[image from https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/]
You know what white flight is, right? If there’s a neighborhood in which most of the people are Caucasian, and then people of color start moving in, eventually the white people start moving out. They’re replaced by people of color, and so the number of white people drops lower and lower. White flight. Once there is a certain threshold of people of color, white people remove themselves.
Male flight is also a thing. When women join a profession or activity, once it’s evenly male-female, and then tips a bit towards women, the men leave.
From Why aren’t we talking about the real reason male college enrollment is dropping?
Take veterinary school for example:
In 1969 almost all veterinary students were male at 89%.
By 1987, male enrollment was equal to female at 50%.
By 2009, male enrollment in veterinary schools had plummeted to 22.4%
A sociologist studying gender in veterinary schools, Dr. Anne Lincoln says that in an attempt to describe this drastic drop in male enrollment, many keep pointing to financial reasons like the debt-to-income ratio or the high cost of schooling.
But Lincoln’s research found that “men and women are equally affected by tuition and salaries.”
Her research shows that the reason fewer men are enrolling in veterinary school boils down to one factor: the number of women in the classroom.
“There was really only one variable where I found an effect, and that was the proportion of women already enrolled in vet med schools… So a young male student says he’s going to visit a school and when he sees a classroom with a lot of women he changes his choice of graduate school. That’s what the findings indicate…. what’s really driving feminization of the field is ‘preemptive flight’—men not applying because of women’s increasing enrollment.” – Dr. Anne Lincoln
ENDQUOTE
That was it; that was the finding. If women come to dominate a group, men leave. The author evaluated many professions that have switched from male-dominated to female-dominated, such as teaching, interior design, nursing, biology majors. Once an area is about 60% female, the men start actively avoiding and leaving the group. Male flight.
It’s a form of misogyny. If women are a majority, then the activity is devalued. For some men, the definition of ‘masculinity’ is to avoid anything that is perceived as female. Not all men think this way, of course. But enough do that, once a profession comes to be dominated by women, men actively avoid it, either consciously or unconsciously.
So. If priesthood leaders invited women into full equality, perhaps we would see male flight from Church leadership and from the Church in general. If callings were gender neutral, how long would it take before women became a majority of ward leadership? A combination of women being excited to do callings that men have burned out on, together with the general rule that most wards have more active women than men, could result in a 60/40 female majority in leadership. Within a generation or two, we would have ten female apostles and a couple of token men. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but I’m sure the current crop of Church leaders would be horrified at the thought.
- What do you think of this researcher’s conclusion? Do men tend to leave a space once there are an equal or greater number of women?
- Why do women want to be included in traditionally male spaces, but men don’t typically fight to be included in traditionally female spaces?
- I’m a lawyer. Women had to fight hard to gain the right to go to law school and work as lawyers. Men have not fought for the right to be a paralegal. I’ve met one male paralegal in my entire career. The support staff is always almost entirely female.
- Do you have any personal experience on this topic, either as a man in traditionally women’s spaces or a woman in traditionally male spaces?
- How could we reduce misogyny so that women’s work and participation is not an automatic turn-off for male participation? How do we achieve equality rather than succumb to the idea that making women equal means disadvantaging men?
Wheat & Tares 
“We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
And Janey…..you have so very many grievances…..
Grizzer,
I only wish you could discern that C.S. Lewis’ statement could easily support Janey’s opinion regarding male flight and even point a finger at your own motivations for commenting.
Two law firms ago we had two paralegals, both were male. At the next we had one that sticks out.
In nursing, men are moving into the field again, following the higher paying specialties.
That said, I think you are making excellent points.
I think men know deep in their hearts that males are not the moving force of any animal kingdom. Sure, they might be a leader with a harem, but most males are left on the side looking in. It’s worse in the insect world. Just look at bees with a queen, female workers, and a few drones doing basically nothing but making sure eggs are fertilized. Humans like to think they are different, but if you look at it honestly, it’s still the rich and powerful that get the girl, and the average guy/girl is judged and sanctioned if they step outside the norms. So women won’t get the priesthood because women are both the goal and the threat.
Grizzer – IMO your comment should be deleted, as it wholly fails to address the content of Janey’s post and is simply a personal attack.
Janey, this is a fascinating and troubling phenomenon, and has been discussed on and off in various circles for some time now. Interestingly, even Todd Christofferson addressed it in a GC talk in October 2012. He framed the issue in the opening of his talk:
“Brethren, much has been said and written in recent years about the challenges of men and boys. A sampling of book titles, for example, includes Why There Are No Good Men Left, The Demise of Guys, The End of Men, Why Boys Fail, and Manning Up. Interestingly, most of these seem to have been written by women. In any case, a common thread running through these analyses is that in many societies today men and boys get conflicting and demeaning signals about their roles and value in society.”
His remedy to the issue is summed up in the title of that talk: “Brethren, We Have Work to Do.” The remainder of the talk was basically, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make something of yourselves, don’t be lazy. Of course he never considered the possibility that the underlying problem is not that men are being lazy but that they suffer from implicit bias, or misogyny, that has been particularly inculcated in our partriarchal Mormon culture for generations. He also sets up a commonly used straw man that church leaders often use – an unamed “they” – who are supposedly denigrating men and making men and women part of a zero-sum competition for supremacy.
