on lady tech events

I recently had a colleague ask me about women in tech events, and I wanted to adapt my response into a blog post.

Women in tech events and long-term mentoring can be very fulfilling, especially when the audience is narrow enough. That said, I'm always hesitant about female tech mentoring because it seems like there is so very much of it, both soliciting mentors and mentees, so it's easy to commit to more than you actually want to do.

It's important that every individual takes a step back asks themselves: How much time do I want to dedicate to networking and mentorship? What kinds of interactions are most valuable to me? (What have I enjoyed about other events I attended?) Plan the big picture first, and then use that as a roadmap to make the smaller choices.

In the end, these are personal choices about you and your career. For me, going to WiML every year is enough. But other people might want more support or networking. Still others might not care at all about things like this—again, this is totally personal. It also varies depending on where you are in your career, because our needs and preferences evolve with time.

As a one-off, these kind of things won't make or break you, but it's the aggregate of multiple events over your career. If you're not certain about a particular event, it might be worth going, just to see how fulfilling these kinds of events are to you, so you can make informed choices going forward.

having it all

What is "having it all"?  This is typically understood to mean being a women with children and a happy family life while also having a successful career.

Not only does this phrasing focus the life-balance discussion on privileged women (ignoring those struggling with multiple jobs, etc.), it also isolates women as distinct from men.  There are sacrifices no matter who you are and what choices you make, but we don't talk about men having it all or not.  As far as I can tell, no man or woman is perfect at everything.

We want each individual or family to be able to choose to balance their life or lives as they see fit.  We want them to be able to choose their family structure, domestic responsibilities, social obligations, career paths, and hobbies.  Just like we budget money between housing, food, clothing, and any number of things, each individual budgets their time and efforts.

Having it all is a useless metric, not to mention that it's incredibly ambiguous.  No matter your choice, using this terminology can appear as a judgement to those who allocate their time and efforts differently, which is basically everyone else.

Excommunication of Mormon Activists

Two prominent Mormons are facing the possibility of excommunication.

I'm saddened, but not terribly surprised.  Kate Kelly, one of the members facing church discipline, is the founder of Ordain Women.  While I'd love to see women get ordained, either to the traditional patriarchal priesthood or to a separate matriarchal one, there's a huge problem with Ordain Women: it seeks female ordination regardless of God's will.

I'm happy advocating for the Prophet to seek answers on questions and for the Apostles to consider these issues, but at the end of the day, they lead the church.  No matter how I feel about the issue personally, I cannot receive revelation for the entire church. Promoting a substantial change unconditionally, like ordaining women, is not respecting the authority of the Prophet to speak for God.  We can suggest, discuss, and critique, but we must respect that authority, or else the entire premise of the church collapses.

The irony is that it's exactly this Priesthood authority that the Ordain Women movement seeks.  I think the request is reasonable, and worth, say, a church-wide fast.  It's a really important issue, and deserving of attention, but it cannot be demanded.  We need to have faith in our leaders, not just in the religious sense, but also in a human sense.  We need to hope that they're trying their best and want to guide us to the more perfect world we seek.

The biggest problem is that even the name of Ordain Women is a demand, or could be framed as such.  The start of their mission statement:

The fundamental tenets of Mormonism support gender equality: God is male and female, father and mother, and all of us can progress to be like them someday. Priesthood, we are taught, is essential to this process. Ordain Women believes women must be ordained in order for our faith to reflect the equity and expansiveness of these teachings.

Perhaps I am too docile, but I think a softer approach would be more impactful. I believe that the earthly ordination of women could be very good, but I do not believe it is the only way to work towards gender equality, nor do I believe that it is unquestionably God's will.

Having worked in the temple and performed priesthood ordinances (the only place where in our church women do), I can say that those experiences are certainly special.  I can say that we need more female leadership and that there are some cultural practices that should be changed.  But while I can say what I think and feel, I must acknowledge that in my limited scope of experience, I cannot say what is right for the whole church.

So, I'm not surprised that Kate Kelly is facing excommunication; even from my sympathetic perspective, I feel that the Ordain Women movement is too sure of its initiatives, as any movement needs to be.  I'm saddened that the church didn't use this as an opportunity to discuss the issues, and took a more cowardly approach, but I hope that those involved on all sides can take the time to be introspective rather than defensive so that they can take advantage of the true purpose of church disciplinary counsels: to help us acknowledge our failings and become better people.

I've focused on Kate Kelly and Ordain Women, because I know less about John Dehlin and his Mormon Stories Podcasts.  I'm imagining that the "cause for concern" in his case is LGBT rights, but I haven't researched it thoroughly.

