I Am Not a Boy.

I am not a boy.

I know you've probably realized that by now. I am definitely a girl. I don't leave the house unless I've at least employed the use of my eyebrow pencil. I enjoy shopping for clothes, though that doesn't happen very often. I read and read and read and read (not sure if that's considered a girl characteristic any more than a personality trait). Not gonna lie, I still once and a while got out my Barbies when I was 13.

I believe I have much to contribute to society. I have the potential to start college as a sophomore. I'm glad that I have been blessed with the opportunity to attend college, when I know a lot of other people don't. I plan on going to college, getting my bachelor's, and maybe getting my master's. I don't want anyone to prevent me from following my dream or telling me how to live my life. But this is the pressure I feel, that I have to be wife and a mother because I am female. I have to be beautiful and pretty and confident.

I am still not a boy.

Ability and knowledge are not gender-inclusive. It doesn't matter if you have a Y chromosome or another X one. You can be who you want to be. You may be a band nerd, a computer geek, a football player, a ballerina. Your genetic profile doesn't change your hopes and dreams and abilities. YOU are what changes your hopes and dreams and abilities. And sadly, society and culture do too.

Have you ever seen a boy in ballet? You may have, you may have not. It's not as common, since ballet is almost universally considered a "girl" activity. Have you ever seen a girl playing football? I have. She was my best friend. It's not as common, since football is also almost universally considered a "boy" activity. Most of the time you just don't see a girl try out for your local high school's varsity football team.

My friend was strong-willed and filled with vitality. Her step was always filled with vibrancy and energy.. She was what brought life into my surroundings. She was the kind of person who would make you not just feel like you were alive, but make you feel like you were actually living. Almost every day during recess in 5th and 6th grades, she would be out playing football with the boys. She would always joke around with them at school and act so comfortable around them. And while I was playing on the swings with my other friends, or doing whatever most of the girls did, she would always happen to be out in the field playing football with the boys.

My friend was not a boy, either.

One time I confronted her about it. I was mad that she spent so much time playing football and never wanted to play with me and all of our other friends at recess. She replied that she loved playing it, and that she was sure that I could find more people to play with my group of friends, but she wouldn't stop. I eventually learned to respect her choice, and I always ended up laughing at the funny exchanges she would have with the boys during class. It was almost as if they were all her brothers.

I remember that at one point, the boys started wondering why she was playing football with them, and that some of them didn't like that very much. When they told her that she shouldn't be playing anymore, my friend wasted no time in taking action. She started a petition that stated that it was perfectly fine for girls to play football. She had a bunch of people sign it, including neighbors, friends at school, and I think even the principal. Eventually, the guys didn't really care if she played football with them or not, and the petition didn't matter anymore. But she, even in grade school, knew that if someone judged her because she was waltzing across cultural divides that were meant to separate the genders, that was their problem.

I am not friends with this person anymore. Her strong-willed personality and my stubborn personality made us love and gravitate towards each other during the end of grade school, but caused some differences that I wish could have been resolved. Still, I see her in the halls at school almost every day and sometimes wonder, "Does she still have that same outlook on life? Does she still believe that she should be free to do what feels best for her, whether it's against cultural norms or whether the unwritten social restrictions will try to crush her considered a 'boy' thing or a 'girl' thing?" I don't know, and I may never know. But her example has set the stage for me in my life.

I grew up in a typical Mormon family. Stay at home mom, dad that worked from 8-5. Girls grew up and became sewing, cooking, loving mothers while boys became the head of the home, the bread-winner. I remember my brother's favorite color being red up until he started going to first grade, where he learned that red was a girl color, and that his favorite color should be blue or green since he was a boy. I remember being that evil older sister that could coerce her little brother into doing almost anything, including suggesting he play "Superman" at the park in his underwear (don't EVER ask Kevin about it unless you want another homicide in the ranks), or most importantly getting him to dress like a girl. We have pictures of it, and my mom and I sometimes joke that we could use it as blackmail if we really wanted to.

But is that so bad? Little children are born with a clean slate that eventually ends up getting filled and filled as they get older and as time goes by with rules and most importantly, ideas and expectations. The little girl realizes that her mother dresses her in pinks and purples a lot (with a few butterflies and flowers thrown in) and gets her hair done in cute little braids. She has dolls and stuffed animals and Barbies galore, but then turns around to find her little brother playing with dinosaurs and cars. Why doesn't she have the dinosaurs and cars? Why do dinosaurs and cars have to be boy toys? Why doesn't her brother ever get Barbies for his birthday? Things like these slowly start forming in a child's mind, and they learn. Children go to school and their eyes are opened to the true social norms of the world.