I think church leaders can probably see that giving women equal opportunity in priesthood and leadership would result in many men becoming disinterested. But as long they embrace gender essentialism, I don’t think they’ll ever be able to see that it’s their own implicit bias/sexism that would cause that result.
My husband and I have had long discussions about the LDS Church, the priesthood and the expected free labor of women. He often points to the RLDS church. When the RLDS allowed women to have priesthood authority, they had a definite and obvious decline in membership.
My response over the years to that oft repeated stance is this: “Do we do the right things for the right reasons, or do we do things to remain popular?” He never has a response. This same discussion gets repeated at least once a year. Neither one of us has changed our positions.
The professional incident I will always remember was working in a small and very lucrative professional group. There were 20-30 men and 3 women in that group. None of the women were of childbearing age. The men tended to be early 30’s, had SAHM wives and young children. The women were 38-40.
The major owner of that group preferred to meet with 2-3 people at a time to discuss any sort of changes or concerns. He felt such meetings were more effective than one big partner or employee meeting. One afternoon, he had scheduled a meeting with 3 of us. The mix was two women and one man from the group. Our male colleague walked in, looked at the two women and freaked. He was visibly shaking. He looked to the majority owner and asked “WHERE are MY BOYS??!!” His next statement was, “WHY AM I WITH THEM?!!?”
Me? I was stunned. I thought of this guy as a colleague. He was younger, had less seniority, less requests for his services and definitely had a SAHM/Trophy-wife dynamic going on in his personal life — but I had assumed that he saw me as an asset for the group.
The majority owner looked him up and down and stated, “These two women are NOT the weak-links you seem to think they are. They were both recruited due to the business, connections and competency they brought with them. They are both requested more than anyone else in our firm. Why would you think they are less?”
He had no response.
Until that incident, I thought I functioned within that firm to make all of us a lot of money and that I was valued by my colleagues. After that incident, I paid more attention to the Boys Club dynamic. It became obvious that among the younger guys, they could not see past the gender of the three women. Our competency, the personal requests for our services, our willingness to help them personally could not be seen without putting our gender first. While they high-fived and fist-bumped each other, while they relished the attention that female support staff heaped on them, they could not get past the gender of the three of us who were considered equal in title and higher in productivity.
In my own marriage, we both worked in a professional capacity — in very different and distinct fields. He was never asked who cared for his children. When people found out what his wife did, no one asked why he did not quit his career to focus on his family. No one ever asked if he was in a domestic situation that allowed for corporate travel.
I find it extremely weird just how much men care about the dynamic of working with women.
An interesting theory I ran across the other day is that the LDS church enables men to marry above their level. In other words, women who are 8’s marry men who are 5’s in the LDS church. The church is able to create scarcity of temple worthy men due to missions, law of chastity, etc. The argument is essentially that if you’re a guy “5” you can serve a mission and increase your number a couple of notches because there aren’t enough guy “8’s” for the women at that level to pair with. There may be some truth to this but it certainly doesn’t explain everything.
To the OP, I do think the researcher is correct. The best explanation I have is that men want to misbehave when they’re with men but feel constrained when women are around. I’m in banking – traditionally male – and a colleague once invited the men to a strip club after work. One of the women asked why the women weren’t invited and he was “um do women want to go to strip clubs with their colleagues??” Her answer was basically yeah, because business decisions are being made there. I didn’t go but I know several women who did. It just seems like a strange dynamic… but that’s what women have to do.
This will be downvoted, but women and wives in the church need to stand up for themselves more. My observation is that the powerful women (ie women with powerful husbands) want to maintain the status quo. The woman recipient of the BYU alum of the year who works all over the world made this observation to me – ie that some of the staunchest supporters of patriarchy are women. Men who are positions of power, and who see the misogyny, need to speak up even when it’s uncomfortable. I ultimately left the church in part because of women’s issues and I told the SP in person why I was leaving. Malcolm Gladwell said the same thing. You have to be willing to leave.
Interesting to think of priesthood being guarded as a male profession instead of just religious reasoning. Kind of changes the perspective in a big swoop.
And adding to this thought comparison because of other similar studies of male professions opening up to and then being dominated by women. Because of course there have been other studies on this subject because it has been around longer than women have been allowed to vote. Different studies focused on different aspects, for instance, some focused on pay rates. As a profession becomes female majority, then men flee because they devalue it, thus the profession becomes devalued, thus pay drops. Just exactly how home prices drop in a neighborhood that becomes minority.
Another aspect of studies like this is that professions that are highly valued by society or respected put up more of a fight when women attempt to invade. Yes, invade is a good word because professions that keep women out are trying to be their own little world, and women have to fight to get in. Some are valued such as the military, even though the pay isn’t good like military and others are valued because of the skill it takes to do it well, or learning it takes to do it. But because of the value some men put on these trades/professions they don’t want women to “dirty” it. They KNOW that sharing it with women devalues it, because to them it does devalue it, so they fight to keep women out. They fight to keep women from dirtying it.
