A few years ago I wrote a whole huge blog post on my personal blog about women in the priesthood. It was 2014 and Ordain Women was in the news a lot (at least the LDS news) regarding giving women the priesthood. I jumped on my soapbox and preached from on high about how important I thought it was for MEN to have the priesthood and not women. Seriously, I don't even know that version of Syndy anymore.
Today I'm here to make new statements and change my original opinion because frankly I'm now more educated and "woke"...yep I said it "woke". Deal with it.
April of this year, 2022, I went to my first feminist retreat. Not something I ever envisioned for myself. When I was there I was still active in the church and processing a lot. It was life changing and I'm planning on going again this next year, I'm even on the planning committee.
Here's something you need to know about mormonism. It's all male run. Like completely. People will tell you that women can lead as well and they would be kinda right. Women are allowed to lead other women and children. Once males turn 11 they are not allowed to be lead by women again. They can be taught by women but women are never again their leaders. Women leaders in the church are always overseen by men. We cannot make decisions, give callings even distribute our own budgets for our organization without approval from a man. We get our temple recommends from men, we are punished by men if we sin, we are asked to do callings by men, it's literally all men in charge.
In my feminist organization it's all women. ZERO men. We went to a retreat in another state and we didn't have to have one single man there to do anything for us. In the church women are not allowed to even be in the church buildings alone and we cannot do activities without a male being there to "make sure we are safe". At the retreat we presided, we spoke, we sang and prayed. We blessed, we loved and women collected all the money and distributed it accordingly...SHOCKER! Women ran our worship service, we passed around m&m's instead of bread and water, we sang beautiful songs surrounded by nature, it was lovely. It was the most spiritual experience I have ever had outside of childbirth.
My daughters, if they had remained in the church, would never know true leadership. Currently my oldest works for an insurance agent. Her boss and owner of the company is a woman and all the employees in her office are women. She is learning to lead in a healthy and normal way. If she had stayed in the church she would be a leader out in the world and only allowed to be a follower in her church. How messed up is that? My husband works for a small paper company, think Dunder Mifflin of the Midwest, and it is owned by a woman. My daughters are seeing very good role models out in the "world" on how to be a strong leader, but in the church they were always second.
Now my husband has never been one to make me feel second. We do things together and he's always supported my endeavors and I've supported his, but in the church he was over me. Leaders would come to him first to see if I would take a calling. His calling always came before mine and if I was in a leadership calling and they wanted him to have one too they would release me from mine to give him the opportunity to serve. When I got married I understood that his word was the last word. When he told me he wanted to move to Illinois and had applied for a job here in my mind I heard the words of my leaders "your husband has the last word". Even naming our children he always joked that he could name them whatever he wanted because he got to give them names and blessings at church in sacrament meeting so his word was the last word. He also knew if he ever wanted to sleep with me again he would not under any circumstances name any of our children Wolfgang...yeah it was one of his picks! LOL
In the church there are no true women leaders. That is sad. Making that one change, letting the women have the priesthood and leadership opportunities would, in my opinion, help them retain members. How many women are leaving and taking their families with them because they realize that they are never going to be equally represented?
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