LDSToronto wrote:MsJack wrote:"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they’re so frightfully clever. I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta, because I don’t work so hard." ~ From Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Most perfect quote ever for the whole, "Why would women ever want the priesthood, it's so hard and so nasty"
H.
PS. stealing it.
Glad you liked it.
I actually meant for it to denote that Mormon women typically express a disinterest in wanting the priesthood because they've been conditioned from childbirth to be satisfied with not having it, just as the Betas in Huxley's Brave New World were conditioned to be happy with a lower social standing than the Alphas. They are both told that the higher class (men/Alphas) has an awful lot of hard work to do, so they're actually lucky to not be members of the higher class.
zeezrom ~ I think that your proposal was an interesting one. What if some LDS men did go "rogue" and ordain some women? Would the church try to claim that the ordination didn't take because it had not been authorized higher up? Or would it acknowledge that the women were technically priesthood-holders now, but instruct them not to use it?
In Women & Authority: Re-emerging Mormon Feminism, Maxine Hanks has an account of a woman who was initially born with exterior, non-functioning "guy parts." She was raised as a man, ordained to the priesthood, served a mission and married in the temple before anyone realized she was really a woman with fully functioning female organs under the non-functioning male one:
W&A, p. 325-326 wrote:Gender-based distinctions may feel unnatural and wrong to many women. Some women feel they possess both masculine and feminine qualities; some have androgynous traits. The arbitrariness of gender-based privilege in exercising priesthood is illustrated in one example from the late 1980s. A former missionary elder underwent medical tests and was discovered to possess the complete reproductive and sexual organs of a female beneath a superficial, non-functional male organ. She had surgery to restore femaleness. Her temple marriage was annulled. It was decided that her priesthood would not be revoked, but she was told she could not exercise it. It was also decided that the priesthood ordinances she performed on her mission, including several baptisms, confirmations, and blessings, would stand as valid ordinances. When she was presumed to be male, she was allowed to exercise priesthood. People accepted her authority, felt the spirit of God, and considered her administration of saving ordinances to be valid. Yet she had the reproductive organs of a woman, not a man.
If this is true, then it isn't that women cannot hold the priesthood, like there's something about being female that repels priesthood. It's simply that they do not. So what would stop priesthood from being transferred if a man did ordain his daughter, or if local leaders collectively ordained some women?
