Exponent II's Blog, page 222

Where is Discernment?

I grew up in the United States, but outside of Utah. My family were deeply orthodox believers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I learned to be very trusting of all church members, especially those in leadership. I saw them through rose-colored glasses, and never encountered evidence to make me think otherwise. I was taught as a youth that a bishop had the gift of discernment and I absolutely must confess my sins or he would know I was lying. I believed that and acted accordingly.

In my patriarchal blessing more than 20 years ago I was told that I was given the ‘great spiritual gift of discernment’ and that it would help me to ‘discern the inner thoughts of others’. There have been times when I felt like that blessing was being realized in my life. A feeling that I could see into someone’s mind and heart and understand their motives. At times it gave me the promised comfort.

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I moved to Utah as an adult, 7 years ago. It was a culture shock to suddenly find myself surrounded by fellow church members everywhere I went. Occasionally catching up on the news, I was disenchanted with my childish notions that Mormons are all good and trustworthy. I learned about so many instances of crime and abuse perpetuated by those I would have considered “Brother” or “Sister”, and expected more of. I used to think Mormons behaved better than the general population. Now, I doubt it. They are the same as other people. And some are worse. Some use their positions of power and influence to take advantage of the vulnerable.

This week in my home county, news broke about a current bishop (Lehi,UT, Mill Pond Ward) who was arrested in a sex-trafficking sting. He had contacted police officers posing as prostitutes and offered to ‘manage’ them. He met with them and offered to help them avoid police and get clients. He said he had experience with this (later denied). He put one of the officers’ hand over his genitals and later exposed himself. He was arrested under suspicion of exploiting a prostitute, patronizing a prostitute, sexual battery, and two counts of lewdness. He also served as a police officer in Utah until he resigned in 2012, apparently while under investigation for sexual misconduct.

This makes me sick. Behaviors like this don’t come about suddenly. This man would likely have been giving temple recommend interviews within days of his arrest. The church is taking action to replace him as Bishop, but the damage is done. Having someone who serves as Bishop of a congregation be caught in such un-bishop-like activities damages the credibility of the whole ‘calling’ process. Why would this man have been called as bishop? How I wish there was someone in leadership who would have prevented this man from being put into a position of trust! D&C 46 talks about the gifts of the spirit given to the church, one of the important gifts being that of the discerning of spirits (v. 23). The D&C student manual explains “To Church leaders the Lord gives the gift ‘to discern all those gifts lest there shall be any among you professing and yet be not of God’ (D&C 46:27).” (https://www.lds.org/study/manual/doct...). What ever happened to the gift of discernment in leadership? Aren’t they supposed to recognize when someone in the congregation is ‘professing’ and ‘not of God’? Keeping a predator out of the office of bishop, seems like a prime time for the gift of discernment to have been useful.

According to lds.org, discernment is “To understand or know something through the power of the Spirit. The gift of discernment is one of the gifts of the Spirit. It includes perceiving the true character of people…” (Guide to the Scriptures, “Discernment, Gift of”). In this situation, I think the true character of this bishop was displayed in the way he behaved toward the undercover officers. The very purpose of the gift of discernment was frustrated.

In the Book of Helaman, Nephi displays great spiritual gifts. When a crowd of passers-by gathers to hear his prayers of lamentation on the tower in his garden, he calls the people to repentance and he prophesies and reveals the murder of chief judge Seezoram. Then he discerns through the spirit, that the murderer was Seantum, and that blood would be found on his cloak. (Hel 7-9). Nephi’s story shows a case of God revealing to a church leader happenings that occur elsewhere (murder), as well as who was involved, and where to look for proof.

As a child, these kinds of stories led me to believe that church leaders were similarly inspired, that God would reveal such mysteries to them. Elder Bednar taught that discernment can help us “detect hidden error and evil in others,” (What is Discernment? New Era, June 2018). Who is supposed to detect the hidden evil in our fellow congregants? Who is supposed to detect the hidden evil in our bishops, stake presidents, or other church leaders? Who is going to protect vulnerable people from predators? If this gift is truly the prerogative of our leaders, why don’t we see it in action? I worried as a 12 year old that if I didn’t confess and repent of every little ‘sin’, the bishop would know, and I wouldn’t get to go participate in youth baptisms. Now I see that every day people are lying at every level in the church and getting away with it. Regularly I see in my newsfeed of people called to leadership positions in the church, while hiding heinous crimes. If we don’t know someone is wicked until the law catches up with them, it is too late. The church is littered with people professing and not of God. Discernment is dead in the church leadership.

