First meaningful post!
This is a response to Clancyman's most recent post, found here: The Clancy. Firstly, I want to critique his critique of Ms. Jardine's recent Church talk, found here: Pencils and Pearls. Secondly, I want to offer my own thoughts on her talk. Thirdly, I want to discuss some ideas on the Church prompted by Clancy's post. And fourthly, I want to enter the conversation on intersex individuals.
(You'll notice that Clancy exclusively refers to Jessica as Ms. Jardine, even though he knows her quite well. I'm going to follow suit. Because it's fun. And because I don't know her. At all)
Clancy's Post
So, Clancy wants me to criticize him for being too harsh on Ms. Jardine. However, the harshness here is no surprise, and is hardly excessive, considering the situation. Anyone who has had meaningful conversations with the C-man in the past half year or so can see exactly where the forcefulness in this post comes from. While his frustrations with Ms. Jardine are very much apparent in the post, it seems that his frustrations with the Church are the true motivators behind his post. Unfortunately, it seems that his emotions keep him from separating the two.
If anything in the post were to be identified as a thesis statement, it would be this: Ms. Jardine is very impressed with herself for being a rebel and a self-professed feminist, when in actuality, she is another cog in the great machine named the status quo.
However, after picking apart various parts of the talk, he ends up with this: Ms. Jardine's argument, while showing great promise initially, is nothing less than confusing, sophomoric dribble that is too enamored with its ability to provoke an audience that isn't critical enough to catch the third-rate ideas contained within.
The idea of Ms. Jardine being a part of the status quo is lost. Really, the critique is doing nothing more than calling her out on being overly manipulative while lacking actual content. This would be fine if it were nothing more than some kind of blog review, but Mr. Clawson is using it as a springboard to get into some of his issues with the Church, specifically those concerning gender. It's possible that the problems of the Church that he wants to discuss are rooted in, or at least perpetuated by, talks like Ms. Jardine's, but Clancy fails to make the connection, and instead only cites her use of "The Family" to jump the gap. Minus 5 Timpoints.
(Actually, I really enjoyed the new post and gained some more respect for roommate, even if the critique here doesn't reflect that. Mostly, I just wanted to give him a little taste of his own medicine)
Jessica's Talk
I don't want to attack Ms. Jardine's arguments or rhetoric here; Clancy's done enough of that. Instead, I have questions. Oh, and one little correction.
Correction first! She says, "the penultimate life goal of all women was to have a husband a car, 2 TVs, a dog, 2.4 children, and a fireplace." As a co-founder of Cool Words Used Correctly (or CWUC pron. "kwook"), a nonprofit organization for the championing of mind-blowing yet accurate word choice, I am obligated to point out out that 'penultimate' does not equal 'ultimate,' but in fact means second to last. 10 Timpoints from Gryffindor! I mean... Ms. Jardine!
Okay, now questions. I find the "feminist mystique" idea very interesting. Ms. Jardine illustrates the idea with an example: One woman reported, “Ever since I was a little girl, science has had a fascination for me. I was going to major in bacteriology and go into cancer research. Now I’ve switched to home economics. I realized I don’t want to go into something that deep. If I went on, I’d have been one of those dedicated people. I got so caught up in [it], I never got out of the laboratory…I’m not so intensely interested in home economics, but…I realized I shouldn’t be that serious. I’ll go home and work in a department store until I get married.”
At the risk of sounding sexist, I can't help but ask: isn't this woman happy? Sure, she says she's not as passionate for home ec, but is there any indication that she regrets her decision? Is Ms. Jardine implying that she's not happy? Perhaps the case can be made that when she says she realized that she shouldn't be that serious, she is really admitting to being subjected to some sort of socialization brainwashing. To me, though, it sounds like she is an intelligent woman who made an informed decision to ultimately bring her more happiness.