The moment a baby is born and pronounced a boy or a girl, its whole life is laid out before him/her. We immediately start assigning pink and blue bows, stating how beautiful your baby girl looks or what a handsome little guy your boy's going to turn out to be. Little baseball or foot ball shirts are collected and Daddy's Little Princess shirts flow freely It is normal.

Ideas are impressed on them that the boys in the next grade up play sports like football and baseball, and that those older girls on the swings at the playground take gymnastics or piano lessons. Everyone wants to belong and fit in, so we gently and effortlessly try to conform to our gender's standards.

Well, at least, most of us. Then there are the few exceptions.

In 7th grade band, no boys played the flute. It was a girl instrument. We were all the epitome of femininity. Then, when we arrived in high school we realized that one of the senior boys played the flute in band, and was pretty dang good at it. He was the son of our town's counseling/therapy center founder, so we knew that with a guy like that as his dad, he was probably well-adjusted, even if a little bit weird for playing the flute. He was extremely nice to everyone, and the point is, we respected him, just like we respected my friend who played football every day and hated wearing skirts for being herself.

And then the struggle continues. Us girls try to fit into the standards that we need to be rail thin, or at least have airbrush-sculpted abs and a push-up bra that advertises our... you get the picture. With highlighted hair flat-ironed to a 375 degree crisp, the latest skinny jeans or maxi dress or lace top, Victoria's Not-So-Secret bra and underwear and eyelashes coated over and over again with black sludge, we need to look pretty. Beautiful. Sexy. Feminine.

The sporty, athletic girls, gum chewing in mouth, have their straightened and styled hair in a ponytail or artistically messy bun, iPhone in hand, wearing a see-through tee over a tank top, yoga pants that show off their long shaped and shaved legs, and bright-colored Nikes. The punk or fashion statement girls wear side-parted, hairspray-poufed/curled hair, ripped shirt with usually not more than a bra under it, bright or dark skinny jeans and any kind of shoes you can imagine.

The guys wear a cleverly-conceived Nike or Under Armour shirt, athletic shorts or dark-wash jeans, Nikes within the color range of neon yellow, neon orange, blue, or black, and gel/mousse styled into their hair. They need to not only look or act cool, they need to be cool. Sexy. Suave. They need to feel it.

We have to be perfect. We have to be liked. We have to be feared, for being feared is so much better than to be afraid. We have to try and claw our way to the top to prevent from being stepped on in the bottom. We have to stab others in the back and put them down to drive the incessant insecurity back down into its gilded, shiny box, always threatening to emerge.

We are Prozac Nation, the laser-brightened teeth smiling and smiling and smiling, clear blue eyes wide and open and strained and occasionally red from the tears that illegally surface.

We are America's teenagers, suffering from the gender roles and expectations that are pushed on us that try and make us seem perfect. We are victims of our own X or Y chromosomes.

Eventually, every once and a while, someone turns their head around slowly, in the hallway at school, at church, at work, on the street. They look around as if they have been woken up for the first time, and finally realize what they are ultimately seeing beyond the superficiality.

They see human beings, eyes clear and knowing or clouded and confused, walking away, trying hurriedly to get to their destinations. They see a person with feelings, with a heart, with a moral compass that sometimes doesn't match up with the brain. They see a person whose dreams sometimes don't coincide with reality. They see a person who just wants to be loved, to be liked, who is finally just so tired of being alone.

They reach out and see past the bright appearel or masculine look, the smile or the frown, and see what that person truly is.

Everything.

Women of The Past, Our Heavenly Mother, and Their Examples Today

**If you want to read one of my faaaaavorite posts, "Cognitive Dissonance, Part I (and Les Misérables!)"
and haven't yet, here's the link! :)

So lately I've been wondering about the teachings of the early days of the church, and some of the more prominent female figures from then. I've always been hearing the rumor that women back in the early days of the church had the authority for the laying on of hands, Eliza R. Snow was a feminist, our Heavenly Mother is a taboo topic. Then comes the thought flashing in my head: Research Time!

I have always loved the example of Eliza R. Snow. That amazing lady has always been portrayed to me as a strong, opinionated, "I am not going to take any crap from anybody" kind of person. Plus, she's the author of the classic Mormon hymn, page 292, "O My Father". She was the second General Relief Society President until her death in 1887¹. She was a prominent poet, and touched many with her written works.

She was one of the first to imply that we have a Heavenly Mother, in the above-mentioned "O My Father":

I had learned to call thee Father, Through thy Spirit from on high,

But until the key of knowledge Was restored, I knew not why.

In the heavens are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare!