Sentencing Decision

This morning, a United States District Court ruled on the case of Suzette Smith, former board member of Exponent II. Judge Anthony Trenga sentenced Ms. Smith to 15 months in federal prison. Exponent II is relieved that this difficult period is over. The board would like to thank the agents at the FBI and the Department of Justice. We would also like to thank those who have supported our organization over the last 17 months. Truly, we could not have gotten through this time without you.

Guest Post: The Syrophoenician Woman Is My Hero

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[Photo credit: “Tyre Al Mina” by Heretiq, Wikipedia Commons]

By Kaylee

I’ve been studying the bible story of the Syrophoenician woman. In the King James Version she’s called the Syrophenician woman. Matthew calls her “a woman of Canaan.” But if you know the story, you probably remember it as the one where Jesus calls the woman a dog.

It’s found in Matthew 15:21-28 and Mark 7:24-30 and it goes like this:

Jesus has been preaching in Galilee and has been getting mobbed by the people after John the Baptist’s death. Pharisees come up from Jerusalem to see what’s going on, and they get into a heated debate with Jesus over washing hands before eating. (Yes, really.) So Jesus decides to take a beach vacation to the Gentile city of Tyre. Somehow this Gentile woman of another ethnicity (Matthew calling her a Canaanite—even though that term was archaic by New Testament times—was a shorthand way to say she is “other”) finds Jesus and asks him to cast a devil out of her daughter. She calls him “Lord” and “Son of David.” Jesus straight up ignores her. Her cries must have been pretty obnoxious because Jesus’ disciples ask him to send her away. Jesus replies to them, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Nevertheless, she persisted. She knelt before him and asked for help. He replied, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” Her response: “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Because of her strong argument and great faith, her daughter was instantly healed.

This is a kinda quirky story, and one we hardly ever talk about at church.*

To work through this story, I made two lists.

Parts that challenge me:

Jesus ignores her.
As the God of the Old Testament, Jesus supposedly commanded the extermination of her ancestors.
Disciples tell Jesus to send her away.
Jesus is unwilling to help her because she isn’t an Israelite.
Jesus calls her a dog.
Jesus was nice to the woman at the well (a Samaritan). Why isn’t he nice here?

Parts I like:

The woman is faithful.
The woman is persistent.
The woman is quick witted.
The woman is humble.
The woman is focused on her end goal: getting help for her daughter. She doesn’t allow offensive behavior or words to derail her from this goal.
The woman gives Jesus a strong argument to heal her daughter, and the daughter is healed.
The woman is an example of “love your enemies, bless them that curse you.”

The reason this story really resonates with me is the amazing example of this woman. She owned her desire for a blessing. She was determined. She was not cowed by the voice of authority telling her no. She advocated for her daughter. And she did all this while still being incredibly humble. I particularly love how she cleverly retold and expanded Jesus’ parable of the dogs and the children: she used the retelling to give herself a seat at the table (even if it was under the table, with the expectation of scraps.) The way she shifted the perspective of the story provided a strong argument for healing her daughter.

On the other hand, this is a challenging scripture story because Jesus seems to show up on the “wrong” list. The answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” generally does not include ignoring or belittling people. It can be hard to make sense of stories with scant details that happened in an ancient culture that you are reading about through translation. There are all sorts of explanations of Jesus’ behavior. Maybe he was testing her faith. Maybe he was testing his disciples to see if they thought he should break the mission rules and minister to someone who was not of “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (compare Matt 10:5-6 to Matt 15:24). Maybe he was trying to clarify the point that he was trying to make to the Pharisees: “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles” (Matt 15:11). Jesus was putting bad words and actions into the Syrophoenician woman and only getting good words and actions out of her, proving her pure heart. Or, maybe the human side of Jesus was still learning grace to grace. Twelve-year-old Jesus hadn’t learned about telling his mom where he’s going, what he’s doing, who he’ll be with, and what time he’ll be back. Perhaps thirty-something-year-old Jesus had yet to comprehend the full extent of his ministry. Perhaps he was still learning to see his own prejudice. I don’t know. Initially, the premise that Jesus could have been prejudiced made me uncomfortable, but choosing to frame the story with this premise has helped me understand it in new ways.

