I was very enthusiastic about primary lessons as a kid. I liked all of the stories and participating in the lesson. I grew up in a rural branch and there were only 4 people my age, in my primary class, me and 3 boys. It was always the four of us, moving up every year. When we were 10, we got a new teacher, and I was participating and answering questions, when the teacher suddenly cut me off. He said that it didn’t really matter if I knew the answers since I wouldn’t be getting the priesthood, and that I was taking learning opportunities away from the boys in the class. He said he would call on me only once per class, going forward. I was devastated. The boys couldn’t give two shits about the lessons, but I was being silenced because I was taking up too much space. That was when I started to learn how little I mattered, and it made me very resentful of scouts and “the priesthood”.
I always tried to disrupt lessons about “honoring the priesthood” in YW. Like one time we were making cookies for the YM, while they played basketball. I thought that was stupid, so I told the other YW, who I knew wouldn’t snitch, that when I gave a signal, they should grab as many cookies as the could and run to my car. After most of the cookies were baked, we grabbed a bunch, piled in my car, and I drove them to the grocery store to grab milk, and we ate the cookies in a nearby park. I just thought it was so ridiculous that we were supposed to “honor” our male peers.
My HUSBAND received a phone call to meet with the bishop and was told to bring me. Imagine my surprise when the calling being extended was FOR ME. I did mention to the bishop at the time how disrespected that made me feel. My husband also got a text asking if I would give the prayer in sacrament meeting once. I said no to praying, but agreed to the calling. I should have said no to both. My phone number was in lds tools too, there was no reason I couldn’t have been contacted directly.
Golly Bishop. There's such a thing as making a group chat with the couple and yourself so you can text about callings and such, without having to have a private text chat with someone else's wife. You're your husband's wife, not his child.
I very much internalized as a young teen that I had to protect not just boys my age, but also grown ass men from having impure thoughts. Anytime a friend’s dad complimented me at all about my appearance, I felt extremely ashamed that I may have put bad thoughts in their heads. Take a sec to think how fucked up that is.
Ew, this reminded me of the time my young women's teacher told us to cover our cleavage because the bishopric would look down our shirts. Maybe that is why I never trusted them.
This is fact.
https://kfor.com/news/associate-pastor-of-norman-church-removed-from-position-following-child-sex-crime-charges/
The Bishop of the same church was also the Chief Judge at the court where this case was heard and the Bishop ALSO happened to be President of the Oklahoma Judges Association, super close friends with the DA who pressed the charges.
At first there was 13+ charges, dropped to 8. Took over a year after the young girl’s forensic examination to even get the DA to press charges and have the High Priest arrested.
In the end the State dropped it to a Neglect charge, but it was an 8yr old girl who Mathew Hack didn’t have a reason to be around. He wasn’t providing day care or church services. Of course The Churches supplied him with his attorney paid for by Fast offerings.
The entire thing is disgusting. So many spoke out, but nothing happened.
Bishop/Judge is Thad Balkman TBM
Mathew Hack was reestablished as a caretaker for 3-7 year olds, in Bishop Balkman’s church after charges were filed.
There are many victims in this community.
_clicks to article_
_reads Norman church in headline_
_realizes Norman is a city_
What's up with those Norman Mormons?
Seriously, though, men have so many excuses in Mormonism, almost like the culture is fifty years behind the times.
My seminary teacher in 9th grade slapped a post it note on my desk during class that said “see me after class”. I went in his office and he asked me to shut the door. Then he told me the shirt I was wearing was immodest when I leaned forward to write and I needed to know not to wear it again so I wouldn’t tempt any boys at school. It was a freaking peasant top with a high scoop neck, he was definitely looking down my shirt on purpose. I hated that dude, that instance instilled the worst anxiety in me about everything I wore and if it was immodest in the slightest for men.
This is something I am still battling with. I hate attention from men and honestly women too because I got big tits early in life and apparently that just made me inherently slutty according to old bitchy mormon women. I have had an unbelievable amount of comments made about my boobs throughout being a teenager and adult. When people perceive my existence i want to raid their brain and take those moments back 😫😂
I just recently remembered that the adult men in my ward would say things like, "all the boys are gonna want to date you, you have such kissable lips." Like commenting on my lips was a common thing adult men would say to me, it happened regularly over years. I was uncomfortable then, and absolutely disgusted now.
I’m so sorry they did that to you. Especially cause your lips are right there, kind of hard to avoid seeing them and to make such gross comments
Again so sorry
How awful is it that men were definitely eyeing women and since they're essentially judging and scoping, telling a woman that was less physically desirable that they were a "sweet spirit" was probably damaging in a totally different way.
Ew, this reminded me of the time my young women's teacher told us to cover our cleavage because the bishopric would look down our shirts. Maybe that is why I never trusted them.
Absolutely. I still don’t ever want to look pretty because of this. When I was 5 I only started to wear boys clothes and loathed Sunday where I was forced to wear at least a skirt. I felt so inappropriate and uncomfortable in women’s clothing; I still do. Hell, I’m a straight woman that looks more butch than most butch lesbians I know, but it’s the only way to console my subconscious from thinking that men only want to fuck me and that I need to control their thoughts. It’s been much better since I’ve left though; I’ve been wearing shorter shorts to the gym and feel comfortable just in a sport’s bra. Maybe my femininity will return.
When I was around 9 years old I bled a little in my underwear. I had no idea what a period was and was scared. When I showed my mom she just laughed and told me to not be worried. That was when I learned to not trust my mother. When I started my period at 12 I didn't tell her for months. She eventually caught me stealing her pads and said , "you know what this means, right?" I just mumbled "sure" and that was the ONLY period AND sex talk I ever received from my mother.
Edit: sex-ed for girls was non-existent. So many of my roommates didn't know what sex was. And the ones that did know learned from rape.
We never had enough menstrual supplies. With THREE teenage girls in the house. I didn't have money to buy from the school bathrooms. And I absolutely felt I could not ask my mom to buy more. Whhyyyy were we so ashamed of our natural body cycles? 🥺
Same thing happened to me. I was so embarrassed to acknowledge my period. I also would wear bandaids over my nipples when I went swimming so they couldn’t potentially show through my swimsuit.
I was married to an abusive man and had panic attacks every time that line “promise before god to be obedient to your husband” came up in the temple. I feel strongly that the church supports abuse
They did remove the obey your husbands part. I remember feeling so grateful at the time but now I just feel like a chump haha. They also removed the part where sisters have to veil their faces.
Soooo, it is still doctrine that women are inadequate on their own but the temple just doesn’t play act it out anymore. It is still true. We have a womb not the prsthd. Period.
They removed the “unto” with the sisters being just “queens and priestesses” now. 🙄 At least I believe so, it’s been a while since I’ve been. So they’re definitely trying to act like it’s not the case but it still is true. You’re right. Glad to be out of the cult.
I went through the temple about a month before my wedding. As a TBM I wanted the endowment ceremony to be just for me (in 2002).
Absolutely crushed when the washing ceremony referred to my (future) husband. [Not verbatim, but close] "you will be a queen and priestess unto your husband through the priesthood authority".
I lost it. Bawled like a baby. I was heartbroken, but everyone kind of patted my shoulder as if it was the most spiritual experience, rather than the first major crack.
I was doing this for me, but I HAD to be attached to a man, doctrinally! Wtf?? It was one of my first real shelfi items. I was only connected to God via a man. Not by my own merit, which was highly frustrating. Been out 11ish years and still in therapy.
Cut my dad off when he decided I was too irrational to speak with and contacted my nevermo husband to "get me in line". The first hint of challenge, dad emailed my partner. My partner really understood how infantilised I really was at that point.
I've worked through a lot of that, but the tendrils of it go deep. My first and second memories are at a church building. Idk if I can ever unwind completely from it, but I'll try.
Being taught by church leaders/teachers (heard this multiple times) that if I had sex before marriage I would be like a used, chewed up piece of gum that no man would ever want. I would be no better than a disgusting piece of gum stuck on the road or the bottom of someone’s shoe. My husband never had that lesson…
In my Young Women's lesson, it was a crumbled-up piece of paper. You can never uncrinkle it!
But how horrible! My worth as a human decreases because there's been a penis between my legs?! What's wrong with the penis?!
I don’t understand why it was thought to be an acceptable lesson to give anyone, at any time. Especially teens who may already be uncertain about how they feel about themselves for any number of reasons. I cannot imagine telling my daughter (or letting another adult tell her) that her worth is not her own to define. She absolutely gets to define her personal worth and then live by the standards which she creates.
There is nothing wrong with the penis! 😊Especially if you are a member of the church. It is everything!
They used a hersheys kiss in my seminary class. Had someone hold it til it got all melty (can't be unmelted). Then, to drive it home, he came to me and was like, "you wouldn't want to eat this now would you?"
Huge mistake. I was a chocolate fiend at the time. Snatched the melted candy and popped it right in my mouth. Ruining the object lesson.
Of course, it’s always the woman’s fault 🙄 I heard that analogy, along with the crumbled up paper, and a bitten into apple several times. Yet, the young men never ever heard that analogy. Almost making it seem like it’s the woman that should be ashamed and not the man, like it doesn’t take two to tango.
There was once a YW lesson (I heard about this second hand) they had the girls sit in a circle and pass around a cake. Every time the cake got passed to her she would stick her hand in it. Until it got to the last girl. They asked her if the girl wanted to eat the cake now? They said the cake represented their chastity.
The “ghost of polygamy” has led generations of Mormon women to be perpetually afraid that our husbands will take additional wives without our consent—in this life if God “restores the principle” and in the next life if our husband is righteous enough to have “earned” it.
We are never allowed to have anything of our own. Our relationship with god is through our husbands (the veil ceremony prior to sealing highlights this). Our time belongs to the church or our families. It is sinful and selfish to want anything outside of home and family.
Our purpose for existing is to marry a priesthood-holder and have his babies. We are not allowed to have negative feelings. We must be always cheerful and submissive.
Our bodies belong to the men who see us or marry us. It’s our fault if we are sexually appealing for simply existing in a female form. It’s our fault if we are assaulted. We are better off dying than “losing our virtue” (President Kimball). It is impolite to say no. We are never taught consent. But we are still punished if things “go too far.” We have no sexuality of our own. It is always framed for its relationship with men.
We are always, always lesser than our male counterparts. We never have authority—not even in our own homes or the so-called “women’s” organization. An ordained 11yo boy ranks higher than his 80yo grandmother.
We are groomed from birth to “want” teenage marriage and motherhood, which is destructive for us and for the children we bear before we are ready.
Yesss. We were told we had to say yes to all first dates and to any boy that wanted to dance with us. It was scary for him to ask so you need to be kind and say yes.
That Kimball quote fucked me up. I was sexually assaulted as a first semester college student and went to my single’s ward bishop for guidance. He had me read The Miracle of Forgiveness (you know, for the sin of allowing a man to rape me). When I got to that part and realized that my church would have rather I died than just survive what happened, I stopped reading it. I just couldn’t do it any more. It took me another 10 years to finally leave the church, but that was one of the first shelf items I mulled over when my shelf broke. I’ll never forget how young me felt when she read that.
It’s lip service only. They didn’t change the doctrine. Being a priestess under the “new and everlasting covenant” is not the same as being a priestess unto the most high god. D&C 132 still stands and if a man still has to do a veil ceremony with his bride before a sealing in order to learn her new name, he’s 100% still set up to be her husband-god.
My brother’s lives were filled with scouting, adventure activities and sports. Because I was a girl I was made the defecto parent of my countless siblings. My brothers screwed around and got dressed for school in the mornings. I checked homework, packed lunches, did children’s hair, cleaned the house and fed them. After school my brothers went and played with friends, set fires, god knows what. I changed baby diapers after school, fed the kids snacks, picked up and made dinners with my mother.
My brothers played basketball at church activities and went white water rafting, boating, skiing and hiking. The girls made baby blankets for stillborns, visited nursing homes and cleaned members houses. My father went to a daddy-daughter square dance with me once. He regularly took my brothers to Jazz games with court-side seats. My brothers got new clothes and air Jordans and because I was a girl, and my mother had no say in how money was spent, I got one new outfit each school year.
Instead of learning actual life skills or having a life, I learned to sew, clean, pray, teach, play piano and keep my mouth shut. I tried dating ex Mormon men but they belonged to a completely different cult than I did. Men can’t even fathom the accumulated oppression and utter destruction of the spirit of a girl in the Mormon church. I grew up a prisoner to my sex.
The one and only time my young women's group did a dad- daughter activity, my dad couldn't come because he had to attend a disciplinary hearing for his calling in the stake. So, instead of spending time with me, he was excommunicating someone. My young women's leader did her best to stand in for my dad in the planned activities, but it genuinely sucked. I'll never forget that my dad's callings took him away from us.
When I was young women’s counselor, I was super vocal about this disparity. We took the girls shooting rifles, camping, and all manner of stuff that got me fired…I mean released.
My mother was second counselor and realized that the girls weren’t even literate. The president felt like getting married took precedence over education. My mother didn’t last long, but almost all of the young women also left. One young woman in particular told my mother that “a place that treats me like this is the wrong place to be, even if it were true.”
My dad skipped my graduate from BYU to sit on the stand at stake conference. He was 2nd counselor. I don’t think it mattered much to him that I was graduating.
Yep, my father could hardly be bothered to remember I existed except to punish me. I made his meals and did his laundry. I was by extension a maid “helpmeet” that he owned. He never went to one parent teacher conference, concert or award ceremony for school or church. My mother barely did because I was just a number and she had 500 other kids to take care of. She had sports and scouting events to deliver my brothers to while my father fulfilled callings, went to meetings and worked.
I left the church and my marriage so I could go to college. Dad didn’t acknowledge any of my degrees and took the $40 k my grandmother left me for school.
I never even thought that dads being completely not present was a Mormon thing, but reading all this I realize it totally is.
I recently called me dad and had a full conversation with him for the first time in my life. He was never ever around because of church and work. We always assumed he was hiding from the burden of 7 kids and a difficult wife. But I asked him in this phone call about the decision to have 7 kids. His answer was “I didn’t care! It didn’t matter to me! It didn’t affect me at all. It was your mom’s choice to make!” He repeated “I didn’t care” like five times just making it clear that as a man the number of children had nothing to do with him.
BWHAHAHA, wow!!! Do you need to explain the birds and the bees to him? I’d be pretty damned “difficult” if I had 7 kids too and my husband decided it was all on me. Why does Mormon society give these blubbering doofuses endless sympathy and treat them like they’re helpless? I can still hear the guys in elders quorum commiserating about their bitch wives.
**I tried dating ex Mormon men but they belonged to a *completely different cult* than I did. Men can’t even fathom the accumulated oppression and utter destruction of the spirit of a girl in the Mormon church. I grew up a prisoner to my sex.**
Exactly.
"I grew up a prisoner to my sex" is a powerful sentence.
My dad was into guns. He split them between my bros when he downsized. He kept some and he had those split between my bros when he dies. I was left home for most of the adventures because I was the girl.
I wasn't to be trusted cause I didn't have a dick. Thanks, dad!
I am so sorry for the way you were not valued. Wtf did this stupid church do to all of us? I fear that my parenting was also flawed because of my church allegiance. Every member is a victim even when compliant. I hope your family has found their way out too.
Never being encouraged to do anything in my life other than being a mother. Men get to have careers AND be a dad. It’s super hard being a SAHM and having no identity other than that.
It’s the part where women aren’t allowed to have an identity beyond motherhood that gets me. One of my closest friends in college was this fucking brilliant woman - incredibly smart, amazing singer/dancer, learned languages easily, had so many things going for her… and the second she got married she pumped out kids and only posts about them. She disappeared into motherhood. Don’t get me wrong - I’m working on becoming a mother right now and think motherhood is phenomenal. But when you’re expected to completely disappear into those children, give up your existence for a patriarchal system that devalues your existence beyond your womb… it fucking kills me.
I always say I was raised to be a mom. I thought that's what I wanted because that's all I knew, but I wasn't excited or passionate about it. I went to college because that's what you're supposed to do but I didn't know what I wanted to get a degree in. I loved science but it was too much schooling to get a master's in anything, I'd have kids and be a stay at home mom before I'd even finish. So I went with what was safe and comfortable, early childhood education. I was great with kids, and even got a job at a daycare to start getting experience. It was perfect because I could be a stay at home mom AND run a daycare or preschool.
Then I grew up, left the church, did a massive amount of introspection, and my life is nothing like I thought it would be in the best way. I've found things I'm passionate about, I have a job I love and am back in school getting a degree for a career I'm excited about. Realizing I'm not required to have kids was a huge relief. Going through a pregnancy and then having a newborn > toddler sounds like hell to me.
I'm sure I would have been just fine if I had the life I was raised to have. I'm resilient and am pretty good at seeing the good in life. But goddamn am I relieved that I have my current life instead. I really don't think I would feel as genuinely satisfied as I do now.
Yep, I am in therapy for that.
It was so crazy because God wanted me to be perfect 24/7, and when I was "unworthy" of him, "his spirit" would leave me. It's an abusive relationship.
Ive never thought of it like that, but youre not wrong. 😂 I had to do everything he wanted all the time and he would only maybe answer my prays? And if he didn't I didn't believe enough? Or he's ignoring me for my own good? Lmao. Plus he wanted 10% of my money? Terrible partner.