Now, reminding you guys here, *not all men*! And you guys here are usually pretty good guys. Grizzers is the exception to “you guys here” being pretty good guys. But the “bad” guys think any thing to do with girls is worthless and that is why “sissy” is such an insult. I mean, com’on, sissy is a nick name for sister, so all “sissy” means is “girl”but it is such a big insult to call someone a girl that the press reacts when Trump uses it to insult a guy. It is like calling a black guy the n word to call any male the “f” is for female f word. So, guys, I don’t want any of you coming back at me for calling you bad things when I say there really are men who think like this.
And a fun note on “white flight” is that it isn’t about race. No, not at all. Think about when Catholics moved into Protestant New England. The Irish for instance. There were ghettos of Irish in NYC because as the newcomers moved in, the area became “tainted.” They were not running from race, but from minority and thus devalued low status. They were running from those they saw as “other”. It can be Jews, Catholics, Irish. It can be racial as looking down in Native Americans, whether native to US or native to Mexico. It can be language or even accent as in London where the titled upper class looking down on the common classes as not good enough, even when they become very rich because they still speak like a commoner.
So, kind of a universal tendency for those who pride themselves on being “better” and base it in some aspect of their identity. So, it can be any of “I am better because I am W.A.S.P. White, AngloSaxon, Protestant, or Male, heterosexual, Cisgender, healthy. It is taking pride in that identity that is bad because it hurts self and others.
I’m a registered nurse who isn’t practicing at the moment, though I keep my license current. Nursing was a second career for me. After being laid off from an IT/operations job—and then landing in the ER with appendicitis—the calm, highly competent (male) nurse who cared for me made a lasting impression. I thought, “Why haven’t I considered this?” and went back to school.
I started my career on a med-surg floor. I loved it. Caregiving is second nature to me (I’m the oldest of six and grew up cooking, cleaning, and babysitting), and I enjoy the science—pharmacology, math, and clinical problem-solving. In my experience, many male RNs gravitate toward specialties like ICU, ER, cath lab, or endoscopy, while many women are found across areas like med-surg, cardiology, home health, oncology, and infusion. Imo, great nurses excel everywhere, regardless of gender, but I do notice this selection-bias (at least at the Utah hospital I worked at).
Ultimately, high patient ratios took a toll. With my wife working full-time and our son at a crucial stage, I shifted back to a white-collar, work-from-home role so I could be more present at home. I remain proud of my nursing background and continue to maintain my license. I agree with Janey’s post here. I lament the fact that I am still stigmatized for my choice of profession. I’ve had many patients say, “How, your such a good nurse. Have you ever considered becoming a doctor?” I’ve also had patients turn and look at me when the actual (female) doctor was in the room thinking that I was their physician. I had to say, “I’m the nurse, your doctor is excellent.” The gender-bias is strong and pervasive. I wish I had more answers.
Historian Judith Bennett has written about this pattern – tracing it back to the middle ages; as women enter a previously unavailable profession it loses status and/or when women enter a new field it has already declined in status. The “stickiness” of such patterns despite many women and men wanting it to change remains a major challenge. The attack on higher ed is partially due to this. College educations were highly valued before the last 30-ish years, but as colleges became 50/50 or majority female, suddenly college degrees were a waste of time, foolish, etc. College is not the end-all-be-all of employment and education opportunities, but the diminishment of it just as women are flourishing in it is spot on for Bennett’s findings of earlier eras. If you look at what state legislatures are doing to state schools – cutting programs under the label of efficiency or high-income potential being the only justification for college – many times they are prioritizing cutting programs that are predominantly taken by women. Univ of Utah’s cuts will predominantly fall on the College of Humanities, whose majors have long been majority-women. I recognize there is “catalog bloat” in many university offerings, but the common approach to cut programs about women, gender, ethnic, and sexuality studies is revealing. Beyond those obvious headlines is, IMO, the unconscious bias of cutting programs (liberal arts, foreign languages, humanities in general) that are majority-women.
The theory I’ve heard is that men are almost entirely raised by their mothers and seek to be like them early on, only to be pushed away, thus developing aversion and resentment for things feminine later on. The struggle for gay men was much harder than the struggle for lesbian women. Just a couple of decades ago when homophobia was more in vogue, lesbianism in media wasn’t treated as experimental and cool while gay males were treated with disgust.
Working in trading, I know very few females. Lots and lots of men wanting to get in on the action.
Where I used to work in academia, though, there are more and more women. Almost to the point that it seems close to equal. 53% assistant professors but only 36% full professors. This shows generationally the change over time. I wonder if a similar phenomenon might happen in academia that happened in the veterinary world. Still there are some departments that are mostly men, such as engineering and finance.
The “priesthood is for men and boys only” system does seem to work if the goal is to keep men and boys more engaged with the Church as an institution. It’s hard to predict what would happen if the system changed, but the law of unintended consequences remains on the books.
It’s worth pointing out that not that long ago there were relatively few sister missionaries compared to young men serving. With the recent age changes, many more young sisters are serving and the numbers are much more balanced now. The missionaries of both genders seem to be handling it just fine. On the other hand, a quick Google search suggests the percentage of active young LDS men who choose to serve a mission is declining. It would be great to get some hard data on this.
I wonder if making proselyting missions more available to young women has in some sense filled part of that priesthood gap that troubles some young women? The eagerness and energy with which many young women are choosing to serve surely means something positive for both the Church and for the young women who serve.