It is easy for me to identify with the Syrophoenician woman and see her as an example of how to advocate for changes in the church that would be a blessing to myself and my daughters. It challenges my heart to accept as necessary the hefty amount of humility she displayed. It is not as easy for me to identify with Jesus in this story. There are so many questions I have about the motivations behind his actions. At some point though, I realized that that if I want something in the church structure to change, I have to ask people who are willing to follow Jesus’ example in this story. That surprised me, because, well, didn’t Jesus show up on the “wrong” list here?

How did he get put into the “follow His example” category? If we assume that Jesus was prejudiced against the woman, but was then willing to listen to her and change how he acted towards her, he shows personal growth and learning. I hesitate to call what Jesus did “repentance,” because that implies that there was sin. I wonder, though, if we suppose that Jesus was ignorant of his prejudice against this woman until this moment, can it be counted as sin? This actually gives me a good deal of hope, because I am still learning. I am still finding many parts of my mind that are ignorant and uninformed (not for lack of trying, but still). And I hope I can change course as thoroughly and gracefully as Jesus did. Framing the story as one in which Jesus experiences growth humanizes him so that I can actually try to follow his example. This story then becomes a wonderful model of “when I know better, I do better.” Jesus didn’t just “do better” in this story, he continued to “do better” afterward.

Before Jesus came to Tyre, he fed the five thousand. There were twelve baskets of food left over. Biblical numerology says that the number five represents divine grace and the number twelve represents God’s governing power. So these numbers represent feeding the Jews, who were chosen of God, and what is left over is the priesthood. The story of the Syrophoenician woman happens right in between two nearly-identical stories of feeding the multitudes. I like to think that the Syrophoenician woman’s argument didn’t just heal her daughter, but also changed Jesus’ course as he continued in his ministry.

After Jesus left Tyre, he preached throughout many Gentile regions. He came back to the Sea of Galilee and fed a multitude of four thousand. This time seven baskets of food were left over. The number four implies geographic fullness or universal truth. It seems likely that Gentiles were in this crowd. The number seven implies completion or perfection. I love the expansion of God’s nurturing represented by these numbers. I love that when everyone is fed, the result is not just priesthood, but perfection. This is a beautiful message of inclusiveness. And not a message I was expecting to find when I first glanced through this story.

 

*I’m a life-long member and I don’t specifically recall ever discussing this story at church. Maybe we talked about it in Seminary, but that could be hopeful thinking on my part. The Come Follow Me curriculum for this year never mentions this story.

 

 

Kaylee only wears sensible shoes (if she has to wear shoes at all) and is passionate about pants with functional pockets (even her Sunday slacks).

Nevada is the first American state with a female-majority legislature. Why not Utah?

[image error]Four years ago, I took my nine-year-old daughter with me on a visit to the Utah state capitol building. She took a look at the photos on the Senate and House rosters and asked me, “Where are all the girls?”

The Utah Legislature is now in session, and this time around there are more female lawmakers than ever before. Twenty-five women, including five women of color, currently serve as state senators or representatives in Utah. These women make up 24% of the 104-member Legislature.  

The improvement is significant. The Utah Legislature now has the same proportion of women as the United States Congress, which also includes more women this term than ever before. I am grateful for the efforts of coalitions like Real Women Run, who have worked tirelessly to bring about this change. 

Even so, I look wistfully to our neighbor to the West, Nevada, which currently has a narrow female majority in its state legislature. This cohort of Nevada lawmakers is the first American legislature in history with more women than men. Did you catch that? Almost a century after most American states started allowing women to become lawmakers, only one of the fifty American states has ever had a majority female legislature, and it happened for the first time this year. People sometimes tell me that if my church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), extended the priesthood to women, men would be displaced, lounging around with nothing to do while women took over. That certainly hasn’t happened in secular society. Don’t worry, men!

Utah’s Eastern neighbor, Colorado, is also having a record-breaking year for female representation, with 45% female representation.

Political pundits are crediting the recent improvements in female representation to female organizing and activism. I don’t doubt they are right, but I also wonder why progress has been uneven across the nation. Why hasn’t my home state of Utah achieved proportional representation like our neighbors?

1. Utah is the only state where the majority of its citizens are members of the LDS Church.

Nevada has the 4th highest proportion of LDS members in the nation, at 6%. That’s a lot of LDS people, but not nearly as many as Utah at 62% LDS. 