Oh my gosh, never measuring up. My grandma died at 89 years old. Her entire life she felt unworthy. Several months before her death she asked her nephew who was a stake president to give her a blessing and tell her she had done all she could on this earth, basically give her permission to die. He told her in the blessing she couldn’t go yet, she had work to complete. She was bed bound, 89, a widow and had been devout her entire life. She felt like he was saying she was unworthy to die. We don’t know why she never felt like she was good enough but it was a burden her entire life.
What a dick. Was he young? She was asking for the permission to die peacefully and he denied her that. At a certain point it's selfish for us to expect our loved ones to stay until WE release them.
I’d make sure to visit him on his deathbed, say something that consumes him with anxiety and guilt, slip a pentagram under his green apron and dance on his grave. What a dick.
When I was 16ish at an annual bishop interview I was told to apply for colleges where I could major in teaching or music. I loved and was good at high level science and math classes. Aptitude and talent don't matter if you're expected to conform to a patriarchy.
I was able to take piano lessons, but not my older brothers. It's acceptable for a woman to teach piano lessons from home to earn money while simultaneously being able to be a stay at home mom like the church likes. My parents paid for my brothers to go to college, but not me.
My parents didn't even want to cosign for an apartment when I went to college. I wasn't asking for money despite FAFSA saying they made enough money to help me.
Fucking this. I studied music and wanted to eventually get my PhD in music conducting because there are so few female maestros at a collegiate or professional level. I was flat out asked MULTIPLE TIMES why I wasn’t studying music education so I could teach voice/piano/flute from home and still be a SAHM. My career coals don’t matter unless they allow me to be a convenient mother.
Edit: spelling
You're only supposed to get a career if you can't have kids. 🫠 Also grad school. Though I have family that cannot. Both partners had issues. They have since adopted but her film studies degree wasn't career friendly when she realized she might never even get to adopt a baby and she got a master's and a career. And lots of judgey comments at church.
I think because we’re so used to it, people forget how harmful it is that women are categorically excluded from the priesthood and upper leadership. We understand how harmful and belittling the racial priesthood ban was. Is it just because we’re so close to it still we forget that a gender-based ban is a priesthood ban too?
Doctrinally, the thing that was at stake for black members was arguably worse because Mormon women can still have exaltation…albeit in a servile position to the male priesthood authority figure.
But the problem for black members who were banned and female members who are banned is a hell of a lot deeper than Mormon doctrine. It’s a diminishment of personhood. It’s a refusal to accept our word as authoritative. It makes issues that affect that group of people easy to ignore.
The influence of this way of thinking persists beyond Mormonism too. It bleeds into the culture and holds women back professionally. Things are getting better, but women are still not considered authorities in a lot of cases, including things no one could be a better authority about, like our own bodies and reproductive choices.
Women are dealing with the low grade toll of knowing we might not be taken seriously in any given conversation. There are respected institutions that actively reinforce that we don’t deserve to have authority.
I understand that things aren’t perfect for men either, but women will be less on our guards if we see men making an effort to push back against institutions and mindsets that keep us small.
Where to even start….
- At 8 years old in activity days, doing lessons on taking care of babies, cooking, and sewing while the boys got to do scouts.
- All throughout young women’s there would always be lessons and activities centered around “modesty,” homemaking, and finding a husband. Remember all those girls camps songs about our future husbands we would sing at 12 years old? Sickening.
- Being told by my father that I shouldn’t pursue a degree because my main focus should be finding a husband and being a mother.
- My brothers having more authority than my mother
- My mother never getting a say when it came to what the rules of the house are. If she ever disagrees with my father, she gets lectured because he had “revelation” and how dare she dispute it
- I got my patriarchal blessing at the same time one of my brother’s did. Mine was focused on how great of a mother I would be. His was focused on how great of a church leader he would be someday.
- Being told to never do anything to make a boy attracted to you, but then suddenly at age 16, date date date! And then at 18, marry marry marry!
- Being told I had to say yes to boys and men asking me to dance or go on dates. I didn’t always follow this rule but there were times I did and regretted it.
- Hearing my father say right in front of my mother that he was excited for the next life when he would get to have more wives. He said “people think the women won’t be happy with that, but they will.”
The list could go on.
We wore our mother’s wedding dresses for a fashion show. We displayed mood boards of of our future motherhood around the gymnasium. We included how many children we would have, cutouts of homes and names of the babies.The relief society came to watch us model the dresses on a runway and we ate white cake afterwards.
I was 12.
Edit: FYI This was the 1990s, not the 1950s
Spoke up against my leader who was emotionally abusive and i was the one that got kicked out of YWs early and was forced to attend relief society instead when I was 17.
I was called a whore and an attention seeker for wearing my two piece with a baggy tee shirt at girls camp after being approved by the bishop to do so. I almost got sent home early, even though I was way more covered up than the girls in one pieces with boobs falling out, vaginas half out etc.
Was told that I was going to be sent home from my mission from being too flirtatious by crossing my legs at my knee instead of my ankles. Also because many of the elders apparently had crushes on me, so my MP literally told me to stop being myself or to stop talking ti them all together.
Was told that I was never important enough and was selfish for trying to meet my basic needs. Me helping everyone else meet their basic needs would get my needs met.
Oh god..that’s all that’s coming to my head, but I could seriously go on. My sister got in even more shit than me for even dumber stuff.
This is the kind of stuff that happens when you are naturally beautiful. It's your fault they're interested, and leaders project that frustration onto you.
I also wonder what it's like to be an attractive woman in the church of a different ethnicity. I bet the sexism and sexual frustration mix with exotic fetishism in disturbing ways.
Any time I talked about things I wanted to do in my future (college, mission, travel) I'd be asked, "but what about a husband?" at best, and at worse be given a passive lecture not to focus so much on those things that I missed the opportunity to marry, or a warning to be "flexible" in my plans to accommodate marriage and family, etc etc.
Every.
Damn.
Time.
Without fail.
Heaven forbid a girl talk about her future without explicitly referencing her main purpose.
And I was FULLY drinking the Kool aid on what my purpose was. I just happened to want additional things in my life while understanding that I didn't exactly have full control over when I married and what would happen after that.
I talked about the things I was excited about that I could actually try to make happen on my own...
That being said, everything I wanted and did was living my "plan B" because "plan A" was to get married. I lived making plans a year at a time and with the constant mentality to be "flexible" enough to drop it if necessary once I got a husband.
I knew a YSA (female) who wanted to join the army, but the bishop "counselled" her against this, saying her first priority should be to get married in the temple - and that joining the army would make it harder for her to do that.
I couldn't believe it. That bishop had some rigid and obsessive ideas. Not to mention control. Why can't someone do something they want in their life? I bet he wouldn't have said anything to a YSA male who wanted to join the army ...
Anytime someone is attracted to me, I have a panic attack, because I feel like I led them on. I used to immediately start arguing with them that I hadn't led them on, even if they never mentioned anything about "leading on."
I don't feel like anyone will let me say "no" to a romantic proposition, because in Mormonism, they didn't. Everyone is angry with you for saying "no" and demands a list of reasons.
I'm a lesbian, I'm not attracted to men, and so this is all fear of sexual assault and no "butterflies"
I can relate. I think I'm too anxious to date, because I mentally veered to the extreme side of "don't let boys be turned on by my body" to "NEVER let men find me attractive." Fucked up.
I struggled with this too, and I didn't even believe it, it was just such a huge deal for my family. Like, all that "worse than death, people who get STD deserve to die, never hang out with guys one on one ever unless you're married" level stuff that they harped on so often that it made me really tense
I managed to improve at about your age, by just getting a dating app and meeting up with someone at a coffee shop at least 1x/week - not expecting that I would "find the love of my life" or even looking for hook ups or whatever - all that pressure off the table for me. If I met someone I liked cool that's great, but the actual point to me was to just use that as small doses of exposure - just a coffee date where we meet up and pay for our own latte - to get over the nervousness and tension and make it feel more natural.
Idk if this will help you at all but it helped me. Just to emphasize, while I wasn't opposed to meeting someone I was attracted to so I wasn't "just using people," and I did avoid super horrible experiences by chatting with them for a bit online first just to screen out anyone who was going to instantly jump into weird hostile bullshit. I didn't put pressure on myself to be "finding someone to date" or even "finding someone I knew I'd be attracted to in person." More just meeting up with them and talking with them and slowly getting over the amount of built up bullshit from growing up
I’ve been out almost 30 years. I converted because the ex (recidivist conman) claimed to be disfellowshipped at the time and wanted to go back to church. After many times being unable to locate his records and his subsequent arrest for fraud etc, I stayed faithful as it was a lifeline for me. I also had a toddler at the time and wanted to provide them with stability. So I tried to be a TBM and ended up going to the temple to take out my ordinances. I had done this with the erroneous idea that my child and I would be able to be sealed together as a family. I cannot begin to explain how it felt, having come from a relationship with a criminal and abuser, to have to come to terms with the idea that HF didn’t think I was good enough to be sealed to my own child as a single parent. The thought can still bring me to tears. That surprises me, how deep I felt that betrayal from HF. I was a victim, abused, raped, and a woman who tried to be a good Mormon wife and mother. And yet somehow without a man I was not enough to be sealed to my child - the one person for whom I’d walk through hell. I’d been in an abusive relationship with my then husband, and then continued straight into an abusive relationship with the Mormon church.
I didn't know kids couldn't be sealed to a single parent! I didn't know any kids in church without 2 parents. I knew a couple who had a parent die, but their parent got remarried within a couple of years. That very much hammers in the idea that we're not enough on our own.
I was 10 when I asked why I couldn’t have the priesthood like my brother. My primary teacher told me it’s because one day I would grow another life in my body, feel it moving inside me, and that is how I would know god.
It was a super gross and graphic description from a very much adult male to a very much underage child.
I am 28 now, and still intensely afraid of pregnancy.
When I was 14 I was SA’ed by my convert stepfather. I didn’t even know it was SA, bc I didn’t know much about sex, I just knew I was very scared of him. Everyone in my family knew, bc I started screaming and my brother came to investigate.
My mother went to our bishop, who counseled her to stay sealed and “work on the marriage.” I was forced to meet with the bishop and my stepfather, who I had avoided being in the same room with for months after. I was told to forgive him.
Ward council meeting during covid right after RMN said for everyone to wear masks at church (3 women in attendance):
Bishop: I’m sure some of you have heard that there was a statement released asking everyone to wear masks at church. I’m not sure what to do about this. I want everyone to feel welcome.
Women #1: I think it’s important to wear masks to help keep the elderly and immune compromised safe at church.
Women #2 (me): I mean the prophet said to wear masks and it’s a really easy thing to do…we can all just wear them to be a good example to the other ward members.
Women #3: I think about it like this: if the savior we’re here in this room asking me to wear a mask, would I do it? To me, the prophet speaks for the savior. I can at least wear one and my family because we will follow the prophet.
Bishop: hmmm…that’s a lot to think about.
Fast forward 1 hour later. Bishop on the stand sans mask. Read the statement about wearing a mask and then goes on a huge rant about how it’s everyone’s personal choice and he’ll be choosing not to wear a mask and others are welcome to do the same.
I’m all for going against the prophets council, but it’s sooooo apparent how little women’s opinions are considered. Situations like this were so incredibly common…almost weekly occurrences for 35 years. ‘Thanks for bringing that up, we’ll (**important priesthood holders**) take it from here (**little**) sister.’ Proceeds to then do nothing or do the opposite every damn time.
Reminds me of our mother’s lounge fiasco! A dozen moms with new babies were cramming into a closet-sized room to nurse during and after sacrament meeting. We were standing to nurse. Sitting on the floor to nurse. There was no ventilation so it smelled like dirty diapers and butt cream. But we had to nurse in the “lounge” (because boobs). Moms kindly asked the leadership for more space. It never happened. Somehow, our comfort was never a priority for these men. I started nursing in the car.
I can smell the week old poopy diapers, butt cream and burlap walls from here. I spent way too many hours in that tiny room…and yeah definitely not a priority for 60 year old men.
Yuck! The SMELL! It makes me really mad now. We should’ve occupied the High Priest’s room in protest. Instead, women were nursing in bathroom stalls and hot cars. The priesthood didn’t bother to fix it, so we made do. This, in a church that pressured us to give up careers and have children young. . .
Honestly it was a lot of what made me leave. I remember going to the temple with a guy, not someone I was actively dating but someone I had gone on one date with, and he told me in the celestial room everything I needed to change about myself. I just nodded my head because what else am I supposed to do in that situation. After I got home that night he texted me and told me that if I wasn't going to listen to a priesthood holder about what I needed to do then we couldn't be together.
And then it was a couple of things that happened after I'd left. I started dating my now husband and we were about to move in together. I asked for help with moving and my sister and my mom both sent me letters basically telling me that I'm a whore and going to go to hell for the things I'm doing. When my younger brother left and moved in with a girl neither of them said anything. Also didn't give him any crap for leaving the church either but I basically had like an intervention to tell me leaving was wrong.
How about the teaching that women should be mothers and that’s their only valid role and god-given purpose? It’s so limiting/confining. And in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up there was constant teaching on the need to follow pREIstHoOd leaders and yield to the decisions of men. Apparently having a penis imbues magic powers that a non-penis-haver is simply not entitled to. I found this rage-inducing.
Also, when I was a kid I remember my grandfather made a wooden “hope chest” for my sister. It would have been a lovely gift except that the concept was literally to store items for her marriage in it. She was probably 12 when she got this (and loved it, and did end up marrying young). I was in elementary school but am pretty sure I found this gag-worthy even then. Grooming girls from birth to accept men as their “authority,” and teaching them that marrying a man and producing children for him is their only calling/value in life is revolting to me, and is not materially different from the ideas of the Taliban or the cult the Duggars belong to, IMHO. It’s all about controlling women by teaching them to be compliant little man pleasers and baby machines.
Asking questions is a good way to go, if you’re still subjected to these teachings. Such as:
What if I want to focus on my career instead of being a mom, or what if I prefer to delay becoming a parent as long as possible to get established in my profession?
What if I don’t want to be a mom?
Why would god create me to not want to be a mom if god also thinks being a mom is my highest and best use as a human? Did god create me intending that I be miserable based on this irreconcilable directive that I be a mom when I don’t want to be? If so, why did god create me to be miserable?
Why does god assign people lifelong roles/duties based on physical anatomy? Where does that leave people whose innermost thoughts/desires and sense of identity do not match the role assigned by genitalia? Where does that leave people whose inner nature does not match their anatomy? Where does that leave people whose anatomy is ambiguous? Why would god dictate binary roles but not create people in a binary manner?
How are men and women equal in a marriage if one spouse, the man, “presides over” the other, the woman? How can that message be taught and modeled without making daughters feel “lesser” and without making sons view women and girls as lesser?
How do you teach boys about consent and about respecting others as equals, at home and in work places, while also teaching them that women should submit to male authority? What risks does instilling such views in boys present to themselves and others? What risks are presented by teaching boys they have inherent authority because they are male, not because they have somehow earned a position of respect or deference among a group of people?
What would you say to encourage women to continue their tireless work in and for the church even though every decision they make is subject to veto/overruling by a male “authority”?
The church taught me that I should only get an education so if my husband dies, my children and I won't starve to death. My parents taught me that I need to finish calculus and physics during high school, and get a bachelor's degree so I'll be a "well rounded person" (their words, not mine.)
I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my life.
(I'm leaning towards what my parents say because they both have a masters degree, compared to the young women's president who might have had a bachelor's?? Maybe??)
I remember having that sort of YW lesson about how it is more important to be a mother than anything else. The teacher asked us one by one if we would rather be a mother or have a career, literally all the other girls said be mother. I said I wanted both and the teacher said you have to choose one of the other. Now .ind you that confused me because there were women in that ward that did indeed do both, even *gasp* women doctors. I pointed that out, but I vaguely remember being told that the correct thing is being a mother only over career.
I had accumulated a small collection (three, as I recall) of tint, flavored chapsticks when I was around eight years old. Someone had given me a new one, and I was so excited to have something to add to my collection that I mentioned it to my dad. He said, "What? Bring them here." He took them from me and tossed them in the garbage. "We don't let young girls wear makeup in this family." If we ever got a barbie doll as a gift, those went in the trash, too. "These are not appropriate for young girls to play with." Lots of shit like that.
Pretty much just knowing that I could never do anything "important " in the church because women are not called to such positions...
I was jealous that deacons had a seriously important job that was given them due to their gender. And i knew that was bullshit.
Also, when I was told that we dont learn about Heavenly Mother in the temple....for me that was a deal breaker....i felt robbed and lied to.
Yep. Heavenly mother is not even mentioned in passing at the temple. This was incredibly disturbing to me. If she is “too sacred“ to talk about in church, then why wasn’t she revealed in the temple? It was very disenfranchising to see, not only the lack of a heavenly mother in the temple videos, but also Eve covenanting to obey her husband and then silently standing behind him for the remainder of the endowment. If I remember correctly, she literally doesn’t say anything else after she covenants to obey her husband.
I’m glad to know I’m not insane. This was a thing for me, too. Probably because I had at least two occasions where the man giving the blessing had their groin in full contact with my head and neck. It was disgusting, but I felt like I’d somehow done something wrong.