I said basically the same thing when the mission age for women was lowered to 19, so the men’s age just had to be lowered even lower to 18. I said that if they ever gave the priesthood to women, they would have to upgrade the men to Platinum Priesthood status so they could still be better and more important than the women.
There was a very funny/horrifying Reddit discussion. A couple who used to be Mormons were having marital problems because the husband resented having only had one sexual partner and marrying young, so he demanded to the wife that they open the marriage. She very reluctantly agreed, partly because he had made it pretty clear by asking it that he wanted something other than her. Well, you can literally predict what happened without reading the rest, but immediately she’s got multiple dates lined up, and he’s getting absolutely no interest whatsoever from anyone. This guy found out the hard way that the entitlement and “special boy” status he had been fed since birth in the Church was a total patriarchal fabrication. Entitled jerks are actually not attractive.
It is well documented that women entering a job category results in lower pay and status for that category. We’ll see what happens as AI changes the job landscape. It seems likely to me that the real “protected” jobs will be things like nurses and teachers and elder care where human interaction can’t be replaced by AI. Men with emotional intelligence will thrive. Others will probably have to stick to physical jobs in the trades that are one-off (e.g. in homes, not in business). We shall see.
One thing that helps destigmatize women in the workplace is requiring men to take an equal amount of paternity leave when a child is born–offering it as an option isn’t enough. Employers still have the bias that someone having a child is a huge disadvantage if the employee you rely on is now absent or multi-tasking or might have to go do some caregiving. That bias is held by both men and women. Decades ago, a woman who worked for me who was a manager over 100 employees was in an HR training where the HR manager explained why they couldn’t ask a visibly pregnant candidate about her plans when the baby was born. This woman raised her hand and said, “Right, so we can’t ask it or write it in our notes. We just have to find another reason not to hire her.” I facepalmed.
But when it comes to the priesthood, it’s very linked in to gender roles and heterosexual marriage. It’s only a real family, the kind of family the church is for, when there is a male priesthood holder with a wife. Having the priesthood is the thing that supposed to tie them all together. Without it, the family is not a functional unit in the same Mormon way. It’s why single women were so appalled when they were told during the pandemic that it didn’t matter if THEY couldn’t take the sacrament, while their married friends were told they could do the sacrament at home. It means the priesthood in the home is some kind of gender role theater to make the men feel like they are in charge / important / have something to do. The sacrament was apparently for the men blessing it, not the women taking it.
grizzer, ya lazy learner, it’s incredible how you completely missed the point of not only Janey’s post, but of “The Screwtape Letters” as well! The more relevant quote would be:
“The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that one thing is not another thing, and, specially, that one self is not another self. My good is my good, and your good is yours. What one gains another loses. Even an inanimate object is what it is by excluding all other objects from the space it occupies; if it expands, it does so by thrusting other objects aside or by absorbing them. A self does the same. With beasts the absorption takes the form of eating; for us, it means the sucking of will and freedom out of a weaker self into a stronger. ‘To be’ means ‘to be in competition’”.
The reason why men leave professions that become female dominated, or white people leave neighborhoods that have more minorities move in, is because they believe that more access for others means less access for themselves. They would literally rather have more for themselves than share equally with others. That is, per CS Lewis, the doctrine of hell, not Heaven. As Screwtape goes on to explain:
“Now, the Enemy’s philosophy is nothing more nor less than one continued attempt to evade this very obvious truth. He aims at a contradiction. Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This impossibility He calls Love, and this same monotonous panacea can be detected under all He does and even all He is…”
Those who advocate for women to have equal access to the priesthood are literally following the doctrine of heaven, per CS Lewis; those who earn that more men will leave the church if women get the priesthood are literally conceding to the doctrine of hell. Read the entire book next time, not just excerpts.
Brad D: “The theory I’ve heard is that men are almost entirely raised by their mothers and seek to be like them early on, only to be pushed away, thus developing aversion and resentment for things feminine later on.” The version of this I’ve always heard is not that the mother pushes them away, but that as they grow up and look around they start to notice differences from the mother and they reject the mother or change her role as they seek to find their place. Here’s how it played out with my oldest son. Up to a certain age, in his imaginative play he always cast me in the role of the princess. One morning he came into my bedroom with a basket over one arm singing sweetly “Snow Whiiiite, I have a nice apple for you!” But within a year of that (around age 5 or 6, when he was in school where gender segregation really starts from social pressure), I was cast in the role of the horse, and I’ve been the horse ever since.
“The struggle for gay men was much harder than the struggle for lesbian women. Just a couple of decades ago when homophobia was more in vogue, lesbianism in media wasn’t treated as experimental and cool while gay males were treated with disgust.” Just to add a little color to this observation, there is something deeply patriarchal about this. In fact, in Singapore when I lived there “homosexuality” was illegal, but lesbianism was not (the law was finally changed in 2022, although gay marriage is still not legal there). In a patriarchy, lesbianism is just not seen as the same kind of threat to the patriarchal order, possibly because men have traditionally had more money and how economic power is distributed is what really matters. Additionally, “bi erasure” is a thing because in a heteronormative society, bisexuals are told they could just choose to marry a straight person heterosexually and not upset the “natural order.” I know personally of cases where Mormon families have said this to their bi children. Even in Victorian England where a homosexual man could be imprisoned or subject to chemical castration, most people didn’t bat an eye at schoolgirl crushes, hand-holding or sexual experimentation. After all, lesbians *mostly* couldn’t financially support themselves.
