The rest of this post is not about the "ordained women" movement but about how I view gender roles and labels. There are some beautiful (I think) things written in here that may make you think twice about how society and the church view gender labels. I believe very strongly in the roles of male and female in the gospel and do not wish to change your beliefs about male and female (sex) roles in the church, but wish to open your eyes more about gender, which is very different than sex. So here it is–
I'm a big believer in not using gender stereotypes on people, especially children. I don't mean that I'm going to go dress my little boy up in a dress (although back in the day this wasn't uncommon) or I'm going to expect my little girl to play football with the others boys. What I mean is literally not using things like dresses and playing football to define my child as a girl or a boy. Will I be putting cute, frilly little dresses on my baby girl when I have one? Yes. But, I'll also be putting my cute little boy in cute little suits. I know it sounds contradicting but there is a huge difference between the two and it has to do with the mentality of it all. When I say I'm not going to use gender stereotypes with my child that means I'm not going to force my child to identify with the color pink as girly (incidentally pink was also historically a color baby boys wore) or playing with cars as boyish. Instead it will be "the color pink is a pretty color and you think it's a pretty color because it's your (and my) favorite color so we're going to go buy you cute pink clothes and awesome pink cars to match your favorite pink bed spread." And when they get tired of pink and their favorite color is black and they like to collect black rocks as their new thing, then that's what we'll do.
Growing up my younger sister and I were obsessed with animals, we would take an awesome plastic cheetah toy over a Barbie any day. We would pretend we were dogs and crawl around in the grass barking all day. My little brother owned a doll when he was a baby. He used to wrestle with the missionaries, he sucked at school. My older sister used to destroy doll hair, why? Because she was fascinated with learning how to cut hair (still is) and a lot of dolls suffered for it. She loved playing soccer. I once asked for rocks and sticks for Christmas because I had a wild and vivid imagination. I used to have the worst bowl hair cut ever and my favorite color was never pink. My little sister was the only one of us ever to own a mermaid Barbie doll with growing hair. Her best friends have always been boys.
Where are the four of us now? My older sister who loved to do hair still does her own and wears tons of make up, but doesn't like to be in the popular crowd and prefers to biking over soccer. Me, I'm as "girly" as you can get without doing my hair and make up. I even like the colors pink and purple and have many clothes in those colors. I'm still all natural, I like my hair long, I'm very creative and imaginative still, I love dinosaurs and when I "grow up" I want to be a paleontologist. My little sister still loves animals, she has 19 rats, 10 betas and other fish, a dog and a cat. She loves to read and is as creative, if not more than, as me. She doesn't relate to girls still, but she has several friends that are girls who think she is awesome. She doesn't like to be "girly" but she's seen more chick flicks than I have. My brother doesn't own his doll anymore, but he still wrestles– ergh– does tae kwon do. (second degree black belt). He's very handy with wood and a saw and is taking more AP classes at school than the other three of us combined.
So what's my point? Notice how many gender related things I listed that flip flopped from back then to now. Count the number of things that aren't gender related. If you're not gender labeling then everything above should be counted in that list. What did you get?
Now this doesn't mean that some gender labels– let's call them roles– aren't important to us. Roles such as mother and father. There are many responsibilities that secular and non secular go with these two roles. In the church we take this very seriously. But what happens when you take one of those out of the equation? Then mother has to take on the role as father. She has to provide for her children like a father and she still has to nurture them like a mother, and vise versa. When it comes to all those gender labels that we fight about in society, one's that should go this way or that way or if they have those then we should have them too, we forget that every single one of us can do those things if we have to. The only thing that cannot be shared or switched (without surgery, even then...) is everything reproductive. That physical attribute is set in stone the moment you are born (don't get into the whole "what if you have both?" argument because I'm not sure how that works.), everything else is purely based on the individual and the circumstances/environment that they grow up in.
I have this beautiful diptych painting that portrays the silhouettes of a man and a woman and written all over are some simple, straight forward thinking. I'll leave with you what they say:
I'm a big believer in not using gender stereotypes on people, especially children. I don't mean that I'm going to go dress my little boy up in a dress (although back in the day this wasn't uncommon) or I'm going to expect my little girl to play football with the others boys. What I mean is literally not using things like dresses and playing football to define my child as a girl or a boy. Will I be putting cute, frilly little dresses on my baby girl when I have one? Yes. But, I'll also be putting my cute little boy in cute little suits. I know it sounds contradicting but there is a huge difference between the two and it has to do with the mentality of it all. When I say I'm not going to use gender stereotypes with my child that means I'm not going to force my child to identify with the color pink as girly (incidentally pink was also historically a color baby boys wore) or playing with cars as boyish. Instead it will be "the color pink is a pretty color and you think it's a pretty color because it's your (and my) favorite color so we're going to go buy you cute pink clothes and awesome pink cars to match your favorite pink bed spread." And when they get tired of pink and their favorite color is black and they like to collect black rocks as their new thing, then that's what we'll do.
Growing up my younger sister and I were obsessed with animals, we would take an awesome plastic cheetah toy over a Barbie any day. We would pretend we were dogs and crawl around in the grass barking all day. My little brother owned a doll when he was a baby. He used to wrestle with the missionaries, he sucked at school. My older sister used to destroy doll hair, why? Because she was fascinated with learning how to cut hair (still is) and a lot of dolls suffered for it. She loved playing soccer. I once asked for rocks and sticks for Christmas because I had a wild and vivid imagination. I used to have the worst bowl hair cut ever and my favorite color was never pink. My little sister was the only one of us ever to own a mermaid Barbie doll with growing hair. Her best friends have always been boys.
Where are the four of us now? My older sister who loved to do hair still does her own and wears tons of make up, but doesn't like to be in the popular crowd and prefers to biking over soccer. Me, I'm as "girly" as you can get without doing my hair and make up. I even like the colors pink and purple and have many clothes in those colors. I'm still all natural, I like my hair long, I'm very creative and imaginative still, I love dinosaurs and when I "grow up" I want to be a paleontologist. My little sister still loves animals, she has 19 rats, 10 betas and other fish, a dog and a cat. She loves to read and is as creative, if not more than, as me. She doesn't relate to girls still, but she has several friends that are girls who think she is awesome. She doesn't like to be "girly" but she's seen more chick flicks than I have. My brother doesn't own his doll anymore, but he still wrestles– ergh– does tae kwon do. (second degree black belt). He's very handy with wood and a saw and is taking more AP classes at school than the other three of us combined.
So what's my point? Notice how many gender related things I listed that flip flopped from back then to now. Count the number of things that aren't gender related. If you're not gender labeling then everything above should be counted in that list. What did you get?
Now this doesn't mean that some gender labels– let's call them roles– aren't important to us. Roles such as mother and father. There are many responsibilities that secular and non secular go with these two roles. In the church we take this very seriously. But what happens when you take one of those out of the equation? Then mother has to take on the role as father. She has to provide for her children like a father and she still has to nurture them like a mother, and vise versa. When it comes to all those gender labels that we fight about in society, one's that should go this way or that way or if they have those then we should have them too, we forget that every single one of us can do those things if we have to. The only thing that cannot be shared or switched (without surgery, even then...) is everything reproductive. That physical attribute is set in stone the moment you are born (don't get into the whole "what if you have both?" argument because I'm not sure how that works.), everything else is purely based on the individual and the circumstances/environment that they grow up in.
I have this beautiful diptych painting that portrays the silhouettes of a man and a woman and written all over are some simple, straight forward thinking. I'll leave with you what they say:
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