Doctrine change in Mormon church does not reflect gender equality

Equal access to oppression does not reflect an increase in gender equality, and perhaps someone should tell that to the people celebrating the fact that Mormon women are now able to go on missions at 19 instead of 21 years old.

I wasn’t sure if I was just hearing a lot about it because, as a woman who was raised Mormon, I’m more exposed to issues and current events surrounding the Mormon church, or because it was actually a big deal to people outside of my Mormon Facebook friends. But after an extensive piece was published in The New York Times on Saturday titled “Missions signal a growing role for Mormon women,” I realized that this message is being spread to a much larger audience.

More importantly, it’s being spread to an audience that likely isn’t as familiar with the church’s more surreptitious teachings and policies regarding female members. So to those celebrating an advertised step toward equality, I say: not so fast.

A Mormon mission is a rite of passage in the Mormon church, in which young people — and some older adults — are sent to proselytize (preach door to door) in whatever part of the world God sees most fit, according to the mission coordinator’s alleged divine revelation. Traditionally and doctrinally, male members are permitted and socially obligated to go on missions at 19 years old, while female members can go at 21. As of October 2012, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that women could serve as young as 19 — quickly and spitefully adding that men are now allowed to serve at 18, just in case anyone was uncomfortable by the idea of real gender equality. The rule that women serve for 18 months and men for two years still stands.

Putting the charade of this announcement aside, is this really something that we should be celebrating? After all, serving a mission isn’t exactly a means of gaining any kind of power and authority within the church. In fact, the experience is nothing more than a form of militant servitude. My sister and I have always joked about our sneaking suspicion that missionary training involves getting a lobotomy, but I digress.

Let’s review the rules according to the Missionary Handbook: All missionaries are assigned companions of the same gender that they must never be further than shouting distance from, except during certain hygiene-related activities. Missionaries can only write — or email, now — their parents once a week and can call only twice a year: Christmas and Mother’s Day. Missionaries are discouraged from maintaining romantic relationships from back home. If they must continue the relationship, their limited correspondence can’t contain any traces of intimacy.

Every day they have a set schedule to wake up at 6:30 a.m., eat breakfast, exercise for 30 minutes, spend two hours studying scriptures and religious texts and spend the day proselytizing with an hour break for lunch and an hour break for dinner. Prayer and bed time is at 10:30 p.m. sharp. Missionaries are not allowed to watch television, listen to the radio, watch movies or use the Internet, barring a few church-related exceptions. They can only listen to religious music and only read materials authorized by the church. They are required to dress a certain way — suits and ties for men and full-length coverage for women. The church even offers a helpful gallery to give women a model for applying “natural and conservative” makeup.

Allowing women to participate in this Bible boot camp a few years earlier is not what I would call social progress. Especially not when women are still forbidden from holding the priesthood — power and authority to perform ordinances and serve in high positions — the same way black members were forbidden from serving in these same positions before the civil rights movement. As much as Mormons like to vocally deny the church’s abandonment of polygamy, they still teach that this degrading, sexist practice will resume in the afterlife. It’s the same desperate attempt at appealing to the mainstream while maintaining a fundamentally oppressive belief system, of which members only get a full taste when they’re too invested to make an easy exit.

So, no, I am not impressed with the supposed “promotion” of women in the Mormon Church, because I’ve been in the culture long enough to know what it really is: a ploy to make the church more palatable nationally.

Write to Natalie at natalie.russell8@gmail.com.