What do LDS men think of non-virginal women?

[_The Nehor]

I think both genders were told to set limits. I was.

On a side-note I've found that when dating I usually have to stop the girl as opposed to vice-versa. I prefer to think that this proves only that women desperately want me but that MIGHT just be my ego talking.

Or maybe you're particularly devout. (Or both!)

As crazy as this would sound from the traditional double-standard perspective, I purposely selected dating partners I thought wouldn't go beyond strict LDS standards. I wanted someone as devout and chaste as I was.

Don

Actually I don't think I was devout.....about that at least. That wonderful male LDS dichotomy. Want the chaste daughter of Zion and the wild whore of Babylon. Hence why I want either an angel disguised as a devil or a devil disguised as an angel.

[_Moniker]

Or maybe you're particularly devout. (Or both!)

As crazy as this would sound from the traditional double-standard perspective, I purposely selected dating partners I thought wouldn't go beyond strict LDS standards. I wanted someone as devout and chaste as I was.

Don

Hahahaaa!!!

Actually that sort of goes right along with what was said in the thread. Did you read it? What do LDS men think of women that are not chaste? I know I don't make as many "smart" posts as others that like to do double entendres (I'll work on that!), but could you reply to the op? Thanks!

[_Blixa]

Hey Beastie,

I don't doubt that the anti-masturbation theme is harped on more strongly for girls than for boys. I've never seen a pamphlet "For Young Women Only" about their "little factory" or equivalent....

As to young women being told they needed to be the ones to set the limits, this is reported from the perspective of having been in the young women's classes. How do you know the same burden wasn't placed on the young men? It was--at least when I was in young men's. In fact, it was part of the curriculum--straight from the manual. There's a particular quote that was frequently used to drive this home--I think from Spencer W. Kimball. It cites the popular belief that young women should set the standards while the boys should just take them for as far as they'll go, and then says that a young man who does this is unworthy--that it's his duty to set limits, and that if he doesn't, (and here it's chauvinistically framed) he isn't honoring his priesthood.

I suppose that the reference to the double standard shows that the standard was not alien within LDS culture. But I can tell you that I grew up believing that I was held to the same standards, and just as accountable for hewing to them, as the young women. The only way I knew there was a traditional double standard was by reading--I didn't experience it. I would have expected to be (at least) as socially and ecclesiastically punished for premarital sex as an LDS girl would have been.

Whatever the vices of the LDS system, I don't think the promotion of a double standard of sexual behavior is one of them.

Don

True, I was only ever in young women's classes, but I did talk to a lot of the young men about their experiences. Perhaps it is a generational difference in our experiences? ; ) Either way, there is a different framing in the issues, as you note. If not completely replicative of larger cultural double standards, this seems to indicate a preservation of a double standard---which could hardly be otherwise given the notion of gender that all this is grounded in.

[_beastie]

I don't doubt that the anti-masturbation theme is harped on more strongly for girls than for boys. I've never seen a pamphlet "For Young Women Only" about their "little factory" or equivalent....

As to young women being told they needed to be the ones to set the limits, this is reported from the perspective of having been in the young women's classes. How do you know the same burden wasn't placed on the young men? It was--at least when I was in young men's. In fact, it was part of the curriculum--straight from the manual. There's a particular quote that was frequently used to drive this home--I think from Spencer W. Kimball. It cites the popular belief that young women should set the standards while the boys should just take them for as far as they'll go, and then says that a young man who does this is unworthy--that it's his duty to set limits, and that if he doesn't, (and here it's chauvinistically framed) he isn't honoring his priesthood.

I suppose that the reference to the double standard shows that the standard was not alien within LDS culture. But I can tell you that I grew up believing that I was held to the same standards, and just as accountable for hewing to them, as the young women. The only way I knew there was a traditional double standard was by reading--I didn't experience it. I would have expected to be (at least) as socially and ecclesiastically punished for premarital sex as an LDS girl would have been.

Whatever the vices of the LDS system, I don't think the promotion of a double standard of sexual behavior is one of them.

My boyfriend was the same way, he wouldn't date a girl he thought had lower standards than he did.

I do realize that young men are taught that they don't honor girls if they engage in sexual behavior with them. But what about the simple idea that young men have a stronger sex drive, while women are seemingly unsexed in LDS culture? Do you agree that underlying idea exists in LDS culture?

[_Blixa]

I think this is true but if with the Holy Ghost and them without you match A's intelligence....that means you're inferior all things being equal.

Apparently the HG was no where to be found when you composed this sentence.

How do you know this isn't my upped intelligence?