I am hoping that this results in a fruitful exchange between the church and its more liberal members about how to express concerns and suggest ideas.  Currently, our only recourse is to either limit ourselves to local impact or go incredibly public online.  There needs to be a way to faithfully express concerns in a way that it doesn't get stuck either at a local level or in a traffic jam to the top.

the lady doth protest too much: a response

My mom sent me a snippet of this article, which was quoted in the WSJ last week. She was all, "I don't agree, but I thought you might want to see this..."  Right she was...it got my blood boiling.

The “women in tech” experiment has been a disaster. [...] It all comes down to one, dirty little secret. Whisper it. The tech industry is not sexist.

Tech isn't sexist?  Most individuals I've met in tech aren't sexist, but some are, just like in any industry. It's harder to see when you're not the recipient of the bias, but it certainly exists.  Additionally, I have my own sexist moments, so how could others who have not thought as long and hard about women in tech not have sexists moments?

Okay, so assume tech doesn't have any more sexist individuals than any other industry.  There is still an huge issue that Yiannopoulos doesn't even consider: that the culture is sexist.

That's right.  A culture that encourages starting work at 10am, taking long lunch breaks, and playing pinball mid-day means that you basically spend all day at the office.  Why is that sexist?  Because there's pressure from (some of) the rest of society for women to have kids, clean house, and be home to make dinner.  I'm not saying women should feel pressure to do those things, and so our general society's culture can be fixed too.  But it should be a lot easier to change the beneficent tech industry to be more flexible rather than the other way around.

For each of the four industry jobs I've had, my daily start and end times have been earlier than the average employee.  I was usually one of the few who cooked their own dinner, let alone packed the occasional lunch.  The stereotypical mother and wife norms clash with the norms of tech employees.  A lot of women want jobs where they can do homework with their kids, go out to a bar to meet someone after work, or hang out with friends not related to work.

So when our Mr. Yiannopoulos might actually be right when he says things like the following.

Of course, the number of women in tech will never be the same as the number of men, because most women simply don’t want to do these sorts of jobs.

He might be right not because women aren't good at tech, but because the culture is insular and demanding, and many women (via nurture or nature) want to do stuff outside of work.  But, even if he is right, I want him to prove it, because it's ludicrous for anyone to pull a statement like that out of nowhere.  I'm doing my best not to degrade into a fit of profanity.

There are a lot of reasons for fewer women in tech, and the answer to many of them is to break the stereotypes that perpetuate the issues, which isn't just about fixing the numbers in schools and watching it propagate, as Yiannopoulos naïvely suggests. Women need role models and other women at the top to both show that it can be done and to help make the policies so that it can be done with greater ease.

The article isn't all bad; in fact the most interesting point is that underrepresented racial minorities and socio-economic groups deserve more air time, which is very true.  That doesn't mean that women deserve less, though.  If anything, women are even more underrepresented in those groups.  By evening out the playing field for all women, it also helps other minority groups, not to mention roughly half of the population.

In addition, the minorities that are most underrepresented, in my opinion, share many stereotypes in common with those for women: being family-focused is an easy example. By making the tech industry more appealing for one category of minority, we're widening the door for everyone.

white male boards and white male commenters

Just read this article on the breakdown of the boards of directors in tech. The article is great, but some of the comments are really distressing.

Not having women on the board is an issue of innovation? Since when did women innovate? People need to get used to hearing non-PC but completely accurate assessments. Companies don't perform based on 'wishful thinking'.

Wow.  Since when do women innovate?  Uh...since men started innovating?  Perhaps they don't have as long of a history in industry, but that doesn't mean they don't innovate.  The problems are that 1) far fewer women have the training necessary and 2) being on a board requires being pushy enough to move up the chain, which most women aren't comfortable doing, either because it's not culturally acceptable or because they care more about their personal lives.  And we shouldn't get used to non-PC statements of this variety because these are all cultural issues that have solutions. Addressing them starts with identifying a problem. Well, problem identified.  (Hint: part of it's you, bucko.)

Another doozy:

Let's hire based on race and gender instead of qualifications because people who can't get hired on qualification are moaning! Great idea for those who are moaning but horrible idea for people actually running the business.

Nobody said we should hire more women that aren't qualified.  Nor are we saying the the problem needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW.  It's a matter of understanding the causes and then addressing the cultural factors that impact this imbalance.  Until we do address the underlying issue, it's important to take just a little time to consider candidates outside the usual mold, but still qualified.  They exist, but it's harder to find them, so it takes effort.

