Exponent II's Blog, page 58

Call for Submissions: Being Fat and Female in the LDS Church

My mom died on New Year’s Day this year. She had strong opinions on a lot of issues, and two of those that never changed throughout my life were:

1. She loved the gospel.
2. She hated being fat.

She was a popular speaker at local Relief Society meetings, and her presentations would inevitably include jokes about getting to be skinny in the resurrection and heaven being a place where chocolate has zero calories. All the women would laugh because it was so relatable.

Going through her belongings after she was gone, I found this cartoon image she’d clipped and saved from a 2009 Wall Street Journal. Somehow it captured the underlying sadness I always felt from her wanting to fit into something smaller.

In the year and a half leading up to her death, I watched my mom drop so much weight that her skin sagged off her body and her pants wouldn’t stay up. It was ironic to realize she’d spent her whole life hoping to reach a number on the scale that could only be achieved once her body was actively dying. In fact, we placed her on hospice care a full year before she passed away and I think the extra weight kept her here longer. She’d stopped eating long before dying, but her body still had energy left to burn to stay alive. The extra weight she’d unwillingly carried ended up giving her extra time in that body.

If I could’ve given my mom one gift during her life, would it have been better to make her skinny, or give her the ability to love her body despite the fact that it never would be skinny? I don’t really know.

Either way, I saw throughout her life how brutal our culture and religion can be to women who don’t fit (literally and figuratively) into the tiny boxes prescribed for them. My mom was fat, loved reading and writing, and I think she would’ve loved me putting together a guest series on this topic. 

Here are some pictures of my mom and me.

If you are (or ever have been) a fat woman within the LDS church, I would really love to hear your perspective. From practical matters (the chairs in the overflow are uncomfortably small for larger bodies) to social matters (dating in a religion where being small is considered best) to spiritual matters (like bishops who tell women they aren’t following the Word of Wisdom if they can’t fit into the seats at the temple). You can write under your real name or use a pseudonym and remain anonymous. I’ll also take short anecdotes and compile them into posts, so if you have a short story but not a full blog post – send that to me as well.

Email exponentabby@gmail.com with questions or with your guest submission for the blog. I’ll get the series started as soon as I have enough posts. Thank you!

(In memory of my mom, Donna Maxwell. 3/24/1948 to 1/1/2024.)

Being Non-Binary and LDS

This main image is the non-binary flag with an LDS temple in front. Non-Binary is an identity under the transgender umbrella that indicates a gender that is not exclusively male or female, and July 14th is International Non-Binary People’s Day!

Our guest author is a non-binary Latter-day Saint. They currently live in Utah pursuing a bachelor’s degree in psychology. You can find them on Instagram at @androgynous_saint.

I wanted to make a celebratory post in honor of Non-Binary People’s Day. People tend to feel more comfortable when I share happy things about my gender identity, not upsetting things. But I realized that since women are taking the brave step to point out institutional issues that affect them, I can do the same. Latter-day Saint women have courageously spoken up about modesty, garments, Heavenly Mother, polygamy, pressure to conform to social roles, lack of inclusion, and not being granted the privilege to hold priesthood offices. It may make some men uncomfortable to read about these things, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t read them. Likewise, some of the issues I will address may cause some discomfort, but people still need to learn about them. Just as there are many well-meaning men that can’t know about LDS women’s issues unless they are told them, well-intentioned members can’t see the institutional barriers I deal with unless I speak up about them.

So much of our church culture and practice is gendered. Let’s begin with the typical pulpit greeting, “Good morning/afternoon, brothers and sisters”. I love that we address one another with familial terms to emphasize that as all of us are God’s children, we are spiritual family. But “brothers and sisters” isn’t all encompassing when non-binary people exist. I feel a bit left out of the family, so to speak. Perhaps I’m being hypercritical here. Then again, small gestures can make a big impact. So next time you give a talk in sacrament meeting, try opening with a simple “Good morning, everyone”. Or if you’re feeling bold, address the congregation as “siblings in Christ”. The word “sibling” doesn’t have an emotionally warm connotation. But maybe it would someday if people started using it.

Another issue is bathrooms. The outrageous political uproar over trans people in public restrooms is horrifying. The sad reality is, many trans people have had to just get used to being cautious and nervous when using public bathrooms. But like the nursing mother who wakes up from being accustomed to an inadequate mother’s lounge, I’ve come to realize that it really isn’t fair that I am stressed when using the bathroom; especially if it’s at a church where I’m supposed to feel safe and welcome. Some trans people are able to pass well enough as one gender or another and are able to get by. But if I were to fully express my gender in a way that affirms me (through medical transition and clothing), neither the men’s or women’s restroom would be safe/comfortable for me. We need more unisex bathrooms in all public buildings, churches included.