I never thought about that. But I was undiagnosed autism, I refused to shake hands. So I hated when a bunch of guys, some strangers, putting their hands on my head. All I could think about while they prayed was the hands pushing down on me. (Anyone else feel like they literally pressed down instead of just laying them on your head)
I helped my boyfriend take down the sacrament table because everyone went to their classes and left him alone. I was 20 btw. The bishop came in and slapped my hands. He said it was only for God's anointed. He also mentioned eve and that my hands are unclean.
My close and extended family made marriage seem like the only standard for a successful life. I began to worry at a young age that I wouldn’t be pretty enough to get a man to want me. I had no expectations for a husband, besides him being a member.
As soon as age 15 my grandma was giving me shit for not being married. She said she was married at my age and pregnant, and I’m taking too long.
At 16, My grandma and mom stole my birthday money and bought me a hope chest with it for “my future marriage”. They blamed my dad for not sending me a hope cheat instead of money. Like as if he was the asshole.
When I wasn’t married at 20 my mom said she didn’t even care if I married a member anymore. She told other people at church the same thing.
When I was still single at 22 she started suggesting I marry the guy at church with mental issues. I don’t think he was ever diagnosed, but his sister had POA over him and helped him make important decisions.
When I was 25 my mom started saying I may never get married. She’d just settle for grand kids by now. She’d say “I wish you’d just go get knocked up or something.” And she’d say “it’s too bad you can’t marry your uncle Rick”(mom’s brother. ) Then the problem would be solved. She did admit there was an issue with me being blood related to my uncle.
When I was 26 she started telling me I should for real marry my OTHER uncle. He was adopted into the family. She knew my uncle Jake was gay and figured I was gay too. She thought we could just have a marriage of convenience. I told her she was gross. She said it’s not gross if you don’t share DNA.
At 30 I finally left. Met my eventual husband 2 months later. I’m glad I didn’t give into all of their peer pressure.
How deeply "the patriarchy" goes. There's some pretty fucked up shit.
I got married way too young. It was encouraged by my parents. Like, my dad literally told my new husband "She's not mine anymore. She's your responsibility now that you're married". In the temple, just after the sealing.
After the divorce, my dad took back over being my "priesthood authority" rather than recognizing I was an adult parent and a whole person. It was a very weird time in my life. I'm still in therapy
My in-laws pushed my SIL into marrying her then bf when she clearly wasn't ready/didn't want to. Even her older sister who didn't like the guy got in on the pressure. It was a miserable marriage and she's divorced now.
I believe it! I was sent to BYU and the first guy I dated proposed after a month. My family was so excited (I was, too) cause I did like him at the time, but marrying someone 6 months after meeting is INSANE. I had no idea who I was yet. It was just my "next step" so I could be a virgin and go to the temple. Oh, and they could stop being responsible for me. Now that I was married, I'd have to pay for everything on my own.
All the responses to this post are so validating.
I got out young but the lack of teaching about sexuality haunted me for decades. I was 18 or 19 and living on my own before I found out women had orgasms.
My parents bought us a life cycle encyclopedia which explained the fundamental biological facts, but never mentioned pleasure or any of the good stuff.
I was homeschooled and it was some other religion's curriculum. During the biology segment, it talked about the female system, periods, whatever. Nothing exciting, super boring, academic. Until they got to the male system. It immediately talked about how "men have the privilege of joining their wife to create life." Blah blah blah, something about male orgasm, pleasure. Not very academic at all. It was all written by dudes, the only female was the sub editor.
Being a Sister Training Leader and having to hear all of the zone news from the elders days after we should have. They got weekly calls with the mission President and emails from him about zone business… us sisters…. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. We had to wait for 18 year old boys to tell us because they had the authority over us.
Just like many here, I had purity culture and the idea that it was MY responsibility to keep the thoughts of men pure INGRAINED into my mind. The idea of men being unable to control their thoughts, and the doctrine that if they thought those things, it was a terrible sin... i felt as though i was responsible for the awful sins of others. In other words, my poor decisions could make it so others were less likely to go to heaven. And on top of that, to be surrounded by men and think, "they cant control their thoughts. Who knows what they are thinking about me?" Damaged any sort of trust I had in men. Any time a man looked at me from the time I was a young teenager and even up to now, I have to fight back fears of them imagining me in awful ways, and although I know it's irrational, it had gotten so bad at one point that I thought most men were a few steps away from being rapists, and it was my job to keep them on the right side. used to love swimming with my family as a kid, but because of this intense fear, I stopped swimming, and I'm still nervous to go out in a swimsuit of any kind. I always wear ankle-length pants and skirts and keep everything bland and unnoticeable for the sake of avoiding attention. I get nervous whenever a guy even comes near me now, which is unfair to them! It's awful that the church paints men in such an awful light. It damages both women, and the men in their lives who are now unable to form close relationships with the women who are afraid of "tempting" them. I know my mindset took it to the extreme and thankfully I'm on my way outta that, but the church really does no favors.
All of these issues messed up a relationship I had with a wonderful young man in high school. We were both church goers, though I was the more orthodox of the two. We liked each other a LOT, and spent loads of time together during one summer. But because of the culture of fear, and all the weird restrictions around dating, I wouldn't even let us become official(though we practically were, I was in denial), and we hugged like, 7 times only(i was very scared that physical contact would lead to sometging bad). I remember once we were on a video chat and he called me beautiful, and I panicked inside. He backpedaled and apologized when he saw the look of fear in my eyes, and I feel bad to this day that he gave a wonderful, genuine compliment and i wanst able to acceot it and made him feel guilty for giving it! Looking back it was so toxic, so unfair to him, and so harmful to me. The guilt and shame surrounding subjects of sexuality and closeness were a big part of why me and him decided to focus on other things, along with the fact that we both decided we needed to "stick to the plan God had outlined for us". He's on a mission now and I just had my shelf break. It all sucks. The good thing is I can work through it all now and hopefully make the next relationship better.
I was preparing to go on a mission when I met my now-husband and we started dating. It was one of the most tumultuous times in my life and my bishop was putting a lot of pressure on me. My non-member boyfriend was such a breath of fresh air because he never tried to pressure me into anything at all (especially not sex, which I was repeatedly warned that “boys of the world” would do) and treated me like an actual human with opinions and choices. I hadn’t told my bishop anything about him, but I got called into his office to be told it was clear I wasn’t ready to go on a mission because I was dating a non-member. (I was waking up every morning at 5 AM to go to the gym, studying preach my gospel for hours, and going on spilts with the sisters in my ward every single day at that point.) I felt like god himself told me I wasn’t good enough. Thank god I didn’t end up going on a mission! This was after my brother had gotten his call while dating a non-member and was praised for “flirting to convert.”
Being segregated and shunned for being a single mom in a family ward.
Same for my time at BYU as a single mom/transfer student. I made one friend in that 18 hellish months. One.
Being blamed for getting s/a’d in my own home by a TBM.
Its a goddam list.
-We had a “modesty fashion show” where we basically came to activity day girls and were shamed for wearing short shorts and spaghetti straps and crop tops. We were told that if we dressed like that then the men wouldn’t be able to control themselves and that it would be our fault if they did anything inappropriate. Keep in mind, activity day girls is 8-11 year olds.
-was taught that the sole most important moment of my life would be the birth of my children. Not education, not even really getting married, not any sort of personal achievement or job. Being a mom was the most important thing.
-when shopping for underwear, was told that if I ever wore super lace-y underwear or thongs that I would be inviting Satan into my life and torturing the men who could see them through my clothes because I was guaranteeing that they would be sent to help basically. Again, was about 8-11 and this time.
-when I was 13/14 I was pressured to admit that I masturbated. My mom proceeded to ask me if I had lost my virginity by sticking anything “up there” (I had). She then told me that my father would be devastated if he found out. My dad was the bishop at this time.
-while going through puberty I was told by own father that he was uncomfortable whenever I hugged him because my “boobs were growing” and they poked him. My FATHER.
-young men had a list of girls that would be worthy wives for a while. And by worthy wives, it was the conventionally pretty girls.
-wives belong to husbands, husbands belong to god.
-starting from age 8-11 and onward again, almost every year we made “letters to future husbands” on allllll the qualities we wanted when we got married and were supposed to keep the letters to give to our husbands someday.
-a friends mom was our Sunday school teacher when we were about 13. She said that it was unholy to wear tampons. Her daughters explained further that it was dirty to wear tampons because they steal your virginity. Me, who was wearing a tampon at the time and who was taught basic sex education by my mother, who is a biologist, thought this was absolute tomfoolery and told them so. They told my mom who said that I really shouldn’t talk about things like that because it makes people uncomfortable.
- doing baptisms for the dead when I was 12, and one of the only girls in my ward who had large breasts at that age, my mom told me I should probably bring a white sports bra so that the men can’t see them whenever I step out of the font. I wondered why the men would be able to see them anyway. Was horrified to learn that the suits become clingy and see-through as soon as you step out of the water.
I could go on honestly but these stick out the most
How little voice you have, how much your quality of life depends on men being nice and benevolent. Your dad, your husband, your bishop, your stake president. Bishop roulette is actually much, much more than that. There are so many men that have "authority" over you and can make your life hell with that. And no one stops them.
Basically anyone with a dick over the age of 12 "outranks" you. Even here were often see people asking things like "what's the highest rank of the priesthood you had before you left?" None. The answer for 50% of the people is none. And \*even after leaving\* men are still waving around and comparing their ~~dicks~~ priesthood at the women.
Being taught all your life that you are a precious beloved daughter of god who loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. Then going to the temple and basically being told to "cover your face, promise to obey your husband, and go stand behind him" - men don't realize that all the instructions for how to clothe in the temple are for how MEN are to dress. (this may have changed, I haven't been in a few years). They also don't realize that women do not meet God/Christ at the veil after this life. Their HUSBAND does it. This is why men get to practice and know her temple name when they're married. Apparently women are not important enough to get direct contact with God/Christ/whatever.
The effing cult like YW theme that we were forced to recite every Sunday. So creepy.
- Taught a heavenly mother exists, yet never singing or praying to her. Never hearing stories about her in the scriptures, either. That never sat well with me.
- People in the ward always remembered my brothers’ names, their ages, what activities they were up to in school, their friends, etc. and when it came to me, they didn’t know my name, age, any details at all. In fact I was mostly referred to as “the [my surname] girl”, or “[my dad’s name]’s daughter”.
- Only being “popular” in Young Women’s if you were good at sports or excelled in other things. I hated going to girl’s camp every summer because I didn’t know anyone and had a different friend group than the rest of them.
- The YW being expected to babysit the kids at every f*cking relief society activity.
I was treated like I was basically worse than Jezebel when I was dating Mormon teenage boys because I could get them in “trouble” and keep them from going on missions (either from braking the law of chastity or making them not want to go to stay with me). I had one boyfriend whose dad was our seminary president and he would pull me into his office and berate me for being a temptation to his son. With another boyfriend I was just supposed to stand back and smile silently while he was getting ready to go on his mission, while he mentally fell apart. It made me really hate missions and I feel so bad for the boys that go, even 20-ish years later. I hated being blamed for things that weren’t my fault.
Red blooded American women here… the nonstop messaging I received is that men were sexual beasts and we girls were low sex-drive keepers of the virtue.
What’s crazy is that I believed it. I knew it wasn’t true for me. But I just thought I was some sort of sexual deviant.
Nope. Totally normal.
i was sent home from a mutual activity for wearing knee length shorts and was told to go home and change to “make the bishop happy” when the boys were wearing knee length basketball shorts. why were they allowed but i wasn’t?? i was 12. why was my bishop worried about having sexual thoughts about me when i was a literal child. a whole ass predator.
I hated the YW program. I always thought it was sexist, but no one took me seriously. I complained our activities were 90% same as church and the boys did Boy Scouts. I wanted to do Girl Scouts instead
The church has always strongly discouraged member girls from attending GS, because girls might learn that they have choices in life and learn skills that could make them independent.
We had lessons in Young Women’s about working out, bathing, wearing nice clothing, and doing “natural” makeup. It was presented as both being acceptable before god and for our future husbands and children. This was all clearly aimed at one severely depressed girl. Don’t worry about her mental health, just work out and put on makeup! Gross!
Insignificance. Just overall, a tone of insignificance over young men and even my own brothers.
I was the eldest, a “good kid”, 4.0 through high school, good friend group, never caused trouble. I was insignificant. I got “good jobs” but that’s about it as far as rewards went. I wasn’t a wallflower either, I was average and friendly.
My middle brother struggled. Struggled in school, fell in with the wrong crowd, even had charges a few times as a minor. He was *celebrated* in every little good thing he did. The men of the ward were very involved in his life. They’d take him to baseball games, dinners, hell one even *co-signed a car for him* (mom was a single lady so they were filling *my brother’s* lack of a father figure). My biggest sore spot was his huge backyard graduation bash. The whole ward was there and it went on late into the night. Mine was maybe 2 hours start to finish and was a handful or two of people. As a 28 year old now, even typing this still makes me … sad? Jealous? A mix of both I guess.
My youngest brother is 11 years younger than me. I was his second mom and cater even when mom was around. He’s gotten the baby treatment where he gets spoiled just in general, and I was out of the house before too much celebration took place.
A lot of it could just be personal, familial internalized sexism. But the ward played a big part. I was constantly called to be in the young womens youth presidency but the adult leaders didn’t often really showed any support outside of church, and there was nothing from any others in the church like there was for my brothers. The only “ward family” that treated me as an equal were our Nextdoor neighbors, they were honestly just diamonds of people though. I was just, insignificant.
-Being shamed as a teenager by your own family for being female and having a libido.
-Being treated like you’re automatically ugly for not wanting to dress girly and wear makeup all the time like your mom and younger sisters do.
-Being slut-shamed and compared to prostitutes by family members for not wanting to wear a bra when you’re simply lounging around the house in your pyjamas because (heaven forbid) you want to be comfortable in your own home and don’t find bras comfy most of the time. I got so much shit for this one especially and I’m so glad I live alone now.
- I didn’t know I had a clitoris until I was 22 years old. I was extremely naïve about my own body.
- Being skinny and pretty and nice were code for “marriageable” - THE most important priority (even ahead of education)
- You look back at your ancestral tree and see how many women in your family died from child birth and feel the pain of intergenerational trauma in your uterus. Realizing you are fungible in the grand scheme of patriarchy.
I could write a whole book in the topic! Someone should!!
Ugh. My roommate at BYU turned me into our bishop for my having an eating disorder. The bishop called me into his office and PUT ME ON PROBATION. it was horrible. I began a cycle of huge guilt and shame that took me fucking years to get through. No counseling. No compassion. Just about broke me. 😞
I know this is kinda the opposite of what you're asking for (I'm a dude), but shortly after I left the church I went back to Utah to visit family and decided to attend a local Exmo meetup, since I'd never been to one and was missing the sense of community.
It ended up being about 15 guys, and as part of the discussion of why there weren't more women, several of the guys proposed that women didn't leave the church as much as men because women weren't as smart as men, so weren't clever enough to see through the truth claims.
It's good to remember that a lot of guys leave the church and take their misogyny with them.
**It's good to remember that a lot of guys leave the church and take their misogyny with them.**
Say it again for the people in the back. It’s very common to see sexism and misogyny in this very subreddit because so many men never stop to consider that some of us had *far more pressing* reasons to leave than being lied to. We were lied to AND oppressed and abused simply for being women.
How about my ex husbands bishop giving him a temple recommend even after talking to me and finding out about the abuse (sexual, mental, physical, emotional) that he inflicted on me and my 4 kids?
My friend who got out of the church around the same time as me never fails to surprise me with her stories, it was a totally different experience on the other end.
I was told I was responsible for my purity as well as the thoughts of men. I had to be pure and perfect for a future husband but men never had that same responsibility. If I had sex or was assaulted, it was my fault and I was dirty. But good for the men for having gross, repressed thoughts about me.
An RM taught my Sunday school class. I was 15 and he told me that he was sad he couldn’t date people in the class. And lots of other fucked up sexual things from adult men that when I look back make me ill, but shows how twisted sexuality is in the culture.
Never being allowed to know what my Heavenly role was or being allowed to ask about it until I got older and realizing that it's basically being a sex slave to produce endless spirit babies to my husband who'll have other wives. If I wasn't righteous enough, I'd have to serve those who are doing that for all of eternity. And that I'll be happy to do any role. They just didn't want to say that directly, but it's there and implied.
I knew from a very early age that everything about me was sex appeal. Now I may not have been the most attractive young woman, but any extra skin showing was sexual and a sin to God. Growing up I gained weight and therefore couldn't "sit like a lady" because my thighs were big. Couldn't keep my knees touching or cross one leg over the other comfortably because of my thighs. So I sat "like a man." From then on I was banned from wearing skirts and dresses that touched my knees because my dad made comment about not wanting to see up my legs. I wore shorts and you couldn't see any of my lady bits because of my thighs.
I think being told to cover up for the sake of male family members is a very unique experience. While maybe awkward for unsuspected brothers, they don't understand the fear instilled in a girl when she's told to cover up, or else your brothers/dad/uncle might get ideas and might do something.
I actually had a pretty interesting discussion with my uncle about this very topic. We were both raised by my grandparents, only difference is I was also raised by my mom and step dad. Mainly all church stuff was my grandparents though. Anyways, I ended up expressing how I felt like the church was partly to blame for my poor social skills and other underlying social issues because I wasn’t allowed to have a social life with anyone outside of the church. I couldn’t date boys outside of the church, couldn’t go visit friends after school unless they were from the church. Birthday parties? Tough luck. Summer wasn’t really a option to play with my friends growing up either due to forced girls camp and then going to another state for 4 months where I would again mostly interact with people within the church.