The reason why this is important?  Because you care about equal opportunity, not for those that are qualified, but for future generations.  People need role models, and if there are no women on your board, what does that say to your female employees?  What does that say about your company to women students?  It says: don't bother trying to climb the ranks because you won't get there.  We need to say please try, so that we have a better candidate pool.

We have the opportunity to craft our society for the future.  We can either say: well, that's the way its; suck it up.  Or we can say: that's not the way I'd like it to be; here's how we can change it.  Saying that this is just the way to world works is equivalent to stating that women and other minorities deserve these inequalities, not for cultural reasons, but because of their inherent lack of ability.  Or that you're okay with the inequalities (often because they benefit you).

Next steps to fix these issues: trying a little harder to find qualified minority higher-ups, creating or improving family friendly initiatives for both genders, and developing mentorship programs for students and lower ranked employees to increase retention.  We know these things already, it's just about taking the time to help them play out in order to reap the rewards.

P.S. I like white male people!  My husband is and most of my wonderful mentors are/have been white males. You are instrumental in making these changes happen, so thank you!  ♥

harnessing the power of educated stay-at-home moms

A few weeks ago, I was having a discussion with a colleague whose wife is extremely well-educated but stays at home with their two kids.  This is a quite common story, with many stay-at-home moms having bachelors from prestigious colleges all the way to moms with PhDs.  I'm sure it happens with blokes too, but it is much more common route for women.

We then talked about how hard it is to find part-time work.  In 2010, I was pre-grad school doing research part time (so my schedule was super flexible), and I couldn't find a second part-time gig that worked and was worth it.  It's just hard.

So we came up with a startup idea: basically a high-end Amazon Mechanical Turk for connecting people with part-time work.  It would have to be less sketchy than craigslist jobs, and on a per-task basis.  The idea is that employers could break tasks down into small chunks--1 hour, 15 minutes, etc., have a deadline, and a minimum skill level in certain areas.  Individuals could accomplish tasks, "level up," and make money.  In addition to skills, you could have an optional review process to accept a task or request a redo/edits before payment.  There could bonuses for doing N tasks for a company, or doing a certain number of variations on the same task, accomplishing a task early, or for doing an excellent job.

This would require re-imaging how tasks are assigned and reviewed in the work environment, but I'd like to hope that it wouldn't be too hard.  What would be good candidates for this?  There'd be many boring tasks, certainly.  Data entry, ugh.  But writing summaries could be fun, as could be tagging photos and participating in user studies. If I were a user of this system, I could write web-scraping scripts for folks, do web development, or accomplish other small programming tasks.

There could be a competition component for some things, like the various logo/website design sites out there.  For example, a company could judge from the first three submissions and accept one or none.

Regardless of the details, there should be a web service like this, that pays more and has harder, more skilled-based tasks than AMT.  This wouldn't help just SAHMs, but it would be good for the unemployed or partially-employed, in general.  As for the companies?  I don't think they'd mind getting more work done.

the things I didn't write about

It's been a while since I posed anything.  I got stuck on my diatribe about digital barbarism, and then a bunch of stuff happened, personal and otherwise.

In the personal arena, I attended NIPS, drowned in coursework, and was elected garden coordinator for our apartment community.

Then there was the hullabaloo about Mormon women wearing pants.  I participated in a cowardly manner by wearing my baggy skirt-like harem/jeanie/Aladdin pants.

Locally, Sandy has still displaced way too many people, and we're still working on gutting homes so mold can be prevented before they start to rebuild.

And then Newton.  I cried several days in a row.  I know that there are worse things abroad and to some degree it's selfish to focus on how terrible it was when other equally bad things get very little attention.  But it felt more personal; it's a two-and-a-half hour drive from where I live and the states are all so close culturally, it felt like it could have been my own town.  An emotional reaction, rather than a logical one, I know, but I'm not a robot.  A lot of people are suffering, in Newtown and elsewhere, and they have my prayers.

Middlesex

I just finished reading Middlesex, which a very sweet friend of mine thought was about Middlesex the county next to ours.  It is most certainly not.

It was a great read, and I plowed through the end, but I can't put my finger on what held it back from being excellent.  Perhaps it was all of the explicit talk about sexuality.  I can be prudish at times, but that's not what it was.  I think it was that the narrator just talked about it too much, and like any topic that's overdone, it gets old.