Every other Sunday, our second hour is divided by gender for youth and adults. I imagine that these classes are beneficial for some. But I’m usually uncomfortable in single-gendered spaces. And while they have their benefits, I think splitting these organizations by gender reinforces certain social gender roles. I wish I could unobtrusively toggle between Elders’ Quorum and Relief Society. But most wards wouldn’t take that very well. People would accuse me of agenda setting when I’m really just trying to feel comfortable at church. I can’t begin to describe what it’s like to worry about being seen by others as a dangerous threat.

Before being endowed, I was told how beautiful it is that everyone wears white in the temple. It symbolized equality and no more divisions. Race, age, or socioeconomic status don’t make a difference in how you participate in temple worship. But in this representation of heaven, there is still one division left, one social category that dictates where you sit and what you can or cannot do in the temple. And that is gender. Feeling gender dysphoria in the temple of all places really hurts. For a long time I worried if there was something wrong with me for feeling that way in the house of the Lord. I wondered, was this binary structure truly reflective of heaven, and did I need to change myself in order to fit in it? I struggled heavily with that before I learned that nothing stated in the temple was/is eternally set in stone.

The policies in the Church’s general handbook for transgender people (found in section 38.6.23) are just vague enough that it’s up to a local bishop’s discretion on how an individual participates in church and whether or not they hold a temple recommend. We call this “bishop roulette”. Being non-binary complicates bishop roulette even further. When a non-binary person socially transitions, it’s often not to the “opposite” gender which may confuse a bishop about whether to impose restrictions or not. It may come down to hair length or dress, or if the person takes hormones and it becomes obvious, or whether a privileged member complains about being uncomfortable by that person’s presence. Because of this, I haven’t come out to a bishop in years.

These are just some of the things that have made my experience as a non-binary Latter-day Saint difficult. Luckily, I’ve had one past church leader make it less so. While attending my family’s ward after my mission, I decided to come out to the current bishop. He was open-minded, he didn’t quote the Family Proclamation at me, and he asked questions in an effort to understand me better. I met with him again a couple weeks later and he asked if I wanted a calling. He let me choose where I felt most comfortable serving, which was teaching youth Sunday school. He didn’t express any concern about putting a transgender person with a group of youth. He didn’t seem worried about me “corrupting” them with a queer agenda. It meant a lot that he trusted me. I was thrilled when he got called to the stake presidency a few months later. I haven’t seen him in a while but I recently learned that he regularly meets with one of my gay family members for lunch. We need more of this in the LDS church. We need more people that respond with openness and empathy instead of wariness and judgment. It won’t make the institutional policies go away, but it will help LGBTQ members feel more included in the body of Christ. 

https://transequality.org/issues/resources/understanding-nonbinary-people-how-to-be-respectful-and-supportive

https://www.thetrevorproject.org/resources/category/gender-identity

***The Exponent blog welcomes guest submissions. Click here for post guidelines and the submission form.***

“The Sting of Being Erased”

“Let woman learn in silence, with all submissiveness.”
(1 Timothy 2:11, RSV)

A few days before Melissa Inouye died, she suggested that the one thing Latter-Day Saints could do better as a faith community is to “preserve the words of dead Mormon women.” Her bold and pointed plea shines a light into a vast hole of Mormonism, a hole shaped like the words of women.

Unfortunately, the silencing of Mormon women started at the very origins of our religion. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in her book A House Full of Females, tells the story of Eliza R. Snow’s precious Relief Society minutes (that she meticulously wrote and carried across the continent) and how in 1853 her words were distorted from their original text to center male authority and power. Eliza’s words were edited unapologetically by a group of male leaders and then approved by the prophet and published in the Deseret News. This is how patriarchy silences women. Additionally, when Brigham Young authorized the building of a fireproof vault for church records the same year, “Eliza’s minutes were not among those preserved.” (310)

Luckily, many of Eliza’s words miraculously survived on their own but so many other words of Mormon women are lost forever and will never be spoken out loud. These stories remind me of the harrowing lamentation of Ana, the fictional wife of Jesus in Sue Monk Kidd’s novel, The Book of Longings, when she realizes her life and stories are excluded from history simply because she is female, “I found no answers, only the sting of being erased.” (407)

There are many, many ways to erase women from the narratives of history but the one that scares me the most is the silencing of women by creating Silent Women who have no stories of their own to tell – women who tell the stories and words of men as if they are more important than their own. 

