General Women's meeting

[Portia]

And living where? I'm applying to jobs up at the U. It's exhausting.

[Portia]

Back on topic, go read this post at BCC:

Some Mormon feminists think this inclusion of Primary girls in the women’s conference is some kind of subtle insult, like the church is putting us women in the same category as children. I really don’t think that’s it. Of course, I don’t know what’s actually it because it makes no freaking sense. Why would you include eight-year-old girls in a women’s conference? Why? Why? Perhaps inviting 11-year-old girls would not be inappropriate—girls on the cusp of Young Woman-hood, as it were. Although I am generally opposed to this sort of Valiant creep (just because I think it’s unnecessary, not because it’s harmful), I can sort of understand it. But what do our leaders have to say to grown women that could possibly be relevant and not mind-numbingly boring to eight-year-old girls?

(Emphasis subtracted.)

My sister is 12. I'm 25. Our lives are so fantastically different. She's dealing with puberty, middle school homework, and the loss of a parent in childhood. I'm dealing with a long-term relationship, full-time work, and the loss of a parent in adulthood. Our spiritual development, like our physical or emotional development, is so different!

I'm no saying my life isn't significantly different from, saying, my twice-widowed 70-year-old recently retired grandmother, too, but we're both adults. My sister is not, not even close.

There's always some sort of chastity talk in the YW meeting. How are they going to frame that to not given married RS women all sorts of unnecessary hangups? "Please, married women, have an active and fulfilling sex life with your husbands. And seventh-grade girls, um, just ignore what we said. Yeah."

(BCC is what I would consider a "mainstream" LDS blog, not far right or left. I am genuinely confused about the reasoning and what the meeting will be like.)

[mic0]

It's funny to me how everyone is confused about 8 year olds being invited to women's conference, but not 8 year olds in general being baptized. You're old enough to become a member of a church but not to attend a meeting?

[Portia]

It's funny to me how everyone is confused about 8 year olds being invited to women's conference, but not 8 year olds in general being baptized. You're old enough to become a member of a church but not to attend a meeting?

I'm confused about it. My brother said he actively lied about his belief to get baptized, and was terrified. I think he was clearly too young. Between this and other factors, I am not going to let my kids join any church until they're reasonably mature (16 or 18). Damnation scare tactics just aren't convincing in the light of eight-year-olds forced to be deceptive, in my view.

[UffishThought]

I don't see how letting girls attend the general female meeting is any different from letting boys attend the general male meeting. And the guys have porn talks all the time, so they don't take sex completely out of it. There are also talks directed specifically at the teens and kids, and talks directed at the adults, in Priesthood meeting. I'd guess we'll see a similar thing in this RS meeting.

I don't know what they were hoping to accomplish by this move. I wish I did, because I'm sure there were motivations of some kind behind the change. I can see a lot of excitement and optimism in the original announcement, but I'm not positive what it's FOR. So I'm mostly ambivalent. I don't see it as a good or bad change, yet, just a change. Ask me again once I've attended a few of them.

[Portia]

I don't see how letting girls attend the general female meeting is any different from letting boys attend the general male meeting.

Are they allowed? Do they often go? It was always a rite of passage for twelve year old guys in my family/ward. My dad went alone when my brother was in Primary, because he (my brother) didn't have the priesthood. He might have gone just before he turned 12: I don't know, that's the year I started college.

[UffishThought]

My comment was addressing your example of you vs your 12 year old sister, and the potential insult of grouping women with children, not the 8-for-girls-but-12-for-boys difference.

For that, it seems a little odd, and I don't understand it. In much the same way as I don't understand why women and men still go on missions at different ages, and for different lengths of time. I'm sure there's a purpose, but I don't know what it is. I can speculate, but most likely I'll draw the wrong conclusions and get all worked up over nothing. ANY age seems like an arbitrary cutoff to me, so while I can see 8 and 12 are different, neither makes me angry by itself, and I don't care much about the gap, either, except to wonder idly what the policymakers thought it would accomplish.

[Portia]

I think it'd be good for there to be a separate Aaronic and Priesthood meeting. Twelve-year-old boys are arguably even less adults than twelve-year-old girls are.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

Honest question, Portia: If you're leaving/left the church anyways, why do you care so much?

[mic0]

Honest counter-question: Should people only care about things they are directly involved in?

