So Who’s Right?
I got two very DIFFERENT pieces of email the other day. The first said this:
I just finished reading “Wives and Sisters.” I have to admit I was less than impressed. As a journalist you should get your facts straight before you present them to your readers. I sympathize with what must have been a
horrible childhood, but your anger should be directed in helping abused women and children (they are in all social groups–not just LDS families) instead of trying to blacken the LDS Church. All of teachings of the Church are AGAINST any kind of violence or abuse. Just like the rest of the population–it has taken time for some of these crimes to come to the public eye. The Church has
moved quickly to eradicate this evil from our midst. Many of the lessons in the Priesthood manuals are directed at teaching the men to be kinder and more supportive of their wives and children. As for the LDS church being oppressive
to women–I had to laugh at that one. Any Sunday that one would care to visit our ward would find at least two women speaking in Sacrament Meeting. The Young
Men don’t relish the speaking assignments but the Young Women love it. The adult women are heard from each week also, as speakers and in offering opening
or closing prayers. Also, I have yet to meet any of those poor, tired, down-trodden Mormon women you speak of. All of the LDS women I know are happy, confident, lovely people.
The same day, I received THIS email:
Natalie - I have just learned about your book, and have it on order from Amazon. I was compelled to buy it because I’ve now been asked three times by acquaintences if I had written it. With the exception of your dominant plotline (the kidnapping) it’s my story, too. I’m sure there are many of us who have felt the hold and then the eventual release that ‘the church’ has had on our lives. Living in Utah as the only ‘non-believing’ member of a militant Mormon family has been both a blessing and a curse. I cannot wait to read this
book. I’m thanking you, in advance, for writing it.
Email writer number 1, whom I will call Molly, basically said the same thing I’ve gotten from other Mormon readers. Please note, not ALL Mormon readers react this way. But like Mormonism encourages, she is speaking in absolutes. “All of the LDS women I know are happy, confident, lovely people.”
ALL of them? Boy, that is pretty hard to defend, because people are PEOPLE, and I know some of those same Mormons, and I can guarantee you they are NOT all happy, confident, lovely people. Unless you are all taking massive amounts of drugs. Then maybe you ARE all very, very happy, and it APPEARS every other Mormon is very happy, too, mostly because you can’t see through the fog.
Frankly, if ANY PORTION of that statement were true, Utah would NOT be the highest anti-depressant-popping state in the nation.
People like Mark Hacking would NOT kill their wives, because they would be too damn HAPPY to be upset that said wife was leaving because, of course, said wife would NOT be leaving, because Mark would not have created the pyramid of lies that collapsed. He would have been a perfectly wonderful, perfectly functioning MORMON MAN WHO WAS PERFECTLY LOVELY.
This AIN’T fucking Utopia, Molly.
Who gives a shit if the women are SPEAKING in your sacrament meeting? What proof does that offer up? That Mormon men allow their women to speak? How progressive of them.
As for ALL of the teachings of the church being against violence…. MUWWAAHHHAAHHHHAAAA.
Please, let me cite one of my favorite Brigham Young quotes.
“I say, that there are men and women that I would advise to go to the President immediately, and ask him to appoint a committee to attend to their case; and then let a place be selected, AND LET THAT COMMITTEE SHED THEIR BLOOD. “We have those amongst us that are full of all manner of abominations, those WHO NEED TO HAVE THEIR BLOOD SHED, for water will not do, their sins are of too deep a dye. “You may think that I am not teaching you Bible doctrine, but what says the apostle Paul? I would ask how many COVENANT BREAKERS there are in this city and in this kingdom. I believe that there are a great many; and if they are COVENANT BREAKERS we need a place designated, WHERE WE CAN SHED THEIR BLOOD.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 4, pages 49-50)
Nope, no violence there.
My second email was one of hundreds like it I have received since the release of the paperback edition of WIVES AND SISTERS. I realize that everyone’s Mormon experience was not like Allison Jensen’s, but I ALSO know that Molly has to know that everyone’s Mormon experience is not like hers, either. But that’s not what she’s telling you and me.
Interesting. Does she really believe her story? Curious and curiouser.
June 2nd, 2006 at 10:16 pm
It still cracks me up. Sorry my dear friend, I shouldn’t laugh in amazement at ignorance. This will always happen. Molly wouldn’t have been upset if you’d written about Baptist, Catholic, or Jewish. And I wholly doubt Molly would have ASSUMED that you meant all Catholic live the existance of Alison, or Baptist, or Quakers, or Shakers. If you did mean that, how could you have written the story because there would have never been the positive Mormon women that it took to get to Alison. Such as her mother, or her grandmother.
