It’s no
secret in the Mormon community what has recently been put in the spotlight as
the issue of the moment: women wearing pants to church. To most people outside of the LDS church,
this question seems ridiculous and out of date, to say the least. Inside the church, it gets more complicated
than it really needs to be. There is no
doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that says women
must wear skirts to church. The council
that was given was for members to wear their “Sunday Best” to church on the
Sabbath. By doctrine alone, it is
evident that there is nothing wrong with women choosing to wear pants to church
if they feel that is the best they have. There
is no doctrine that says skirts are better than pants for women to wear. Even with that being the case, why has it
brought up such a tumultuous rift in the culture of the church? There seems to be culturally implied reasons as to why women should not wear skirts to church.
I am a Mormon
feminist. There, I said it. I have been saying that for quite some time
now and am still waiting to be struck by lightning for it (but I won’t hold my
breath). I have done much research and
do much reading on the topic of feminism and considering the fact I go to
church every week and am an active member of the LDS church, I think about
feminism in relation to the gospel virtually every single day because I view
both subjects as important in my life. It’s
important to define what feminism is, since everyone appears to have different
and incorrect definitions of the term. Feminism
is a very open ended topic and has much room for interpretation and different
schools of thought within itself.
However, it can be boiled down to this: feminism holds the belief that women are equal to men and should be treated as such; if you believe
women deserve equal rights, you are a feminist.
That’s it. It’s a simplistic way
of viewing the field of thought but that is what lies at its core. It doesn't necessarily mean that you are a
lesbian, liberal, man-hating, boner-killing, Satan-worshipping, God-hating
butch woman (although there are feminists who fit that category, but that’s a
story for another day). It means you
believe a woman should have the right to make their own choices using their own
agency and have their own rights equal to that of everyone else in their
society.
Jesus is a
feminist. Did that just blow your mind? I beg you to try and disagree with that. There
is no way the Saviour would ever condone the subjugation and oppression of
women nor would he ever attempt to make any woman feel inferior to anyone for
any reason. He preached about love,
charity, faith, equality, and tolerance, to name a few; He would not condone
the kinds of ideology that support oppression of anyone and therefore, he is a
feminist. (Still waiting on that bolt of
lightning…)
So now that
we know what feminism really is and that women are in fact allowed to wear
pants to church, what is all the fuss really about? Many say it stems from unrighteous female
pride and bitterness in the hearts of the women of the church who don’t truly understand
the reasons for them not being permitted to hold an office of the priesthood. If that’s the only conclusion you can come to
as an observer of this issue, then you don’t really understand the issue. Those who have prayed, pondered, researched,
and received personal revelation about the church would know that the
organization of the priesthood within the church is divinely appointed by the
Lord and that just because men have the priesthood and women don’t, that in no
way makes women second-class citizens. There
are countless scriptures and modern day revelations that state repeatedly that
men and women are “equally yoked” and the priesthood is in no way to be used as
a tool of subjugation and superiority but it is to be used for service. I am no less of a member because I don’t have
the priesthood; the office of the priesthood one holds does not increase their
value as a human being. Men and women
have different responsibilities but neither is more important than the other. This issue of what women can wear to church, and
gender inequality in the church on a larger scale, can and will be discussed
without reference to the priesthood because it is so much bigger than
that.
We have
already established that there is no doctrinal reason that women can’t wear
pants to church. That reason is purely
culturally constructed. We live in a
society that conditions us to believe that skirts are what women wear when they
want to look nice and pants are for more casual occasions. There is no real foundation in logic as to
why this is true, it is only true in our culture because we have all decided to
accept it as truth. This concept of
gender performativity (i.e. how men and women fashion themselves to look and
act like “real men” and “real women”) is largely arbitrary and subjective. We as a society have taken it to such great
extents as to believe that what people wear is indicative of who they are as a
person. The Saviour would not want us
judging people based solely on their physical appearance and he would never
think of us as “less manly” or “less womanly” based on what we chose to wear.
So if what I
choose to wear does not make me less of a person, then it can’t make me any
more or less worthy of receiving the blessings of keeping the commandments of
the gospel. “Hmm… this whole idea of
social constructs is really breaking down much of what I thought I knew”, said almost
everyone when they hear about how cultures notions are constructed by the people who
inhabit them. So to understand our ways
of operating, we need to look into our ways of thinking about how we operate.
A large
portion of responses to this issue have been less kind, understanding, and
compassionate than they should be considering we as members of the LDS church
claim to worship God and his Son, Jesus Christ; if we claim to believe those
things and we covenanted at baptism to take upon us the name of Christ, then
the kind of responses experienced are really counter-productive. It’d be helpful to look at why so many would
respond in such a hostile, aggressive manner over something that, as stated previously, should
not technically be
an issue.
The main way
to maintain hegemonic control of any society or any group of people is through “othering”,
which is making a distinction between the self and those who do things we do
not want to associate with our self and are thus categorized as undesirable and
inappropriate attributes to have. The best
way to get people to do what you want is to brand the opposite choice as
something bad and vilify those who do not conform to how you feel they should
be acting. This is not a concept originating from or specific to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, this is how societies all
over the world function to varying degrees.