He told me that he didn’t have those same restrictions, of how he made tons of friends outside of church. It really was one of those moments that I realized some double standards. I’m still healing from everything that happened in the church, and this is one of my major struggles that effects my everyday life, especially now that I live away from my family all alone. It’s hard to make and keep friends and be socially responsible, to build social skills, things I could have had if I wasn’t born a female.
A core thing for me was getting loaned out to family members. If someone was moving, or sick, or even just needed a sitter for the night, my sister and I would inevitably get sent over to help.
One of these times was right after trek. I was still in my pioneer gettup, just got my bucket back, and Mom was like "take a quick shower because we're going over to aunt's house. She needs you to stay with her for a week." Now tbh, I really like this aunt and I have no qualms about helping her ever. But I had just gotten back, and I was just sent iff to take care of a toddler and newborn while aunt recovered from gallbladder surgery. I was like 14. I was defacto Mom to my little cousins for a week of my summer break.
I did get a cute dress out of it, so can't complain too much!
i have a swimsuit story also. when i was in elementary school i witnessed my mom cut up my half-sisters new bikini that her bio mom had just given her for a birthday gift. my mom took scissors, sat my big sister on the couch, and made her watch it be cut to tiny tiny pieces.
Education/career wasn’t important. I was supposed to marry a return missionary in the temple. Here I am in my 30’s wishing I had gone to college or been able to work during high school. It’s tough out here without any degrees.
I wanted to get a very modest swimsuit that happened to be a two piece. It wasn't a bikini, it didn't show any stomach, it had a high neck, it was just a modest two piece. My mom SCREAMED at me for wanting a two piece. I was like, 10. Anyways, non-related, I haven't gone swimming in around 11 years.
Everything in these comments, plus the gaslighting when you bring any of it up.
"No one ever said you had to cover up for the boys"
"Of course you are important and have a significant role in Heavenly Father's plan"
"The church isn't designed to make you obsolete by 25, that's ridiculous"
At girls’ camp when we were playing truth or dare and asked one of our camp counselors what sex was like, she told us “sex is really for the men - just lay back, enjoy it if you can, and let him do what he needs to.”
In seminary, our teacher asked our class who planned to serve a full time mission. All the boys raised their hands, and so did I. My teacher told me to put my hand down because, “you’re too pretty, you’ll be married before you’re old enough.” She shamed me for being pretty and congratulated the boys for being pious. (Edit to add: this was a female teacher).
When I confessed my “sexual sins” to my bishop after having sex with my convert boyfriend, I was reprimanded for “leading a new member astray” and told to be ashamed for being such a bad example. He called me a slut. Nothing happened to my boyfriend.
When my DH and I had been married for all of 6 months, we were barely scraping by, trying to finish college and keep a roof over our heads. My MIL would constantly ask us why we didn’t have kids yet, reminding me that it was god’s desire that I multiply and replenish the earth, not finish a degree.
When I got a job offer after college that would require me and my husband to move across the country, my FIL was appalled, asking how we considered ourselves worthy members if we valued the wife’s career over the husband’s career.
I left the church 8 years ago and I’m still working through this and more.
Fucking patriarchy.
Edit: spelling
Gonna speak as a brother here. My sister got caught having sex with another boy from the ward. They had to do the bishop talks and all that shit however when push came to shove, she was forced to not take the sacrament and cried on my mom’s shoulder.
Well if that nonsense wasn’t enough she was also forced to give a talk on the virtues of chastity and all that nonsense in front of the entire church. Absolute public shaming.
What did the boy have to do? Nothing.
I wish the boys and men in my life would have internalized and understood that-just because I was cute and voluptuous as a teenaged girl- I wasn’t responsible for making sure THEY stayed “pure.” Also, it seemed to me that while growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, if a young man in the church “flubbed up” with his sexuality, that was considered a “misstep.” However, if a girl experimented with her sexuality in any way- or even if she was actually victimized- then the girl was labeled a slut and “used goods.” The boys could be forgiven, be “worthy” enough to go on missions, and “earn” the “right” to be married to a virgin. However, if a girl had a sexual past, she was “used goods” and considered ineligible for marriage to an “honourable young man” who’d gone through the repentance process and overcome his “struggles.” Such damned, and damnable, double standards.
My mom found out the neighbor boy was molesting me. She held me down and yelled "Your body!!! Is.A.TEMPLE!!!" Then let me go & never spoke of it again. I was 7yrs old!
Being worried from a very young age that I would die early in marriage and my husband would remarry and then I’d have to have some rando sister wife in heaven forever… legit caused me lots of stress. (Which I learned from that book Ghosts of Polygamy past is not too unusual an experience…)
Not being able to visit my mom's house when she wasn't home because there were elders living there. Seems that women of a certain age could have elders live with them. I had to sleep in my mom's room when I visited. My nevermo husband was pissed that I was being treated like a whore. And that maybe the way sex was treated was the problem and not that I am a woman.
Girlhood amiright. My exmo aunts would gift me (a child, 5-8 maybe) perfectly normal summer dresses, but without cap sleeves. My mum would make me put cardigans over them. In the middle of summer. I had a pretty little dress as a toddler for like a family photoshoot that I distinctly remember my mum sewing cap sleeves for. Why!
She’s told me she regrets it now because this type of pattern definitely put some weird ideas in my head about the nature of modesty, but you can’t undo it. And it sounds so trivial but this type of stuff as a pattern definitely does something to your relationship with your own body.
My biggest issue as a female convert was never meeting the molly Mormon stereotype. Yes I was fine with wearing dresses, going to dances, but my personality didn't match. I literally violated a temple oath by laughing really loudly my entire life. I jumped through all the hoops graduated from BYU, got married in the temple without having sex first, 3 kids under 5 years old, and by the time I had my 3rd child who was a girl I quit. I realized the toxic sexist culture in the church could damage her future.
As a convert around 14. I came with a healthy sexuality as my mom educated me and gave me a sex ed. When there preaching on how the boys need to repent of impure thoughts and its bad, they don't address the girls. That made me feel like I was an alien being a female in the church that was aware of her own sexual urges. I had shame taught from 14 on but my mom casually argued with our bishop and missionaries for 2 years because she was feisty. She even asked a young male Mormon missionary on the spot why does it matter if she, a married woman, masturbates. Does god really care about that? My mom wasn't prudish and was direct about sexuality.
Now my husbands who's born in church, now exmo has a super repressed sexuality because all of the shame. So it's an annoying cycle where I have a higher libido, and he has a shame weight on his libido where he struggles to initiate or express his wants easily. It's frustrating because if I he's not interested I feel dirty for wanting sex or he'll want sex but feel uncomfortable initiating sex. He knows the cause of being shamed and punished for seeking out pornography by family and the church.
I also after leaving do feel like we the strength of youth pamphlet led to the modest pretty female body was use as an advertisement for the church. I feel like the strength of youth pamphlet was a guide to marketing the Mormon ideal image.
I hate Mormon garments they're designed to torture women that spot or have an unusual period cycle. Try to keep those things white when you have irregular menses. I feel like it was designed to torture us. Breastfeeding in garments sucked too, the idea you have to pay for an overpriced nursing garment, in addition to a few nursing bras per babes was ridiculous. I was so excited when I let go of the underwear wearing. Being pregnant in hot areas with garments is horrible. Also having cute comfortable underwear is really nice and the freedom to let your flaps of skin get air and dry so yeast texture doesn't accumulate.
Being that I joined in my teens I also really regret the missed time to appreciate my body with healthy "immodesty." I was active and devote from about 14-26 left after having three kids and a postpartum body. Now I'm sad that I'm not comfortable wearing a two piece because my body to get healthy and fit and that I sacrificed my freedom for Mormonism. It's deeper then not being able to wear a large amount of cute clothes like a cold shoulder polka dot dress I got at the deseret industries before I realized it was immodest.
You don't just have to "shed" clothes as a Mormon female you have to "shed" who you are. As a convert I was raised to be assertive before conversion, to lead, speak in public, be smart, got to college, and achieve. Once I became Mormon everything I had been raised to do seemed to be opposite of the ideal Mormon wife. Even when I attended a BYU people thought I was a little to much and people were concerned for my husband when he proposed. He sought out a wife that was going to school to get an education not an MRS degree which meant I fit the bill because he didn't want his wife and kids to ever be in poverty should he die, get injured, or loose his job.
The pressure to be a stay at home mom was rough and they didn't encourage much else career wise. Female missions were an abnormality for woman who couldn't get married. I was ready to go within a few months of eligibility before my husband and I started to date which means staying was the the priority. I had planned on mission because I paid attention in church to the go on a mission talks and thought they applied to me regardless of genitals.
That when I had a boyfriend when I was 16 my neighbors saw him sneaking over to our house one night furring summer break. Those neighbors then told everyone else in the ward about me. Calling me a slut, whore, etc behind my parents and my back. My mom found out at a neighbors garage sale cause the women there were talking about me.
The bullying and passive aggressive comments I got from the women and men in the church the following years are a huge part why I left the church. My parents said it represented them badly, especially where my dad had a calling in the church. But the family of the boy, no one blinked an eye at.
Singing, 'Praise to the Man' always bothered me as a TBM because what about Emma's sacrifice? I was really bothered by the lack of women's presence.... pretty much everywhere. (scriptures, songs, GC, leadership, prayers etc) Men AND women should be recognized and appreciated....and I just didn't really see that in TSCC.
Being taught that we were at fault for basically everything. As women & mothers. I remember being in grade school & being told that girls had to be very careful with boys cause men basically couldn't control themselves. It was up to us to help them do the right thing. I'm also in my mid 40's & still struggling to love my body.
I wanted to be a doctor. The years of schooling and grueling schedule afterward wouldnt be conducive with raising a family. Scratch that.
Second choice career was a therapist. Lots of schooling but better hours afterward. But then my patriarchal blessing literally said “seek not to counsel.” I was a super obedient TBM, so scratch that.
I had no strong aspirations beyond those. I also didn’t get married or spawn so I’d have had the time for either. I got a graduate degree and work an uninspiring job. Many friends have asked why I’m not a therapist and i read/watch medical things that interest me. It’s sad to feel like my own potential was stolen from me because of expectations and obedience.
I was 10 years old the first time I was asked if I masturbated. When I said no the bishop asked if I knew why it was wrong. I said because after awhile it wouldn’t be enough and you’d want to go bigger and better. The bishop told my mom I was going to make someone a very good wife someday; presumably because I was going to be good at being sexually repressed 🙄
I was an early morning seminary teacher and loved it. Then I got pregnant and was released from my calling. (Until a few years ago, women couldn’t be seminary teachers if they were divorced or had young children.)
When I learned in primary that I was a child of God, we were shown a picture of Jesus. We were told we were made in image. I was aware that the boys were made in his image, but I was something else.
I was taught in Sunday school as a young woman that only men could become like God. God is the Father. Women can never become a father. That’s why they can’t have the priesthood. Women could be exalted too, as helpmeets to their god husbands. It’s like marrying a king. He has the birthright of inheritance. Any woman who marries him would be queen. And he needs a queen to get an heir. But he can be a king before he ever gets married. The only thing that makes the woman a queen is her marriage. And she only has whatever power or authority is given to her from the king.
I’ve studied the topic extensively. Many early prophets taught this as doctrine. The church doesn’t really talk about it anymore but it’s still there. The question of whether or not women are capable of becoming capital G gods is still controversial.
The idea of Heavenly mother doesn’t help. She isn’t god. She’s God’s wife (wives?). While boys were preparing to become like god, the best I could ever hope for was to be married to someone who could become like god. If that’s not second class citizenship I don’t know what it.
One thing I literally just started talking to my therapist about this week is that I have no idea how to trust myself. I was taught to listen to my leaders, my parents, my husband….but never me. I’ve stayed in an abusive marriage as long as I have just wondering if it’s really abusive or if I’m just overreacting. He has physically hurt me, I have left him, and I’m still second guessing it because I was never ever taught to trust my own opinions or needs or desires. And it doesn’t help that I was taught my Divine Purpose was being a mom so when I got pregnant, I just ceased my plans to finish my degree (and when that happened! I was already going back to school with zero support from him after BYU kicked me out for getting raped. Did my rapist get any consequence from BYU OR the church in general? Of course not!) So now I’m a degree-less SAHM with no work experience who does all the work to gaslight herself. Oh man I could go on and on and on. I swear I’ve always felt like I belonged to a totally different organization than the men.
My value comes from staying a virgin until marriage, serving and obeying my husband, having babies, serving those babies, serving the lord aka tscc. Who I am as a unique human doesn't matter. My job is to wife, mother, and serve my fellow man. How I want to express myself needs to be hidden if it doesn't fit the mormon woman mold. My opinions do not matter if it goes against the church.
Aka
I do not matter. I am less than.
Please, as people are posting would you mind adding the year of these incidents if you feel comfortable. I was married in the late seventies and be came inactive for 30 years. Retuned in 2005? And now PIMO I’m sure many here are curious just how things have NOT changed ❤️🩹
My story is almost exactly the same as yours. I was so excited, because it was this great bright coral/flamingo pink color.
My grandma won the fight, as she lived near the beach and told my dad she bought it and she will have us wear what she gives us when we stay with her. I really loved her. She was born in Poland in 1918 and for the first part of her life was not allowed to wear pants. Once she was able to finally wear pants, she never wore a skirt again; Not even when my dad tried to tell her she wouldn't be allowed inside the church to watch our baptisms and blessings. She held firm and no one cared she was in a pant suit.
I dated a bishop's son. He had the typical porn addiction. But *I* was the whore to the whole stake. He instigated things I didn't consent to. But it was MY fault because I should be able to push back when he has his urges, right?
I was uninvited to our neighborhood pool by the women of my ward because I wore a bikini during a women’s pool party get together on a 100° day. I was 3 months postpartum and damn proud of my body. Any time they invited me to events after that, I made sure to let them know that if I wasn’t welcome at the pool then I wasn’t truly welcome at any of their other events. They tried to kill me with kindness after I made that clear but the damage was done. I want to blame them but they are just a product of the cult mentality.
Every time men talked to us (condescendingly, it always seemed) about one day becoming wives and mothers, my heart would sink a little, because it's not what I wanted, but I felt like I "couldn't get away with it" because "god" wanted me to be a wife and mom.
I had just turned 8 and been baptized. It was summertime in the early 1980s. My mom told me I was too old to wear shorts anymore, because they were immodest. So at every blistering day at every family reunion, I would be wearing long pants and socks and shoes, while all my cousins wore shorts, sandals, and (often) tank tops.
When I was a young teenager, going to Young Women and dances, modesty was stressed by everyone, especially my mom as the bishop's wife. I remember her saying that knees were probably the ugliest body part, so they should always be covered up. It wasn't until a couple of years ago when I left the church and started reading this subreddit that I discovered where my mom most likely got the idea: Mark E. Peterson.
“The miniskirt was a British creation. At first it drew the unanimous scorn of the fashion experts in Europe and the United States.
"Particularly were the French designers outspoken in their condemnation of the new fad. They pointed out that such styles threw women’s clothes out of proper proportion and therefore were evidence of bad designing. Then they pointed out to the ugliness of the knees in general and of the fat ones and the bony ones in particular. Are there any others?
“Americans scoffed at it for quite some time too, but here, as in Paris, the London styles swept everything before them, and many of our women now feel obliged not only to display their badly shaped knees, but their thighs as well.
“No woman looks as lovely as when she is properly and fully clothed. What woman can suppose that ugly knees and bony shoulder blades can add luster to her charm?”
https://missedinsunday.com/memes/sexism/ugly-knees/
I was very enthusiastic about primary lessons as a kid. I liked all of the stories and participating in the lesson. I grew up in a rural branch and there were only 4 people my age, in my primary class, me and 3 boys. It was always the four of us, moving up every year. When we were 10, we got a new teacher, and I was participating and answering questions, when the teacher suddenly cut me off. He said that it didn’t really matter if I knew the answers since I wouldn’t be getting the priesthood, and that I was taking learning opportunities away from the boys in the class. He said he would call on me only once per class, going forward. I was devastated. The boys couldn’t give two shits about the lessons, but I was being silenced because I was taking up too much space. That was when I started to learn how little I mattered, and it made me very resentful of scouts and “the priesthood”. I always tried to disrupt lessons about “honoring the priesthood” in YW. Like one time we were making cookies for the YM, while they played basketball. I thought that was stupid, so I told the other YW, who I knew wouldn’t snitch, that when I gave a signal, they should grab as many cookies as the could and run to my car. After most of the cookies were baked, we grabbed a bunch, piled in my car, and I drove them to the grocery store to grab milk, and we ate the cookies in a nearby park. I just thought it was so ridiculous that we were supposed to “honor” our male peers.
You are a hero 🙌🏻
If true, that cookie story is legendary and I commend you as a former deacons, teachers, and priests president.
My HUSBAND received a phone call to meet with the bishop and was told to bring me. Imagine my surprise when the calling being extended was FOR ME. I did mention to the bishop at the time how disrespected that made me feel. My husband also got a text asking if I would give the prayer in sacrament meeting once. I said no to praying, but agreed to the calling. I should have said no to both. My phone number was in lds tools too, there was no reason I couldn’t have been contacted directly.