[Portia]

Honest question, Portia: If you're leaving/left the church anyways, why do you care so much?

Ha! I could write a very, very long thesis-level answer on this. But to try to be brief:

• A lot of my family members and closest friends are LDS
  Whether it's sane or not, I'm moving back to Utah
  How women are treated in the Church really affects the people I'm closest to, and culturally, me
  I'm a seventh-generation Mormon, this is basically my identity

It's a pretty common response to say "if you don't like it, leave!" and "man, those lapsed Mormons can't leave it alone." I understand the latter viewpoint, to some extent (not the former. It's never that simple.). But if you moved to, say, Saudi Arabia and were discomfited by the treatment of women, I would see no reason to not voice your opinion on that.

One of my non-LDS best friends thinks that "group identity can be a pleasant substitute for a personal identity." Maybe I'm a more interesting "liberal" LDS person in my own mind, because what I do (um, graduated, work in a dull job in a dull region) is just not that out of the ordinary in the real world.

Maybe if there were a substantial reformation, I would return. Maybe it's a mistake to move back to where this is an issue I'll have to constantly renegotiate. But I'm pretty passionate about feminist issues in general. If I lived in, say, a Catholic-predominant area (vive la France) I would probably express my viewpoint on female ordination therein. But it lacks some ethos not being Catholic. And if I'm going to be counted among the 15 million, well, I'm Mormon. If I ever did go through the hoops of resigning, I would probably wash my hands and move far, far away. But that's a pretty extreme step for what I view as ultimately fixable problems.

[Portia]

"Bah! Fahn. I am not saying you ah stupeed, though dat has yet to be proven or disproven. Dat ees not the issue. The issue is that we French majors get no respect around here."

"Maybe you should try to not yell at people all the time."

Sometimes I crack myself up. The next part is awesome.

"Maybe you should have some passion about things every once in a while. I can pronounce close front rounded vowels, I've studied Balzac and Voltaire and Maupassant, I've successfully stepped over a homeless harmoneeca player in a crowded metro station. What does your mazhor even have that mine doesn't, huh?" French had started flinging books out of her bookbag (which seemed to have pins on it related to the--gasp!--Socialist party) to hit Nursing on beat with each author.

Plus ça change ...

[Portia]

Another (faithful, I assume even conservative) voice raising similar issues.

Times and Seasons, 8 & Up

ETA: The idea that a father is unfit to watch his preteen daughter alone is the most depressing thing I've heard in a long time. My father became the sole parent of an eleven-year-old when our mother died. Our "daddy/daughter dates" from that time, going rock climbing together or eating ice cream, are some of my happiest childhood memories. Sigh. Hopefully just a dumb rumor. Right?

[Whistler]

it did cross my mind that including 8-11-year-olds would prevent them from being alone with their dads/teenage brothers. But I think that's a dumb reason.

[Dragon Lady]

I don't buy that one. Because the 7-year old girls will still be home with their dads/teenage brothers.

[Dragon Lady]

Now if they also mandated a nursery be provided... but I don't see that happening either.

[Violet]

And living where? I'm applying to jobs up at the U. It's exhausting.

I have a rental app for house in Sugarhouse sitting in my inbox right now, but I'm currently hanging out in Orem and applying for Utah County jobs because commuting is terrible and I found an internship doing more of what I want that would pay me about the same as my job does after I take out commuting costs, so why shouldn't I? Especially when most of my Utah dwelling friends are Provo and south. And that's my life currently...

[Portia]

And living where? I'm applying to jobs up at the U. It's exhausting.

I have a rental app for house in Sugarhouse sitting in my inbox right now, but I'm currently hanging out in Orem and applying for Utah County jobs because commuting is terrible and I found an internship doing more of what I want that would pay me about the same as my job does after I take out commuting costs, so why shouldn't I? Especially when most of my Utah dwelling friends are Provo and south. And that's my life currently...

Hmm, sounds a bit like my boyfriend, although he works in Lehi. I would love to live in Sugar House.

I'm applying up at the U for now, but would take a job in Utah Co. as a last resort.

[Marduk]

The conventional wisdom I've always heard on the missionary age differential is to try to keep fraternizing to a minimum. There's a cultural backlash against dating/flirting with a woman one's senior, even if it is only a year or two.

[Dragon Lady]

Marduk, maybe it's my pregnancy brain, but I feel like you keep making comments that... make no sense in context.