Objectifying people: the Mormon paradox

[Guest]

Good morning fabulous people!

The other day, I was joking around with friends about conversion to the Mormon Church. One of my friends said in jest, how she is going to become a Mormon. I will use the name "Jane" to refer to this particular friend. Thinking it would be a witty thing, I replied, "I call I get to be the one who confirms Jane." Jane replied, "No way." I think there might have been some disgust in those words. No disgust in the idea of becoming Mormon, but rather disgust in how she was being treated.

Ever since that conversation, I have been bothered by my own comment. Here I am, a person holding the office of Elder in my crown or mantle or whatever the hell you want to call it. I have a gift from the most powerful being in the Universe. It is an authoritative tool I can use to cause great magic to take place. One of the things I can do is bestow a heavenly ordinance on a fellow mortal. I get to take this mortal, put my grubby hands on her head, and say magic words to put a spell on her. We get to transform her! We clammor to do it because it is the epitome of our religion: to save souls. To sound charitable, we call it, "Bring children of God closer to Christ."

Behold, the objectified human beings of Mormonism!

At the same time, LDS leaders are scurrying like bats in a darkened, dunged about cave, to prevent their followers from placing their females in fashionable clothing. The fear is that we objectify our people. We make them little "things" that we play with. They become dolls in our dollhouse and we are the children with coffee cake crumbs on our faces and smeared jelly our fingers. We brush their hair and make them kiss Ken and look for more bathing suits to don them in.

Behold, the clothes we wear are objectifying our people!

How dare we take something powerful and use it at the expense of other people. How dare we.

Have a wonderful day!

Zee.

[_stemelbow]

he fear is that we objectify our people.

not really. The fear is that we squash desires to be chaste.

[_just me]

You have a wonderful day, too, zee. And the LDS church absolutely does objectify people. I guess it is only right to do it their way, though. *shrugs*

Enjoyable post.

[_Runtu]

Michael Quinn did a great piece on the result of objectifying:

http://mormonstories.org/baseballbaptisms.html

I know in my mission, for many missionaries, converts were numbers, things to tally up and report at the end of each month, not people. The Bible says, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." It's ironic that as a people we (and I include myself) focus so much on what a person looks like, how they dress, and how much they conform to the norm.

[_zeezrom]

Runtu,

Fascinating paper by Quinn. Thank you!