In April 2019, Sister Sharon Eubank shared a story about a vision she received early one Saturday morning. She called it “a little dream” and described the scene she saw and the feelings she felt about a dark gazebo with arched stone windows. It’s a beautiful dream and I admire Sis. Eubank’s deep goodness, but the whole thing fell disappointingly flat for me. Sis. Eubank boldly shares her dream but then her dream pivots back securely into a man’s myth and interpretation. 

Her dream seemed like someone else’s dream. Sharon only has one “she” in her entire talk. Contrastingly, Sharon’s talk is littered with quotes and stories by men and includes thirteen “he”s, one “him,” and five “his.” That’s a total of 19 to 1. Are these her words? Or is she just the vessel for theirs?

Sharon Eubank’s dream reminds me of another prophetess who dreamed about stone tablets.

Sue Monk Kidd, in her book, The Dance of the Dissidant Daughter, describes a dream she had about a shriveled old bishop who attempted to whack her with two stone tablets. She notices that the tablets are inscribed with the Ten Commandments and the bishop is too weak to lift them so she grabs the tablets from him and places them in a bag before walking away. Soon, in her dream, Sue meets an old smiling woman inside a cottage filled with flowers. When Sue looks in her bag, the stone tablets are gone and in their place is a Russian nesting doll.

In Sue’s dream, the wrinkled woman sings an exuberant song about “beautiful breasts and beautiful wombs,” and when Sue looks into a dream mirror, she is struck by her beauty and awed that her reflection is “nested” within the old crone’s.

The difference between Sharon’s dream and Sue’s dream is that Sharon’s dream is safe and approved by patriarchy while Sue’s is untamed. Sharon’s falls securely into Mormon theology without disrupting the male narrative; I knew she’d find peace and light through faith just like the brother of Jared did. But Sue’s dream is not distorted to fit into a patriarchal narrative or held up by one. In fact, it puts that narrative into a bag and transforms it into something else, something unsafe and entirely different and feminine.

Kidd laments that “Being a Silent Woman is not about being quiet and reticent, it’s about stifling our truth. Our real truth.” (70) In other words, women can speak and regurgitate men’s stories, the scripture stories they are made of, the stories they are beaten with, the stories as old as time, but are those Mormon women’s real truth? 

Women can speak boldly and loudly from pulpits and still hide their bloodstains and blood symbols and their breasts and wombs and their wisdom and their dreams from everyone who listens. They can keep their truths hidden inside the bags they hold, clinging to the ancient stone tablets. They can be Silent Women.

Or, we can open the bag and find something else, create something new and wise and feminine and real. Preserving Mormon women’s voices is so much more than just placing them in fireproof vaults, it’s about leaving the old (and new) stories that don’t include us and building our own. We need new myths. We need more stories. Mormon women’s stories. We need more than recycled patriarchy. We need to leave the old, weak men behind us and find ourselves in the mirror, beautiful and unspeakably valuable. 

We need to preserve Mormon women’s real words.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Photo by Julia Kadel on Unsplash

I Don’t Wear Someone Else’s Underwear

Recent talks from church authorities have increased conversations about garment wearing, especially among LDS women. Since hearing these talks, many people have expressed concern about their relationship with garments, the temple, the church, and leaders.

This is inevitable and understandable.

If you take symbolic clothing which is part of a symbolic ritual, and then, decades after the development of said ritual, add a requirement that this symbolic clothing be used as underwear which is to be worn constantly, and then add all the elements of modesty culture and directly connect it to appearance needing to always reflect strict adherence to said garment wearing, that is fertile ground for confusion, dissonance and trauma in relationships with self and in church community.

I have had a number of calls from people who are wrestling with trying to understand their own confusion. Language and meaning declared in recent talks are not the same as what they hear in the temple. The recent changes in the handbook refer to wording and covenants in the temple that they do not and did not experience. Any trust they had built in being able to seek guidance of the spirit in wearing the garment while also considering their health, this felt violated.

