about, like the ban and polygamy. Although the articles didn't use very strong language about being wrong, some people found them really disturbing. I thought they were overly gentle and glossy.

https://www.lds.org/topics/race-and-the-priesthood?lang=eng#14

I am sure some of the reason for not discussing things further was discomfort. It is embarrassing to be on the wrong side of history. Probably there was relief that we didn't need to worry about it anymore; since 1978 everything was good except for occasional awkward questions.

For my next anecdote, I can't remember if it came from an institute teacher or a mission president. Both of my mission presidents were church education men, so there were some similarities. As it was definitely either from college or mission, it occurred sometime between 1991 and 1996.

He was relaying a story of a Black girl (teenager or maybe young adult) talking about Black men not getting the priesthood, and she explained it as her Black brothers playing basketball in the pre-mortal life instead of doing the things that they should have been doing.

Now, this is an old theory, referenced in a letter from Joseph Fielding Smith in 1907 (see notes at the previous link), though at the time he acknowledges that while it is generally believed it was merely an opinion and not official.

There was never a good explanation given for the ban, because there was no good explanation. It was racism, it was common, and that doesn't sound good so we will say it is temporary and move on. It should have been clear that would never work; if you don't give people an explanation, they will imagine one.

So the thing I hate is that this imagined reason carried through the years and became a reason for this girl to look down on people who looked like her. It gave her a reason to think that her father and brothers and any male relatives were inferior. As it was a priesthood-specific issue, maybe she could tell herself that it did not apply to Black women. Maybe after 1978 she could tell herself it was just the older people, her ancestors that were inferior but her living family was good.

It is still a rotten thing to do to someone.

And I know that white man - and without remembering exactly which one he was, I know he was a good man that I was very fond of - used that story because her saying it made it better. If even one of their own accepts that it is not simple racism, then it's fine, even though it was wrong all along.

I hate that the people of the church taught her that, and that the leaders of the church did not prevent it.

I remember similar instructors also saying how the ban never applied to people of Asian descent or Native American people, and even some people who looked pretty dark but were not from Africa. There was still some pride there, a good decade after the ban, because it was just being descended from Ham (also debunked), and it was not simple racism. A more complex look at racism could have factored in anti-Blackness and model minorities, but they didn't go there.

Of course, if they had really dug into it, they would have had to examine and realize and remove the ban much sooner.

No one wants to think Brigham Young was racist, or all the others after him who did not lift the ban, or grant temple access to Black men who had gotten the priesthood before the ban (which also happened) were racist, because we also know them to be good men who did good things. It's uncomfortable (and might threaten your confidence in your own lack of racism) so we try to not think about it so much.

That's exactly how we avoid improvement. That's how we leave really good people responsible for justifying our racist acts.

We have to stop that.