I don't doubt that you've served under good men and I don't necessarily think your experiences are abnormal. But do think they're due largely to luck. You're lucky that you've served under good leaders and you're lucky that your life has reasonably followed the Standard Mormon Template™ so that others in the Church are more willing and able to support you and then, by personality or by choice, you've decided that you want a life that aligns well with what the Church supports for women. But if any of those had failed, you could quite easily find yourself in dire circumstances. And I think that women who are unlucky in one or more of these circumstances still deserve to be treated with respect.Dragon Lady wrote:So I guess I'll close with saying that maybe I've just served under all good, righteous men. Maybe you'll consider all of my experiences as not-normal. And maybe they're not.
No, of course not. I absolutely agree that these problems originate with individuals, not with groups. However, if power always lies in the hand of one group and never in the hands of another group, then the injustices perpetrated by one group on the other will be perpetuated, while the injustices perpetrated by a member of a group on another member of the same group will balance out.Dragon Lady wrote:And if men are using their authority unrighteously, I don't think the problem is, necessarily, that he's male and thus has the priesthood. I think the problem is that he's unrighteous. (At least in that situation.) The solution then would be to teach the priesthood to, well, be more righteous. But I'm absolutely convinced that women in positions of power would have many of the exact same power struggles. I've seen it in how my sister's RS president treated her as a counselor. Women are not immune to power struggles.
Imagine that you have a Relief Society President who hates people with green eyes. She might be mean to a counselor with green eyes or a RS member with green eyes or any member of the ward with green eyes. And that would be wrong. But some day she's going to be released, and the new Relief Society President might be someone who has green eyes who wouldn't be prejudiced against people with green eyes, or the old RS President might serve under a bishop with green eyes, and if he saw she was treating someone else badly for having green eyes, he'd tell her to knock it off. So, even though she is acting personally badly towards someone else (and even towards a group of people), that attitude isn't going to spread because the power structure doesn't reinforce it.
But look at the example of a male ward clerk who changes a woman's surname upon marriage without asking her first because he just assumes that's how it should be. Any woman who has that happen to her will never be in a position to control whether or not that happens to anyone else and to thereby change the culture, because she'll never be a ward clerk. And any male ward clerk who does that will never have to answer to a female superior who will tell him to go about things a different way, because the entire leadership structure above him is male. And no one ever changes a male's name without asking him because people just don't treat men that way (probably because other men would put a stop to it). Ditto for software that demotes a woman from "head of household" to "spouse" upon marriage (and only heads of household are allowed to verify certain types of information). Ditto for being certain that your tithing will be entered under your name and not under your spouse's name. Ditto for being certain that your contact info will be entered at all. (This has been a problem in my current ward; women's contact information is mysteriously never being entered by the membership clerk.) And these are all just relatively minor clerical examples. Imagine if there were more important callings that were restricted to men.
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
Do you care about the women who do? (I mean that as a genuine question, not as snark.) I see a lot of women coming into such discussions to proclaim that not all women are unhappy or have a problem with the status quo, but I don't usually see these women deigning to acknowledge the pain and problems of the other women in the conversation. Are you willing to do that?Dragon Lady wrote:I *know* I'm not agreed with by many. In fact, on this forum, I'm probably far, far, far in the minority. Maybe that's why I spoke out? Just to show that not all women feel oppressed in the current system.