liberation

cross posted at exponent

I, like many, dread the weeks we talk about gender roles at church. These conversations are often trite and repetitive and serve to alienate those who fall outside the prescribed ideals for men and women. My Relief Society had one of these lessons several weeks ago and I was pleasantly surprised that the class actively engaged with the topic and sometimes critically pushed against some of the more restrictive ideas. For example, the class had compiled a list female roles, a typical list that included things like women are nurturers. At one point one of the counselors in Relief Society presidency pointed out that there was not one role on the list that men could not fulfill except for the physical act of giving birth. Read the rest of this entry »