Smog-Breathers

I just read an amazing book called “Multiplication is for White People”: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children by Lisa Delpit,an insightful writer whose work I have admired for the last ten years, which is about when I was first exposed to her.   I was lucky enough to take a seminar from Lisa when she was a visiting scholar at LSU while I was a doctoral student there.   The focus of Lisa’s work has been on the education primarily of African American children, but also of low-income children, and on the ways in which power dynamics and culture work to influence their educational experiences.  

But this blog post isn’t about Lisa.   This blog post is about Ordain Women, an organization which is advocating for female ordination in the Mormon church.   The Mormon interwebz have been all abuzz about Ordain Women for the last few months–but especially, the last couple weeks–the same time period during which I have been chewing through Multiplication is for White People in preparation for using it in one of my classes.

One passage struck me, in particular, as I’ve been swimming in online content about Ordain Women.

In this passage, Lisa cites Beverly Tatum (another greater writer/thinker whose work I really admire), who says that residents of Los Angeles are “smog breathers.”   Day in, day out, they breathe in smog.   They don’t even notice it.   They become inured to it.   They don’t even know the smog is there–despite the fact that it’s bad for them to breathe it in.   If you live in LA, you are a “smog breather.”

Delpit takes this analogy and says that similarly, if we live in the United States, we are “racism breathers.”   Same idea–we don’t mean to breathe in racism.   We don’t realize we’re breathing in racism.   Nonetheless, we do it.   It’s everywhere, every day, in every breath we take.   Racism seeps into our consciousness without our consent and without our conscious awareness.

As soon as I read this section, my mind went straight to Ordain Women and the upcoming action on Saturday, October 5, during which almost 200 Mormon women (and some men) are planning to stand in line to request admission to the priesthood session of General Conference.   It hit me, like a ton of bricks:   I am a “patriarchy breather.”   It’s not just the Mormon church that exudes patriarchy; it’s everywhere.   However, I happen to care more about patriarchy in the Mormon church than I do in other churches or institutions because, quite simply and selfishly, I’m a member of the Mormon church.  

I care for personal reasons, because I’ve been breathing in patriarchy for my entire life.   And I am weary of it.   I’m weary of the invisibility I experience personally and which women experience institutionally in the Mormon church.   It bothers me, at age 40, to realize that before just a few years ago, it seemed okay and normal and right (as in, divinely sanctioned) to believe in an androcentric God.   Oh, sure, in Mormonism, we also tip our hats (barely) to the notion of a Heavenly Mother, but we aren’t allowed to talk about her (much) or pray to her.   Up until just a few years ago, it seemed okay and normal and right to me that all the leaders of the Mormon church are male:   the prophet/president, his two counselors (we call this “the first presidency”), the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, the first and second and nth Quorums of the Seventy, the presiding bishopric . . . who am I leaving out?   And that’s just at the highest levels of church leadership.   When you get down to the regional and local levels, it’s the same:   only male stake presidents, only male bishops, only male Sunday School presidents (whah?), only male executive secretaries, only male clerks, only male financial clerks . . . you get the picture.

This all seemed divinely ordained to me.   It felt okay to have absolutely no female representation at any of these levels.   [And before you call me out, yes, I know that there are several women who lead in important positions in the church.   We call those organization “auxiliaries.”   What does that tell us about their role?   That doesn’t sound like “equality” to me.   And all those women serve “under the direction of” male priesthood leaders who exercise ultimate authority over everything they do.]

It seemed completely okay that my husband would be the one to officiate in all the important religious ordinances in our children’s lives.   It seemed like the right way for only him to officially name and bless them when they were infants–while I sat on the pew, trying desperately to hear what he was saying–literally outside the circle of the ordinance.   We aren’t even allowed to record the blessings because there’s a rule somewhere that says we can’t.   [I did, anyway.]  

It seemed completely normal to me for my husband to be able to bless them, using his priesthood, when they were terribly sick or on the first day of school or if something important was happening in their lives and they wanted what we call a “father’s blessing.”   I sat on a separate chair, during all those precious moments.   A non-participant observer.   Quiet.   Silent.   A spectator.

It seemed right for my husband to be able to baptize them when they turned 8–making them official members of our faith tradition.   With my girls, I stood on the outside of the baptismal font–an onlooker again–holding the towel for them when they came out of the font.   With Stuart, I wasn’t even able to do that because he’s a boy, so I wasn’t allowed in the men’s restroom to wrap him up in a big towel when he came out.   Instead, I stood, quite literally, on the other side of a big sheet of plexiglass separating the room from the baptismal font–separated by plastic sheeting from the most important religious event of my son’s life.   I felt a wave of panic almost crush me during the brief 30 seconds that it took for the ordinance to be completed.   Mercifully, it was over quickly and I could move on to licking my wounds and hugging my boy later, fighting back huge tears.   Not wanting to sully his special day.  

So yeah, I care about this.   I feel like I’ve earned my stripes, so to speak, after all the red-shirting I’ve done.

And I care because I have three amazing kids who are growing up to be patriarchy-breathers as well.   And I don’t want that.   I want them to smell it, as if it were natural gas.   In this case, I’m the one putting in the artificial scent so that they can sniff it out before it hurts them.   I want them to be able to smell it and get out from underneath it, quick–the way you smell a gas leak when you get home at the end of a long day.   You walk in and you smell it right away.   You say to yourself,   “Wow, what’s that smell?” and then you walk around the house until you find it or you leave and call the gas company.   Not teaching them to avoid patriarchy would feel like not telling them to get away from natural gas when you smell it.   It would feel like a dereliction of parental duty.   They deserve better than that.   They are amazing, those kids of mine.   I don’t know how or why; that’s all I know.

I don’t know what this will mean for their relationship to Mormonism–or for mine.   I know well, after having lived it for 40 years, that there are many beautiful things about Mormonism.   Countless.   I know you can still enjoy those many things despite the patriarchy.   I know plenty of people who do just that.   I used to be one of those people.   I’m guessing people love things about LA–despite the smog they have to endure in order to get the weather and the beaches and the . . . (what else do people love about LA?)

And I might change my mind.   But for now, I feel like I don’t have enough oxygen to breathe.   I’m putting my mask on first.   Then I’ll work on helping my kids–just like the flight attendants tell you to do.