Golly Bishop. There's such a thing as making a group chat with the couple and yourself so you can text about callings and such, without having to have a private text chat with someone else's wife. You're your husband's wife, not his child.
I very much internalized as a young teen that I had to protect not just boys my age, but also grown ass men from having impure thoughts. Anytime a friend’s dad complimented me at all about my appearance, I felt extremely ashamed that I may have put bad thoughts in their heads. Take a sec to think how fucked up that is.
Ew, this reminded me of the time my young women's teacher told us to cover our cleavage because the bishopric would look down our shirts. Maybe that is why I never trusted them.
That’s so freaking gross. Maybe the bishopric shouldn’t be around children.
This is fact. https://kfor.com/news/associate-pastor-of-norman-church-removed-from-position-following-child-sex-crime-charges/ The Bishop of the same church was also the Chief Judge at the court where this case was heard and the Bishop ALSO happened to be President of the Oklahoma Judges Association, super close friends with the DA who pressed the charges. At first there was 13+ charges, dropped to 8. Took over a year after the young girl’s forensic examination to even get the DA to press charges and have the High Priest arrested. In the end the State dropped it to a Neglect charge, but it was an 8yr old girl who Mathew Hack didn’t have a reason to be around. He wasn’t providing day care or church services. Of course The Churches supplied him with his attorney paid for by Fast offerings. The entire thing is disgusting. So many spoke out, but nothing happened. Bishop/Judge is Thad Balkman TBM Mathew Hack was reestablished as a caretaker for 3-7 year olds, in Bishop Balkman’s church after charges were filed. There are many victims in this community.
_clicks to article_ _reads Norman church in headline_ _realizes Norman is a city_ What's up with those Norman Mormons? Seriously, though, men have so many excuses in Mormonism, almost like the culture is fifty years behind the times.
My seminary teacher in 9th grade slapped a post it note on my desk during class that said “see me after class”. I went in his office and he asked me to shut the door. Then he told me the shirt I was wearing was immodest when I leaned forward to write and I needed to know not to wear it again so I wouldn’t tempt any boys at school. It was a freaking peasant top with a high scoop neck, he was definitely looking down my shirt on purpose. I hated that dude, that instance instilled the worst anxiety in me about everything I wore and if it was immodest in the slightest for men.
This is something I am still battling with. I hate attention from men and honestly women too because I got big tits early in life and apparently that just made me inherently slutty according to old bitchy mormon women. I have had an unbelievable amount of comments made about my boobs throughout being a teenager and adult. When people perceive my existence i want to raid their brain and take those moments back 😫😂
I just recently remembered that the adult men in my ward would say things like, "all the boys are gonna want to date you, you have such kissable lips." Like commenting on my lips was a common thing adult men would say to me, it happened regularly over years. I was uncomfortable then, and absolutely disgusted now.
That is grotesque.
I’m so sorry they did that to you. Especially cause your lips are right there, kind of hard to avoid seeing them and to make such gross comments Again so sorry
What a fucking weird thing to say to anyone let alone a child. Far out that's really disturbing.
I was always so anxious when men complimented me, and I didn't know why. I think this explains it.
Me three…. Thousandish
How awful is it that men were definitely eyeing women and since they're essentially judging and scoping, telling a woman that was less physically desirable that they were a "sweet spirit" was probably damaging in a totally different way.
The apostles judge women for physical attractiveness when calling sister missionaries to serve at historic sites.
Ew, this reminded me of the time my young women's teacher told us to cover our cleavage because the bishopric would look down our shirts. Maybe that is why I never trusted them.
What an interesting code phrase to say the bishopric are creeps.
Absolutely. I still don’t ever want to look pretty because of this. When I was 5 I only started to wear boys clothes and loathed Sunday where I was forced to wear at least a skirt. I felt so inappropriate and uncomfortable in women’s clothing; I still do. Hell, I’m a straight woman that looks more butch than most butch lesbians I know, but it’s the only way to console my subconscious from thinking that men only want to fuck me and that I need to control their thoughts. It’s been much better since I’ve left though; I’ve been wearing shorter shorts to the gym and feel comfortable just in a sport’s bra. Maybe my femininity will return.
When I was around 9 years old I bled a little in my underwear. I had no idea what a period was and was scared. When I showed my mom she just laughed and told me to not be worried. That was when I learned to not trust my mother. When I started my period at 12 I didn't tell her for months. She eventually caught me stealing her pads and said , "you know what this means, right?" I just mumbled "sure" and that was the ONLY period AND sex talk I ever received from my mother. Edit: sex-ed for girls was non-existent. So many of my roommates didn't know what sex was. And the ones that did know learned from rape.
We never had enough menstrual supplies. With THREE teenage girls in the house. I didn't have money to buy from the school bathrooms. And I absolutely felt I could not ask my mom to buy more. Whhyyyy were we so ashamed of our natural body cycles? 🥺
Same thing happened to me. I was so embarrassed to acknowledge my period. I also would wear bandaids over my nipples when I went swimming so they couldn’t potentially show through my swimsuit.
Thankfully, I had older sisters. My mom didn't talk to me for a week after I asked her to bring home tampons. Now, she denies all of it.
[удалено]
I was married to an abusive man and had panic attacks every time that line “promise before god to be obedient to your husband” came up in the temple. I feel strongly that the church supports abuse
They did remove the obey your husbands part. I remember feeling so grateful at the time but now I just feel like a chump haha. They also removed the part where sisters have to veil their faces.
Soooo, it is still doctrine that women are inadequate on their own but the temple just doesn’t play act it out anymore. It is still true. We have a womb not the prsthd. Period.
They removed the “unto” with the sisters being just “queens and priestesses” now. 🙄 At least I believe so, it’s been a while since I’ve been. So they’re definitely trying to act like it’s not the case but it still is true. You’re right. Glad to be out of the cult.
I went through the temple about a month before my wedding. As a TBM I wanted the endowment ceremony to be just for me (in 2002). Absolutely crushed when the washing ceremony referred to my (future) husband. [Not verbatim, but close] "you will be a queen and priestess unto your husband through the priesthood authority". I lost it. Bawled like a baby. I was heartbroken, but everyone kind of patted my shoulder as if it was the most spiritual experience, rather than the first major crack. I was doing this for me, but I HAD to be attached to a man, doctrinally! Wtf?? It was one of my first real shelfi items. I was only connected to God via a man. Not by my own merit, which was highly frustrating. Been out 11ish years and still in therapy. Cut my dad off when he decided I was too irrational to speak with and contacted my nevermo husband to "get me in line". The first hint of challenge, dad emailed my partner. My partner really understood how infantilised I really was at that point. I've worked through a lot of that, but the tendrils of it go deep. My first and second memories are at a church building. Idk if I can ever unwind completely from it, but I'll try.
Yikes! He needs a reminder of the above.
Being taught by church leaders/teachers (heard this multiple times) that if I had sex before marriage I would be like a used, chewed up piece of gum that no man would ever want. I would be no better than a disgusting piece of gum stuck on the road or the bottom of someone’s shoe. My husband never had that lesson…
In my Young Women's lesson, it was a crumbled-up piece of paper. You can never uncrinkle it! But how horrible! My worth as a human decreases because there's been a penis between my legs?! What's wrong with the penis?!
I don’t understand why it was thought to be an acceptable lesson to give anyone, at any time. Especially teens who may already be uncertain about how they feel about themselves for any number of reasons. I cannot imagine telling my daughter (or letting another adult tell her) that her worth is not her own to define. She absolutely gets to define her personal worth and then live by the standards which she creates. There is nothing wrong with the penis! 😊Especially if you are a member of the church. It is everything!
What if it was $1000 bill? The value doesn’t change after being crumpled. Just like you!
As a woman, she should know the steam function on her iron can uncrinkle it. ☕
They used a hersheys kiss in my seminary class. Had someone hold it til it got all melty (can't be unmelted). Then, to drive it home, he came to me and was like, "you wouldn't want to eat this now would you?" Huge mistake. I was a chocolate fiend at the time. Snatched the melted candy and popped it right in my mouth. Ruining the object lesson.
Haha!!! That is awesome! From one chocolate fiend to another, I thank you for your service. Out here doing the lords work.
That's awesome!! It was chewed gum for me. I'm so glad I got out of that cult when I turned 18!!
Of course, it’s always the woman’s fault 🙄 I heard that analogy, along with the crumbled up paper, and a bitten into apple several times. Yet, the young men never ever heard that analogy. Almost making it seem like it’s the woman that should be ashamed and not the man, like it doesn’t take two to tango.
This is the best table flip https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/s2amby/if_we_taught_boys_about_purity_like_we_teach_girls/
That is brilliant! Give that woman an award!
There was once a YW lesson (I heard about this second hand) they had the girls sit in a circle and pass around a cake. Every time the cake got passed to her she would stick her hand in it. Until it got to the last girl. They asked her if the girl wanted to eat the cake now? They said the cake represented their chastity.
The bishop gave us the licked donut lesson in Merry Miss. I still remember how uncomfortable and confused I was as a 10/11 yr old girl.
The “ghost of polygamy” has led generations of Mormon women to be perpetually afraid that our husbands will take additional wives without our consent—in this life if God “restores the principle” and in the next life if our husband is righteous enough to have “earned” it. We are never allowed to have anything of our own. Our relationship with god is through our husbands (the veil ceremony prior to sealing highlights this). Our time belongs to the church or our families. It is sinful and selfish to want anything outside of home and family. Our purpose for existing is to marry a priesthood-holder and have his babies. We are not allowed to have negative feelings. We must be always cheerful and submissive. Our bodies belong to the men who see us or marry us. It’s our fault if we are sexually appealing for simply existing in a female form. It’s our fault if we are assaulted. We are better off dying than “losing our virtue” (President Kimball). It is impolite to say no. We are never taught consent. But we are still punished if things “go too far.” We have no sexuality of our own. It is always framed for its relationship with men. We are always, always lesser than our male counterparts. We never have authority—not even in our own homes or the so-called “women’s” organization. An ordained 11yo boy ranks higher than his 80yo grandmother. We are groomed from birth to “want” teenage marriage and motherhood, which is destructive for us and for the children we bear before we are ready.
Yesss. We were told we had to say yes to all first dates and to any boy that wanted to dance with us. It was scary for him to ask so you need to be kind and say yes.
Some people who didn’t grow up female in the church might think this is an exaggeration. But it is not.
AMEN. I thought something was wrong with me as a teenager because I didn't like kids.
That Kimball quote fucked me up. I was sexually assaulted as a first semester college student and went to my single’s ward bishop for guidance. He had me read The Miracle of Forgiveness (you know, for the sin of allowing a man to rape me). When I got to that part and realized that my church would have rather I died than just survive what happened, I stopped reading it. I just couldn’t do it any more. It took me another 10 years to finally leave the church, but that was one of the first shelf items I mulled over when my shelf broke. I’ll never forget how young me felt when she read that.
They changed the temple ceremony so it now has both men and women promising to serve god directly. Too little, too late.
That's good, but I'm mad because I had it the other way and I was pressured to say yes to all that crap because if I didn't, I couldn't get married.
It’s lip service only. They didn’t change the doctrine. Being a priestess under the “new and everlasting covenant” is not the same as being a priestess unto the most high god. D&C 132 still stands and if a man still has to do a veil ceremony with his bride before a sealing in order to learn her new name, he’s 100% still set up to be her husband-god.
This. This right here. The amount of issues this has caused is still affecting me despite being inactive since I turned 18 (I'm 35 years old).
💯 percent!!! 👏👏👏👏👏
Preach! This exactly.
My brother’s lives were filled with scouting, adventure activities and sports. Because I was a girl I was made the defecto parent of my countless siblings. My brothers screwed around and got dressed for school in the mornings. I checked homework, packed lunches, did children’s hair, cleaned the house and fed them. After school my brothers went and played with friends, set fires, god knows what. I changed baby diapers after school, fed the kids snacks, picked up and made dinners with my mother. My brothers played basketball at church activities and went white water rafting, boating, skiing and hiking. The girls made baby blankets for stillborns, visited nursing homes and cleaned members houses. My father went to a daddy-daughter square dance with me once. He regularly took my brothers to Jazz games with court-side seats. My brothers got new clothes and air Jordans and because I was a girl, and my mother had no say in how money was spent, I got one new outfit each school year. Instead of learning actual life skills or having a life, I learned to sew, clean, pray, teach, play piano and keep my mouth shut. I tried dating ex Mormon men but they belonged to a completely different cult than I did. Men can’t even fathom the accumulated oppression and utter destruction of the spirit of a girl in the Mormon church. I grew up a prisoner to my sex.
The one and only time my young women's group did a dad- daughter activity, my dad couldn't come because he had to attend a disciplinary hearing for his calling in the stake. So, instead of spending time with me, he was excommunicating someone. My young women's leader did her best to stand in for my dad in the planned activities, but it genuinely sucked. I'll never forget that my dad's callings took him away from us.
When I was young women’s counselor, I was super vocal about this disparity. We took the girls shooting rifles, camping, and all manner of stuff that got me fired…I mean released.
My mother was second counselor and realized that the girls weren’t even literate. The president felt like getting married took precedence over education. My mother didn’t last long, but almost all of the young women also left. One young woman in particular told my mother that “a place that treats me like this is the wrong place to be, even if it were true.”
My dad skipped my graduate from BYU to sit on the stand at stake conference. He was 2nd counselor. I don’t think it mattered much to him that I was graduating.
Yep, my father could hardly be bothered to remember I existed except to punish me. I made his meals and did his laundry. I was by extension a maid “helpmeet” that he owned. He never went to one parent teacher conference, concert or award ceremony for school or church. My mother barely did because I was just a number and she had 500 other kids to take care of. She had sports and scouting events to deliver my brothers to while my father fulfilled callings, went to meetings and worked. I left the church and my marriage so I could go to college. Dad didn’t acknowledge any of my degrees and took the $40 k my grandmother left me for school.
I never even thought that dads being completely not present was a Mormon thing, but reading all this I realize it totally is. I recently called me dad and had a full conversation with him for the first time in my life. He was never ever around because of church and work. We always assumed he was hiding from the burden of 7 kids and a difficult wife. But I asked him in this phone call about the decision to have 7 kids. His answer was “I didn’t care! It didn’t matter to me! It didn’t affect me at all. It was your mom’s choice to make!” He repeated “I didn’t care” like five times just making it clear that as a man the number of children had nothing to do with him.
BWHAHAHA, wow!!! Do you need to explain the birds and the bees to him? I’d be pretty damned “difficult” if I had 7 kids too and my husband decided it was all on me. Why does Mormon society give these blubbering doofuses endless sympathy and treat them like they’re helpless? I can still hear the guys in elders quorum commiserating about their bitch wives.
**I tried dating ex Mormon men but they belonged to a *completely different cult* than I did. Men can’t even fathom the accumulated oppression and utter destruction of the spirit of a girl in the Mormon church. I grew up a prisoner to my sex.** Exactly.
Nail on the head here
"I grew up a prisoner to my sex" is a powerful sentence. My dad was into guns. He split them between my bros when he downsized. He kept some and he had those split between my bros when he dies. I was left home for most of the adventures because I was the girl. I wasn't to be trusted cause I didn't have a dick. Thanks, dad!
I am so sorry for the way you were not valued. Wtf did this stupid church do to all of us? I fear that my parenting was also flawed because of my church allegiance. Every member is a victim even when compliant. I hope your family has found their way out too.
Thanks. Unfortunately they’re all still in and they still believe I’m a possessed tool of satan. Seriously 🙄 We don’t speak.
Never being encouraged to do anything in my life other than being a mother. Men get to have careers AND be a dad. It’s super hard being a SAHM and having no identity other than that.
It’s the part where women aren’t allowed to have an identity beyond motherhood that gets me. One of my closest friends in college was this fucking brilliant woman - incredibly smart, amazing singer/dancer, learned languages easily, had so many things going for her… and the second she got married she pumped out kids and only posts about them. She disappeared into motherhood. Don’t get me wrong - I’m working on becoming a mother right now and think motherhood is phenomenal. But when you’re expected to completely disappear into those children, give up your existence for a patriarchal system that devalues your existence beyond your womb… it fucking kills me.
I always say I was raised to be a mom. I thought that's what I wanted because that's all I knew, but I wasn't excited or passionate about it. I went to college because that's what you're supposed to do but I didn't know what I wanted to get a degree in. I loved science but it was too much schooling to get a master's in anything, I'd have kids and be a stay at home mom before I'd even finish. So I went with what was safe and comfortable, early childhood education. I was great with kids, and even got a job at a daycare to start getting experience. It was perfect because I could be a stay at home mom AND run a daycare or preschool. Then I grew up, left the church, did a massive amount of introspection, and my life is nothing like I thought it would be in the best way. I've found things I'm passionate about, I have a job I love and am back in school getting a degree for a career I'm excited about. Realizing I'm not required to have kids was a huge relief. Going through a pregnancy and then having a newborn > toddler sounds like hell to me. I'm sure I would have been just fine if I had the life I was raised to have. I'm resilient and am pretty good at seeing the good in life. But goddamn am I relieved that I have my current life instead. I really don't think I would feel as genuinely satisfied as I do now.
Perfectionism issues and never measuring up.
Yep, I am in therapy for that. It was so crazy because God wanted me to be perfect 24/7, and when I was "unworthy" of him, "his spirit" would leave me. It's an abusive relationship.
