November 26th

Today I'm thankful for overcoming a personal pet peeve.

So, in Mormondom, there's this cultural thing where women are set up as "moral beacons" who are naturally, by virtue of their ovaries, filled with an innate goodness. Meanwhile men, by virtue of their Y chromosome, are inherently base.

This cultural thing has existed since the foundation of the church, when it was not just a Mormon idea, but a world-wide trend.

Even today, in secular society, we see traces of it. If a woman sleeps with 10 men in a single month, she is a ho. If a man sleeps with 10 women in a single month, he is a playa.

Now, personally, I don't subscribe to this theory that your inherent goodness is based on your chromosomes. Consequently, it has always bothered me when we have "you women are so special - it is your divine duty to be a moral beacon to the world because you are so inherently good because you're women, and men will never understand what it's like to be this good, and you were born closer to the Celestial Kingdom than men"  lessons in church.

I've even heard some special cupcakes go so far as to say that that is why more boys die as babies than girls - because babies who die go straight to heaven, so in order to have an even gender count in heaven, they need more men to die when they're still babies.

**facepalm**

Yeah... the attitude is a problem.

So, we'll have these lessons, where we're told it's our sacred duty to be moral beacons to the world, because we are women. This concept has always bothered me. Why is it our duty? Why don't the men have that same duty? We're not inherently better than them, no matter what the insecure teacher is saying, so why do they keep teaching that we're held to such a higher standard?

Today, while flipping through conference talks to prep for a visiting teaching message, I had an epiphany.

Alright, so yes. Men have the same duty - it's just taught a little differently to them. It's not "you have this duty because you are male," it's "you have this duty because you are a disciple of Christ." Encouraging and standing up for morality has and always will be a fundamental principle of Christianity.

But the thing is... as women... because of this totally unfair double standard, we have an extra tool. No matter how women got there - be it innate qualities or socially engineered inequality - the simple fact of the matter is that women have a stronger voice for morality. We need to use it, simply because it's there, and it's available for our use.

It's not about whose job it is, and it's not an excuse for men to be less than women, or a promise that women will always be held to a higher standard than men. It's a tool to be used in a very good cause. So, [to me:] stop complaining about the double standard and do the job using the tools you have. It's everybody's job, and you don't get points for worrying about the fairness of it all and who has to do more of what. You get points for how well you get the job done.


So, today I'm thankful for that epiphany. And, as an overarching theme, I'm thankful for epiphanies in general, and the ability to be instructed and learn things about life and truth.

PS: Oh, and as a side note, I've recently realized worrying about gender equality is petty. Very petty. If I need an injustice to worry about, I can focus on child abuse or human trafficking.