These are committed, temple attending, garment wearing members of the church. They have felt able to appreciate the value of wearing something daily which is a symbol and reminder of their commitment to worship and learn and serve in the church. Like myself, many have had a mixture of experiences with ritual, and freely choose to create individual ways to have ritual practice be a part of meditation, and mindfulness, and awareness of ways to take on transformation. I recognize that attaching literal meaning to any part of ritual contradicts the purpose of it, and I try to recognize when I imply literal truth about my own insights (which are constantly evolving, as ritual is designed to enable), and to listen through that filter when anyone is sharing their own thoughts. I do not assign literal truth to the meaning others find in their ritual experience. I remember that it is the meaning they find which they embrace at this time. Our own insights are meant to shift and develop over time. 

When anyone insists that the garment has a certain, inherent meaning, and that my behavior must align with that meaning, and I must prove my own worthiness by displaying adherence to that meaning, that would mean I must walk their path, have their experience, and wear their underwear. 

I don’t wear someone else’s underwear.

I know, from personal experience, that the level of quality and consistency in the officially made garments is not great. But ever since the recent talk that singled out women and criticized them for not wearing garments enough, and saying there would be a change in the garment design later this year, there has been a definite decline in the production reliability, especially for women’s styles and sizes. Even petite sizes are longer, and reach below the knee. The necklines of some tops are gathered so high, only crew necks cover them. Is this in response to this talk, or did it precede the talk? After decades of seeing the material and style of the garment offer some more comfortable options, this seemed to be a retrenchment. This is very disconcerting, especially after a talk from a male leader, who suggested that women wearing yoga pants were somehow less worthy or less committed to their covenants. A church leader who is putting that much meaning on women’s clothing is revealing more about himself than he is about others. 

It is important to be able to discuss this.

Maxine Hanks and I were recently asked to be on Valerie Hamaker’s podcast Latter Day Struggles. We discussed different aspects of this issue, including early history, some of the many changes surrounding garments, the purpose of symbolic clothing, and especially the complications of trying to equate symbolic clothing with daily underwear. 

I highly recommend this valuable episode. It is episode #222 on the Latter Day Struggles Faith Expansion With Valerie Hamaker Podcast. This podcast is well worth the subscription.  

Some highlights – 

Maxine Hanks covered some little known history of the garment, including its origins as the first layer of sacred priestly robes used only in symbolic ritual. And the gradual shifting opinions about wearing it as daily underwear, including the almost unanimous vote taken by general authorities in the 20th century to change the policy to recommend that garments only be worn during temple attendance (spoiler alert – the single dissenting vote determined the outcome).The purpose of symbolic clothing is – drum roll – symbolic. There is no inherent or absolute meaning or truth to symbolic items. The value of it, like the value of symbolic ritual, is the personal experience and individual interaction each participant has with it. The most anyone else can tell you about its meaning is to share what it means to them. Each needs to find their own meaning, and relationship with what and how the clothing can remind or inspire one to learn from and live individual covenants we make in our ongoing relationship with God and ourselves.It is important that we, for our own health, distinguish between underwear and symbolic ritual clothing. Underwear, especially for women, is often directly influenced by our health, and different seasons of life. If we take an obligation around proving worthiness by wearing symbolic garments, and collapse that with underwear needs during the various, changing health situations and what is appropriate and conducive to that, then we are wearing someone else’s underwear. We put our physical, spiritual, emotional and mental health at risk when we do. I am very specific about the only time I answer a question about garments, and that is only during the scripted temple recommend interview. For me, this is symbolic of my journey to prepare to participate in symbolic ritual, and honor the purpose and my commitment to that ritual. This is where I acknowledge that I honor what the garment is. I do not elaborate, or go off script. Anything other than that scripted question about the garment would be about my underwear. And I do not discuss my underwear with anyone. There is no leader who is trained to understand and hear about what is involved in all stages and aspects of my health, especially all the cancer treatments, surgeries, side effects, tubes, drains, wound treatments, compression wear, fluids, and the impact every circumstance of my life has had on my body. There is also no way those who write policy in Salt Lake City can possibly understand what it is like to go through what anyone of us might go through. And it is clear that any instructions which tell people to restore the garment as soon as possible after working out or doing yardwork are speaking from a privileged, western society perspective. I have traveled for humanitarian service in countries where every day involves hard labor, often outside in hot and humid weather. Where is the understanding and encouragement to be aware of what is appropriate wear for that kind of job, or in cultures that have a very different tradition around what is considered modest wear?Pay attention to the part the symbolic garment plays in the temple ritual, and the instruction around its purpose. There is no specific covenant made specific to the garment, unless that has changed very recently. There is instruction regarding the wearing of the garment, and that instruction gives the individual the responsibility and privilege of working that out for their own lives. If that has changed very recently, that underscores that this clothing is symbolic, not with inherent meaning. If there were inherent, big T “Truth” meaning, there would not be regular changes made to the design, wording, and teachings about the garment. And if there are changes being made because some leaders are assuming that current habits of women they see do not conform to their idea of proper underwear, then recent change is not about honoring the garment, and it is definitely not about drawing closer to God. It is about controlling women and their bodies, with no concern for understanding their circumstances or ministering to their needs. It is the opposite of the Gospel of Christ.