Tsk Tsk Tsk, young tunnel vision, spoonfed idiots amaze me.
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:00 am
Do you mean “Mark Hacking” in the wife killing paragraph? However, Mark Hofmann is a gem as well.
Yay for Brigham and his good ole Blood Atonement. Not!
June 3rd, 2006 at 11:03 am
I think many people look to justify their onw (miserable) lives by making these sweeping and untenable generalizations–both positive and negative.
Personally, I find Molly and people like her very pitiable.
June 3rd, 2006 at 12:43 pm
Yikes, Wendy. Good catch. I’m in the middle of writing my next book for St. Martin’s, so I sorta had Mark Hoffman on the brain, although I was THINKING of Hacking.
June 3rd, 2006 at 2:22 pm
Don’t you just love how Mormons seem to be convinced that their experience is the universal experience, and that anyone who says that their experience is different is accused of, oh, basically lying and trying to tear the church down.
I have been accused more than once of “generalizing” when I have said that my exprerince of the church is that creativity and the intelligent individual are not valued, that questions are not encouraged, and that thinking for oneself is considered to be dangerous. But it isn’t generalizing, apparently, when someone proclaims that all the women of the church are “happy, confident, and lovely”.
Oh, and the being against violence thing? Um…has that individual ever read the Book of Mormon? What’s that thing, right near the beginning, where Laban’s head is liberated from his body using, if I recall correctly, his own bloody sword? Isn’t that, oh, violence, that is defended by the teachings of the church? And that’s just for starters.
Just sayin’, you know.
Elaine
June 3rd, 2006 at 9:27 pm
I could have written both letters (but I didn’t). 10 years ago I would have written the first one. I would have said that ALL mormon women where happy, confident and lovely people… because, well, I was a lovely person, in my own opinion. And I was trying EXTREMELY hard to convince myself that I was also happy and confident!
Now that I’m totally away from Mormonism and am developing a sense of being happy and confident, for the first time in my life, I see how abusive the whole Mormon culture is, especially to women. I really do feel like I was raised in a very abusive environment in so many different ways that I couldn’t even begin to innumerate them all. The self-hatred this environment caused for me is the ultimate abuse.
June 4th, 2006 at 12:12 am
You know, I was too hasty in discounting Mormon women in my dating pool. A few classes for me to get the lingo down and I’m in heaven. Confident, happy, lovely . . . . obedient women. That’s like having a great dog that can cook! I’m in!!!
Brother Howy
June 4th, 2006 at 8:53 am
You’re sooooo bad, Howy. What am I going to do with you?
June 4th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Hi everyone - I’m the writer of the 2nd email. (Thanks for the PR, Natalie!) After reading the first email while attempting to digest food, all I can mutter is WOW. Even though I know people like Molly, I’m still aghast at seeing it in print and know someone really expects people to believe it. I guess ignorance truly is bliss. I don’t begrudge anyone believing in their faith and upholding their doctrine, but … Molly sounds like she’s heavily medicated and living in Stepford…like so many others around me! (I wonder if her Xanadu is as happy & lovely as Homemaking Night?)
Jean
June 4th, 2006 at 11:23 pm
Hey Jean,
Hope you don’t mind me using your email, but of course I kept it anonymous. I only out people when they are bitchy and ugly.. LOL.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Wow.. I felt that Wives and Sisters was a good example of Mormon culture… And, “spare the rod, spoil the child” was an ever present saying in our house when I was growing up. My father thought nothing of disciplining my mother… and he was considered a Mormon doctrinal guru. Funny, women were supposed to act like children in the church.
I remember a few “family outings” where we were lectured by my father about how a good Mormon woman should act. When I finally left home, he sorrowfully told me that NO MAN would want me.
Fortunately, I have a wonderful man in my life who is NOT mormon and who would not think of hurting me for any reason.
June 7th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Oh.. I want to mention that my family come from “old mormon” heritage. And they clung to Brigham Young teachings.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
Cynthia . . . Cousin Cynthia? My family’s name (mother’s side) is Young. They are Brother Brigham’s descendants. Most older Utahans are. Guess it wasn’t that remarkable after all.
InthenameoftheOsmondsandRoseParkamen,
Brother Howy
June 9th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Cousin Howy… my sis married a Young but divorced him.
Yep, my mother went to Hyrum Utah to a family reunion of Petersons… any relation? We are related to Allens, Kingsbury, and a whole lot of others.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
None of those sound familiar but who knows? It is Utah after all. The Johnsons, Stevensons, Brintons, Murrays, Miners and a ton of folks I’ll never know. The degrees of separation get mighty tiny in Zion.