I wanted less talk of sex and more talk of gender.  Why did the narrator make the choice she/he did?  I wanted more on what mannerisms were hard and easy in the transition.  What were the harder and easier parts of playing each gender?  I wanted to know more about the struggle of familial acceptance. In the end, I felt like I only knew 3/4 of the narrator. Some intrigue is good, of course, but I was left too hungry.

the pace of change

For those of you who aren't LDS or otherwise haven't heard, this Saturday the church president a policy change: men can now serve missions starting at age 18 (used to be 19), and women can now serve missions starting at 19 (used to be 21).

Everyone's buzzing about it.  Young women are super stoked about the possibilities, some older women are excited but a little bitter that the change was only made recently.  I'm personally excited to see the next generations of girls, possibly even my own daughters, grow up thinking that a mission is a serious possibility, not just something to be done if you don't get married in college and don't know what to do with your life.  (I'm not saying that was the actual reason for most women missionaries, but it was a common perception.)

I think this is a great step toward equalizing men and women in the church.  While it isn't perfect equal (women can still only serve 18 months as opposed to men's 24, and there's still the 18/19 discrepancy), it's a much, much better policy.

It's got me think about the pace of change, though.  At the press conference after the announcement, when asked why weren't the ages set to be equal for men and women, Elder Holland responded "one miracle at a time." N pointed out the quote from Winterbuzz on FMH, that sums up the skeptical view pretty well (which I share):

While I am happy that this change makes so many people happy, I can’t help but wonder that if this is the most we can expect from modern day prophets in the way of revelation, that’s sort of depressing, isn’t it? We must be so spiritually hungry that even the smallest shift in policy seems heaven sent.

Each generation experiences the church's policies and politics differently.  My parents experienced the policy change that African descendants could receive the priesthood, but also the anti-ERA push.  The next generation, like Joanna Brooks, experienced the September Six in the heat of their coming into real adulthood.  My generation experienced Prop 8 in that same heat, and now we have this policy change to add to the list of experiences.

Just looking at the list, it seems like we're focusing on smaller and smaller changes or policies.  This makes sense, because--never mind, I'm not going to go into detail on the parallels between policy changes and simulated annealing.  You can make them yourself, if you care enough.

Anyway, I hope to see more equalizing progress.  That's all.

LOTR lego

I just saw an ad for the new LOTR lego sets (warning, there's sound), and I'm furious. Well, as furious as I can be about Legos. Lego bends over backwards to say it wants to attract more girls, and the result is the grossly overfeminine Friends sets. But now, when they have a easy way to create something that everyone would love, they totally miss it.

How? No Galadriel. No Arwen. No Rivendell. No Lothorian. No Shire. No Grey Havens. Nothing remotely green. Instead of bringing in beautiful architecture and lush settings, they opt to focus on the war bits. Remind me, why is middle earth worth saving? Oh right. Because it's beautiful.

Recall Sam's quotes in the ROTK movie: Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?

And TTT:
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.

So why don't they reflect that in their sets? Is it because it's hard?  C'mon Lego.  Give us a huge Lothlorian with buildings in trees and fountains.  You could make a whole series out of that alone.

transgenderism

As a preface, I respect transgender and transexual folks.  It's a rough world, and it takes guts to redefine yourself like that.

But I don't like the term "transgender."  Identifying as transgender means you are accepting gender roles.  Men are one way, and women are another.  It means that if you are one sex, you identify with the roles associated with the other.  The thing is, I don't believe people should feel like something is wrong because they don't associate with their accepted gender roles.  (By that logic, I would totally be bigender.)  Instead, I think that gender roles should be eliminated or adapted to be made more inclusive.  People shouldn't feel broken for being themselves.

Identifying as transexual, on the other hand, is more of a physical matter.  You feel like you're in the wrong body.  I can't speak to that, and this post isn't really covering it, though the two are obviously closely intertwined.

The reason I bring this up is this post on growing up transgender in the LDS church.  I identified with lots of the gender issues the author covered.  Gender roles are huge in the LDS church.  Women and men are separated by the clothes they wear, the domestic and familial roles they're supposed to perform, and their roles in ordinances and other community endeavors.  When you're eight, boys get a blue book and girls get a pink/brown book.  Then, as soon as you're twelve, you're expected to spend an hour (Sunday services) or more (weeknight activities) each week in classes specifically for your gender.  Boys get the priesthood and girls don't.  Missions, callings, Temple.  Gender, gender, gender.