I share this as someone who has embraced and honored the value of garments since I received my endowments over 40 years ago. I remember feeling like I had superpowers when I first began wearing them – not because of a literal protection from them. I had had too many experiences of losing garment-wearing loved ones to disease and accident and illness to ever consider them as magical in that way. I had helped cut garments off the cancer ravaged bodies of deceased loved ones, and it was clear it was not a literal shield. No, I felt I was magical in another way. I had a daily reminder that I had taken on a ritual practice of repeatedly going through the motions of an archetypal ascension journey, and I was willing to see how it might confront me to look at what I was doing to hold myself back, what I was unwilling to give up, where was I clinging to paradigms that kept me from connection, from at-one-ment. This is what I had learned about the power of ritual, and the garment was a part of it. I appreciate what that meant to me at the time, and I have journeyed through deepening my ownership of that part of my path. When I have, at times, been in situations where the physical representation was harmful or unhealthy, I have learned to carry the reminder of that power in other ways.

A benefit of learning history, and sharing stories of owning our own relationship to our symbolic clothing which we are required to have as underwear is one way to help navigate times when messages from talks tend to contradict personal experience. The God I experience, and that I have been led to in my lifetime of church service, honors my journey. They lead me to own and create my path as I wrestle with the complexity and richness of this life. I appreciate the leaders and fellow members who also honor and trust that we are each doing the best we can as we come together in community, trying to make our way to God in our daily lives. 

Because I hope to receive grace, I try to have grace for others when they seem to impose their own meaning on me, especially when they use any position of authority to do so. Knowing history helps me realize that the strong opinions of a few men have largely shaped much of the current rhetoric around ritual policies, changing much of it from the original purpose of the temple being a place of possible spiritual insight through symbolic learning ritual. This is how most aspects of civilization have been shaped. God leads me to create my individual path through all of it, without needing to have someone else tell me what it has to mean. I can create new worlds from any symbol, if that is the meaning that inspires me. I have had extraordinary examples and mentors for that kind of creation. None of them have insisted that I wear any underwear except my own.

We’re Officially 50! Here’s How to Wish Exponent II a Happy Birthday.

The first issue of Exponent II debuted in July 1974, so while we’re celebrating all year-long, this month is officially our 50th birthday! Exponent II’s first editor, Claudia Bushman, described Exponent II as a “little newspaper begun in Massachusetts written by and for LDS women.” It was named after the nineteenth-century publication Woman’s Exponent created by early Latter-day Saint women in Salt Lake City. Exponent II is the longest-running Mormon feminist publication and has been crafted with skill and love and labor from thousands of contributors over the decades. So this month, let us celebrate! Here’s a few ways to wish Exponent II a happy birthday. 

At the launch party we’ll give away an Exponent II essentials kit featuring a feminist cross-stitch, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich patron saint candle, an Illuminating Ladies Coloring Book and more!Join Our Virtual Exponent II Launch Party and GIVEAWAY

On Thursday, July 11 at 6:00 MT / 8:00 ET p.m. we will gather on Zoom to hear from the visual artists, poets, and writers who have contributed to our Summer 2024 issue. This open-themed issue covers a range of topics including, the feminine divine, caretaking, temple work, trans identity and motherhood. If you’ve wondered what Exponent II is also about, this is a great place to find out. All are welcome! Register to receive the Zoom link. 

At the launch party we’ll be hosting an Exponent II giveaway with an amazing bundle of Exponent II goodies crafted by Exponent II artists — just attend to be entered to win! 

Also, subscribe by July 15 to receive our Summer 2024 issue in your annual subscription — four issues for $35!

Watch for Our Birthday Fundraiser

If you would like to make a donation to help keep our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization alive and thriving, this month is the time! We will be launching a two-week fundraising campaign with a raffle for some *stunning* hand-crafted and one-of-a-kind goods made by artists published in Exponent II. Watch our social media accounts or sign-up for our newsletter to receive notice when the donation drive launches. Learn more about donating to Exponent II.  