Truth is reason, truth eternal Tells me I've a mother there.

When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by, 

Father, Mother, may I meet you, In your royal courts on high?

Then, at length, when I've completed All you sent me forth to do,

With your mutual approbation, Let me come and dwell with you.

 Ever since I was a child I've paid attention to that one line... "Truth is reason, truth eternal/Tells me I've a mother there."

I've always been fascinated with the mysterious Heavenly Mother. But what has recently got me is the part about truth. Truth is mentioned twice, and in direct relation to the existence of our dear loving Mother.

If truth is reason and if truth is eternal, why is it that the doctrine of our Heavenly Mother considered taboo, or frowned upon because of cultural perception?

 The church is mostly silent on the topic. Official mention of our Heavenly Mother from the church is constricted to just a statement on evolution in 1909: "All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity"² and, more recently, The Family: A Proclamation to the World where a another statement infers the existence of a Heavenly Mother: "Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents..."³

I found a fun little tidbit from Orson Pratt, an early LDS apostle, that, truthfully, makes me a little upset. In his book The Seer (c. 1853). He has a paragraph that mentions our Heavenly Mother:

"As God the Father begat the fleshly body of Jesus, so He, before the world began, begat his spirit. As the body required an earthly Mother, so his spirit required a heavenly Mother. As God associated in the capacity of a husband with the earthly mother, so likewise he associated in the same capacity with the heavenly one; earthly things being in the likeness of heavenly things [...] But if we have a heavenly Mother as well as a heavenly Father, is it not right that we should worship the Mother of our spirits, as well as the Father? No; for the Father of our spirits is at the head of His household, and His wives and children are required to yield the most perfect obedience to their great Head. It is lawful for the children to worship the King of heaven, but not the "Queen of heaven." The children of Israel were severely reproved for making offerings to the "Queen of heaven." Although she is highly exalted and honored as the beloved bride of the great King, yet the children, so far as we are informed, have never been commanded to pray to her or worship her."⁴

I'm not sure where to start off on this, but here we go. I want to know where it is mentioned in the Bible of the Israelites worshiping the "Queen of heaven".Okay, found it. Jeremiah 7:18-19 and Jeremiah 44:17-20

 18 The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to ^athe queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.

 19 Do they provoke me to anger? saith the Lord: do they not provoke themselves ^ato the confusion of their own faces?

and

17 But we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our ^aown mouth, to burn incense unto ^bthe queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of ^cvictuals, and were well, and saw no evil.

 18 But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have ^awanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.

 19 And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men?

The funny thing is, when I click on the footnote where it says "the queen of heaven", it is supposedly referring to the fertility goddess, such as the Babylonian Ishtar.

I believe there is a difference between worshiping a false, polytheistic God than our Heavenly Mother.... 

My next problem: "[...] the Father of our spirits is at the head of His household, and His wives and children are required to yield the most perfect obedience to their great Head."

 I feel as if I'm kind of getting into a delicate situation here. I absolutely am not implying that we should not have obedience toward God, but the way Mr. Pratt says makes it seem as if She is considered less than equal to our Heavenly Father.

Let's quote The Family: A Proclamation to the World again. "[...] fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners." I have heard countless times from the General Authorities that men and women are equal "but different". This is a tricky spot. Theoretically, do God and our Heavenly Mother "help one another as equal partners"?

In all actuality, my opinion doesn't really matter, because dear ole' Orson's "doctrinal declarations" were condemned by the church. "The Seer [and other writings by Pratt] contain doctrines which we cannot sanction, and which we have felt impressed to disown, so that the Saints who now live, and who may live hereafter, may not be misled by our silence, or be left to misinterpret it. Where these objectionable works, or parts of works, are bound in volumes, or otherwise, they should be cut out and destroyed." Ouch.

You may think that this was off-topic, but if just one man had a mindset like this, surely there were many more who did also? I realize that there are some major differences in the church now from the church in the mid-1800s (for example, polygamy), but the attitude for some things hasn't seemed to change much.

So, pray tell, why is the church silent? There's always been the controversy of the fact that she is considered so sacred that we shouldn't talk about her, because we don't want to disrespect her. I personally don't think that's a very good reason. Okay, that came out wrong. I appreciate the fact that we don't want to disrespect our loving Heavenly Mother, but we know about and talk about the most powerful, almighty being in the known universe. Sadly, He is disrespected all the time, at any given second of the day. But that doesn't prevent us from talking about Him and learning spiritually from the scriptures concerning him.

So, I have a coupla' theories.

