When you hear the words “Compassionate Service” what comes to mind? This is like one of those word association games- just go with your gut feeling. Macaroni and cheese? Sign up sheets? Relief Society Board Meeting? A calling you hated (or loved)?
I’ve always loved the theme “Charity Never Faileth.” I like scriptures about charity. I like the warm fuzzies of taking dinner to someone with a new baby. I value the opportunities I’ve been given to hold the hands of the sick and dying, whether I knew them well or not. Being there at the crossroads of life and death- that is powerful.
Of course compassionate services isn’t all heavy stuff- sometimes it’s just giving someone a ride to the storehouse or watching their kids or picking up a pack of diapers or scrubbing someone’s toilet when they are moving out of their apartment. Once members of our ward literally rebuilt the decrepit home of a woman in our ward. That part was somehow not Compassionate Service though, but an Elder’s Quorum Service Project. And men who like to cook are generally out of luck, since the sign up sheets for meals get passed around in Relief Society.
Is the errand of angels really (only) given to women? Is food preparation somehow a female skill in God’s eyes? Can men be gentle and human? Should young women who like power tools be pointed towards sewing machines instead of circular saws? I wonder if the delineation is purely cultural or a matter of personal preference (how many women in my ward would have wanted to mud drywall with the guys?) or if it’s a chicken and the egg situation.
How could our wards and stakes be more inclusive and equitable when it comes to opportunities to serve?
This really has always bothered me. I don’t for a second believe that God cares who does the cooking or who does the “tough stuff”. It reminds me of the issues surrounding gender biased language, and the question of which caused which. Do we lean toward men as the default because that’s how language favors perspective, or did language really follow reality?
I think I’m going to have to make sure my son always brings meals with me and that my girls go with their father to help with any tool intensive service projects ;) Or my husband and I could just start switching places too. I do have my own drill.
This will come as no surprise to those who know me: I do not for one second believe that the “errand of angels is given to women”–any more than it is given to men. I’d be on board with “the errand of angels is given to people,” but that doesn’t sound beautiful musically. ;)
And I also don’t believe that women are naturally gentle and kind and human. Or that men are. I think all those traits are developed because they are nurtured or fail to develop because they are not nurtured or explicitly discouraged.
I think it is just ridiculous that food lists are passed around only in the Relief Society and Primary. Many men cook–news flash, it’s 2011. But as long as we keep doing that, the more we keep communicating the message that women’s work is in the kitchen.
Same goes with babysitting. If there is ever a need for babysitting for a ward function, who do they go to? The YW. That’s the default.
I think some of this charity gender bias comes from the Pioneer/handcart hagiography that grips Mormon culture in the US. I don’t have any pioneer ancestors (and who celebrates a Sesquacentennial, anyhow?) so that may account for my stiffneckedness re: the handcart issue. The gender roles of the 1850s are becoming irrelevant to modern humans.
On the other hand, having been a young man and seeing the upcoming YM in my area, I will definitely still call young women for babysitting. Some things are too important to trust to idiots, even for the sake of appearance.
If sign up sheets were passed around in Sunday School that might help. I’m useless with power tools, and my husband is useless with cooking, but my brothers are all good cooks and two of them are useless with power tools as well.
I say if a young women would rather use a drill than a sewing machine good for her. And if a young man wants to sew, why not? Growing up we learned life skills regardless of the traditional gender. We all do laundry, we all cook, we all can do minor repairs to appliances.
I think you would need a really progressive ward with a really progressive bishop to break out of the women cook/men build mold.
– service needs and opportunities could be coordinated via ward councils
-the priesthood quorums could have compassionate service leaders or a counselor in charge of service needs
-sign up sheets could be passed in multiple meetings
all of these address the notion that opportunities could be made open to both sexes. None of them address the basic question of what are the purposes of the various organizations and how are the different, and why are they based on sex rather than interest?
I think it’s tough for members of the church who don’t feel like their interests intersect with what is expected of their sex. Or just want to bake a cake/bust out the Sawzall, darnit.
But the bigger issue that holds back this discussion is that the institutional church is so devoted to traditional gender roles that it takes someone ‘progressive’ to move forward with any change in the paradigm.
So for those of you who don’t feel like God cares who does what, how do you answer those who would say that the organization of the church is inspired, so therefore women and men should be separated in their pursuits of service? How does that jive with RS leaders saying that we work ‘with’ the priesthood to establish the kingdom? Are the quorums and the RS supposed to work as equal partners like parents in the Proclamation?
Have any leaders actually said that our spheres of service should be separate? I think it’s just how things have come to be born out of natural prejudice for what the roles should look like, not because the church said that’s how it’s supposed to happen. But I could be wrong.
I do think we are all supposed to work together in equal capacity, but as long as there are natural lines drawn we have to start blurring the boundaries. I wish we had more large scale community service projects where this could play out more, and I think it’s worth it for us as individuals to find opportunities and present them to who ever is “in charge” of ward service at the time.
Spunky asked an interesting question that this reminds me of. If women had the priesthood officially, would a female only Relief Society cease to exist or be needed? Would men and women integrate and share roles more fully and widely?
http://www.the-exponent.com/2011/02/24/musings-on-women-priesthood-and-social-darwinism/
This often irked me when I was coordinating youth activities. The boys were expected to put away the chairs. And the girls were often happy to let them do it, which I get but am also annoyed by. We don’t need boys to stack chairs. Let them stack their own chairs!
I once told a friend that my parent hired both teenage girl and teenage boy babysitters when I was a kid. This person thought my parents must have been very progressive…
What annoyed me in YSA even more than this was that in our stake we had a male and a female YSA rep, we would both be in charge of clear up after an event held at the chapel.. and me being the feminist who didn’t like it when the men were made to clear away all the tables and chairs, would get started on clearing them away myself.. however my male counterpart, happy to have a female clearing everything away would usually leave my to do it single-handedly. I want equality for men and women, but somehow men sometimes see this as women ‘wanting to be like the men’ – that is not the case, at least for me. I don’t want men and women to swap roles, I just want us all to work together.