Submit to Our Fall 2024 IssueLimited edition Exponent II Patron Saint candles will be available for sale. Illustrations by Frizz Biz / Anna Wright.

The theme of our Fall 2024 issue is “Stranger Than Fiction.” We’re accepting art, poetry and writing submissions until July 31, 2024. See full details here. If you could use some solidary and support in the writing process, join our Generative Writing Workshop on July 16 at 7:00 MT / 9:00 ET p.m.. More details and a link to register here. 

Come See Us at Sunstone

The Sunstone Symposium will be held August 1-3, 2024, in Salt Lake City at the University of Utah campus. Exponent II will have two panels: “We’ve Been Here Before’: Exponent II, Online Mormon Feminism, and Where Change Happens” and “Fifty Years of Exponent II.” Learn more here. We’ll also be in the exhibit area selling subscriptions and branded goods — feminist cross-stitch kits, patron saint candles, Illuminating Ladies Coloring Books and more! 

Nine Terrible Young Women’s Activities from the Nineties

My teenage daughter loves thrift store shopping, so earlier this week I spent the afternoon lounging on used couches flipping through stacks of second-hand church books while she shopped with her best friend. Among these books I found one full of mutual activity ideas for young women, published in the late 1990s.

To be fair to the authors, there were a plenty of perfectly acceptable ideas in this book. Unfortunately, there were also some terrible ones – many of which I personally experienced while in the young women’s program myself, from 1993-1999. It would appear these bad ideas ran rampant in the church at the time. 

With that introduction, here are my top nine least favorite Young Women activity ideas from this book, from the nineties:

Bad Activity Idea #1:

Young Women’s lesson manuals from the nineties are full of teachings about how to respect, honor, admire, support and sustain priesthood holding men and boys. It’s not wrong to support each other, but sometimes these lessons and activities inadvertently teach girls to be in awe of the boys, as if they hold a magic authority a woman could never understand. As adults, women might continue to do what they are asked by bishops and stake presidents without question because they were taught from their youth that men in the church have a special connection to God that they don’t.

Bad Activity Idea #2:

While this book enjoyed popularity in the 1990s, Deseret Book has discontinued its publication, and for good reason. It is filled with outdated, harmful ideas about homosexuality, masturbation, a victim’s responsibility for sexual assault and rape, and a young person’s worthiness if they violate the law of chastity. This book hurt many people, and an activity focused on it is a horrible idea. If you own this book, don’t donate it. Light it on fire.

Bad Activity Idea #3:

At first glance, this looks like a great idea – educating young women about STDs. But this activity isn’t focused around safe sex, it’s focused on the “blessings that come from following the commandments to stay morally clean”. There is zero chance girls leave this activity knowing how to confidently stay safe if they choose to become sexually active. Rather, they’ll leave ashamed and afraid if they are having sex, or self righteous and still uninformed if they aren’t.

Bad Activity Idea #4:

These are just life skills, not “divine role of motherhood” skills. Motherhood is a relationship with another human being, not knowing how to sew or cook. To prepare to be a mother (which not all girls will ever become), they should teach relationship and communication skills – as well as self care – not how to crochet.

Bad Activity Idea #5:

“Hobo” is a derogatory term for the unhoused, and we should not be dressing up as natives of another country. These two ideas didn’t age very well!

Bad Activity Idea #6: 

What are the chances every list included “modesty” as what the bishop felt the young women needed to improve upon the most? This is going to be a lesson on keeping the thoughts and actions of the young men pure, and not preventing them from serving missions. Every single woman can back me up on this!

Bad Activity Idea #7:

This one feels complicated, because I want young girls to feel involved in church ordinances and rituals – but it feels patronizing to have them sit at the feet of the boys their same age while they explain sacred priesthood duties to the girls. They aren’t peers in this scenario – the boys have special power they will never have. Their only way to participate is by doing the laundry and ironing.

Bad Activity Idea #8:

Many of us had activities like these growing up. What I don’t like is that it’s a young women’s activity… but we must bring in men to judge the girls. The Young Women’s leaders can’t teach the girls about the topic. It’s got to be male leaders. (And the activities that get you points for heaven are things like knowing the names of important men (apostles).) The quiet undertone messaging of every YWs activity is that the men are in charge, the men are the judges of us, and the men are the important ones to know about. It’s so insidious and hard to see at times.

