Sexism
Remember the days of Ordain Women? Remember how gender equality became a real topic at Church? It concerned Church leaders so much that we got a slew of talks about how women already have the priesthood and we just hadn’t noticed. We got an endless string of assurances that God loves his daughters Just As Much as he loves his sons.
Nothing much really changed. Women pray in General Conference once in a while. Women can witness baptisms now. But the real issue, the real Thing That Isn’t Fair, was always about excluding women from the decision-making process. I, personally, was a lot more bothered about the fact that women’s voices are missing from the decision-making leadership than I was about the fact that I couldn’t baptize my son (though he did ask me) (a cousin baptized him instead) (the hope was that baptizing his younger cousin would inspire older cousin to go on a mission) (didn’t work).
The disabled community has a slogan: No Decisions About Us Without Us. Catchy, right? The idea is that disabled people have opinions, perspectives, and really good suggestions, and it’s wrong for non-disabled people to take away their voice and make decisions for an entire group without actually listening to that group.
And this, folks, this idea that you don’t make decisions for a group that you’re excluding from the discussion, is why diversity matters. Straight white Christian men should NOT be making all the decisions for gays, people of color, the vast number of people who are not Christian, women, and nonbinary people.
A challenge the Church faced during the Ordain Women phase was that women were equal everywhere else. Women held leadership roles. Women were respected. in the workplace, men showed that they could work for women supervisors and managers and it went just fine. Women got used to speaking with authority and having their input seriously considered. Sometimes, not as often as men, but sometimes, the women were actually the decisionmakers.
It would be a whole lot easier on the Church if women stopped being equal everywhere else. Secular equality led women to hope for equality everywhere. Fortunately for religious conservatives, secular equality is disappearing.
“From the Pentagon to the U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration has vowed to root out policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, from every layer of government.” [source] For our conservative readers, I will inform you that DEI was never about quotas (surprise!), or promoting/hiring less qualified minorities. Duh. That would be stupid. DEI was about making sure that qualified minorities got a chance too.
But now the federal government is actively removing women and minorities and replacing them with white guys. The Trump administration rejected all four women farmers chosen by their peers to represent them in an industry group called the United Soybean Board earlier this year, a rare intervention by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the promotions of four Army officers — two Black men and two women — to the rank of brigadier general. Plus, Brown and Franchetti, among other top military officers, were fired by Trump in February 2025. That decision left no women in the top ranks of military leadership.
Utah’s state government (wholly dominated by Trump-loving Mormons) hasn’t quite dared to fire women, but for the last three State Supreme Court seats, the list of candidates is men only.
Women are farmers. Women serve in the military. Women are greatly affected by the decisions of the Utah Supreme Court. And yet women are being escorted away from the table (and back to the kitchen).
Racism
Republicans don’t even pretend to conceal the fact that they’re racists anymore. As soon as the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act by removing race as a factor in electoral districts, the Republicans raced to redistrict and dilute Black votes. They had those maps prepped and ready to go. As mentioned above, two of the people whose promotions Hegseth blocked were Black men.
Remember when a whiff of racism was enough to end someone’s political career? Remember when being racist was a bad thing? Remember when the Church was getting pressured to apologize for its racist history? That’s gone now. Because of Republicans.
Why Christians Support Trump
If you want to know why faithful Christians support Trump, take a look at the sexism and racism. Trump is willing to openly and defiantly demote women, push women aside, and silence them. This benefits Christianity because if women don’t participate equally and fully in secular life, then they’ll stop asking to participate equally and fully in religion. Republicans are racist and they’re mean about it. This benefits Christianity because if the secular world is viciously racist, then Christianity’s more benevolent racism looks good in comparison.
Christianity in general, and the Church in particular, does not embraced equality in areas like authority and representation. God’s love may be given to all equally, but that doesn’t translate into representation and authority.
Questions:
- Please feel free to leave comments explaining about how DEI really worked because conservatives have to hear things at least twenty times to counteract the million times they’ve believed the conservative propaganda. For example, the DEI at my work meant that we made sure we posted job listings in all the regular places, plus we made sure to post the listing in publications aimed at racial minorities and women. Then we interviewed whoever responded and hired the most qualified. DEI was to make sure the applicant pool wasn’t just white guys.
- Isn’t that such a great slogan? No Decisions About Us Without Us.
- Does secular gender equality threaten religious sexism?
- Remember that post I wrote about how religious doctrine would change if women were equal? Don’t you wish we could get all those revelations? What has religion lost by silencing female voices?
