Call for Submissions: The Deleted Comments Department
On Sunday, March 17, the official Instagram account for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints shared a quote from Sister J. Anette Dennis from a talk she gave that evening at a special broadcast to celebrate the birthday of the Relief Society. It read, “There is no other religious organization in the world, that I know of, that has so broadly given power and authority to women.” Later, some additional context from the talk was added to the caption.
Over the following days, more than 8,000 comments flooded the post. The comments ranged from a few words to several long paragraphs, with commenters responding to the quote and how the words did or did not fit their personal experience. A significant number of the comments appeared to be from active LDS women.
Initially, this was the Church’s response: “The Church’s social media team acknowledges the numerous comments that have emerged in response to this post. Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Your comments will be shared with Church leaders who follow these issues. We, like you, strive to follow the example of Jesus Christ in our interactions, including conversations online.”
Within hours, the 8,000+ comments were no longer visible. There was an immediate outcry from people who believed their work had been deleted by the Church’s social media team.
We believe that these comments matter. The voices and experiences of LDS women and gender minorities matter. We hope the comments will be restored on Instagram and that what seems to be intentional silencing is simply a social media glitch. But whatever happens on Instagram, we believe it is important to record these voices and want to extend our platform to do so. We invite you to share your original comments and your ongoing thoughts here on this post. Please include your name (and/or Instagram handle). We will assemble comments into a series of posts. Find our comment policy here.
We invite you to share screenshots for potential reprinting in an upcoming issue of Exponent II magazine. Send the screenshot via DM to the Exponent II Instagram account.
If you have more to say than the length of an Instagram comment (and we hope you do!), we welcome you to submit a guest post to include in this series.
Sincerely,
Your Series Hosts, The Deleted Comments Department