Bad Activity Idea #9:

Young women are constantly asked to provide free babysitting for ward activities. It gets taken advantage of frequently, when married couples ask for free childcare because they are attending a temple session – then add dinner and an activity before or after. Some girls feel they’re not allowed to ask for payment if the date was to a church event or temple session, even if they’re babysitting for a large family with lots of young children. The reality is that childcare is hard work – and the girls should still be paid! If a young man mows lawns for his summer job, would anyone expect him to come to their house and do it for free so they could have Saturday morning available to go to the temple?

I’m now well into adulthood and these activities are a distant memory, and for a decade I’ve been running a large girl scout troop in my city in Utah. I’m determined to give the next generation of girls better activities than what I had, and in my troop we have never – not even once – dedicated an entire girl scout activity to learning how to honor all the special and important things that boys can do and girls can’t. I’m very proud of this track record!

What were the best (and worst) activities you had in Young Women’s, and what years were you there?

***The Exponent blog welcomes guest submissions. Click here for post guidelines and the submission form.***

Stranger Than Fiction – Fall 2024 Call for Submissions

More often than not, reality is stranger than anything we could possibly invent. Did the Boy Scouts really just eat the ice cream bought for the Young Women’s activity? Did that sign on the drive-thru just answer your prayer? Did you run into your childhood seminary teacher on a train in India, only to address head-on your spiritual famine?

To write these accounts as fiction would make the stories seem unfathomable, possibly unbelievable. But the universe is a wild, weird thing.

What have you seen or experienced that felt stranger than fiction? Tell us something that made you think, “I cannot believe that actually happened.” What are your tall tales that played out in real life, and how do you make meaning of them now? We are here for the heartbreaking, the shocking, the humorous, the healing, and anything else that gets stirred up. If it happened, we want to hear it.

To submit work for this magazine issue, please follow the guidelines on exponentii/submissions by July 31, 2024.

(Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash)

The One Thing I’ve Learned About Knitting

A knitting pattern is a beautiful promise. With just the right tools and materials, it says, you can make exactly what I have made. The pictures, at just the right light and angles, promise perfection.

The problem, of course, is any deviation from the instructions, materials, and tools will yield a distinctly different product, a potentially very imperfect product.

As a beginner knitter who was sourcing yarn from the thrift store while slowly building up a supply of needle types and sizes, it quickly became a challenge to consider how the materials I could access would work with the patterns I found online and in books.

I’ve learned that some yarns want to be. Some lovely Álafloss I got from an estate sale just didn’t want to be a blanket, no matter how I tried. Though it was the right weight for the pattern, the swatches didn’t feel right. The same pattern with 220 Superwash Merino and some Icelandic Spunni knitted up like butter, despite those yarns being a lighter weight than the pattern called for.

The problem is that patterns promise complete replication when exact circumstances are adhered to. Anything can be replicated with the right materials, tools, and instructions.

But life doesn’t work that way.

Even if I did buy the (expensive) exact yarn, in the exact colors, with the same (expensive) brand needles, and followed the pattern to create the exact same piece, it would still be different.

No matter what I’m working with, I’m a different person, my environment is different, my tension on the yarn varies, and my ability to count stitches correctly is questionable. The intent I put into the piece will contribute to a unique outcome almost too mysterious and magical to predict.

I could invest far more money and time into my knitting in order to replicate the patterns, but I can’t say it would increase my satisfaction or joy in the craft.

I could also frustrate myself to no end in an attempt to create perfect replications of patterns.

Instead, I pull a little from one pattern, try out different combinations, try to get familiar with types and weights of yarn. Though patterns are integral for inspiration and learning new skills, intuition is the guiding star and freeform experimentation is the joy in the journey.  

There’s an infinite amount of combinations in knitting and some will work for me and some won’t.

Buying the exact yarn, in the exact colors, with the exact size needles, might yield a good copy, but that’s all it can ever be – a good copy. My fingers, my process, my environment can’t recreate the original.

So why would I want it to?

Embracing my unique circumstances and working with what I’ve got lets the patterns and pictures be inspirational, no more, no less.

I used to be frustrated when I attempted to craft. What I made was never like the picture. Now I see this as the perfect measure of creation. My mistakes, my process, my work, my own relationship with the materials.

This is all to say, an emphasis on replication (one might even say uncritical, thoughtless, exacting replication) is founded on a misunderstanding. Replication is fundamentally impossible.