- Does secular racial equality threaten religious racism, including Bible-based justifications for slavery?
- What does the Church lose by maintaining a leadership with a supermajority of white guys?
Wheat & Tares 
Oh Janey: Ever the Justice Warrior. Treating people with a level of respect and decency is one thing – having an expectation of “equality of outcomes” is simply Bat Sh*t Cray Cray. Talk about Societal Suicide through Kindness! So many people (including me) are fully exhausted and sickened by the efforts to drag everyone to the lowest common denominators. Whether you like it or not, much of the World appears to be moving back to some semblance of merit (performance based) systems; regardless of your race or sex. Thank God! Even Nature itself expects this……..
(Yes, the LDS Church is something else entirely – and – of course – they’re paying the price by people simply leaving and not making the emotional investment any longer.)
grizz – I compliment you on actually engaging with the topic, rather than what you usually do. However, you misread the post. Nowhere did I talk about equality of outcomes. And nowhere did I say anything against merit based performance. I’ve noticed that conservatives tend to do strawman responses. I made a good point and you don’t have a rational response to what I actually said. So you created a ridiculous idea and responded to that. That’s a strawman argument. I didn’t say what you are responding to.
The conservative assumption is that only straight, white Christian men are competent to make decisions for everyone. This is false. Women should participate in the decisions that concern women. People of color should participate in the decisions that affect people of color. Disabled people should participate in the decisions that affect disabled people. Straight, white, Christian men have held an outsized amount of power for centuries. Secular society was moving towards greater equality. Conservatives are trying to set society back to a situation in which straight, white, Christian men get all the power simply because of their identity. I’ve worked with mediocre white men who got the job just because they’re a white guy. Their lazy entitlement is a real drag on a company. Equality of opportunity (not outcomes) displaces mediocre white guys. Talented, hardworking, white guys still get jobs.
There are a lot of straight, white, liberal men (some of whom are Christian) who understand that equality strengthens society and improves conditions for everyone. Combine those men with women, people of color, gays, the disabled, and I have hope that society will wholly reject the return to Jim Crow and sexism.
The post was about how Christianity in general, and the Church in particular, benefits from secular institutional racism and sexism.
I took to heart what I was taught growing up: humility, combined with never thinking that I had all the answers. By extension, just because I haven’t experienced something in my life, such as being disregarded or treated as less because of the color of my skin or my gender, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen. And frequently.
I like having friends and acquaintances who do not share my background. When they talk about things they have experienced, or that their family members have experienced, I listen. When I don’t get hired for a position, then find out that a white woman or person of color was hired instead, I don’t automatically assume that I was more qualified than they were.
I, too, get tired of the constant stories of sexism and racism. The difference is I’m tired of it because it is STILL HAPPENING. Whether it’s the casual “joking” sexism of women drivers or the deeper, institutionalized sexism and racism of the Church and US government, it still happens. I’m tired of the arrogance and power-grabbing that goes along with the current, rampant, redistricting. On both sides of the political aisle.
I don’t think it’s wrong for people to want a voice in decisions that are being made about them. Isn’t that, ultimately, why the US declared independence?
This was an excellent, thought-provoking piece, Janey. Thank you for articulating it so well.
What does the Church lose by maintaining a leadership with a supermajority of white guys? The combined wisdom and leadership of millions of women and minorities. If you believe that skills, talents, good ideas, knowledge, and leadership are found equally among all groups of people, then limiting leadership to white men is the equivalent collecting resumes for a job opening and throwing away 70% of them without looking at them. Sure, you’ll find some good candidates, but think how many more you would have found if you were open to looking at everyone. And if you think that white men are somehow blessed with an extra dose of these qualities just because of their whiteness and their maleness, well, I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m tired of talking about this because I just don’t know what else is left to say. grizzerbear seems to imply that when cis-het white guys are promoted its because of merit, and when anyone else is promoted it’s some sort of conspiracy to deprive the cis-het white guys of what they deserve. I don’t even know what to say anymore; it’s like trying to argue about the color of the sky.
One of the infuriating tactics used – certainly in the pre-civil rights era – was to limit access to resources like education and stability to minorities in the United States (poster child being redlining). The lack of opportunity IMPOSED by the “system,” and resulting poor outcomes, was used as justification for why those same minorities should not have XYZ (name the desired thing). This never fully went away, and the current administration’s efforts to basically bring it back are sickening. But the reason I mention it, is because of the OP’s noting of how Trump’s administration is taking actions that seem wholly rooted in the beliefs about any given minority that likely originated because of the very lack of access to resources the majority denied those minorities to begin with.