1) The LDS church has established that our church already has some pretty different views about God and the Godhead than your common neighborhood Christian church down the street. Maybe the formal establishment of our Heavenly Mother would make the LDS church seem to lean to more polytheistic views? Maybe it's better to lay low and be neutral than advertise such beliefs to the world?

2) Some of the sisters "back in the day" were what could definitely be considered feminists. Besides Eliza R. Snow, Emmeline B. Wells, and Bathsheba W. Smith probably could be considered "Mormon Feminists" of their time, and they had some strong beliefs. Does the church think that by indoctrinating our Heavenly Mother's existence, that would maybe rile up more of the women and encourage them with their "unrealistic" views on Mormon feminism, priesthood, and equality? (Have a look at a recent talk by M. Russel Ballard, "Let Us Think Straight" from BYU Education Week. I'm definitely going to write something about that later.)

When it comes to feminine equality, I think that Brigham Young, second president of the church, was ahead of his time. He once said (emphasis added):

"As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief Societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large."⁵

Also, quoting from Wikipedia: The Woman's Exponent publication (the R.S. official newspaper) published a 1920 editorial in favor of "Equal rights before the law, equal pay for equal work, equal political rights", stating that a women's place is not just "in the nursery" but "in the library, the laboratory, the observatory."⁶

Eliza R. Snow threw in her two cents also by saying the following quote:

"Is it necessary for sisters to be set apart to officiate in the sacred ordinances of washing, anointing, and laying on of hands in administering to the sick? It certainly is not. Any and all sisters who honor their holy endowments, not only have right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon to administer to our sisters in these ordinances, which God has graciously committed to His daughters as well as to His sons; and we testify that when administered and received in faith and humility they are accompanied with almighty power."

After looking Eliza R. Snow up on Wikipedia, I found a link to one of her poems that I found to be quite touching. Here are a few stanzas (emphasis added):⁷

Though deepening trials throng your way,
Press on, press on, ye Saints of God!
Ere long the resurrection day
Will spread its light and truth abroad. 

Lift up your hearts in praise to God;
Let your rejoicings never cease;
Though tribulations rage abroad,
Christ says, "In me ye shall have peace."  

What though our rights have been assailed?
What though by foes we've been despoiled?
Jehovah's promise has not failed;
Jehovah's purpose is not foiled. 

Though Satan rage, 'tis all in vain;
The words the ancient Prophet spoke,
Sure as the throne of God remain;
Nor man nor devils can revoke. 

My last quote is perhaps my most favorite that I've found while researching this post. Emmeline B. Wells' words will continue to strongly echo in my mind. She put perfectly the struggle for self between the women of the church and the church's leaders. The same was true back then in the 1800s and it is still true today:

"Let woman speak for herself; she has the right of freedom of speech. Women are too slow in moving forward, afraid of criticism, of being called unwomanly, of being thought masculine. What of it? If men are so much superior to women, the nearer we come up to the manly standard the higher we elevate ourselves."

 Truth is always what we seem to seek for. We seek for truth in our everyday lives, in our work, in our schooling, and in our relationships with others. You know that old saying, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free"? Eliza R. Snow had that down perfectly. She knew that we probably wouldn't gain all of the answers we wanted in this lifetime, but there is surely another to come." In her poem, she says "Ere long the resurrection day, Will spread its light and truth abroad." And again, the line from "O My Father: "Truth is reason, truth eternal, tells me I've a mother there."

There is no end to virtue;

There is no end to might;

There is no end to wisdom;

There is no end to light.

There is no end to union;

There is no end to youth;

There is no end to priesthood;

There is no end to truth.

 -Hymn 284, "If You Could Hie To Kolob" by William W. Phelps

Also, here is a GREAT piano arrangement of "O My Father" that I found on YouTube⁸  by Lacie Kirk... I really wanna learn it now :)

Sources:

1. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia,"Eliza R. Snow" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliza_R._Snow)
2. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "The Origin of Man" (http://www.lds.org/ensign/2002/02/the-origin-of-man)
3. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" (https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation)
4.  Brigham Young University Mormon Publications: 19th and 20th Centuries, The Seer by Orson Pratt (http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/NCMP1820-1846/id/18108)
5. Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young, LDS Church, 1997, p. 135
6. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia, "Women and Mormonism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_Mormonism)
7. Brigham Young University Mormon Literature Website, "Be Not Discouraged ('Though Deepening Trials')" (http://mldb.byu.edu/ersnow3.htm)
8. YouTube, "O, My Father" - by Lacie Kirk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibfgoHw0sXA, website: http://www.laciekirk.com/#!music/cg9c)


 Btw, you may not consider Wikipedia a source, but I do ;)