A good descriptor of priesthood ministry in the Community of Christ (RLDS Church) before the 1980s (the revelation opening priesthood to women came in 1984 with the first ordinations a year later) would be authority and power, wirh a good dose of patriarchal hierarchy. Now 40 years later it has developed more toward Christlike service. There are many reasons for that but certainly gender is one of them. Women in the priesthood was probably the “bridge too far” or flash point for the exodus in the 1980s, not the only cause.
Every denomination is unique. I am heartened by the announcement of the first woman as Archbishop of Canterbury for the Anglicans and Episcopalians. Keep in mind that the previous guy was replaced because of his inability to deal with sexual abuse crises.
Huh.
As I was reading grizzerbear55’s quotation of CS Lewis I was like yes he gets it! All these men thinking they need to be special holding the priesthood that women cannot have need to get over themselves. Turns out he wants to cast the OP as the villain. Rorschach test indeed.
I think Brad D raises an incredibly interesting point. If boys keep serving missions notwithstanding most girls now opting in, could a case be made that maybe Mormon men are mature enough to share the priesthood? We’ll probably never find out, but it’s an important data point.
I truly live in a different world than most people. My Southern California city is quite wealthy and diverse and there is simply no notion I’ve observed among teens and 20 somethings that opportunities to have joy and success are limited. Most adults would agree. People generally have housing and food security and when I attend banquets or art shows or athletic events the feeling among the participants and their parents is to celebrate everyone. There are no Riley Gaines among us.
As a result kids expectations are that you win some and you lose some, the journey is just as important as the destination, relationships matter, there is enough good news for everyone to have a spotlight moment, and authenticity is accepted. As a result, virtually everyone goes to community college/university, and everyone wants to contribute. Our kids are being raised in a village. We aren’t perfect; beware our drivers who cannot comprehend how a roundabout works. But it’s a great place.
I didn’t grow up here so I follow the distinction my kids are getting being raised here. I wish everyone could experience a community-wide abundance mindset.
The “white flight” comparison reminds me of a similar model of racial politics, described by Heather McGhee (in the excellent book “The Sum of Us”) as the “drained pool” phenomenon. When public swimming pools in the southern U.S. were forced to integrate, rather than making them welcoming spaces for patrons of all races, many local governments instead defunded the pools, drained them and allowed them to fall into ruin or otherwise demolished them. Often, when a privileged class is forced to open a once-exclusively-held resource to people outside their class, the privileged folk will be more inclined to abandon or destroy that resource so that no one (including themselves) can use it anymore, rather than simply sharing the resource and allowing others to enjoy it. It’s an unfortunate fact of human nature.
If the LDS Church leaders suddenly issued a decree to ordain women to priesthood offices once exclusively held by men, I could plausibly imagine a “drained pool” effect, in which adult male engagement with the Church will drop off, while some zealous men will actively denigrate the whole LDS concept of priesthood, claiming “we never asked for it anyway” and “priesthood blessings don’t really work”. I could see GC talks telling women “you really had it all along…” and other such gaslighting nonsense. Meanwhile, men stay firmly in control of the Church’s administrative and financial power, or at the very least, an “elite tier” priesthood will be created just for men, as described by Hawkgrrrl.
On the other hand, we could potentially see it roll out like OD2 in 1978 (the end of racial restrictions) which was overwhelmingly received positively by the general membership, who were mostly relieved that they didn’t have to uphold or explain codified bigotry anymore. But as long as sexism and misogyny are still socially acceptable (as they are right now in the U.S. and elsewhere) I don’t see the potential for collective LDS relief from abandoning an exclusively male priesthood.
As for me personally, I would welcome the inclusion of women into all priesthood quorums without hesitation. Then again, I’m a rank-and-file white male, with no Church calling, no power in the organization (I am probably on a secret list that will keep me from ever being called as a bishop or higher), and thus have nothing to lose by having to share priesthood responsibilities with my wife and daughters.
I’m a SoCal girl myself, Chadwick, and my kids grew up SoCal kids. They very much resemble what you describe and I credit AYSO soccer for much of it.
When they played there were girls’ teams/games and boys’ teams/games. When they practiced all kinds of things happened depending on which teams had field space at any given time. Girls practiced with the boys. Sometimes they had informal matches — could be girls v guys; could be mixed teams. One year there was actually an organized co-ed teams tournament.
Whatever was happening, in terms of soccer, they developed their skills, they learned strategies, they got ready for seasons and games still ahead of them.
In social terms they learned to respect one another’s abilities, to see that being equal didn’t mean being the same and, most importantly, they learned that the opposite sex wasn’t a different species. They learned to be comfortable with one another many years before puberty hit.
My girls grew up without feeling limited. My son grew up unthreatened by women and able to think of them as partners. All of my kids are in wonderful, healthy, supportive relationships and raising amazing kids of their own with a world of possibilities open to them.
Hawkgrrrrl, I never could understand why women with no man in the house simply did not bless the sacrament themselves. I would not have hesitated to do so. No need to ask for permission from ANYONE.
“No need to ask for permission from ANYONE.”
