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Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 10:50 pm
by _CaliforniaKid
It's interesting that at a conference about Mormonism and pluralism/diversity, 27 of the presenters are men and only 7 are women.
Mormonism's funny ideas about gender may have something to do with this, but it's also true that philosophy and theology are historically male disciplines. Thus SMPT is a boy's club almost by definition.
Maybe next year the conference's theme should be gender-related and advertised in some female venues to help bring some balance to the Society. Just a suggestion.
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 11:20 pm
by _Gadianton
Indeed it is a boy's club, CK.
I'm happy to see that your paper got accepted and that DCP finally got accepted too. See you guys there!
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 1:03 am
by _moksha
If more men are versed in SMTP that is because more men have gotten involved in IT.
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 1:34 am
by _Doctor Scratch
Congrats, CK!
Of all the presentations, I think that DCP's upcoming smear piece on "Interfaith Dialogue" looks the most provocative. Oddly, they omitted his abstract from the webpage:
http://www.smpt.org/conferences_2009.htmlI wonder why?
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 8:22 am
by _ludwigm
7/27 is more than 25%. It is a gigantic rate if You compare it to the rate of women in the list of General Authorities.
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 9:31 am
by _aussieguy55
CK its interesting your should mention the gender imbalance. Look at the Religion Education faculty of BYU and there are only a couple of women. In many of the theological schools and Religion faculties of many colleges there are a large number of women Prof, and even among those are many who teach and study in areas that require some serious language study. Do you this the Priesthood thing might have something to do with it? Or perhaps because marriage and children are promoted so much that many LDS women do not have the opportunity to do those kind of studies?
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 3:08 pm
by _EAllusion
Heh. How is this not a parody?
Joseph Spencer - Omnipotent Weakness: Toward a Mormon Doctrine of God's Omnipotence
John D. Caputo has, in The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event, argued that the traditional distinction between God as ontologically existent and God as ontologically non-existent should be deconstructed, making way for a third possibility—one might worship God as ontologically deferred. In the end, however, such a move can be revealed to be an essential politicization of God: the ontologically deferred God is the evental God of politics. Alain Badiou and Jean-Luc Marion provide a possible framework for making sense of what is ultimately at stake in Caputo's politicization of God, opening the possibility of there being a fourth category for God's essence. If orthodoxy regards God as ontologically strong (omnipotent), the critical tradition regards God as aesthetically weak (impotent), and the Derridean movement regards God as politically weak (potently impotent), Mormonism might be said to regard God as amorously weak, such that omnipotence is redefined as all-loving-ness. This, in the end, cannot be separated, however, from the Mormon idea that God is a gendered person.
Re: Gender imbalance at SMPT
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:37 pm
by _Gadianton
Good catch EA. the "postmodern turn" in LDS theology on steroids. Caputo is out of control to begin with.
This takes the horse=tapir kind of argument to a whole new level.