Ms. Jardine further states that these decisions come with a loss of self, identity, and purpose. Who is anyone to declare that someone else has lost their self or identity? Is it really such a crime to resign oneself to mediocrity? Does mediocrity take away self? What is it that yields identity? Is it uniqueness in ideas or actions? Even if such uniqueness existed, there's no way everyone could be totally unique, because we all copy each other to some extent. I would argue that the ideas of self, identity, and purpose are highly personal and are not really influenced by the number of people who identify the same way.
I'm not saying that women who stay home are more happy or that that's the right decision to make in every case. Nor do I wish to ignore the plight of women that experience depression in their lives at home. I just think that Ms. Jardine is projecting her own ideas of happiness and a fulfilling life onto the woman in her example, and that this is something we tend to do a lot when fighting for causes and the like. When we don't accept others' ideas of happiness, we're really just being intolerant, even when we think we're fighting for their rights.
The Church
*soapbox alert*
I greatly admire Clancy for having the courage to write about gender issues and the Church and I award him 20 Timpoints. There appears to be a severe lack of internal discussion on the state of the Church and its doctrine. Members accept on faith that the Church is doing right before God. Yes, it is true that Christ leads the Church through His servants, the prophets. However, prophets are also members, and therefore imperfect. We don't always do things the right way and our leaders don't always do things the right way. And this is okay. The realization of a prophet's imperfection is not something to freak out about. After all, many prophets in the past have been chastised by the Lord; why should we hold ours to a higher standard.
Some people circumvent this problem by trying to separate prophets' personal lives from their Church lives, saying that despite personal imperfections, their arbitrations in official Church matters and addresses in General Conference are from God, and, thus, perfect. However, such apologetic attempts are frail and counterexamples abound (Bruce R. McConkie, Boyd K. Packer, etc.). Instead, isn't it possible that the problem of our own imperfection as a Church is something that God wants us to figure out on our own? This certainly does fit with His teaching philosophy (see Learning by Faith by Elder Bednar). And if that is the case, how are we to do that without respectful, intellectual, and spiritually-guided debate? I'm not saying that our leaders aren't inspired or that they aren't true prophets; I only mean that we need to stop treating them as omniscient stand-ins for God, and that we, as individual members of the Church, are more valuable than we think we are.
Let me offer an example of the kind of debate I am talking about. In the last General Conference, President Packer said some interesting things about homosexuality. Many members of the Church disagreed and many others agreed. Thousands of letters and e-mails were written to Church Headquarters. Ultimately, the Church changed printed and online versions of the apostle's talk to better reflect official doctrine. Many people saw this as a sign of weakness, but this perspective indicates a misunderstanding of the nature of General Conference. I see it as a sign of strength. Someday, I hope to see the Church develop some device to better house such debates, since these kinds of letters to HQ are generally discouraged.
Intersex Individuals
Let me tell you a story. This comes from the 17th episode of Freaks and Geeks, a fantastic TV show that chronicles teenage life in the year 1980 in America. The story is fictional, but realistic.
Ken was a typical teenager. He liked rock music, drugs, and friends. One day, he sees a mysteriously attractive female tuba player in the marching band and is immediately smitten with affection. After a few awkward encounters, he finally asks her, Amy, out on a date. Amy seems to complement him perfectly and they start "going steady." One day, while at her house, Amy tells Ken that she was born with both male and female parts. At first, Ken tells her that he doesn't mind, but, in actuality, he finds it very disturbing. However, to his infinite credit, he realizes that love is more important and decides to continue to date her. He gets a billion Timpoints.
Now, I want you to put yourself in Ken's shoes. What would you do? Of course you would want Amy to be happy, but would you want to be the one to make her happy? Personally, I have no idea how I would respond in that situation. I would want to love her, but I honestly think I might get too freaked out. Would that be my fault? Or is it the fault of society which has shaped my concept of gender to the point that I would respond that way?
Maybe our idea of gender could better reflect the continuous spectrum we see in biological sex, instead of relying on such a sharp duality. I think the happiness of the many intersex people of the world would be worth the humongous effort it would take to make such a change.
Timpoint Totals
Clancy Clawson 15
Jessica Jardine -10
Ken 1,000,000,000,000