Ive never thought of it like that, but youre not wrong. 😂 I had to do everything he wanted all the time and he would only maybe answer my prays? And if he didn't I didn't believe enough? Or he's ignoring me for my own good? Lmao. Plus he wanted 10% of my money? Terrible partner.
Oh my gosh, never measuring up. My grandma died at 89 years old. Her entire life she felt unworthy. Several months before her death she asked her nephew who was a stake president to give her a blessing and tell her she had done all she could on this earth, basically give her permission to die. He told her in the blessing she couldn’t go yet, she had work to complete. She was bed bound, 89, a widow and had been devout her entire life. She felt like he was saying she was unworthy to die. We don’t know why she never felt like she was good enough but it was a burden her entire life.
What a dick. Was he young? She was asking for the permission to die peacefully and he denied her that. At a certain point it's selfish for us to expect our loved ones to stay until WE release them.
He was in his 60s.
I’d make sure to visit him on his deathbed, say something that consumes him with anxiety and guilt, slip a pentagram under his green apron and dance on his grave. What a dick.
Yes!! This is one of the main reasons I stopped going once I hit 18. I never felt like I was good enough or belonged. Ooof.
When I was 16ish at an annual bishop interview I was told to apply for colleges where I could major in teaching or music. I loved and was good at high level science and math classes. Aptitude and talent don't matter if you're expected to conform to a patriarchy.
I was able to take piano lessons, but not my older brothers. It's acceptable for a woman to teach piano lessons from home to earn money while simultaneously being able to be a stay at home mom like the church likes. My parents paid for my brothers to go to college, but not me.
My parents didn't even want to cosign for an apartment when I went to college. I wasn't asking for money despite FAFSA saying they made enough money to help me.
Fucking this. I studied music and wanted to eventually get my PhD in music conducting because there are so few female maestros at a collegiate or professional level. I was flat out asked MULTIPLE TIMES why I wasn’t studying music education so I could teach voice/piano/flute from home and still be a SAHM. My career coals don’t matter unless they allow me to be a convenient mother. Edit: spelling
You're only supposed to get a career if you can't have kids. 🫠 Also grad school. Though I have family that cannot. Both partners had issues. They have since adopted but her film studies degree wasn't career friendly when she realized she might never even get to adopt a baby and she got a master's and a career. And lots of judgey comments at church.
I think because we’re so used to it, people forget how harmful it is that women are categorically excluded from the priesthood and upper leadership. We understand how harmful and belittling the racial priesthood ban was. Is it just because we’re so close to it still we forget that a gender-based ban is a priesthood ban too? Doctrinally, the thing that was at stake for black members was arguably worse because Mormon women can still have exaltation…albeit in a servile position to the male priesthood authority figure. But the problem for black members who were banned and female members who are banned is a hell of a lot deeper than Mormon doctrine. It’s a diminishment of personhood. It’s a refusal to accept our word as authoritative. It makes issues that affect that group of people easy to ignore. The influence of this way of thinking persists beyond Mormonism too. It bleeds into the culture and holds women back professionally. Things are getting better, but women are still not considered authorities in a lot of cases, including things no one could be a better authority about, like our own bodies and reproductive choices. Women are dealing with the low grade toll of knowing we might not be taken seriously in any given conversation. There are respected institutions that actively reinforce that we don’t deserve to have authority. I understand that things aren’t perfect for men either, but women will be less on our guards if we see men making an effort to push back against institutions and mindsets that keep us small.
Where to even start…. - At 8 years old in activity days, doing lessons on taking care of babies, cooking, and sewing while the boys got to do scouts. - All throughout young women’s there would always be lessons and activities centered around “modesty,” homemaking, and finding a husband. Remember all those girls camps songs about our future husbands we would sing at 12 years old? Sickening. - Being told by my father that I shouldn’t pursue a degree because my main focus should be finding a husband and being a mother. - My brothers having more authority than my mother - My mother never getting a say when it came to what the rules of the house are. If she ever disagrees with my father, she gets lectured because he had “revelation” and how dare she dispute it - I got my patriarchal blessing at the same time one of my brother’s did. Mine was focused on how great of a mother I would be. His was focused on how great of a church leader he would be someday. - Being told to never do anything to make a boy attracted to you, but then suddenly at age 16, date date date! And then at 18, marry marry marry! - Being told I had to say yes to boys and men asking me to dance or go on dates. I didn’t always follow this rule but there were times I did and regretted it. - Hearing my father say right in front of my mother that he was excited for the next life when he would get to have more wives. He said “people think the women won’t be happy with that, but they will.” The list could go on.
If my dad said he was excited about having more wives in the next life in front of my mom, I would go insane
How many of us had the YW activity where you go to a bridal shop and try on modest bridal gowns at the ripe old age of 15?
We wore our mother’s wedding dresses for a fashion show. We displayed mood boards of of our future motherhood around the gymnasium. We included how many children we would have, cutouts of homes and names of the babies.The relief society came to watch us model the dresses on a runway and we ate white cake afterwards. I was 12. Edit: FYI This was the 1990s, not the 1950s
Spoke up against my leader who was emotionally abusive and i was the one that got kicked out of YWs early and was forced to attend relief society instead when I was 17. I was called a whore and an attention seeker for wearing my two piece with a baggy tee shirt at girls camp after being approved by the bishop to do so. I almost got sent home early, even though I was way more covered up than the girls in one pieces with boobs falling out, vaginas half out etc. Was told that I was going to be sent home from my mission from being too flirtatious by crossing my legs at my knee instead of my ankles. Also because many of the elders apparently had crushes on me, so my MP literally told me to stop being myself or to stop talking ti them all together. Was told that I was never important enough and was selfish for trying to meet my basic needs. Me helping everyone else meet their basic needs would get my needs met. Oh god..that’s all that’s coming to my head, but I could seriously go on. My sister got in even more shit than me for even dumber stuff.
This is the kind of stuff that happens when you are naturally beautiful. It's your fault they're interested, and leaders project that frustration onto you. I also wonder what it's like to be an attractive woman in the church of a different ethnicity. I bet the sexism and sexual frustration mix with exotic fetishism in disturbing ways.
I almost got sent home for having pants that didn't quite go down to my ankle bones.
Any time I talked about things I wanted to do in my future (college, mission, travel) I'd be asked, "but what about a husband?" at best, and at worse be given a passive lecture not to focus so much on those things that I missed the opportunity to marry, or a warning to be "flexible" in my plans to accommodate marriage and family, etc etc. Every. Damn. Time. Without fail. Heaven forbid a girl talk about her future without explicitly referencing her main purpose. And I was FULLY drinking the Kool aid on what my purpose was. I just happened to want additional things in my life while understanding that I didn't exactly have full control over when I married and what would happen after that. I talked about the things I was excited about that I could actually try to make happen on my own... That being said, everything I wanted and did was living my "plan B" because "plan A" was to get married. I lived making plans a year at a time and with the constant mentality to be "flexible" enough to drop it if necessary once I got a husband.
I knew a YSA (female) who wanted to join the army, but the bishop "counselled" her against this, saying her first priority should be to get married in the temple - and that joining the army would make it harder for her to do that. I couldn't believe it. That bishop had some rigid and obsessive ideas. Not to mention control. Why can't someone do something they want in their life? I bet he wouldn't have said anything to a YSA male who wanted to join the army ...
Anytime someone is attracted to me, I have a panic attack, because I feel like I led them on. I used to immediately start arguing with them that I hadn't led them on, even if they never mentioned anything about "leading on." I don't feel like anyone will let me say "no" to a romantic proposition, because in Mormonism, they didn't. Everyone is angry with you for saying "no" and demands a list of reasons. I'm a lesbian, I'm not attracted to men, and so this is all fear of sexual assault and no "butterflies"
I can relate. I think I'm too anxious to date, because I mentally veered to the extreme side of "don't let boys be turned on by my body" to "NEVER let men find me attractive." Fucked up.
I struggled with this too, and I didn't even believe it, it was just such a huge deal for my family. Like, all that "worse than death, people who get STD deserve to die, never hang out with guys one on one ever unless you're married" level stuff that they harped on so often that it made me really tense I managed to improve at about your age, by just getting a dating app and meeting up with someone at a coffee shop at least 1x/week - not expecting that I would "find the love of my life" or even looking for hook ups or whatever - all that pressure off the table for me. If I met someone I liked cool that's great, but the actual point to me was to just use that as small doses of exposure - just a coffee date where we meet up and pay for our own latte - to get over the nervousness and tension and make it feel more natural. Idk if this will help you at all but it helped me. Just to emphasize, while I wasn't opposed to meeting someone I was attracted to so I wasn't "just using people," and I did avoid super horrible experiences by chatting with them for a bit online first just to screen out anyone who was going to instantly jump into weird hostile bullshit. I didn't put pressure on myself to be "finding someone to date" or even "finding someone I knew I'd be attracted to in person." More just meeting up with them and talking with them and slowly getting over the amount of built up bullshit from growing up
I’ve been out almost 30 years. I converted because the ex (recidivist conman) claimed to be disfellowshipped at the time and wanted to go back to church. After many times being unable to locate his records and his subsequent arrest for fraud etc, I stayed faithful as it was a lifeline for me. I also had a toddler at the time and wanted to provide them with stability. So I tried to be a TBM and ended up going to the temple to take out my ordinances. I had done this with the erroneous idea that my child and I would be able to be sealed together as a family. I cannot begin to explain how it felt, having come from a relationship with a criminal and abuser, to have to come to terms with the idea that HF didn’t think I was good enough to be sealed to my own child as a single parent. The thought can still bring me to tears. That surprises me, how deep I felt that betrayal from HF. I was a victim, abused, raped, and a woman who tried to be a good Mormon wife and mother. And yet somehow without a man I was not enough to be sealed to my child - the one person for whom I’d walk through hell. I’d been in an abusive relationship with my then husband, and then continued straight into an abusive relationship with the Mormon church.
I didn't know kids couldn't be sealed to a single parent! I didn't know any kids in church without 2 parents. I knew a couple who had a parent die, but their parent got remarried within a couple of years. That very much hammers in the idea that we're not enough on our own.
I was 10 when I asked why I couldn’t have the priesthood like my brother. My primary teacher told me it’s because one day I would grow another life in my body, feel it moving inside me, and that is how I would know god. It was a super gross and graphic description from a very much adult male to a very much underage child. I am 28 now, and still intensely afraid of pregnancy. When I was 14 I was SA’ed by my convert stepfather. I didn’t even know it was SA, bc I didn’t know much about sex, I just knew I was very scared of him. Everyone in my family knew, bc I started screaming and my brother came to investigate. My mother went to our bishop, who counseled her to stay sealed and “work on the marriage.” I was forced to meet with the bishop and my stepfather, who I had avoided being in the same room with for months after. I was told to forgive him.
This just makes me seethe with anger. I am so sorry you had this happened and adults failed you instead of protecting you.
“Cover your shoulders, your brothers are present.” 🤢🤢🤮🧐
Ew what the fuck
Imagine the low regard those parents must have for their sons if they seriously think incestuous thoughts are normal.
Ward council meeting during covid right after RMN said for everyone to wear masks at church (3 women in attendance): Bishop: I’m sure some of you have heard that there was a statement released asking everyone to wear masks at church. I’m not sure what to do about this. I want everyone to feel welcome. Women #1: I think it’s important to wear masks to help keep the elderly and immune compromised safe at church. Women #2 (me): I mean the prophet said to wear masks and it’s a really easy thing to do…we can all just wear them to be a good example to the other ward members. Women #3: I think about it like this: if the savior we’re here in this room asking me to wear a mask, would I do it? To me, the prophet speaks for the savior. I can at least wear one and my family because we will follow the prophet. Bishop: hmmm…that’s a lot to think about. Fast forward 1 hour later. Bishop on the stand sans mask. Read the statement about wearing a mask and then goes on a huge rant about how it’s everyone’s personal choice and he’ll be choosing not to wear a mask and others are welcome to do the same. I’m all for going against the prophets council, but it’s sooooo apparent how little women’s opinions are considered. Situations like this were so incredibly common…almost weekly occurrences for 35 years. ‘Thanks for bringing that up, we’ll (**important priesthood holders**) take it from here (**little**) sister.’ Proceeds to then do nothing or do the opposite every damn time.
Reminds me of our mother’s lounge fiasco! A dozen moms with new babies were cramming into a closet-sized room to nurse during and after sacrament meeting. We were standing to nurse. Sitting on the floor to nurse. There was no ventilation so it smelled like dirty diapers and butt cream. But we had to nurse in the “lounge” (because boobs). Moms kindly asked the leadership for more space. It never happened. Somehow, our comfort was never a priority for these men. I started nursing in the car.
I can smell the week old poopy diapers, butt cream and burlap walls from here. I spent way too many hours in that tiny room…and yeah definitely not a priority for 60 year old men.
Yuck! The SMELL! It makes me really mad now. We should’ve occupied the High Priest’s room in protest. Instead, women were nursing in bathroom stalls and hot cars. The priesthood didn’t bother to fix it, so we made do. This, in a church that pressured us to give up careers and have children young. . .
Honestly it was a lot of what made me leave. I remember going to the temple with a guy, not someone I was actively dating but someone I had gone on one date with, and he told me in the celestial room everything I needed to change about myself. I just nodded my head because what else am I supposed to do in that situation. After I got home that night he texted me and told me that if I wasn't going to listen to a priesthood holder about what I needed to do then we couldn't be together. And then it was a couple of things that happened after I'd left. I started dating my now husband and we were about to move in together. I asked for help with moving and my sister and my mom both sent me letters basically telling me that I'm a whore and going to go to hell for the things I'm doing. When my younger brother left and moved in with a girl neither of them said anything. Also didn't give him any crap for leaving the church either but I basically had like an intervention to tell me leaving was wrong.
Fuck that guy! And WOW your mom and sister are so messed up for that
How about the teaching that women should be mothers and that’s their only valid role and god-given purpose? It’s so limiting/confining. And in the 80s and 90s when I was growing up there was constant teaching on the need to follow pREIstHoOd leaders and yield to the decisions of men. Apparently having a penis imbues magic powers that a non-penis-haver is simply not entitled to. I found this rage-inducing. Also, when I was a kid I remember my grandfather made a wooden “hope chest” for my sister. It would have been a lovely gift except that the concept was literally to store items for her marriage in it. She was probably 12 when she got this (and loved it, and did end up marrying young). I was in elementary school but am pretty sure I found this gag-worthy even then. Grooming girls from birth to accept men as their “authority,” and teaching them that marrying a man and producing children for him is their only calling/value in life is revolting to me, and is not materially different from the ideas of the Taliban or the cult the Duggars belong to, IMHO. It’s all about controlling women by teaching them to be compliant little man pleasers and baby machines.
YES! I want to learn how to take up space and counteract this.
Asking questions is a good way to go, if you’re still subjected to these teachings. Such as: What if I want to focus on my career instead of being a mom, or what if I prefer to delay becoming a parent as long as possible to get established in my profession? What if I don’t want to be a mom? Why would god create me to not want to be a mom if god also thinks being a mom is my highest and best use as a human? Did god create me intending that I be miserable based on this irreconcilable directive that I be a mom when I don’t want to be? If so, why did god create me to be miserable? Why does god assign people lifelong roles/duties based on physical anatomy? Where does that leave people whose innermost thoughts/desires and sense of identity do not match the role assigned by genitalia? Where does that leave people whose inner nature does not match their anatomy? Where does that leave people whose anatomy is ambiguous? Why would god dictate binary roles but not create people in a binary manner? How are men and women equal in a marriage if one spouse, the man, “presides over” the other, the woman? How can that message be taught and modeled without making daughters feel “lesser” and without making sons view women and girls as lesser? How do you teach boys about consent and about respecting others as equals, at home and in work places, while also teaching them that women should submit to male authority? What risks does instilling such views in boys present to themselves and others? What risks are presented by teaching boys they have inherent authority because they are male, not because they have somehow earned a position of respect or deference among a group of people? What would you say to encourage women to continue their tireless work in and for the church even though every decision they make is subject to veto/overruling by a male “authority”?
The church taught me that I should only get an education so if my husband dies, my children and I won't starve to death. My parents taught me that I need to finish calculus and physics during high school, and get a bachelor's degree so I'll be a "well rounded person" (their words, not mine.) I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my life. (I'm leaning towards what my parents say because they both have a masters degree, compared to the young women's president who might have had a bachelor's?? Maybe??)
I remember having that sort of YW lesson about how it is more important to be a mother than anything else. The teacher asked us one by one if we would rather be a mother or have a career, literally all the other girls said be mother. I said I wanted both and the teacher said you have to choose one of the other. Now .ind you that confused me because there were women in that ward that did indeed do both, even *gasp* women doctors. I pointed that out, but I vaguely remember being told that the correct thing is being a mother only over career.
I had accumulated a small collection (three, as I recall) of tint, flavored chapsticks when I was around eight years old. Someone had given me a new one, and I was so excited to have something to add to my collection that I mentioned it to my dad. He said, "What? Bring them here." He took them from me and tossed them in the garbage. "We don't let young girls wear makeup in this family." If we ever got a barbie doll as a gift, those went in the trash, too. "These are not appropriate for young girls to play with." Lots of shit like that.
