{"id":47173,"date":"2024-05-17T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-05-17T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=47173"},"modified":"2025-05-28T20:25:33","modified_gmt":"2025-05-29T02:25:33","slug":"addressing-one-part-of-the-female-ordination-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2024\/05\/addressing-one-part-of-the-female-ordination-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Addressing One Part of the Female Ordination Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

And yes, if women ever receive the priesthood I’m sure it will also be given to sisters with extra fingers.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Female ordination is one of those issues that is built on so many premises that are themselves so potentially polemical that it would take a ten-part series to walk a true believer and a true non-believer through every point of fundamental disagreement about gender roles, gender essentialism, etc. <\/span>Consequently, I’m not going to try to digest the whole issue here. Rather, I want to address a particular line one sometimes hears in regards to this issue without claiming to holistically tackle the entirety of the female ordination debate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A common narrative goes something like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A woman, maybe the woman herself or the daughter of the person speaking, recognizes that, unlike in the Church, women in the workforce sometimes have ultimate, autonomous, organizational authority. [Although, sidebar, I think in practice this actually happens less outside the Church than such interlocutors imply, but that’s another issue]. \u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. She recognizes that there\u2019s no equivalent in the Church.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Therefore, because she wants to \u201cBE SOMEBODY\u201d and do something grand with her life, she\u2019s going to leave the Mormon space where there are limits to her organizational power by dint of her chromosomes.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Often this argument then goes into the old motherhood-versus-careerism, whether women can in fact have it all, whether we truly value motherhood, etc. but these are third rails I\u2019m not touching here. <\/span>Rather, I just want to point out that the implied value judgment in number 3 about what makes life worthwhile is\u00a0 incredibly demeaning to the 99% of guys who also, according to this scheme, aren’t anything.\u00a0<\/span>Yes, women can’t be apostles\u2013and neither can 99.999% of men and, neither would 99.999% of women if they were given the priesthood.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Maybe there are other problems with this in terms of representation\u2013again, I’m not addressing the entirety of the female ordination issue, I’m simply pointing out that any rhetoric arguing in favor of female ordination needs to be cautious about inadvertently connecting leadership positions to substantive meaning in such a way that it not-so-subtly disparages the vast majority of men who do not in fact reach leadership positions. (And yes, I’m aware that we have a ways to go with this socioculturally in the Church in terms of connecting men\u2019s priesthood leadership positions to personal prestige in the Church). I am valuable and worthwhile because I am a member of a God-species with eternal potential, not because of any temporary leadership position I may have held, and I think the implications of this really needs to settle deep into our bones.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    I said I wouldn’t try to address the female ordination issue in one bite, but I will take one more step back to address the connection between leadership and meaning that’s often implied in the ordination discussion. In my professional career I’ve had the privilege of directly reporting to extremely powerful and accomplished women (and men). I respect their skills and leadership and I have enjoyed my time with them, but it’s not like I go home and have a moment of silence in honor of their acumen, prestige, and worldly glory. That’s a category error. They have their reward, and I’m sure enjoy their nice apartments in DC or mansions in wherever, but at the end of the day they too will eventually retire, spend more time with their hobbies and\/or family, and will be replaced by other accomplished people, and on and on until we\u2019re all Ozymandian maggot feces. Much of the rhetoric surrounding female ordination ties ultimate, transcendent meaning to authority positions in a way that is not only a theologically and logically iffy, but also downright demeaning and patronizing to people who never achieve such positions, whether they are men or women.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    And yes, if women ever receive the priesthood I’m sure it will also be given to sisters with extra fingers.\u00a0 Female ordination is one of those issues that is built on so many premises that are themselves so potentially polemical that it would take a ten-part series to walk a true believer and a true non-believer through every point of fundamental disagreement about gender roles, gender essentialism, etc. Consequently, I’m not going to try to digest the whole issue here. Rather, I want to address a particular line one sometimes hears in regards to this issue without claiming to holistically tackle the entirety of the female ordination debate.\u00a0 A common narrative goes something like this: A woman, maybe the woman herself or the daughter of the person speaking, recognizes that, unlike in the Church, women in the workforce sometimes have ultimate, autonomous, organizational authority. [Although, sidebar, I think in practice this actually happens less outside the Church than such interlocutors imply, but that’s another issue]. \u00a0 She recognizes that there\u2019s no equivalent in the Church.\u00a0 Therefore, because she wants to \u201cBE SOMEBODY\u201d and do something grand with her life, she\u2019s going to leave the Mormon space where there are limits […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2970],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-leadership-and-policies"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/DALL\u00b7E-2024-05-14-22.13.59-An-older-woman-in-modern-business-casual-clothes-standing-behind-a-younger-woman-who-is-sitting-in-a-chair-with-her-eyes-closed.-The-older-woman-is-pl.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47173"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50250,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47173\/revisions\/50250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}