As a kid, I came home upset or crying many-a-time because I was too boyish.  Mostly, I wanted to do well in school (especially math) and have a career eventually (heaven forbid).  But, I also wanted to climb trees and play with plastic dinosaurs.  I didn't want to have my eyebrows plucked by other teenagers, plan my wedding, or babysit.  The thought crossed my mind that I should have been a boy, but I pushed it aside.  I like who I am, I told myself, I'm not the one that needs to change.  They need to change their expectations.

Gender roles should not make people feel broken.  They should not make them feel sad or limited.  So before I propose a genderless society, why is gender useful?  Are there instances where gender roles improve people or societies?  If so, I want to know.

Dave-to-Girl ratio

I was reading about Etsy's latest grant for women, and stumbled on the term "Dave-to-Girl ratio."  It's an old joke, but I laughed, and then realized that the Dave-to-Girl ratio for my research group was 2:1 (I count either Dave or David).  For the faculty in my department? 1:2.  The ratio is much better for the department as a whole, though.  What's the Dave-to-Girl ratio where you work?

Oh, and I just heard two IT guys out in the hall...one says to the other, "What about this one, Dave?"

teaching young women

A bit ago, I was asked to help out with a YW class. I didn't end up doing it (out of town), but it got me looking at the teaching manual and I wanted to share some thoughts.

Looking through the list of lessons, the section on "Fulfilling Women’s Divine Roles" seems like it has the most questionable material, though it has a lot of good stuff too. The idea of having "divine potential" in a spiritual sense instead of a gender-roles-sense is great, but they can't help but sneak gender roles.  Also, requiring priesthood approval to have a guest teacher is silly:

"Invite an exemplary sister (preferably one who has married in the temple and has a family), who has been approved by priesthood advisers, to speak to the young women about the joy of being a woman."

"Finding Joy Now" is a wonderful lesson--life doesn't start at marriage or motherhood. The lesson entitled "Homemaking" seems an odd fit for this section, since I typically associate homemaking with housekeeping++. They've apparently co-opted the term "homemaking" and tried to put a spiritual spin on it:

Explain that homemaking involves a wide variety of activities, all of them important. Of great importance, of course, is keeping a house clean and taking care of the physical needs of the family members. However, there is another important side to homemaking, as Sister Belle S. Spafford, a former general president of the Relief Society, points out:

“Homemaking, as I view it, falls into two major divisions: homemaking and housekeeping. Homemaking takes into account the spiritual values: love, peace, tranquility, harmony among family members, security. It makes of a place of residence a spot to which family members can retire from a confused and troubled world and find understanding and rejuvenation. Its character is quietness; it evidences good taste, culture, and refinement. Men, women, and children alike have their individual contributions to make to good home and family life, and each shares in its benefits.

“Housekeeping involves the work of keeping a house clean, orderly, and well managed. This includes financial management, failure in which often becomes a source of family friction.”

I won't go into how silly it is to divide something into two things: itself and something else.  I also think that putting this in the series "Fulfilling Women’s Divine Roles" just begs a few questions: Do men have no divine responsibility to keep their house clean?  How about to bring spiritual values into the home?  Why do we keep bringing gender into these things?

Lesson 8, "Attitudes about Our Divine Roles" is interesting.  The objective is that "Each young woman will develop a positive attitude about her divine roles of wife and mother."  After all that beating around the bush, they finally let the cat out of the bag: wife and mother are the divine roles, the potential we want them to reach.   For starters, I think have issue with the idea of having a spiritual role defined by my gender, no matter what it is.  I think being married is a blast, and I look forward to being a mother, and I think that it's good for teenagers to seriously consider these possibilities.  But.

But three things: 1) emphasizing marriage and children too much in a culture can lead to social and emotional hardship when folks don't "fulfill their potential," 2) the way marriage/mothering is taught tends to be to the exclusion of other wonderful things for women (I'm not saying that that's how the manual is written, but often times that's the lesson the girls end up learning), and 3) there is not nearly as much analogous discussion of marriage and fathering for boys.  As an example of numero dos:

Point out that the worldly view of women’s roles is false partly because it is selfcentered. It focuses so much on a woman’s rights to receive that it almost ignores her opportunities to give.

I agree that it's good not to be self-centered and that it's better to focus on giving, but just to clarify, what are the worldly views of women's roles?  Last I check, most of the world agreed with the idea that women should be primarily wives and mothers.  An increasingly large portion is equalist, saying that men and women should have just as much opportunity to work, stay at home, become educated, and have families.  (Yay!)  And a very, very small sliver is women's-rights-greedy to the degradation of men.  Tossing out this last category, how is the "worldly view" bad?  Because more people are starting to think that there aren't women's roles?  That it emphasizes that women are people?  (Also wik: stop with the true/false binary.)

