Comments on: What I did over summer vacation

By: ben

ben — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’m particularly interested in #8, as I passed the word along to the women I know to respond to Janice’s (sp?) survey. Also, because my wife and I frequently talk about “BWP syndrome”- attributing all evil to the Bad White Patriarchy . It’s like the old Nat X skit on SNL. Everything was “The Man’s” fault. “I think we all know who The Man is.”
I grew up with several women who struggled with their role in the church as such. It’s been interesting to watch them.

By: brayden

brayden — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Kristine –

I’d like to hear about #7. I’m currently writing a paper looking at state-level ratification of the ERA, so I have a strong interest in hearing more about it from a mormon perspective.

By: Alaska

Alaska — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I want to hear about 1, 3, 4, 6 & 8 :)

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Actually I’ve long thought (1) was very interesting. I thought those just prior to the manifesto were interesting as well. Unfortunately the diaries of my relatives who were polygamists at those times didn’t really say much about it.

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

#8 was really interesting–it was based on a really vaguely-worded e-mail survey, designed to elicit general responses about women’s experiences with and thoughts about priesthood structure and church experience. Janiece Johnson, who conducted it, was hoping to get at least 100 responses; didn’t plan to do any real analysis, just mining for themes and quotes. She ended up getting about 1000 responses in one week–people were just dying to talk about these issues. Maybe the most interesting parts of the responses were the forwarding messages–the survey had been sent by e-mail with a request to forward it to interested people. Conservative women sent forwarding messages that said “liberals are going to flood her with messages of discontent; please answer so that she gets a balanced response,” while more liberal women said “she’s working at BYU, the results will be skewed towards conservative responses…”

One of the questions asked the women to rate how “content” they were in the Church on a scale of 1-10; something like 98% of respondents rated themselves 7 or above. This result did not seem correlated to having or not having negative experiences with Priesthood leaders (which about half of women reported, if I’m remembering correctly).

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Clark, the paper on post-manifesto romance looked at stories from the “Young Women’s Journal” as well as from people’s diaries. The “Journal” stories continued to thematize marriage as a sacrificial endeavor for a long time after the Manifesto; it took until well into the 20s before conventional notions about romance really started to dominate. It also took longer than one might’ve expected for stories about polygamy to disappear. Interestingly (if not terribly surprisingly, I guess), romance dominates the personal accounts much earlier.

By: Matt Evans

Matt Evans — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I’m most interested in 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Have any of them been posted on the Internet?

By: Kristine

Kristine — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Matt, I doubt it, as most of them are to be published in other places–”Bodies, Babies, and Birth Control” was published in the most recent issue of Dialogue. I think #1 is going to JMH, and I don’t know about the rest.

BYU Studies press is doing a small printing of all of them, and I assume that will be available to the general public sometime in March.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Matt,

All of our papers from last Summer will be published this month by the Smith Institute and will be available for purchase mid-March.

By: Gordon Smith

Gordon Smith — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Kristine, Can you say more about the participants and how they were chosen? Also, whose idea was this? And what was the goal of the program? Will there be another program like it? Or is it one and out?