That’s the thing! So many limitations in life are things we agree to. Someone says X or not-X and we accept that and agree to limit our lives by it.
…until we don’t.
The right or authority to carry out priesthood ordinances and blessings wouldn’t do much to level the gender playing field in Church because, as hawkgrrl points out, there would then be a more elite tier. Like, the RS Pres could set apart the RS teachers and committee members, but only the male bishop could set apart an RS Pres.
What would really change things up is if women got to make the decisions, or had an equal voice in making decisions. Imagine the Council on the Disposition of Tithes being 50% women from the RS and YW General Board. Put at least 50% female architects on the building development committee and see what changes they make to the general Church building design. If nothing else, the mother’s room might get expanded. How many women write the curriculum? Serve on the correlation committee?
The ability to perform priesthood ordinances is the lesser right, in my view. What would really promote gender equality is if every decision-making group in the Church was at least 50% women, and 50% of the time the women set the agenda and lead the meeting.
I am not surprised the post and the responses immediately centered on criticism of men and masculinity. But why?
What is masculinity and why is it perceived as negative? What is femininity and why is it perceived as positive?
The linked article does not blame men or label their response to the feminization of college and vocation as misogynist. But Janey does and many commenters agree. Can society allow men to have associations that reward their interests? Or is any such arrangement “mysoginist”?
Yet society thinks associations that reward female priorities are desirable and if men don’t like it that is there fault!
And you wonder why men don’t care to join female dominated associations? Maybe the simple reason is men can read the room and perceive that a female dominated association is going to be biased against them.
The case of Harvard President Larry Summers is illustrative. Summers gave a speech where he hypothesized that men demonstrate a wider variation in scientific aptitude and that this variation could explain why the extreme heights of scientific achievement are dominated by men. This was a legitimate hypothesis. And yet for simply vocalizing this idea Summers was villainized and the outcry contributed to his resignation.
Men see this and draw a rational conclusion: Once women gain power in an organization the risk of men being fired for wrong-think – for offending feelings – greatly increases. Men know that it is their nature to cause offense. They speak abruptly and directly. They are excessively analytical and focused on data and material objectives and in thinking out loud, with little care for feelings. Knowing this, does it make sense for men to join an association where they will be penalized for being “masculine”?
A few of you, Instereo, Hawkgrrrl–there were some others, touch on some things that really resonate with my experience. When women are allowed to–for want of a better word–compete with men on a level-ish (the world is still a very patriarchal place) playing field, it turns out that in many places it isn’t much of a competition. We women are socialized for nose-to-the-grindstone work: no breaks (without guilt), and no fanfare. And LDS women? Even more than most. So what happens? We work harder, want less, and come out ahead.
Related is the work women have to do to protect the egos of the men* they’re around. The metaphorical parades that must be thrown. Because if you don’t. The whining. The hurt. The loss of time/productivity. The derailing of important conversations (see the first comment on this thread). Better to throw the damn parade.
So great job, men! Your uniquely male ability to exercise priesthood authority makes you super-special and chosen, and so, so important, and we just wouldn’t be able to run God’s kingdom here on earth without you in all of your masculine splendor! We women would be *checks notes* unable to function without you!
*Not all men, obviously. But more men than most of the men here who are regular readers would believe.
To Linda, Alice, and others: you raise an interesting point about women blessing and distributing the sacrament at home. The D&C tells us how we perform this ordinance at church, and this assumes the church is in some sort of regular order. I think it makes sense to do this away from church if priesthood holders are present. But is it improper, wrong, and sinful for a woman ever to bless and pass? Imagine you are a member in 1944 or early 1945 Germany. All the men are gone to fight the war, are in jail, or are dead. The Russians are getting close and will be there within a matter of days. A group of faithful women and small children continue to gather in someone’s basement. Would God be angry if that small group of followers performed a sacrament one last time before the Russians arrived? with a woman breaking the bread and being voice for the prayer? I wouldn’t have a problem with this.
Disciple, it is not “masculinity” that anyone thinks is bad. Please read my statement above where I emphasize “not all men” and say it is ONLY men who need to feel superior to women. Men who think to be men you have to devalue all things famine. Yes, there are women and men who have rebelled at this kind of man to the point that they switch it backwards and start saying that all things masculine are poisonous. My brother is one of the feminists who started calling this kind of arrogant asshat man “suffering from testosterone poisoning”. It is not masculinity anyone here is saying is bad, really it is pride based on masculinity. The thinking that being female is bad and you know, that kind of thinking is too damn common. Your very defensiveness in taking this discussion as bashing masculinity is part of that. Get over it. Your manhood is nothing special and it most certainly does not make you better than women. Get over yourself, disciple.
Georgis, OR, imagine there is a terrible disease and people are dying by the hundreds. You are a little old lady at high risk of dying if you are exposed, living with your equally vulnerable and high risk of dying from this disease sister. And everybody is told to isolate as much as possible to slow the spread and protect the vulnerable. So, the only way to partake is to have priesthood come to your home to bless the sacrament which may very well expose you and sister to dying. And YES our beloved leaders do say it is a sin to bless your own sacrament. They care less about the vulnerable to dying of a disease GETTING the sacrament than they do guarding the male right to bless the sacrament. Told me the sacrament “ain’t worth shit.” [Borrowing the language of my friend who found herself in that position.]