The church as an entity would not condone this kind of action and
hostility towards others, the gospel of Christ preaches about charity and love
towards everyone despite whether you agree with their own personal choices or
not and yet the people of the church cannot escape the societies in which they
were raised. People are social
constructs of their environments and therefore because people grew up in a
world where false ideologies run rampant and pervade every aspect of thinking,
those people then bring that way of thinking into the church; even though those
ideas are not inherent in the gospel of Christ, the members of the church still
have those archaic and inaccurate ways of thinking.
People tend
to get upset when you tell them that why they think what they think is not
really true. This happens for a number
of reasons. People fear the unknown and
most often prefer not to question things or dig too deeply for answers. In order to combat that fear, they say that
people who question the status quo in ways like wearing pants to church are
being contentious, defiant, or they don’t really have faith in the same way or to the same extent as the people who don’t
question. That is also untrue; the
scriptures and modern-day revelation tell us that we are to ask the Lord if the
things we learn are true and we can receive answers. We have never been encouraged to passively
accept everything the General Authorities tell us, we need to come to our own
conclusions. By having conclusions that
are different from someone else’s, people often find their faith and
testimonies shaken when their reasons for why they think something don’t match
up to those of their fellow members.
This begs the question of whether they really knew what they believed in
the first place which is also a story for another day. It is sufficient to say that vilifying others
who choose to use their agency differently than we do is a common way of
trying to maintain hegemonic control because it is much easier to control a group
of people who don’t ask than ones who do.
Let me clarify here, the church encourages members to question and
search out answers while our society enforces the opposite.
Another
response to this movement is one of neither support nor opposition; there are
many who say that while there are valid points on gender inequality in the
church, that this is not the way to go about discussing it. To that I pose the question, where would you
suggest this be brought up and how should it be done? There are no perfect ways of navigating
issues that are so subjective and personal but I can tell you one thing,
responding with hate and anger and shaming of the other party is not how the
Saviour would have done it.
The most
important thing to remember in this issue is the separation between church
doctrine and church policy. It is church
policy that men wear white dress shirts to church but it’s not doctrine; my
husband wore a grey and white checkered shirt with a waistcoat and suit pants
last Sunday and let me tell you, he looked a lot better than some who showed up
in oversized, un-ironed shirts and pants who looked sloppy and like they just
rolled out of bed. You tell me which one
wore their “Sunday best”. The same goes
for women. There are many new moms who show up in church with their hair pulled back in a
sloppy ponytail, they are wearing a t shirt and a casual skirt and flip flops
(which we have been asked not to wear to church) because they are worn out. If I had a high quality, well-tailored pant
suit (which I plan to have a few of one day) I would absolutely wear it to
church and would look more put together than many other women who dress out of
habit rather than purpose. I am not
judging the people who do go to church who match the above descriptions, I don't really care what you wear to be honest, it has no effect on my life whatsoever. I am
trying to shed light on the fact that you can’t just target one group of people
when the same criticism can be extended to many.
There are
many other points on gender inequality that are based in the culture of the
church and not in its doctrine. Women who serve in presidencies of auxiliaries are most often called “Sister
(insert last name here)” which is the same title they have even when they are not serving in higher callings, while the men in leadership positions are called “President
(insert last name here)” instead of "Brother (insert last name here)" as they are when they are not serving in higher callings. There is no
reason why a sister cannot have the title of President if they are called to a
presidency; it shows respect for the calling and the person asked to fill it
just as it would for a man. Women are
also typically confined to the callings of the Primary organization to work
with the children and then the other two auxiliaries designed for women, the
Young Women’s organization and the Relief Society organization. There are women who are called to be gospel
doctrine teachers but the ratio of male to female teachers is heavily weighted
to one side (guess which side I’m inferring).
There is no doctrinal reason why women cannot serve in any calling that
is not directly related to the office of the priesthood. The organization of the Relief Society was
supposed to be a self-organized and self-governing body in charge of
humanitarian aid and the welfare of fellow women in the ward that was to be run
by women. Nowadays, “Super Saturdays”
where sisters do nothing but sit around and make pointless crafts and shoot the
proverbial breeze all day was probably not what the prophet Joseph Smith had in
mind for the organization. Those days
could be used for workshops on self-improvement, applicable life skills, and personal
development, but instead they are about making things like wreaths and quilts which are 2
things I could not care any less about. There
is little autonomous authority left in the organization, as I see it, and it
tends to ostracize more than include. Case
and point: the response to this issue being raised by fellow women was
completely attacking the other side by sisters in the organization who should have been kinder
and more understanding but instead participated in internalized misogyny (it's a useful term, look it up and remember it).
My intent
with this piece was to clarify the situation of what it really means for women
to wear pants to church. In essence, it means nothing; it should mean nothing,
anyway. Wearing pants has no impact on
personal worthiness to participate in the blessings of the gospel. There is gender inequality in the church that
stems from social constructs and not from doctrine of the church. Voicing concerns of this inequality through
wearing pants does not make the women who participated any less of a woman nor
does it diminish their standing within the church; it is in no way indicative
of their own personal testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is a separate
concern that needs to be addressed.
Questioning how things are run is not a sign of weakness or aggression
but is something we should all try to do more often; try to question more of
what you think you know in order to find out more of what you didn’t know. Ya
know? Productive, righteous, positive
change is where we all want to be going and maybe between all of us, we can get
there.