Members of the LDS church are accustomed to seeing men – and only men – in priesthood leadership positions. Naturally, some church members may choose to vote for the kinds of leaders they are accustomed to. Inequity in religious societies spills over into the secular societies that surround them. 

In Utah, members of the LDS Church make up 88% of the legislature, well above proportional representation for a group that is 62% of the state population. Likewise, LDS church members are often overrepresented in Congress in comparison to the LDS share of the American population. While LDS women have held state and federal office, LDS elected officials are disproportionately male. 

Latter-day Saint men gain leadership experience and social contacts in the male-only LDS priesthood hierarchy. I have often heard fellow Utahns say things like, “He used to be a stake president, so I know he’s honest and hard-working and I’ll vote for him.” The same can never be said for a woman.

2. The Utah Legislature has a Republican super-majority. 

In contrast,  In Congress, there are 7 times as many female Democrats as female Republicans. Nationwide, 61% of women in state legislatures are Democrats and 38% are Republicans. 

During the recent election cycle, Democrats gained support among almost every demographic of women—including white women, who have historically been more likely to vote Republican than women of color. Pundits say that both a Republican platform that is unfriendly to women and Republican support of men with sexual harassment histories is fueling this exodus. There are still many women left in the Republican Party, but fewer of them run for office, and among those who do, fewer win. While advocates for gender parity in legislative leadership have sought to promote women within both major political parties, they have had more success within the Democratic Party because Democrats actively seek to recruit and promote women in a way that Republicans do not. 

The dominance of both Republicans and LDS church members in Utah politics are not unrelated. In spite of professed political neutrality, church leaders tend to promote mostly Republicans to high-ranking clergy positions and often use Republican jargon in religious talks. (I’ve written about that before here.) American Latter-day Saints take the hint and overwhelmingly vote Republican. 

I look forward to the day when it is just as likely that a legislative body will be majority female as majority male. In my home state of Utah, that day is still a long way off.

(As Long as You Stay in Our Box)

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Of course we love women, they say
(as long as they accept their role,
uphold the patriarchy,
and don’t voice their desire for more)

Of course we love single people, they say
(as long as they are sad to not be married,
don’t ask too many questions about the holes in our heaven theology,
and don’t mind being forever supervised by married people)

Of course we love childless couples, they say
(as long as they want children (but of course they want children!),
aren’t unnecessarily putting off having children (just have faith!),
and don’t get snippy when we ask impertinent questions about their family planning)

Of course we love people of color (is that even the right term anymore? People get offended so easily these days), they say
(as long as they pretend the priesthood/temple ban never happened (we fixed it! it’s fine now!),
don’t expect apologies for past or present racism,
and refrain from pointing out our continued colonialism)

Of course we love gay people, they say
(as long as they are properly penitent about it
and live inspirational, celibate lives)

Of course we love transgender people, they say. They’re God’s children too, after all.
(but only when they conform to the gender we ascribe them,
don’t expect us to switch pronouns,
and don’t try to switch auxiliaries because that might make people uncomfortable)

Of course we love bisexual people! they say
(they can easily follow God’s plan by having righteous heterosexual temple marriages,
so what’s the big deal, anyway?)

Of course we love Jesus, they say
(but not when he’s used to promote a socialist agenda,
or speaking truth to our power,
or when someone points out that his strictest criticisms were against the church leaders of his day)

Of course I love you, God says, and I created this world to be big enough to hold the whole of you.
(and with Me, there are no boxes)

#hearLDSwomen: My Stake President Micromanages Women

[image error]BYU Women’s Conference is an annual 2-day conference sponsored by the Relief Society and BYU. It’s promoted Church-wide, but there is a cost to attend (similar to Education Week). A committee organizes the conference, selecting the theme, speakers, and topics. Speakers include general authorities and auxiliary leaders as well as topic experts and lay people. I was asked to be part of the BYU/Relief Society Women’s Conference committee. The invitation was extended by the president of BYU and the Relief Society general presidency. I found it a very rewarding and insightful experience. The eye-rolling part: my stake president was apparently apoplectic that this “invitation” hadn’t gone through his approval. He had my bishop call me in to find out how I had become involved. The message I got: why YOU? He also brought it up at some other priesthood meeting as a bishop from another ward confided in me a couple of years later how upset the stake president was that he wasn’t able to okay what I’m assuming he thought was a calling.