At church, we are encouraged to replicate Joseph’s Smith’s life changing prayer, Moroni’s call to pray over the Book of Mormon, and now there’s a two year checklist full of action items for new converts.

The covenant path, as we know it now, continues to turn spirituality into replication. Everyone should get baptized. Everyone should enter the temple. Everyone should wear those garments 24/7. The covenant path turns the journey of conversion into a checklist. The garments wearing pendulum has swung back to prescriptive practices.

As church patterns correlate in ever tightening circles (the center cannot hold), replication becomes more urgent and more pressurized.

If we just do the exact thing in the exact way with exactness, the outcome will always be the same, our church patterns promise.

In knitting and at church, the one thing I’ve learned is that replication isn’t realistic.

Photo by Knit Pro on Unsplash

Recycled Writing – “Improving Grace?”

I have a defunct blog where I used to write my religious musings before joining Exponent II. I was trying to find something to write about today, and I couldn’t think of anything. (Or, rather, I couldn’t verbalize the things I was thinking. Stay tuned for the future when I’ve had a chance to write it all out.) I flipped back through the archives of my old blog to see if there was anything to repost, and I found an old piece that posed a question I still haven’t answered. So, here goes:

Sometimes I’ll catch myself singing hymns without spending too much time actually thinking about the words. Today at church, we sang hymn 240, Know This, That Every Soul Is Free. As I got to verse 4, I noticed a phrase that struck me as a bit odd.

“Our God is pleased when we improve His grace and seek His perfect love.”

What does it mean to improve the grace of God? I’ve always viewed God’s grace as perfect.

I did a search in the scripture section of the church website, where I typed the phrase “improve grace” into the search box. I didn’t get any results.

The only thing I can think of is in the context of real estate. A piece of empty land is said to be “improved” when a structure is built on it. So maybe what the hymn means is that when we have God’s grace in our life, we should do something with it.

That’s all I’ve got. Any other thoughts on what it could mean?

Guest Post: Identity Expansion

By Melissa

I’ve been experiencing an identity crisis for the past four years. No, let’s call it an identity expansion. It’s actually been creeping up on me much longer, but I’ve felt the acute effects of it in the past year or so, more strongly than before. I know I’m not alone in this, but I also know other women have dealt with it better than I.

It all started when I had a faith crisis . . . no, no, I mean a “faith expansion.” Then my kids went back to school. I took a Jennifer Finlayson-Fife class — or two, or three, or four, if you add a paid podcast subscription on the pile. This helped with some of the symptoms I was feeling. But add “trying to differentiate from my husband and the church” to new symptoms I was feeling, and the expansion felt like it might burst me wide open.

I tried talking to my mother about it, but when I started asking, “Do you remember when. . ?” she responded, “No, no I don’t.” Clearly my mother had buried some feelings way down deep in order to be at peace with the identity she chose, but didn’t really choose because she was guided/guilted into it. I however, remember my mother laying on the couch all afternoon into the evening, asking me to help brown the ground beef while she continued to lay in her depression on the couch.

My father was away three months at a time serving in the Idaho state legislature. He’d come home on the weekends, but my mom was the lone parent during the week. He did this for nine years of my child/teenage-hood. My dad was also a successful attorney and my mom stayed at home to raise five kids. I was fourth in the line up and remember wanting to be around my mother until the third grade, which was when my dad entered the legislature. After that, I have many memories of a very bitter and resentful mom who was scary to be around. My mom’s time was consumed with church callings, and she was told in very patronizing ways that her most important value was in her kids and her contributions to the church.

My mom had mentioned that when she heard the infamous Benson talk about mothers needing to stay at home because it was selfish to do otherwise, she swept out the entire garage afterward to blow off steam. To get her to speak on this now or how she lived her life is an anxiety-ridden conversation that neither of us want to have with each other.

So here I am, in a semi-similar situation as my mother, that of a stay-at-home mom who put off her career long enough that starting over feels fruitless. There are so many avenues to take now that the path forward feels very daunting. That’s the sticky side of comfort. There is no one with a sword at my back forcing me to jump off a plank. I am not my family’s sole provider. But I’ll be damned if I lay on my couch and resent what could have been. I will choose to do my life differently now.

Melissa is your typical Euro/Scandinavian Utahan that actually claims Idaho (where she was born and raised) as her home. She majored in Business at Utah State, but had a midlife crisis after her kids went back to school and became an AEMT responding to 911 calls in SLC and teaching advanced EMT classes. She most enjoys being outdoors with her family hiking, canyoneering, and skiing.