We are all the poorer for it.
Yes the church fits in nicely with trump. Imagine how much more challenging if Kamala were president?
It does make the church look more backward outside the US though.
In australia for example the cabinet of government has 22 places. 12 are held by women, though at present the PM is a man.
I’m sure there are many reasons that sexism and racism are so persistent in many cultures. One of them is religious support, especially for sexism. Jesus didn’t call any women apostles, and he didn’t ordain any women to the priesthood. It’s easy to use the Bible to reinforce sexism. People who want to be sexist anyway can then say that they’re following their religion, and thus dress up their bigotry in faith. Christians would rather use their faith to oppress women and minorities rather than use their faith to make sure everyone has enough food to eat.
But yeah, of course churches endorse Trump. He’s making racism and sexism the norm again. That lets churches happily give up on any efforts they were making towards equality.
Janey,
Nothing prevents women from starting a church where women claim to hold authority. This is the equality under the law that exists today. Should the law demand such a church be dominant in America society? How would such a law work?
Women thrive in many areas of society. Yet you cry sexism wherever women are not dominant. Do you apply the same logic to men? Is it sexism / discrimination for men to be under represented in a occupation?
The argument that sexism & racism explain the under representation of women or minorities fails simple logic. Once we allow a group to be over represented in one area, the same group will be under represented in other areas. Black Americans are over represented in basketball. They are under represented in baseball. Is baseball racist? Asians are way under represented in basketball. Is this a problem?
Women are over represented in elementary school teaching. Men are over represented in lumberjacking. Is this a problem? Why is it we never hear women complain that not enough women are lumberjacks?
I just watched a very interesting video on Ben Park’s latest video on the Origins of anti-gay Christianity. Of course, we already know that all the above mentioned phobias and prejudices are human/social/political constructs, but it’s interesting to hear qualified historians explain how some of these things happen.
The way Trump has demonized DEI, women, LGBTQ esp trans, any social justice reforms, racial equality reforms, etc. is hard to believe and heartbreaking!
Janey, you forgot to mention that the young women can now pass out towels in the temple baptistry. Such progress!
Unfortunately, it has long been part of core Mormon belief, and continues to be, that men and women are unequal and that women are lesser than men. Even the believing Mormon women believe that. That’s why they overwhelmingly did not support Ordain Women. Now believing Mormons won’t start it outright. They’ll claim that they believe in equality, just a different kind of equality. They’ll do a number of performative acts of mental gymnastics to deny the obvious. But I don’t know, Trumpism has made it so people are less coy about being racist and sexist. More and more, people aren’t dancing around it and dog whistling, they’re just coming out and saying it. So I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t hear more Mormons just coming out and saying, “yeah, women aren’t equal with men, it’s God’s will.”
I’m amazed at the pivot since 2020 in the Republican Party. The George Floyd protests railed against systemic racism while conservatives and Republicans vehemently denied being racist all while saying that liberals were overreacting. Now they just come out and say that they’re racist and say overtly that’s things and get applauded for it. Far right influencer Shiloh Hendrix recently raised $600,000 in anticipation of mass backlash against her after she was filmed calling a 5-year-old child the n-word multiple times at a public park.
No tithzation without representation.
The idea of women starting their own church in which men are forbidden to hold priesthood would be challenged as not a religious based belief but a political DEI belief and the case would be fought all the way to the supreme court where the political super conservative SCOTUS would rule that yes that horrible idea is only political as there is no religious basis or scriptural backing for it, and that church would be overruled. That kind of thing has happened before. Religions do not have real religious freedom- ask the Mormons who tried to practice polygamy. We have some restrictions and things that are illegal get challenged in court. This is why the church wrote the proclamation on the family, to give them religious basis for discrimination.
But of course, the exact reverse, where women are forbidden from holding priesthood is not only legal but right and proper because there are scriptures and years of male thinking behind that. And keeping priesthood male only just feels right, because there are idiots around like the two who have commented who honestly believe women are less intelligent and capable and spiritual than men. These poor men have such fragile masculinity that they think being a “man” means they are automatically better. Therefore if a woman really is smarter, more capable, more spiritual, they feel she is trying to take away his manhood simply by being better than he is. It is a very insecure way to live. But grizzer’s automatic assumption that such things as DEI mean that less qualified candidates are promoted over more qualified men, shows this assumption. They think that if a woman or black man is promoted over a white guy, of course the white guy is more qualified. He has a pale penis, which makes him more qualified. Because everyone knows it takes a pale penis to be smart and competent. If that last sentence sounds supper stupid, well, it is because the very idea that the white guy HAS to be more qualified is stupid.