On a separate occasion, I helped organize a stake Relief Society program in which women shared very personal challenges and how their solutions came through Christ. Stories ranged from depression, wayward children, addiction, a crumbling marriage, etc. The meeting was impressively attended and incredibly impactful. However, the next day this same stake president called in the stake Relief Society president to rake her over the coals for “negative and inappropriate” messages. He said he would approve or PLAN any programs from then on.

And…this same stake president would not give my ward a budget for a ward Youth Conference because our bishop wasn’t submitting reports on time or something ridiculous. I was a Young Women counselor at the time; we were given $50 to feed 15 young men and young women at a 2-day weekend “conference” at our ward building.

– Anonymous

Pro Tip: Allow women to perform their responsibilities without micromanaging them. Provide women with the support and information they need.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

#hearLDSwomen: Temple Artwork Only Depicts Women in Submissive Roles

[image error]I live in the Middle East. I don’t get to go to the temple often because when we travel, we have small children with us. Last year I got to go to the Montreal temple to do family sealings involving my grandparents. It’s incredibly hard living in a place where I am not considered equal to my husband. No matter how he treats me in our home, everywhere I go I’m told and treated as though I am less than a man. I was so hoping to go home and immerse myself in a culture that values me.

The temple was a good experience. Until I noticed the artwork.

Right outside the sealing room was a painting of Christ’s tomb. Mary is collapsed to the side in a weak and weepy heap. Peter and John are center of the painting stepping boldly and confidently out of the empty tomb with arms outstretched like they’re ready to spread word of God’s miracle to all the world.

The painting is doctrinally inaccurate. It made me angry.

Mary received that revelation. She stepped forth out of that tomb ready to change the world with what she now knew. She wasn’t a nervous fretting pile of tears waiting for the menfolk to fix things. Her tears dried up when Christ appeared to her. The apostles didn’t believe her until Christ appeared to them AFTER the tomb. SHE was the one who left the tomb with the single most important revelation in human history. THEY were the ones who were angry emotional wrecks because they couldn’t believe the word of a woman when she said a miracle had happened.

Women are given so little voice in the scriptures. Why did the artist feel the need to take hers?

I started looking at all the other paintings. I couldn’t help it–it was like a veil had been lifted. I walked up and down the hallways trying to find some piece of art to smooth out the punch to the gut I had just received.

Every single painting of a woman showed her kneeling with head bowed or in a submissive posture. Every single painting of a man showed him upright, standing, powerful, and very often teaching submissive women. Not one teaching woman. Not one speaking woman. Men taught. Women listened. Everyone had their place, and standing upright together, living and teaching the gospel together, wasn’t it.

I wanted to cry. The comfort I was hoping for in the temple wasn’t there. The story the walls told stole any comfort I might have found.

Amy H.

 

Pro Tip: Choose paintings that depict women as central and active characters. Make sure to include paintings that feature diverse people, not just white men.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

Covenants: The Stuff of Dreams and Nightmares

I have been thinking and writing about temple covenants during the past few weeks. I am writing a paper for an upcoming Mormon Studies conference and am in the middle of cataloging the changes to the Law of Obedience covenant over the last hundred years. My feelings have alternated between catharsis and anger.

One of the things that I’m finding is that the language for the Law of Obedience covenant that women make, including the things that are promised to them, are made increasingly unclear with each successive language change. Melyngoch’s discussion of the word “hearken” on the Zelophehad’s Daughters blog  illustrates some of this problem. This has left me feeling that the authors of these changes never intended to alter the meaning of the covenant, only the language that was used to make the covenant. This has made patriarchal temple covenants easier for some LDS women to accept but more difficult for some to understand and see clearly.  

I’m also listening to Brene Brown’s new book Dare to Lead, which is about using research around vulnerability as the foundation for thoughtful and effective leadership strategies. Throughout the text she repeats the phrase “clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” Clarity of instructions or feedback is beneficial to colleagues who must act on those instructions or feedback. Avoiding hard conversations by avoiding clear feedback or instructions is not a good leadership strategy, suggests Sister Brown. 

This “clear is kind” tip for leaders does not mesh well with my understanding of the history of women’s covenants in LDS temples. Men’s covenants do not change much over time and use clear language.  Women’s covenants grow more confusing over time, employing words and phrases with multiple meanings.  “Unclear is unkind.” What hard conversations are LDS Church leaders avoiding? What hard conversations are we avoiding?

