Feminist

Hey Steph,

It sometimes feels like my Facebook page explodes with blog posts and political statements on a particular subject. Recently, the substance of that explosion has been about women’s role in the church. As you know, I consider myself a feminist. What I mean when I say feminist is this:

Feminist: a person who supports the empowerment of women to reach their potential

The problem with this word is that it has been through a history of extremes and then tempered to include a very large group of people with a wide range of views. So, I’m not writing on behalf of all feminists. I’m just writing as me.

So a week ago my Facebook exploded with posts about women and prayer. Last weekend marked the first time a woman had prayed at General Conference. Some were excited. Others were dismissive. It seemed like everyone had a thought on the topic. I was surprised how heated some friends got about it. I mean, women have been praying in church for a long time, so the fact that a woman prayed in General Conference seemed to be something we could all get behind. I hadn’t really noticed that a woman had never prayed at General Conference before. It just seemed like some lady would have prayed in over 180 years of history, but all the same, my heart sang out a “Go girl” when it happened.

The oddest response that I saw was several friends news feeding that it didn’t matter that a women prayed and that the Church has always treated women equally. Now, I’m not going to open up the can of worms instilled in the second part of these Facebook updates—that’s for another post. But the mere fact that these friends posted that it didn’t matter points to someone who had posted that it did matter. So it mattered to someone.

In fact, it mattered to me.

See, the set order of things in the Church is to talk generically using a masculine pronoun. From a young age, girls start getting really good at reading themselves into male situations. This is a good quality to have when we’re taught by Nephi to “liken all scripture unto us that it might be for our profit and learning” (1 Nephi 19:23). Through thousands of pages of scripture, women are almost constantly reading the word he and thinking the word she. We’re taught that we are to become like Heavenly Father but we think it’s really Heavenly Mother we are trying to emulate. And I think all this transferring of ourselves has truly been for our profit and learning just as Nephi said it would be. But sometimes trying to figure out who I am gets lost in all the he’s and him’s.

So when Jean A. Stevens prayed last weekend, I just felt good. There was no work on my part to stand with her: I could just be me. With the two prayers offered during the conference by women, I heard double the number of women’s voices than are normally heard at General Conference. That’s a lot more visibility. That’s double the number of times that we as a general membership—men and women—represented our thoughts through a woman. That’s double the number of times that women and girls could turn off their pronoun translator and give the men some practice at it.

While I’ll happily continue "profiting and learning" by likening the experiences of incredible men to myself, here’s to a few more times that I can liken myself to another women.

Cheers,

Amanda