A Disciple, I see nowhere in the post that Janey is asking for the law to mandate changes to the church. She seems to be asking that we make changes within the church culture and for the privately-run church leadership to make the changes.
As for female representation, she is talking about it in relation to the political and legal systems. Females make up the majority of law students, and yet overwhelmingly justices and judges are male. If the majority of applicants to lumberjacking jobs and business licenses were female, I would say we have a sexism problem there. But such is not the case. Females and males are different in what fields they gravitate towards and in what areas they are physically capable. I agree with you there. But in law and politics there appears to be equal interest among males and females. So there should be about 50-50 representation, right?
“Women thrive in many areas of society”
Not as much as men, and that’s the point. You can’t deny than there is persistent sexism. Much of it subconscious, but it’s still there. The wage gap is well documented. Yeah things are better than they used to be, I will agree with you there, but the disparity carries on.
“Is baseball racist”
Again, you’re missing the context. Different ethnic groups simply have different athletic gravitations. Why are there so many blacks in the NBA? Simply because for some reason, basketball became extremely popular in black communities throughout the US, whereas baseball did not. But baseball became extremely popular among Latinos and Italian Americans. Go figure. If there were an outsized interest in baseball along blacks with lots of blacks trying out, it would be racist, yeah, but such is not the case.
Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.
Do women really want equality with men?
Men die younger than women.
Men are 9 times more likely to die at work.
Men are 2 to 3 times more likely to commit suicide (women are more likely to attempt suicide but they are far less skilled at men at succeeding at it – one of those crazy stats that should really make us consider how men and women are different).
Would women trade zeroing out the pay gap in return for increasing their risk of death to match men? That is what full equality would demand.
Concerning Christian churches, male leadership in the Christian Church is a long-standing tradition that goes back to the New Testament. Is this a tradition that can be broken without challenging the legitimacy of the church? What would women in the church gain if the process of making them “equal” resulted in the church being rejected as posessing God’s authority?
The men leading the church may sincerely believe that sustaining tradition is the best way to serve women in the church – that breaking with this tradition carries too much risk. Are the men wrong? We can’t say until the tradition is broken and the outcome is weighed.
This is a reason I suggest that women highly concerned about this particular matter start a church that is not tied to the tradition of male leadership. Risk exists with either approach. But in the latter effort women are not stuck waiting for men to give them what they are asking.
Would women trade zeroing out the pay gap in return for increasing their risk of death to match men? That is what full equality would demand.
“Would women trade zeroing out the pay gap in return for increasing their risk of death to match men? That is what full equality would demand.”
So your position is that women are welcome to equality as long as they don’t participate in the economy?
Actually, zeroing out the pay gap and putting the women in equal numbers into the more dangerous jobs would not cause more women to die young. Doing the more dangerous jobs is NOT what causes men to live on average some 6-10 years younger than women. What causes more young men to die real young is risk taking, which is a direct result of you guys having testosterone. Most of those risk taking deaths are NOT on the job. But given the same dangerous job, more men would take the risk than women would. Men just take more risks, which according to the psychological studies is a direct result of TESTOSTERONE. So, this argument doesn’t have a penis to stand on.
So, maybe the answer is guys giving up testosterone.
The other thing that causes men to die younger is heart trouble. And that difference is again tied to testosterone.
So, sorry guys, but if you want to live longer than women you gotta give up that testosterone. And then you would on average live longer than women because women still die one heck of a lot more due to child birth.
Now women have disease and risks of being women. As I mentioned death in childbirth is STILL a risk women face, and in the US, that risk is increasing. Especially in black women. Women also have more autoimmune disease, which is looking like a direct effect of being women. Women with heart disease are more likely to die than men because doctors think the symptoms of heart disease are the same for men and women. That is a direct result of male discrimination and doing all the scientific research on men. Only now with more women in STEM is the research beginning to catch up.
Oh, but then there is the problem of violence against women. When one of the leading causes of death in young women is domestic violence, it begins to look like women should give up men if they want to live longer. So, you guys can give up testosterone and we women will have absolutely nothing to do with you and then we will see about changes in average age of death.
There, you guys give a stupid argument and I will match it for stupid.