Perhaps then, Nehor you could lower yourself to translate your point to me in appropriately small words.

[_beastie]

And were young men given the impression that it may be up to the young man to put the brakes on the young woman?

[_The Nehor]

I think this is true but if with the Holy Ghost and them without you match A's intelligence....that means you're inferior all things being equal.

Apparently the HG was no where to be found when you composed this sentence.

How do you know this isn't my upped intelligence?

Perhaps then, Nehor you could lower yourself to translate your point to me in appropriately small words.

Sorry, I'm kinda out of it today. Trying an extended fast just to see what it's like. So far, very fun. I meant that if the Holy Ghost ups your intelligence and this makes you equal to someone else then they are technically smarter than you. If they had the Holy Ghost they'd blow you away. I was implying that I was a moron not that I was above your level of comprehension by the way. It wasn't a snub.

[Guest]

I don't like the way the church treats young women who are single and pregnant. More than one time I have seen the girl excommunicated and the guy is disfellowshiped. This seems so unfair. The church leadership must believe she seduced him. It's sick.

Two times? If you know of any, then you must not have known all the circumstances. I have never seen a young woman excommunicated for becomin pregnant while single. There are rare times when a person who has not been to the temple is excommunicated. I don't know of any at all.

The Church treats young single mothers extremely well. There are programs to help the yong woman through her preganncy and provide all kinds of social services to her.

This simply blows my mind: all the time I heard that these girls had to be rebaptized. This was western orange county california in the late 70's and early 80's. a friend of mine from high school got pregnant and I heard the institute teacher ask her a couple years later how her bapitism was. My sister, who was a few years younger than I had two or three friends that got pregnant and had to be rebaptized. The whole thing is that it's so screwed up since it has to do with the personality of the Stake President or the Bishop. There are those who are known to excommunicate where others, given the same set or circumstances, would disfellowship the person. But there is a huge (e)affect and difference between the two to the person it happens to. I use to work with two people who were LDS and dated: she became pregnant. She was excommunicated and he was disfellowshiped. He was also a screw off at work and she was the mature one.

[_Blixa]

Sorry, I'm kinda out of it today. Trying an extended fast just to see what it's like. So far, very fun. I meant that if the Holy Ghost ups your intelligence and this makes you equal to someone else then they are technically smarter than you. If they had the Holy Ghost they'd blow you away. I was implying that I was a moron not that I was above your level of comprehension by the way. It wasn't a snub.

Oh I didn't think it was, honestly. I was just baffled and couldn't figure out what your point was. The HG doesn't necessarily provide intellectualy trumping. Got it.

[_DonBradley]

I don't like the way the church treats young women who are single and pregnant. More than one time I have seen the girl excommunicated and the guy is disfellowshiped. This seems so unfair.

???

This is so opposite to what I've observed. I've more frequently seen the opposite--the guy excommunicated and the girl perhaps only put on probation--on the beliefs, first, that the initiative for such behavior must come from the man, and, second, that he holds the priesthood and is therefore more accountable. Such disproportionate discipline is particularly likely for male returned missionaries. When they get involved in sex outside marriage, it's generally with a girl who hasn't been on a mission, and therefore hasn't gone through the temple. The guy is considered more accountable because of the ordinances he's received and covenants he's made.

I've rarely seen or heard of a young woman or girl getting excommunicated for sex outside of marriage.

Unwed mothers do, however, face another kind of ecclesiastical pressure. The church began, several years ago, pushing quite hard to have them give their babies up for adoption through LDS Social Services. The rationale offered was that they'd done studies that showed dramatically better outcomes for babies put up for adoption than for those raised by single mothers. (This might well be so. It's no secret, at least in the data, that single motherhood multiplies one's chances of living in poverty.) However, another rationale suggests itself as well: the church wants to stigmatize what has traditionally been called illegitimacy and idealize the nuclear family. LDS family values are fundamentally nuclear family values. Acting to relocate children from unwed mothers into nuclear families reinforces, both practically and ideologically, that children are to be raised in nuclear families.

In the broader US culture, and particularly among African American women, it has been increasingly popular for women to consciously choose to have children with or without an actively involved father. This flouts the traditional ideal, and normalizes something advocates of the nuclear family don't want normalized. (Recall the furor during the 1992 presidential campaign when Murphy Brown chose to have a child outside of marriage: the issue wasn't one of non-marital sex--that had been there all along; it was of disassociating childbearing from the nuclear-family context.)

The extreme pressure placed on pregnant, unmarried women in the LDS church is part of the church's attempt to maintain its nuclear family ideals in the face of changing American values.

Don