This has left me feeling a lot of regret and sadness about my experiences in LDS temples. I wish that I had known in advance what I was expected to covenant. So many of my covenants were dangled in front of me with the carrot of a sweet setup in the afterlife. I now struggle with a belief in the afterlife. How am I supposed to make sense of the specifics of eternity if I am questioning its existence? 

I wish I had been able to make covenants that could grow with me as my faith has grown and changed. I wish that my covenants had less to do with obeying God and more to do with seeking God. I wish that my covenants had been less about affirming correct answers and more about searching for questions. I wish that my covenants had been less about what God promises and expects me to promise, and more about what we expect of each other in our communities. 

What is your experience with clarity or confusion over temple covenants? What covenants do you wish you had been able to make in the temple?

#hearLDSwomen: My Bishop Did Not Let Me Receive My Endowment

[image error]Despite my worthiness (and even my husband’s willingness), my bishop would not let me receive my endowment right before I married my non-member husband as he wanted me to wait for my husband to join the church.

– Alison A.

I received my endowment just before I got married. I wanted to go through the temple before my dad (who is not LDS) got to town so that it wouldn’t be yet another part of my wedding he was there for but couldn’t go to. I was graduating college three weeks before the wedding and had a day picked out that would work, but my bishop said that the endowment couldn’t be more than two weeks before the wedding, so I couldn’t do it. My friend, whose dad was in a stake presidency, got to go through the temple four months before her wedding since her dad said it was fine. I felt like since I didn’t have a priesthood leader to advocate for me that my opinion didn’t matter.

– Julia

I wanted so badly to be endowed at 19 when all my male friends (who were usually spiritually less mature) were. I eventually received a beautiful answer to prayer that I should wait. Then, at almost 23, I felt again that I wanted to go. I brushed it off at first thinking I’d already been through this, but then my dad asked me if I’d thought about it and encouraged me to ask my bishop. A week later, I had a recommend and date set. I ended up going to the temple the day before I moved apartments within Provo. I quickly learned that my new stake had a “don’t even ask” policy in place for women wanting to go to the temple. I felt like I’d been in my last ward (where I only lived for one semester) just to be endowed when I was ready.

– Anonymous

Pro Tip: Trust women’s revelation. Do not place needless restrictions on women.

Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.

“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)

Code for “I don’t believe you”

Happy Valentines Day! I love the stuffed Han Solo that my husband gave me, and I also love that he celebrates Groundhog Day instead (he got a new hoodie and a 4×4 Rubik’s Cube). We’re weird, but it works.

And now for something that I don’t love. A few weeks ago I posted the following on Facebook:

“Just spent fifteen minutes poring over some pretty straightforward code just to realize that I forgot to put a backslash at the end of a redirect URL. This getting old thing is not for sissies.”

I expected a few chuckles from friends who, like, me, find that aging comes with some forgetfulness. I thought I might get a little bit of validation, perhaps a few comments along the lines of “OMG, forget a semicolon and you’re toast” or “Been there.” What I didn’t expect was comments from men who assumed they knew more than I did about the code:

“15 minutes seems short to diagnose that kind of mistake. Is this in JS?” (PHP, actually. I suck at JavaScript. As I said, straightforward code.)

“Breaking a redirect (or anything) in PHP is allowed because there are like 100 built-in methods for any action.” (True, and I chose the one that made the most sense in the situation. But you have to get the syntax right for each method.)

“Pretty sure you meant forward slash.” (No, I’m pretty sure I meant backslash. Do you somehow have access to my files and therefore think you’re better informed than I am?)

I’ll explain, not that I think it’s necessary: yes, I can code. A little. It’s not the #1 thing that I spend my time on, because it’s not what I enjoy most and it’s frustrating in much the same way that copy editing is frustrating. But I co-own a small test prep business, and we wanted a fun and engaging web page with the ability to accept payment for our classes, and though my business partner is fully competent changing pieces of a page in HTML, I’m the one who has experience with page design and learned ASP when it was trendy (and then switched to PHP when the trend was over). Am I a full-service web developer? Nope. Am I capable of building a page? Yep.

So to my mansplaining dude friends (and I have plenty of friends, male and female, who do this for a living, and only a few of them thought it was their job to correct me): Dudes. It’s coding. If it’s written correctly, the code runs and you get the result you want. If it’s written incorrectly, the code breaks. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t ask any of you for help, and I’m even more sure that it would take you far longer to find the mistake in my code than it took me.

To the rest of you: what are some gender things you really, really don’t love?