I can also pick apart the lesson on the value of education:

“There are impelling reasons for our sisters to plan toward employment. … We want them to obtain all the education and vocational training possible before marriage. If they become widowed or divorced and need to work, we want them to have dignified and rewarding employment. If a sister does not marry, she has every right to engage in a profession that allows her to magnify her talents and gifts.”

Three things: 1) not so much with education and training after marriage?  2) Why is education either a contingency plan or a boon in teaching your own kids?  3) I don't have the right to engage in a profession if I marry?  Or do I just have to pick one that doesn't magnify my gifts and talents?

But.  But.  But.  There are lots of great things in many of these lessons.  I've just highlighted a few of the increasingly infrequent things that rub me the wrong way.  And they aren't less frequent because I'm getting softer.  I think there's been huge progress for women, both globally and within the Mormon context.  I think it's important to make note of the things that still need to be fixed, but it's equally import to acknowledge the great things about where we are now.  I didn't do the latter in this post because it's both easier and more interesting to discuss areas that require improvement.

ces booth babes

Women and "booth babes" at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2012: this features a few options on using women as advertisement.  I was shocked that the women legitimately in the field weren't more upset by it.  I would have given them a few stinging quotes for the record.

Some highlights I transcribed...

CEA CEO: "Sometimes it is a little old school, but it does work.  People are naturally want to go to what they consider pretty.  So your effort to try and get a story based on booth babes which is decreasing rather rapidly in [?]industry and say that somehow sexism and balancing[?], it's cute but it's frankly irrelevant in my view."  A) A man with a talent for speaking, to be sure.  B) Irrelevant?  What a jerk.  I mean, to tell a reporter that their story isn't worth telling is mean all by itself, but things like this are important.  This IS sexism.

Models 1&2: "Specifically for CES, I don't think that having hired models working at a booth deters women because it's not like a car show or something where you would dress really scantily clad" [cuts to booth babe with 6 inches of bare midriff] "We're still, you know, in business attire..." [cuts to woman in pictured above] "...pretty much covered up and I don't think it's so over-the-top that women feel like they can't approach us, either.  It's not extremely obvious that we're hired models..." [cuts to woman in mock shower in essentially a towel, except with a revealing slit down the whole thing] "...as it would be at a car show or something like that where there's girls..." [cuts to a pair of girls in yard-wide ostrich feather headpieces] "...laying on the hood of a car."

Models 3&4: "We've worked many different types of shows, a lot of them are technology-type conventions.  There's women that are into it, just I don't know any really *laughs* that choose, you know, the tech world, so to say, over shopping or cooking or something like that...or taking care of kids or whatever."  Wow.  Just...wow.

Woman's Day

This week we got the final notice that N's subscription to Woman's Day had expired (we got another notice last week too).  Neither of us have ever even opened a Woman's Day in the grocery store, let alone subscribed, so it's either a marketing tactic or a mistake.  Either way, it cracks me up.

Also, why call a lifestyle magazine "Woman's Day"?  I'd imagine that there's very little woman-specific information in it, and while their audience is probably mostly women, they could target a larger subset of the population by simply changing the name.

glass worth shattering?

BBC listed 10 glass ceilings yet to be shattered, and while many of the positions listed were important and worth breaking, I wouldn't really consider others particularly worthy of note.  Being the head writer for The Simpsons, for example is something incredibly specific: if we have to stretch that far to identify glass ceilings, I think it's a sign of good progress.  That said, I'd still like to see 1:1 salaries for men and women of equal ability.

Boys and Girls and God

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the LDS Faith in God handbook for boys and for girls.  I've marked stuff that appears in the boy manual in blue and the girl manual in red.  The boy manual had some typos that I didn't include.  I'm a little torn: if women can't have the priesthood, is it nicer to make a separate manual so you don't have to see the differences, or does that cause a bigger rift between the genders?  I can see it go either way; on the one hand separation allows each gender to be strengthened as much as possible...there's something to be said for forgetting about issues until they essentially disappear.  On the other hand, separation perpetuates the problem of inequality; if we have to deal with it, it might get fixed faster.

Entertain young children with songs or games you have learned or made yourself. Show that you know how to care for and protect/nurture a young child.  Saw that one comin'.

Learn how to budget and save money. Discuss why it is important to faithfully pay our tithing and how Heavenly Father blesses us when we do (see 3 Nephi 24:10–11). Pay your tithing and begin saving for a mission/an education.  I'm glad it's not a hope chest for the girls.  In all seriousness, though, this seems a little unfair to the guys.  Were we not moving away from the mentality that every man must serve a mission?

