If we’re going to insist on having conversation after conversation about gender, priesthood, and Church administration, can’t we at least make the discussion a bit more fun?
To that end, I offer you the Mormon Patriarchy BINGO Card:
NOT to be played for money (click image for full size).
Now, to facilitate the actual playing of the game, I’ll now provide you a discussion prompt. Here it is:
The key difference between men and women in the Mormon universe is that men can work outside the home without diminishing their capacity or performance as parents, women can’t.
Game on.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
Isn’t it “men are there to play with their children, women are there to parent”?
Oooo, nice, NewlyHousewife.
The problem with this is that there will be people that read this and miss the irony. You should therfore delete this post as an attractive nuisance. In other words, it’s a hazard to stupid people. If you keep it up, remember that you may be held accountable for the consequnces. You have been warned.
Here’s the question: is this a guide for winning arguments, or losing them? :)
It’s a guide for winning on the backs of other people’s arguments, Cynthia. Even when women in the Church lose, I still win!
My mission president’s line didn’t make it onto the card: “It’s just a bunch of boring administrative tasks, anyways.”
Also, “if men and women serve TOGETHER in like presidencies and stuff, there’ll be a PLAGUE of infidelity and adultery in the Church” fell just below the cut.
Well, the cousin to that argument is there, Mark: “Why would anyone want the priesthood? It’s so much work!”
Funny, because I would think that according to those absolutely innate, God-given, unchangeable gender traits I’ve been told so much about, it would be the other way around. Women are so much more naturally nurturing and compassionate, so much better at multi-tasking, that they should be able to have full-time jobs and raise their children perfectly! Men, on the other hand, need the priesthood to be good people, so surely they’d need to parent full-time in order to manage it well. They’re so much less inclined to “mothering” than women are, after all—how can they be expected to be good fathers when they only see their children for a couple hours a day?
Brilliant!
Perfection! I’d add in the “but women do ordinances in the temple” argument.
I was almost born at Bingo, so I am pretty sure I already won….or maybe it was my mother who won. Her 6th child was so excellently awesome, that she decided to stop right after I was born.
By the by, this is really fun. I might print this out and play it sometime soon.
In the restored Church of Jesus Christ, the Holy Priesthood is conferred, as an individual bestowal, upon men only, and this in accordance with Divine requirement. It is not given to woman to exercise the authority of the Priesthood independently; nevertheless, in the sacred endowments associated with the ordinances pertaining to the House of the Lord, woman shares with man the blessings of the Priesthood. When the frailities and imperfections of mortality are left behind, in the glorified state of the blessed hereafter, husband and wife will administer in their respective stations, seeing and understanding alike, and co-operating to the full in the government of their family kingdom. Then shall woman be recompensed in rich measure for all the injustice that womanhood has endured in mortality. Then shall woman reign by Divine right, a queen in the resplendent realm of her glorified state, even as exalted man shall stand, priest and king unto the Most High God. Mortal eye cannot see nor mind comprehend the beauty, glory, and majesty of a righteous woman made perfect in the celestial kingdom of God (James E. Talmage, “The Eternity of Sex,” Young Woman’s Journal 25 [October 1914]: 602-3). [p.138]
Boooooo
How do we rank the points according to the authority of the person offering the argument? This game is way too egalitarian.
But, then we have this: “At the end of the two previous meetings of the Relief Society, held 14 and 19 April 1842, ladies who were ill were administered to by the Relief Society presidency. During the meeting of 19 April, for example, “Mrs. Durfee bore testimony to the great blessing she received when administered to after the close of the last meeting, by Emma Smith and Counselors Cleveland and Whitney. She said she never realized more benefit through any administration, [and] that she was healed and thought the sisters had more faith than the brethren” (Relief Society Minutes, 19 April 1842, Church Archives). This caused some members of the society to question the propriety of women anointing with oil and laying on hands, thinking this was only a priesthood function. At this meeting, however, the Prophet explained that this was entirely appropriate. He sympathized with those who did not understand his larger vision. He said “that the time had not been before, that these things could be in their proper order—that the Church is not now organized in its proper order, and cannot be until the Temple is completed.” In the Temple women would with oil and by the laying on of the hands confer on their sisters blessings of greater eternal significance than the beautiful but single effect of healing an illness.” So, how can these two principles relating to women and the PH fit into the Bingo card?
Love it, Brad!
(If I took these priesthood debates seriously, I would think there was rampant womb envy among men. It seems Freud got it exactly backwards—no doubt a case of projection.)
In all my time in the Church, I have never heard anyone defend the gendered status quo with “FREE SPACE”. Just sayin’…
In order to be a real BINGO game, we need multiple cards. Just saying.
You left out the real reason: “What Trapper John said”
“In order to be a real BINGO game, we need multiple cards.”
In a real BINGO game, everyone is in the same room..
“(If I took these priesthood debates seriously, I would think there was rampant womb envy among men. It seems Freud got it exactly backwards—no doubt a case of projection.)”
I don’t want a womb – too much responsibility ;)
Wombs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, let me tell you.
What are big muscles for, anyway, if not the priesthood. See Arnold Friberg.
oooo, Friberg. sigh.
Is this global or just in the U.S.? Of course, in Third World countries, women generally participate in the market, often selling their baked or steamed goods, or fruit from their trees. Should this practice be halted immediately and all women throughout the world be instructed in canning (at home) and the playing of Candyland (which we Americans understand is a key to good mothering).
SES, here is a thing you might want to read.
Hilarious.
Brilliant, Brad!
I’ve never been more thankful for the “Free Space”. I’m the parent who plays the most Candyland, but I preside while doing it, so it’s all good.
So, wait, according to Talmage all I gotta do is…die?
#32
Yep, if you are a woman, all you need to do is die. If you are gay, all you need to do is die. If you are transgender, all you need to do is die. See how easy inequality is? Just tell the people questioning the inequality that A) inequality actually isn’t and B) That things are going to be amazingly awesome after they die.
And by awesome what is really meant is that everyone will happliy go along with the idea that inequality actually isn’t. OR the problem these folks have in insisting that inequality is actually inequality will be fixed; their gender, their sexual orientation, etc will all be made “right.”
I think the one group that we don’t know about is intellectuals. When intellectuals die will they be fixed? Or will they just be in outer darkness? Probably outer darkness, at least for the sarcastic ones. The humble ones will be fixed. Oh, wait, there are no humble intellectuals.
Ah well, awesome bingo card, we should enjoy it while we can.
#33, I would add that if one falls under the transgendered umbrella they would first be excommunicated, and then can die. This has been my experience with the *prevailing “wisdom”* within The Church–and not just limited to the Brethren.