So, a lone woman’s choice is to disobey and do the forbidden, or reject the very potency to help repentance of that sacred ordinance. Reject male authority, or reject Christ’s atonement, or reject that male authority is correct that sacrament is important. Either way you look at it, it is saying God didn’t set it up this way. Either the sacrament is important or it isn’t. The dear leaders can’t have it both ways.
There is an important difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity.
A god that forbids and refuses to honor women who give blessings is not a god I want any part of believing in. And if this god really does exist then I am against that god.
Yikes! I am watching out for lightning just reading some of these comments. Clearly many not only disagree but do not understand LDS doctrine.
@Janey
Your comment reminds me of an op-ed by Natalie Brown in the Salt Lake Tribune, “What I Want My Church to Do for Latter-day Saint Women.”
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2023/09/24/natalie-brown-what-i-want-my/
I think you’re right: the performance of ordinances and callings matters less than having a seat at the table for major decisions—especially how tithes and offerings are used. Or, consider where missionaries are called, the circumstances they serve in, and the strictures placed around their service. These young missionaries (male and female) come from mothers who should have a real say in how missions are structured to protect their kids’ well-being—especially given how much trauma can happen on missions and how many experience psychotic episodes or mental-health crises under stress.
@Chadwick
My liberal, Idaho-raised dad has decamped for Southern California. His city is exactly as you describe—and he loves it. You wrote:
“I wish everyone could experience a community-wide abundance mindset.”
I don’t doubt your community is exceptional, but it’s also exclusionary by design. That’s the point Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson make in Abundance: many blue, progressive enclaves limit opportunity through socioeconomic segregation and restrictive single-family zoning. California has taken big steps to push back on that NIMBYism, but it’ll take time to show up. In the meantime, Texas is where abundance and diversity seem to be thriving. Everyone could experience a community-wide abundance mindset, but it only will come when condos/apartments are allowed in every single area of a city 5-stories high.
Jacob L
It is exclusionary by design and I do hate that aspect. But living in a space with only so much land, perhaps the solution it to build this model elsewhere rather than create an unsustainable density since we lack decent public transit.
My brother lives in Houston. I haven’t seen what you describe there but it’s a big state. Even if there are local communities with something to offer I still couldn’t recommend living in a state attacking women’s bodily autonomy.
Yikes
After 40 years of being Mormon if I still don’t understand the doctrine as you claim that’s not on me but on the system. I got my fill of milk but the promised meat was never delivered. Maybe if Sunday school was actually school…
@Chadwick
“But living in a space with only so much land, perhaps the solution it to build this model elsewhere rather than create an unsustainable density since we lack decent public transit.”
There is endless land in the vertical direction. We have this thing called the elevator. We should use it more often. Single-stair multi-family is the most affordable way to create new units. And we can build mixed use communities with restaurants, shops, and amenities mixed into residential. So-Cal could (if they wanted) implement transit. When I grew up in Utah County, the fields that I walk by now in Orem are now large apartments that have bus rapid transit right to a light rail line. Public transportaiton is a policy choice. And besides, with the weather you have in So Cal, a good foldable eBike or eScooter is about as effective as a car.
I agree with you that Texas has terrible policy choices on bodily autonomy. But California’s deliberate restriction of housing density is an economic form of one-child (or no child) policy. The truth is that many California cities function like Hunger Game districts that are only desirable and work well for a narrow band of elites that can afford it.
And anyway, what good are the soccer teams for forming kids when American families aren’t having kids because of high housing prices?
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/25/nx-s1-5540077/housing-prices-fewer-children
I want to bring this discussion back to the national level. In my view, the current administration is deliberately trying to erode or disempower women-dominated occupations. Its targeting of higher education and the federal workforce appears intentional, as these sectors employ a disproportionately high number of well-educated, highly paid women.
The renewed emphasis on manufacturing, trade schools, and efforts like Pete Hegseth’s push to “purge” women from the military function as a kind of DEI for men. Similarly, the mass hiring of ICE officers disproportionately benefits men drawn to that profession.
Taken together — especially with large signing bonuses and elevated pay and status offered at a time when AI is triggering a white-collar recession among college graduates — these moves appear designed to weaken the economic standing of the academic elite, which skews left politically and is disproportionately female. The administration seems intent on subtly pushing women out of the labor market and back into the home, not through direct legislation but through a reordering of the economy via tariffs, crony capitalism, and related policies.
I have a bit of disdain towards blue states for their housing policies that enable this at the federal level. Many blue states failure to build for decades has pushed people to their breaking point such that they have moved out of blue states and towards red ones. This mass migration from blue states to red ones will make it almost impossible in our electoral college system for Dems to take back the presidency or the senate even winning the traditional swing states. By the time th 2030 census is redrawn, the voting map will be so skewed as if to lock in a permanent GOP majority. Policy wonks understand this. This is also why dems probably need to start getting way more moderate on almost every issue because of housing restriction choices that tilt the national electoral map.
Anna,
The issue is that in feminized organizations men know they will be discouraged from standing out. That this pursuit for excellence is judged as “men having to prove their superiority” is the problem!