“The Priesthood of Aaron … is an appendage to the greater, or the Melchizedek Priesthood, and has power in administering outward ordinances.”/“Stand ye in holy places, and be not moved, until the day of the Lord come.”

Complete the following activities while you are 11 years old. They will help you prepare to receive the Aaronic Priesthood and become a righteous young man/to become a righteous young woman and to participate in the Young Women Personal Progress program.  Calling first, little gents.

Learn about the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood (see D&C 13,D&C 107:20, and Joseph Smith—History 1:68–73).

After studying the thirteenth article of faith, make a list of things that are uplifting and virtuous. Discuss with a parent or leader how you can seek after these things.  Is this just filling in the blank page where the Priesthood stuff goes or is it saying something about differing expectations for the virtue of females?

Read D&C 20:57–60 and Aaronic Priesthood: Fulfilling Our Duty to God [Deacon], page 7. Discuss with a parent or leader the purposes of the Aaronic Priesthood and what it means to do your duty to God.

Talk with the Beehive class presidency or a member of the Young Women presidency about the purpose and importance of the Young Women program.

Talk with the deacons quorum presidency about the role of the deacons quorum. Write in your journal how you can serve the Lord as a member of a deacons quorum/you stand for truth and righteousness.  'Cause guys just stand for the Man.

Read D&C 88:77–80, 118 and D&C 130:19. Discuss with a parent or Primary leader how important a good education is and how it can help strengthen you as a priesthood holder in your home and family and in the Church.  Men are strengthened by education.  Women strengthen their families.  Hmm...

Children who complete the requirements in the guidebook can earn the Faith in God Award.   Whatever.

In countries where Scouting is part of the Church program, boys work on Faith in God along with Cub Scouting. Many of the Cub Scout activities can fulfill requirements for the Faith in God Award. Completion of all activities in this guidebook marked with a Œ qualifies a boy for the Scouting Religious Square Knot patch.  This makes some sense.  I mean, I still wish that girls did the scouting stuff, but whatever.

Parents may help their sons and daughters complete the activities in the guidebooks/this guidebook, especially where it is difficult for children to gather for Primary activity days.  Guys can do everything.  Girls can only be girls.

Each year, the bishopric meets with all 11-year-old boys and their parents to help them understand the importance of the priesthood and strengthen their commitment to prepare to receive it. Members of the Primary presidency also attend the meeting.  We do?  Good to know.

The Holy Ghost and Heavenly Mother

When the in-laws visited a bit ago, I had a conversation with my MIL in which she conjectured about the Holy Ghost being the enigmatic Heavenly Mother.  It was an interesting discussion and given that the conjecture again appeared on FMH recently, I decided to articulate my thoughts on it (in written form, my MIL already got an earful), because while it's nice to have the Godhead be a family, LDS doctrine doesn't simply slip into that mold.

The first thing that came to mind was of the conceiving of Christ by Mary.  In this aspect, the concept of the Heavenly Mother coming to Mary for her to act as a surrogate is really beautiful.  ...as opposed to the creepy Brigham Young quote: "if the Son was begotten by the Holy Ghost, it would be very dangerous to baptize and confirm females, and give the Holy Ghost to them, lest he should beget children, to be palmed upon the Elders by the people, bringing the Elders into great difficulties." (JD1)  Oh, Brigham Young.  Anyway, there's some weird sexual tension in the immaculate conception, and this would fix that for me, with one mother passing responsibility to another.

The second issue is that in LDS doctrine, the Holy Ghost is disitinct from Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in that (s)he doesn't have a body.  From lds.org:

The Holy Ghost is the third member of the Godhead. He is a personage of spirit, without a body of flesh and bones. He is often referred to as the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the Lord, or the Comforter.

We obtain the doctrine of embodiment from the first vision, where Joseph Smith sees God the Father and Jesus Christ.  This is backed up by the fact that the resurrected Christ is touchable in both the New Testament and The Book of Mormon.  Much later, Joseph Smith gives instruction on the nature of the Godhead, which is recorded in D&C 130:22:

The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also; but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of Spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us.

The nature of D&C130, however, seems to be more conjecture than anything else--prophets are entitled hypothesize too.  JS backs up his assertion with logic (as did BY in his above quote), which to me indicates that it is possible he came to that conclusion on his own (well, it's possible he came to everything on his own, but that's another story).  Of the LDS Godhead doctrine, I find the Holy Ghost's required disembodiment to be the least convincing.  Still, however, it would be a major obstacle in any sort of official consideration of the Heavenly Mother-Holy Ghost theory.  (Hey, that sounds kinda like the Adam-God theory.  Maybe we just need a wacky prophet in order to swing it.  Packer, I'm counting on you.)