A Disciple and grizzerbear are sexists who believe men are superior to women and racists who believe that whites are superior to non-whites. Of course they don’t say it openly and outrightly like that. But they constantly come on here raging with red faces, frothed mouths, and blistered fingers from smashing the keyboard so hard about how men are the real victims of sexism and whites are the real victims of racism. It’s simply misogynistic and racist code and dog whistling. Go on any far-right site you hear the same garbage. They’re here to fight, smear, lie, and hate. Delete them.
Disciple (first comment) – white men still dominate in any position of power. Can you name one category of powerful office that has less than 50% white men? CEOs of fortune 500 companies are majority white men. So is Congress. And legislatures. And corporate boards. And university presidents. And etc. The article I linked to, the one about Hegseth blocking the promotions of two women and two Black men, says that 36 white men remained on the promotion list. Am I crying foul because two women were dominating the 36 white male candidates? White men are overrepresented in every decision making body and influential position in the country. Basketball players do not pass laws and set policy. Neither do lumberjacks. Please pay attention to the difference in positions of power, and regular jobs.
Brad D – thank you.
Disciple (second comment) – you’re doing the same thing grizz did and you’re setting up a strawman to try and make it sound like I was suggesting something ridiculous. Nothing in this post is about equality in outcomes, like the death rate (weird example, btw). Equality in having a voice in decisions is an entirely different thing than saying women should die earlier in order to be equal. Do you hear how ridiculous you are?
There are some quasi-religious organizations that are female dominated. I haven’t done any research into them, but Wiccans and paganism are female-dominated. Female-dominated religions have traditionally ended in burning women at the stake, so you can see how the idea of women having revelations and leading religions has been violently discouraged throughout history.
Anna – this is awesome: “Oh, but then there is the problem of violence against women. When one of the leading causes of death in young women is domestic violence, it begins to look like women should give up men if they want to live longer. So, you guys can give up testosterone and we women will have absolutely nothing to do with you and then we will see about changes in average age of death.” Way to meet Disciple’s ridiculous statement with your own ridiculous statement!
Brad D (May 24 comment at 10:34 am) – I considered deleting Disciple and grizzerbear, but I think their comments are actually useful in this context. They are so obviously wrong. There is no good reason against equality, other than white male fragility, and the fact that grizz and Disciple can only come up with strawmen arguments is proof. Like, that’s all conservatives have? To misinterpret and say dumb things like equality means making the average age of death equal? Wow, yeah, you guys got nothing.
@Janey
Disciple’s proposed solution to make things more equal being to do things to make women die earlier instead of doing things for men so they live longer lives is just an amazingly perfect example of how patriarchy warps brains.
Fair enough, Janey. I just have no patience for trolls anymore.
@Janey
I tried to leave a comment I think you might be interested in on your consent-based chastity article but it doesn’t look like it went through. If you can’t find it in the moderation queue let me know and I can try sending it to you some other way.
Brad D,
Why do you hallucinate about what I believe? Nowhere have I argued that men are superior to women. And nowhere have I defended racism. I have observed that complaints of inequality and racism are often selective, ignore simple math, and are dismissive of personal preferences.
Janey overtly argues that gender equality cannot be realized until women are equally represented in positions of power. At the same time she says she is not arguing for equality of outcome. Thus, the only way for Janey’s equality to be realized is if an equal number of highly talented women as men seek positions of power.
What if they don’t? What if highly talented women recognize that given the range of opportunities they have, they choose options they perceive as more personally fulfilling, instead of the pursuit of positions of “power”?
There used to be a movie trope of the man learning that the pursuit of wealth and power wasn’t personally rewarding. So it is kind of funny to see Feminism argue that women deserve to be just as miserable as men in their pursuit of wealth and power.
I recognize that the LDS church is not giving women equal opportunity to hold positions of leadership. To which I invited consideration of the idea that this discrimination is out of concern of leadership to protect the legitimacy of the church. Appreciate that women lead organizations face the same dilemma – open the organization to men and the organization risks losing legitimacy.
If you feel otherwise, I welcome exploration of the question. If the LDS church opened “priesthood” leadership to women how would this change church operation and church culture? I have no judgment if this change would be good or bad – at least to me that is not the issue. I wonder how the policy would be received and put into practice.
And appreciate that per Janey’s own words, such a change would not resolve the equality question until 50% of bishops and apostles were female.
Does religious discrimination against women and…oh, let me ponder a moment…Oh, yeah, got it. Does religious discrimination against women and people of African descent add or detract legitimacy from the COJCOLDS? Asking for a friend.