Men are competitive. Men value the opportunity to be challenged and to prove their ideas superior. Women are intimidated by this and their answer is to alter the rules of the game. Men see this and wisely decide they don’t want to play by the rules women require. Women then complain that men are weak and unable to play along with women.
No, the issue is men don’t want to be in a association where they are criticized for doing their best and demanding the best of others.
Why do men have to stand out? Why do you have to prove your ideas are superior? What if they aren’t? What if they are dumb ideas? You are admitting that men have to feel superior.
A disciple
I’m struggling to see the application of your last comment. Can you give a real life example of men opting out of a feminized organization because they can’t stand out?
Always love when some male commenters get on and enlighten female bloggers and commenters by telling those women what the women actually mean. Or why they project their insecurity on women. Or when they claim their supposed masculinity is so fragile it can’t handle women succeeding or ‘female’ spaces. Priceless.
Clearly they haven’t thought much about the female experience or aren’t listening or just don’t want to or are just jerks or really are fragile and blame women when they should be blaming the patriarchal system that is causing their problems of insecurity. Stubborn, unadaptable, victim-blaming. Everything they are claiming these women are. So much projection.
To you men, I’m sorry you feel this way. There is a better, healthier, happier way.
There is obviously a political element to how woman are viewed. See disciple.
Another example is how many women are in parliament from each political party. At present the Labor party is governing. They have just slightly more women politicians than men, they are to the left of the democrats. Our conservative party have less than 1/3 as many women as men.
In the US of the 215 democrats in the house 94 are women. Of the 220 republicans 31 are women. So just under 50% for democrats and just under15% for republicans.
In the senate of 45 democrats 16 are women, and of 53 republicans 10 are women.
From these figures Democrats are much more woman friendly than Republicans but the US way less woman friendly than Australiia. Even our conservative party has 33% v R 15%..
So is this a particularly American problem, like gun control, because you are so much more conservative?
I’d be happy to see the LDS church start ordaining women in the priesthood, but Lincoln’s research conclusions probably aren’t useful. They step way too far and the research itself has some red flags. The best way to estimate what might happen is to look at what happened in similar religious groups who have already ordained women (CoC, protestant denominations, etc.)…but even that is a guess at best.
Sociology and other social sciences are under fire right now. They want to be taken as seriously as fields like psychology, but social sciences have been plagued by everything from questionable analysis methods (e.g. the disproven “power pose” research that has a Ted Talk with 23M views) to straight-up fraud. (e.g. Francesca Gino being fired from Harvard for fabricating fraudulent research data.)
Lincoln saying, “there was only one variable where I found an effect” is a red flag they may have used p-hacking. P-hacking is basically just poking around and slicing your data in different ways until something statistically significant falls out, then publishing the findings like it was your plan all along. It’s essentially it’s like throwing a bunch of darts at an empty wall, and then drawing a bullseye around the darts after the fact.
It’s hard to know for sure if p-hacking happened without the original data, but it was pretty common practice in 2010 when Lincoln’s study was published – especially in social sciences. I even had some grad school professors teach it as a good research practice, but that’s since changed.
There are undoubtedly some men who’d choose not to join a field simply because it’s become more dominated by women, but there’s plenty of men for whom that isn’t a concern at all. There are rarely simple, generalizable explanations for why humans make complex decisions.
I don’t doubt that the correlation existed in Lincoln’s data, but it’s almost impossible to prove causation in these situations…and it’s dubious for Lincoln to extrapolate (questionable) conclusions to predict the future of unrelated fields like law and medicine.
Pirate Priest, stop it with the rational and measured commentary on the statistics. That’s so masculine. We’re here for the hot takes and the drama.
It’s a series of tubes, always here to dismiss concerns of women as emotional and without merit. Sexist much.
Brian, you may want to reread. The comments were directed to Lincoln’s research conclusions, which overreach greatly and are unhelpful at best; fraudulent at worst. Crap “research” like that isn’t helpful in addressing the concerns of women, of which MANY are meritorious in the church as presently operated.
Not sure what I missed. I understood the criticism of the research. Now, I’m not sure what voice you were attempting to project with your comment, and it may be a difficulty of sarcasm or joking online something, but it sure reads like you were projecting the voice of a ‘stereotypical female’ dismissive of criticism because she wanted a reaction and hot takes, which is a common misogynist view. Like you take project that stereotype onto the OP’s motive. And the ‘that’s so masculine’ sounds like a parrot of the comments that support a stereotypical complaint about women as dismissive of facts, and supporting the argument that women can’t handle a male who criticizes them. But, as I’ve decided this evening to be more generous of people, I’ll assume I misread your comment. And I’ll ask, what did you intend with your comment?
Brian, as amply illustrated in the comments prior to Pirate Priest, the comments run amok in both directions from the OP, including lobbed grenades, dismissive overgeneralizations, and personal attacks between commentors. This is standard internet discussion. Pirate Priest, on the other hand, made a moderately toned comment in support of OP’s position, but pushed back gently on the materials used to support it and illustrated certain shortcomings. Given the topic, the “that’s so masculine” and “hot takes and drama” are sarcastic commentary on the contrast of his value-added post versus some of the others.
I think that whole “male flight” idea oversimplifies things a bit. It’s not always about misogyny—sometimes it’s about shifting interests, pay scales, or work-life balance.