The third issue I want to consider here is the role of women in general: what would Heavenly Mother as the Holy Ghost imply for the rest of us?  There are sufficient reasons for not wanting to propagate a doctrine of Heavenly Mother at all, namely that without a divine role model, women have more choices; as long as society is patriarchal, having an archetype may not be the best for women.  If the Holy Ghost were the female archetype, though, would that imply that women are inherently comforters, that they bring wisdom and peace?  Would we dispense with the fire metaphor as being too masculine?  Given that we know little about the Holy Ghost, would it take on an even more obscure and less understood role?  Would we impose feminine characteristics on the Holy Ghost?  Would doctrine such as this humble the patriarchy enough to enable true equality between men and women?  Or would it encourage further pedestaling of women instead of giving them any real say?

Brave Trailer

I've been anxiously anticipating Pixar's Brave since I saw the concept art forever ago.  The first trailer is out at disney.com/brave!  I love that Merida looks like she's not wearing any makeup (contrasted with Rapunzel in Disney's Tangled who has blonde hair and black eyelashes); they make it obvious that the story is not about her looks or her love life, which is really refreshing.  The clip is too short to make any final judgements, but thus far it looks like a story about a strong character who just happens to be a girl.  I'm stoked.

Mars, Venus, and gender identities

The topic of gender has been floating around my conversations more over the past few days than usual--and it's usually pretty high up there anyway.  The two main events contributing to this were the sexing of a fetus-in-law (and discussion of if a quilt-in-production would be a well-received gift) and an explanation to my brother of why Live it Up! by Mark E. Petersen is hilarious and mildly offensive, complete with an introduction to the idea of gender as a social construct.

I could rant and rave about the gender in the Mormon context, but so many people have already done so very articulately that I would most likely be regurgitating their ideas, even if that wasn't the intent.  Instead, I want to explore the Mars and Venus...as in, the Roman gods.

Mars and Venus are only one of the six god-goddess pairs in Roman mythology.  Why did they become our modern gender archetypes?  For one thing, each have a planet in their name (and Venus is the only female name among the planets), so it's simply a matter of history, for better or worse.  However, if the planet Venus had been called Minerva (equivalent to the Greek Athena), would that have changed much?  Would we just have ignored the planets and come up with something else?

Anyway, the Roman pairing are as follows, with their Greek equivalents and a rough description of their jurisdictions, mingling the mythologies together.

Jupiter (Zeus: king of gods, sky, thunder) and Juno (Hera: women, marriage)
Neptune (Poseidon: water, sea, earthquakes) and Minerva (Athena: wisdom, civilization, warfare, crafts, justice, poetry, etc.)
Mars (Ares: war and agriculture) and Venus (Aphrodite: love, beauty, fertility, sexuality)
Apollo (light, sun, truth and prophecy, medicine, healing, arts, etc.) and Diana (Artemis: hunt, moon, wilderness, childbirth)
Vulcan (Hephaestus: fire, volcanoes) and Vesta (Hestia: hearth, home, family)
Mercury (Hermes: messenger of the gods, trade, guide to the underworld) and Ceres (Demeter: agriculture, fertility of the earth, seasons, and motherly relationships)

There are so many more complex male-female relationships and distinctions listed in these pairings than the simple and prolific Mars-Venus analogy.  Archetypes and mythology are both intriguing in that they reveal aspects of the nature of the world, perpetuate ideas, and demand inspection of their subjects.

I just don't identify with Venus or many of the traits modernly associated with women.  There are many things I do like that are "womanly": skirts, cooking, sewing; but just as many things that are "manly": computers, cars, backpacking.  I hate being conscripted.  I've said it many-a-time and will continue to do so until the day I die: men and women are more the same than they are different and I wish we (encompassing many levels) would stop focusing so strongly on the differences.  But individuals love being different and cling to archetypes like Mars and Venus to emphasize their distinctiveness.  Just WHY VENUS?  I would take any of the others...Athena, Hestia, Demeter, Artemis (I'm obviously more familiar with Greek Mythology), even Hera.  If only one of them had a planet named after them, I'd have a catchy retort when people say things like "men are from Mars, women are from Venus"--which I have heard/seen used in earnest, mind you, which was actually one prompting for this post--I'd be able to say, "Actually no, I'm from Minerva, thank you."