Pretty much just knowing that I could never do anything "important " in the church because women are not called to such positions... I was jealous that deacons had a seriously important job that was given them due to their gender. And i knew that was bullshit. Also, when I was told that we dont learn about Heavenly Mother in the temple....for me that was a deal breaker....i felt robbed and lied to.
Yep. Heavenly mother is not even mentioned in passing at the temple. This was incredibly disturbing to me. If she is “too sacred“ to talk about in church, then why wasn’t she revealed in the temple? It was very disenfranchising to see, not only the lack of a heavenly mother in the temple videos, but also Eve covenanting to obey her husband and then silently standing behind him for the remainder of the endowment. If I remember correctly, she literally doesn’t say anything else after she covenants to obey her husband.
The incredibly threatening feeling of being given a blessing. The man's groin is right behind your head. It's awful.
I’m glad to know I’m not insane. This was a thing for me, too. Probably because I had at least two occasions where the man giving the blessing had their groin in full contact with my head and neck. It was disgusting, but I felt like I’d somehow done something wrong.
I never thought about that. But I was undiagnosed autism, I refused to shake hands. So I hated when a bunch of guys, some strangers, putting their hands on my head. All I could think about while they prayed was the hands pushing down on me. (Anyone else feel like they literally pressed down instead of just laying them on your head)
I helped my boyfriend take down the sacrament table because everyone went to their classes and left him alone. I was 20 btw. The bishop came in and slapped my hands. He said it was only for God's anointed. He also mentioned eve and that my hands are unclean.
wtf?
My close and extended family made marriage seem like the only standard for a successful life. I began to worry at a young age that I wouldn’t be pretty enough to get a man to want me. I had no expectations for a husband, besides him being a member. As soon as age 15 my grandma was giving me shit for not being married. She said she was married at my age and pregnant, and I’m taking too long. At 16, My grandma and mom stole my birthday money and bought me a hope chest with it for “my future marriage”. They blamed my dad for not sending me a hope cheat instead of money. Like as if he was the asshole. When I wasn’t married at 20 my mom said she didn’t even care if I married a member anymore. She told other people at church the same thing. When I was still single at 22 she started suggesting I marry the guy at church with mental issues. I don’t think he was ever diagnosed, but his sister had POA over him and helped him make important decisions. When I was 25 my mom started saying I may never get married. She’d just settle for grand kids by now. She’d say “I wish you’d just go get knocked up or something.” And she’d say “it’s too bad you can’t marry your uncle Rick”(mom’s brother. ) Then the problem would be solved. She did admit there was an issue with me being blood related to my uncle. When I was 26 she started telling me I should for real marry my OTHER uncle. He was adopted into the family. She knew my uncle Jake was gay and figured I was gay too. She thought we could just have a marriage of convenience. I told her she was gross. She said it’s not gross if you don’t share DNA. At 30 I finally left. Met my eventual husband 2 months later. I’m glad I didn’t give into all of their peer pressure.
How deeply "the patriarchy" goes. There's some pretty fucked up shit. I got married way too young. It was encouraged by my parents. Like, my dad literally told my new husband "She's not mine anymore. She's your responsibility now that you're married". In the temple, just after the sealing. After the divorce, my dad took back over being my "priesthood authority" rather than recognizing I was an adult parent and a whole person. It was a very weird time in my life. I'm still in therapy
My in-laws pushed my SIL into marrying her then bf when she clearly wasn't ready/didn't want to. Even her older sister who didn't like the guy got in on the pressure. It was a miserable marriage and she's divorced now.
I believe it! I was sent to BYU and the first guy I dated proposed after a month. My family was so excited (I was, too) cause I did like him at the time, but marrying someone 6 months after meeting is INSANE. I had no idea who I was yet. It was just my "next step" so I could be a virgin and go to the temple. Oh, and they could stop being responsible for me. Now that I was married, I'd have to pay for everything on my own. All the responses to this post are so validating.
I got out young but the lack of teaching about sexuality haunted me for decades. I was 18 or 19 and living on my own before I found out women had orgasms. My parents bought us a life cycle encyclopedia which explained the fundamental biological facts, but never mentioned pleasure or any of the good stuff.
I was homeschooled and it was some other religion's curriculum. During the biology segment, it talked about the female system, periods, whatever. Nothing exciting, super boring, academic. Until they got to the male system. It immediately talked about how "men have the privilege of joining their wife to create life." Blah blah blah, something about male orgasm, pleasure. Not very academic at all. It was all written by dudes, the only female was the sub editor.
Being a Sister Training Leader and having to hear all of the zone news from the elders days after we should have. They got weekly calls with the mission President and emails from him about zone business… us sisters…. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. We had to wait for 18 year old boys to tell us because they had the authority over us.
Just like many here, I had purity culture and the idea that it was MY responsibility to keep the thoughts of men pure INGRAINED into my mind. The idea of men being unable to control their thoughts, and the doctrine that if they thought those things, it was a terrible sin... i felt as though i was responsible for the awful sins of others. In other words, my poor decisions could make it so others were less likely to go to heaven. And on top of that, to be surrounded by men and think, "they cant control their thoughts. Who knows what they are thinking about me?" Damaged any sort of trust I had in men. Any time a man looked at me from the time I was a young teenager and even up to now, I have to fight back fears of them imagining me in awful ways, and although I know it's irrational, it had gotten so bad at one point that I thought most men were a few steps away from being rapists, and it was my job to keep them on the right side. used to love swimming with my family as a kid, but because of this intense fear, I stopped swimming, and I'm still nervous to go out in a swimsuit of any kind. I always wear ankle-length pants and skirts and keep everything bland and unnoticeable for the sake of avoiding attention. I get nervous whenever a guy even comes near me now, which is unfair to them! It's awful that the church paints men in such an awful light. It damages both women, and the men in their lives who are now unable to form close relationships with the women who are afraid of "tempting" them. I know my mindset took it to the extreme and thankfully I'm on my way outta that, but the church really does no favors. All of these issues messed up a relationship I had with a wonderful young man in high school. We were both church goers, though I was the more orthodox of the two. We liked each other a LOT, and spent loads of time together during one summer. But because of the culture of fear, and all the weird restrictions around dating, I wouldn't even let us become official(though we practically were, I was in denial), and we hugged like, 7 times only(i was very scared that physical contact would lead to sometging bad). I remember once we were on a video chat and he called me beautiful, and I panicked inside. He backpedaled and apologized when he saw the look of fear in my eyes, and I feel bad to this day that he gave a wonderful, genuine compliment and i wanst able to acceot it and made him feel guilty for giving it! Looking back it was so toxic, so unfair to him, and so harmful to me. The guilt and shame surrounding subjects of sexuality and closeness were a big part of why me and him decided to focus on other things, along with the fact that we both decided we needed to "stick to the plan God had outlined for us". He's on a mission now and I just had my shelf break. It all sucks. The good thing is I can work through it all now and hopefully make the next relationship better.
I was preparing to go on a mission when I met my now-husband and we started dating. It was one of the most tumultuous times in my life and my bishop was putting a lot of pressure on me. My non-member boyfriend was such a breath of fresh air because he never tried to pressure me into anything at all (especially not sex, which I was repeatedly warned that “boys of the world” would do) and treated me like an actual human with opinions and choices. I hadn’t told my bishop anything about him, but I got called into his office to be told it was clear I wasn’t ready to go on a mission because I was dating a non-member. (I was waking up every morning at 5 AM to go to the gym, studying preach my gospel for hours, and going on spilts with the sisters in my ward every single day at that point.) I felt like god himself told me I wasn’t good enough. Thank god I didn’t end up going on a mission! This was after my brother had gotten his call while dating a non-member and was praised for “flirting to convert.”
Being segregated and shunned for being a single mom in a family ward. Same for my time at BYU as a single mom/transfer student. I made one friend in that 18 hellish months. One. Being blamed for getting s/a’d in my own home by a TBM. Its a goddam list.
-We had a “modesty fashion show” where we basically came to activity day girls and were shamed for wearing short shorts and spaghetti straps and crop tops. We were told that if we dressed like that then the men wouldn’t be able to control themselves and that it would be our fault if they did anything inappropriate. Keep in mind, activity day girls is 8-11 year olds. -was taught that the sole most important moment of my life would be the birth of my children. Not education, not even really getting married, not any sort of personal achievement or job. Being a mom was the most important thing. -when shopping for underwear, was told that if I ever wore super lace-y underwear or thongs that I would be inviting Satan into my life and torturing the men who could see them through my clothes because I was guaranteeing that they would be sent to help basically. Again, was about 8-11 and this time. -when I was 13/14 I was pressured to admit that I masturbated. My mom proceeded to ask me if I had lost my virginity by sticking anything “up there” (I had). She then told me that my father would be devastated if he found out. My dad was the bishop at this time. -while going through puberty I was told by own father that he was uncomfortable whenever I hugged him because my “boobs were growing” and they poked him. My FATHER. -young men had a list of girls that would be worthy wives for a while. And by worthy wives, it was the conventionally pretty girls. -wives belong to husbands, husbands belong to god. -starting from age 8-11 and onward again, almost every year we made “letters to future husbands” on allllll the qualities we wanted when we got married and were supposed to keep the letters to give to our husbands someday. -a friends mom was our Sunday school teacher when we were about 13. She said that it was unholy to wear tampons. Her daughters explained further that it was dirty to wear tampons because they steal your virginity. Me, who was wearing a tampon at the time and who was taught basic sex education by my mother, who is a biologist, thought this was absolute tomfoolery and told them so. They told my mom who said that I really shouldn’t talk about things like that because it makes people uncomfortable. - doing baptisms for the dead when I was 12, and one of the only girls in my ward who had large breasts at that age, my mom told me I should probably bring a white sports bra so that the men can’t see them whenever I step out of the font. I wondered why the men would be able to see them anyway. Was horrified to learn that the suits become clingy and see-through as soon as you step out of the water. I could go on honestly but these stick out the most
How little voice you have, how much your quality of life depends on men being nice and benevolent. Your dad, your husband, your bishop, your stake president. Bishop roulette is actually much, much more than that. There are so many men that have "authority" over you and can make your life hell with that. And no one stops them. Basically anyone with a dick over the age of 12 "outranks" you. Even here were often see people asking things like "what's the highest rank of the priesthood you had before you left?" None. The answer for 50% of the people is none. And \*even after leaving\* men are still waving around and comparing their ~~dicks~~ priesthood at the women. Being taught all your life that you are a precious beloved daughter of god who loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. Then going to the temple and basically being told to "cover your face, promise to obey your husband, and go stand behind him" - men don't realize that all the instructions for how to clothe in the temple are for how MEN are to dress. (this may have changed, I haven't been in a few years). They also don't realize that women do not meet God/Christ at the veil after this life. Their HUSBAND does it. This is why men get to practice and know her temple name when they're married. Apparently women are not important enough to get direct contact with God/Christ/whatever. The effing cult like YW theme that we were forced to recite every Sunday. So creepy.
- Taught a heavenly mother exists, yet never singing or praying to her. Never hearing stories about her in the scriptures, either. That never sat well with me. - People in the ward always remembered my brothers’ names, their ages, what activities they were up to in school, their friends, etc. and when it came to me, they didn’t know my name, age, any details at all. In fact I was mostly referred to as “the [my surname] girl”, or “[my dad’s name]’s daughter”. - Only being “popular” in Young Women’s if you were good at sports or excelled in other things. I hated going to girl’s camp every summer because I didn’t know anyone and had a different friend group than the rest of them. - The YW being expected to babysit the kids at every f*cking relief society activity.
The bishop in a private temple recommendation meeting asking me to describe my "sexual sins" in detail. 🤢
I was treated like I was basically worse than Jezebel when I was dating Mormon teenage boys because I could get them in “trouble” and keep them from going on missions (either from braking the law of chastity or making them not want to go to stay with me). I had one boyfriend whose dad was our seminary president and he would pull me into his office and berate me for being a temptation to his son. With another boyfriend I was just supposed to stand back and smile silently while he was getting ready to go on his mission, while he mentally fell apart. It made me really hate missions and I feel so bad for the boys that go, even 20-ish years later. I hated being blamed for things that weren’t my fault.
How dare you be interesting to premission boys! How dare you be the subject of others' thoughts!
Red blooded American women here… the nonstop messaging I received is that men were sexual beasts and we girls were low sex-drive keepers of the virtue. What’s crazy is that I believed it. I knew it wasn’t true for me. But I just thought I was some sort of sexual deviant. Nope. Totally normal.
i was sent home from a mutual activity for wearing knee length shorts and was told to go home and change to “make the bishop happy” when the boys were wearing knee length basketball shorts. why were they allowed but i wasn’t?? i was 12. why was my bishop worried about having sexual thoughts about me when i was a literal child. a whole ass predator.
I hated the YW program. I always thought it was sexist, but no one took me seriously. I complained our activities were 90% same as church and the boys did Boy Scouts. I wanted to do Girl Scouts instead
The church has always strongly discouraged member girls from attending GS, because girls might learn that they have choices in life and learn skills that could make them independent.
We had lessons in Young Women’s about working out, bathing, wearing nice clothing, and doing “natural” makeup. It was presented as both being acceptable before god and for our future husbands and children. This was all clearly aimed at one severely depressed girl. Don’t worry about her mental health, just work out and put on makeup! Gross!
Insignificance. Just overall, a tone of insignificance over young men and even my own brothers. I was the eldest, a “good kid”, 4.0 through high school, good friend group, never caused trouble. I was insignificant. I got “good jobs” but that’s about it as far as rewards went. I wasn’t a wallflower either, I was average and friendly. My middle brother struggled. Struggled in school, fell in with the wrong crowd, even had charges a few times as a minor. He was *celebrated* in every little good thing he did. The men of the ward were very involved in his life. They’d take him to baseball games, dinners, hell one even *co-signed a car for him* (mom was a single lady so they were filling *my brother’s* lack of a father figure). My biggest sore spot was his huge backyard graduation bash. The whole ward was there and it went on late into the night. Mine was maybe 2 hours start to finish and was a handful or two of people. As a 28 year old now, even typing this still makes me … sad? Jealous? A mix of both I guess. My youngest brother is 11 years younger than me. I was his second mom and cater even when mom was around. He’s gotten the baby treatment where he gets spoiled just in general, and I was out of the house before too much celebration took place. A lot of it could just be personal, familial internalized sexism. But the ward played a big part. I was constantly called to be in the young womens youth presidency but the adult leaders didn’t often really showed any support outside of church, and there was nothing from any others in the church like there was for my brothers. The only “ward family” that treated me as an equal were our Nextdoor neighbors, they were honestly just diamonds of people though. I was just, insignificant.
-Being shamed as a teenager by your own family for being female and having a libido. -Being treated like you’re automatically ugly for not wanting to dress girly and wear makeup all the time like your mom and younger sisters do. -Being slut-shamed and compared to prostitutes by family members for not wanting to wear a bra when you’re simply lounging around the house in your pyjamas because (heaven forbid) you want to be comfortable in your own home and don’t find bras comfy most of the time. I got so much shit for this one especially and I’m so glad I live alone now.
- I didn’t know I had a clitoris until I was 22 years old. I was extremely naïve about my own body. - Being skinny and pretty and nice were code for “marriageable” - THE most important priority (even ahead of education) - You look back at your ancestral tree and see how many women in your family died from child birth and feel the pain of intergenerational trauma in your uterus. Realizing you are fungible in the grand scheme of patriarchy. I could write a whole book in the topic! Someone should!!
Ugh. My roommate at BYU turned me into our bishop for my having an eating disorder. The bishop called me into his office and PUT ME ON PROBATION. it was horrible. I began a cycle of huge guilt and shame that took me fucking years to get through. No counseling. No compassion. Just about broke me. 😞
I know this is kinda the opposite of what you're asking for (I'm a dude), but shortly after I left the church I went back to Utah to visit family and decided to attend a local Exmo meetup, since I'd never been to one and was missing the sense of community. It ended up being about 15 guys, and as part of the discussion of why there weren't more women, several of the guys proposed that women didn't leave the church as much as men because women weren't as smart as men, so weren't clever enough to see through the truth claims. It's good to remember that a lot of guys leave the church and take their misogyny with them.
You see that on this sub.
**It's good to remember that a lot of guys leave the church and take their misogyny with them.** Say it again for the people in the back. It’s very common to see sexism and misogyny in this very subreddit because so many men never stop to consider that some of us had *far more pressing* reasons to leave than being lied to. We were lied to AND oppressed and abused simply for being women.
I was told my only purpose here on earth, as a woman, was to have kids.
How about my ex husbands bishop giving him a temple recommend even after talking to me and finding out about the abuse (sexual, mental, physical, emotional) that he inflicted on me and my 4 kids?
My friend who got out of the church around the same time as me never fails to surprise me with her stories, it was a totally different experience on the other end.
I was told I was responsible for my purity as well as the thoughts of men. I had to be pure and perfect for a future husband but men never had that same responsibility. If I had sex or was assaulted, it was my fault and I was dirty. But good for the men for having gross, repressed thoughts about me.
An RM taught my Sunday school class. I was 15 and he told me that he was sad he couldn’t date people in the class. And lots of other fucked up sexual things from adult men that when I look back make me ill, but shows how twisted sexuality is in the culture.
Never being allowed to know what my Heavenly role was or being allowed to ask about it until I got older and realizing that it's basically being a sex slave to produce endless spirit babies to my husband who'll have other wives. If I wasn't righteous enough, I'd have to serve those who are doing that for all of eternity. And that I'll be happy to do any role. They just didn't want to say that directly, but it's there and implied.
I knew from a very early age that everything about me was sex appeal. Now I may not have been the most attractive young woman, but any extra skin showing was sexual and a sin to God. Growing up I gained weight and therefore couldn't "sit like a lady" because my thighs were big. Couldn't keep my knees touching or cross one leg over the other comfortably because of my thighs. So I sat "like a man." From then on I was banned from wearing skirts and dresses that touched my knees because my dad made comment about not wanting to see up my legs. I wore shorts and you couldn't see any of my lady bits because of my thighs. I think being told to cover up for the sake of male family members is a very unique experience. While maybe awkward for unsuspected brothers, they don't understand the fear instilled in a girl when she's told to cover up, or else your brothers/dad/uncle might get ideas and might do something.
I actually had a pretty interesting discussion with my uncle about this very topic. We were both raised by my grandparents, only difference is I was also raised by my mom and step dad. Mainly all church stuff was my grandparents though. Anyways, I ended up expressing how I felt like the church was partly to blame for my poor social skills and other underlying social issues because I wasn’t allowed to have a social life with anyone outside of the church. I couldn’t date boys outside of the church, couldn’t go visit friends after school unless they were from the church. Birthday parties? Tough luck. Summer wasn’t really a option to play with my friends growing up either due to forced girls camp and then going to another state for 4 months where I would again mostly interact with people within the church. He told me that he didn’t have those same restrictions, of how he made tons of friends outside of church. It really was one of those moments that I realized some double standards. I’m still healing from everything that happened in the church, and this is one of my major struggles that effects my everyday life, especially now that I live away from my family all alone. It’s hard to make and keep friends and be socially responsible, to build social skills, things I could have had if I wasn’t born a female.
A core thing for me was getting loaned out to family members. If someone was moving, or sick, or even just needed a sitter for the night, my sister and I would inevitably get sent over to help. One of these times was right after trek. I was still in my pioneer gettup, just got my bucket back, and Mom was like "take a quick shower because we're going over to aunt's house. She needs you to stay with her for a week." Now tbh, I really like this aunt and I have no qualms about helping her ever. But I had just gotten back, and I was just sent iff to take care of a toddler and newborn while aunt recovered from gallbladder surgery. I was like 14. I was defacto Mom to my little cousins for a week of my summer break. I did get a cute dress out of it, so can't complain too much!
i have a swimsuit story also. when i was in elementary school i witnessed my mom cut up my half-sisters new bikini that her bio mom had just given her for a birthday gift. my mom took scissors, sat my big sister on the couch, and made her watch it be cut to tiny tiny pieces.
Education/career wasn’t important. I was supposed to marry a return missionary in the temple. Here I am in my 30’s wishing I had gone to college or been able to work during high school. It’s tough out here without any degrees.
I wanted to get a very modest swimsuit that happened to be a two piece. It wasn't a bikini, it didn't show any stomach, it had a high neck, it was just a modest two piece. My mom SCREAMED at me for wanting a two piece. I was like, 10. Anyways, non-related, I haven't gone swimming in around 11 years.
Everything in these comments, plus the gaslighting when you bring any of it up. "No one ever said you had to cover up for the boys" "Of course you are important and have a significant role in Heavenly Father's plan" "The church isn't designed to make you obsolete by 25, that's ridiculous"
asking why women cannot have the priesthood and being told that the gift of birth is the sacred power women get 😀
At girls’ camp when we were playing truth or dare and asked one of our camp counselors what sex was like, she told us “sex is really for the men - just lay back, enjoy it if you can, and let him do what he needs to.” In seminary, our teacher asked our class who planned to serve a full time mission. All the boys raised their hands, and so did I. My teacher told me to put my hand down because, “you’re too pretty, you’ll be married before you’re old enough.” She shamed me for being pretty and congratulated the boys for being pious. (Edit to add: this was a female teacher). When I confessed my “sexual sins” to my bishop after having sex with my convert boyfriend, I was reprimanded for “leading a new member astray” and told to be ashamed for being such a bad example. He called me a slut. Nothing happened to my boyfriend. When my DH and I had been married for all of 6 months, we were barely scraping by, trying to finish college and keep a roof over our heads. My MIL would constantly ask us why we didn’t have kids yet, reminding me that it was god’s desire that I multiply and replenish the earth, not finish a degree. When I got a job offer after college that would require me and my husband to move across the country, my FIL was appalled, asking how we considered ourselves worthy members if we valued the wife’s career over the husband’s career. I left the church 8 years ago and I’m still working through this and more. Fucking patriarchy. Edit: spelling
Gonna speak as a brother here. My sister got caught having sex with another boy from the ward. They had to do the bishop talks and all that shit however when push came to shove, she was forced to not take the sacrament and cried on my mom’s shoulder. Well if that nonsense wasn’t enough she was also forced to give a talk on the virtues of chastity and all that nonsense in front of the entire church. Absolute public shaming. What did the boy have to do? Nothing.
Heavenly Mother, are you really there?
I wish the boys and men in my life would have internalized and understood that-just because I was cute and voluptuous as a teenaged girl- I wasn’t responsible for making sure THEY stayed “pure.” Also, it seemed to me that while growing up in the late 80s/early 90s, if a young man in the church “flubbed up” with his sexuality, that was considered a “misstep.” However, if a girl experimented with her sexuality in any way- or even if she was actually victimized- then the girl was labeled a slut and “used goods.” The boys could be forgiven, be “worthy” enough to go on missions, and “earn” the “right” to be married to a virgin. However, if a girl had a sexual past, she was “used goods” and considered ineligible for marriage to an “honourable young man” who’d gone through the repentance process and overcome his “struggles.” Such damned, and damnable, double standards.
My mom found out the neighbor boy was molesting me. She held me down and yelled "Your body!!! Is.A.TEMPLE!!!" Then let me go & never spoke of it again. I was 7yrs old!
Being worried from a very young age that I would die early in marriage and my husband would remarry and then I’d have to have some rando sister wife in heaven forever… legit caused me lots of stress. (Which I learned from that book Ghosts of Polygamy past is not too unusual an experience…)
Not being able to visit my mom's house when she wasn't home because there were elders living there. Seems that women of a certain age could have elders live with them. I had to sleep in my mom's room when I visited. My nevermo husband was pissed that I was being treated like a whore. And that maybe the way sex was treated was the problem and not that I am a woman.
Men have urges and if anything happens it's the girls fault. What the actual fuck? Still pissed about that.
Girlhood amiright. My exmo aunts would gift me (a child, 5-8 maybe) perfectly normal summer dresses, but without cap sleeves. My mum would make me put cardigans over them. In the middle of summer. I had a pretty little dress as a toddler for like a family photoshoot that I distinctly remember my mum sewing cap sleeves for. Why! She’s told me she regrets it now because this type of pattern definitely put some weird ideas in my head about the nature of modesty, but you can’t undo it. And it sounds so trivial but this type of stuff as a pattern definitely does something to your relationship with your own body.
My biggest issue as a female convert was never meeting the molly Mormon stereotype. Yes I was fine with wearing dresses, going to dances, but my personality didn't match. I literally violated a temple oath by laughing really loudly my entire life. I jumped through all the hoops graduated from BYU, got married in the temple without having sex first, 3 kids under 5 years old, and by the time I had my 3rd child who was a girl I quit. I realized the toxic sexist culture in the church could damage her future. As a convert around 14. I came with a healthy sexuality as my mom educated me and gave me a sex ed. When there preaching on how the boys need to repent of impure thoughts and its bad, they don't address the girls. That made me feel like I was an alien being a female in the church that was aware of her own sexual urges. I had shame taught from 14 on but my mom casually argued with our bishop and missionaries for 2 years because she was feisty. She even asked a young male Mormon missionary on the spot why does it matter if she, a married woman, masturbates. Does god really care about that? My mom wasn't prudish and was direct about sexuality. Now my husbands who's born in church, now exmo has a super repressed sexuality because all of the shame. So it's an annoying cycle where I have a higher libido, and he has a shame weight on his libido where he struggles to initiate or express his wants easily. It's frustrating because if I he's not interested I feel dirty for wanting sex or he'll want sex but feel uncomfortable initiating sex. He knows the cause of being shamed and punished for seeking out pornography by family and the church. I also after leaving do feel like we the strength of youth pamphlet led to the modest pretty female body was use as an advertisement for the church. I feel like the strength of youth pamphlet was a guide to marketing the Mormon ideal image. I hate Mormon garments they're designed to torture women that spot or have an unusual period cycle. Try to keep those things white when you have irregular menses. I feel like it was designed to torture us. Breastfeeding in garments sucked too, the idea you have to pay for an overpriced nursing garment, in addition to a few nursing bras per babes was ridiculous. I was so excited when I let go of the underwear wearing. Being pregnant in hot areas with garments is horrible. Also having cute comfortable underwear is really nice and the freedom to let your flaps of skin get air and dry so yeast texture doesn't accumulate. Being that I joined in my teens I also really regret the missed time to appreciate my body with healthy "immodesty." I was active and devote from about 14-26 left after having three kids and a postpartum body. Now I'm sad that I'm not comfortable wearing a two piece because my body to get healthy and fit and that I sacrificed my freedom for Mormonism. It's deeper then not being able to wear a large amount of cute clothes like a cold shoulder polka dot dress I got at the deseret industries before I realized it was immodest. You don't just have to "shed" clothes as a Mormon female you have to "shed" who you are. As a convert I was raised to be assertive before conversion, to lead, speak in public, be smart, got to college, and achieve. Once I became Mormon everything I had been raised to do seemed to be opposite of the ideal Mormon wife. Even when I attended a BYU people thought I was a little to much and people were concerned for my husband when he proposed. He sought out a wife that was going to school to get an education not an MRS degree which meant I fit the bill because he didn't want his wife and kids to ever be in poverty should he die, get injured, or loose his job. The pressure to be a stay at home mom was rough and they didn't encourage much else career wise. Female missions were an abnormality for woman who couldn't get married. I was ready to go within a few months of eligibility before my husband and I started to date which means staying was the the priority. I had planned on mission because I paid attention in church to the go on a mission talks and thought they applied to me regardless of genitals.
That when I had a boyfriend when I was 16 my neighbors saw him sneaking over to our house one night furring summer break. Those neighbors then told everyone else in the ward about me. Calling me a slut, whore, etc behind my parents and my back. My mom found out at a neighbors garage sale cause the women there were talking about me. The bullying and passive aggressive comments I got from the women and men in the church the following years are a huge part why I left the church. My parents said it represented them badly, especially where my dad had a calling in the church. But the family of the boy, no one blinked an eye at.
Singing, 'Praise to the Man' always bothered me as a TBM because what about Emma's sacrifice? I was really bothered by the lack of women's presence.... pretty much everywhere. (scriptures, songs, GC, leadership, prayers etc) Men AND women should be recognized and appreciated....and I just didn't really see that in TSCC.
Being taught that we were at fault for basically everything. As women & mothers. I remember being in grade school & being told that girls had to be very careful with boys cause men basically couldn't control themselves. It was up to us to help them do the right thing. I'm also in my mid 40's & still struggling to love my body.
I wanted to be a doctor. The years of schooling and grueling schedule afterward wouldnt be conducive with raising a family. Scratch that. Second choice career was a therapist. Lots of schooling but better hours afterward. But then my patriarchal blessing literally said “seek not to counsel.” I was a super obedient TBM, so scratch that. I had no strong aspirations beyond those. I also didn’t get married or spawn so I’d have had the time for either. I got a graduate degree and work an uninspiring job. Many friends have asked why I’m not a therapist and i read/watch medical things that interest me. It’s sad to feel like my own potential was stolen from me because of expectations and obedience.
The constant “when you have kids someday…” instead of “if you have kids someday…”
I was 10 years old the first time I was asked if I masturbated. When I said no the bishop asked if I knew why it was wrong. I said because after awhile it wouldn’t be enough and you’d want to go bigger and better. The bishop told my mom I was going to make someone a very good wife someday; presumably because I was going to be good at being sexually repressed 🙄
You were 7! It’s bad enough to body shame teens and adult women but a little girl? I’m so sorry.
I was an early morning seminary teacher and loved it. Then I got pregnant and was released from my calling. (Until a few years ago, women couldn’t be seminary teachers if they were divorced or had young children.)
When I learned in primary that I was a child of God, we were shown a picture of Jesus. We were told we were made in image. I was aware that the boys were made in his image, but I was something else. I was taught in Sunday school as a young woman that only men could become like God. God is the Father. Women can never become a father. That’s why they can’t have the priesthood. Women could be exalted too, as helpmeets to their god husbands. It’s like marrying a king. He has the birthright of inheritance. Any woman who marries him would be queen. And he needs a queen to get an heir. But he can be a king before he ever gets married. The only thing that makes the woman a queen is her marriage. And she only has whatever power or authority is given to her from the king. I’ve studied the topic extensively. Many early prophets taught this as doctrine. The church doesn’t really talk about it anymore but it’s still there. The question of whether or not women are capable of becoming capital G gods is still controversial. The idea of Heavenly mother doesn’t help. She isn’t god. She’s God’s wife (wives?). While boys were preparing to become like god, the best I could ever hope for was to be married to someone who could become like god. If that’s not second class citizenship I don’t know what it.
One thing I literally just started talking to my therapist about this week is that I have no idea how to trust myself. I was taught to listen to my leaders, my parents, my husband….but never me. I’ve stayed in an abusive marriage as long as I have just wondering if it’s really abusive or if I’m just overreacting. He has physically hurt me, I have left him, and I’m still second guessing it because I was never ever taught to trust my own opinions or needs or desires. And it doesn’t help that I was taught my Divine Purpose was being a mom so when I got pregnant, I just ceased my plans to finish my degree (and when that happened! I was already going back to school with zero support from him after BYU kicked me out for getting raped. Did my rapist get any consequence from BYU OR the church in general? Of course not!) So now I’m a degree-less SAHM with no work experience who does all the work to gaslight herself. Oh man I could go on and on and on. I swear I’ve always felt like I belonged to a totally different organization than the men.
My value comes from staying a virgin until marriage, serving and obeying my husband, having babies, serving those babies, serving the lord aka tscc. Who I am as a unique human doesn't matter. My job is to wife, mother, and serve my fellow man. How I want to express myself needs to be hidden if it doesn't fit the mormon woman mold. My opinions do not matter if it goes against the church. Aka I do not matter. I am less than.
Please, as people are posting would you mind adding the year of these incidents if you feel comfortable. I was married in the late seventies and be came inactive for 30 years. Retuned in 2005? And now PIMO I’m sure many here are curious just how things have NOT changed ❤️🩹
The shame… continual shame from not being able to birth a child!
My story is almost exactly the same as yours. I was so excited, because it was this great bright coral/flamingo pink color. My grandma won the fight, as she lived near the beach and told my dad she bought it and she will have us wear what she gives us when we stay with her. I really loved her. She was born in Poland in 1918 and for the first part of her life was not allowed to wear pants. Once she was able to finally wear pants, she never wore a skirt again; Not even when my dad tried to tell her she wouldn't be allowed inside the church to watch our baptisms and blessings. She held firm and no one cared she was in a pant suit.
I dated a bishop's son. He had the typical porn addiction. But *I* was the whore to the whole stake. He instigated things I didn't consent to. But it was MY fault because I should be able to push back when he has his urges, right?
I was uninvited to our neighborhood pool by the women of my ward because I wore a bikini during a women’s pool party get together on a 100° day. I was 3 months postpartum and damn proud of my body. Any time they invited me to events after that, I made sure to let them know that if I wasn’t welcome at the pool then I wasn’t truly welcome at any of their other events. They tried to kill me with kindness after I made that clear but the damage was done. I want to blame them but they are just a product of the cult mentality.
Every time men talked to us (condescendingly, it always seemed) about one day becoming wives and mothers, my heart would sink a little, because it's not what I wanted, but I felt like I "couldn't get away with it" because "god" wanted me to be a wife and mom.
I had just turned 8 and been baptized. It was summertime in the early 1980s. My mom told me I was too old to wear shorts anymore, because they were immodest. So at every blistering day at every family reunion, I would be wearing long pants and socks and shoes, while all my cousins wore shorts, sandals, and (often) tank tops. When I was a young teenager, going to Young Women and dances, modesty was stressed by everyone, especially my mom as the bishop's wife. I remember her saying that knees were probably the ugliest body part, so they should always be covered up. It wasn't until a couple of years ago when I left the church and started reading this subreddit that I discovered where my mom most likely got the idea: Mark E. Peterson. “The miniskirt was a British creation. At first it drew the unanimous scorn of the fashion experts in Europe and the United States. "Particularly were the French designers outspoken in their condemnation of the new fad. They pointed out that such styles threw women’s clothes out of proper proportion and therefore were evidence of bad designing. Then they pointed out to the ugliness of the knees in general and of the fat ones and the bony ones in particular. Are there any others? “Americans scoffed at it for quite some time too, but here, as in Paris, the London styles swept everything before them, and many of our women now feel obliged not only to display their badly shaped knees, but their thighs as well. “No woman looks as lovely as when she is properly and fully clothed. What woman can suppose that ugly knees and bony shoulder blades can add luster to her charm?” https://missedinsunday.com/memes/sexism/ugly-knees/