Thursday, April 16, 2009

What I don't understand

I do as much feminist interpretation of scripture as the next person, but so much of the creation and fall, I don't understand.

"thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."

I don't understand why I was put into this situation.

Where is justice.

3 comments:

Merinmel Caesg said...

Shelley-

Thanks for coming to the Women & Mormonism chat a few weeks ago. I really liked your comments, and am curios as to some of those books that Christ Foster lent you. Also, Austin asked me about the papers I had in hand, but I noticed you had some papers too. What were those?

I've added you to the sidebar of my blog, let me know if you'd rather not be listed there.

-Erin

Marco Brown said...

Hi Shelley,

It's Demaree. I just read your post, and I can give you some advice :). Hopefully you've heard this from your parents already.

The temple. That's the answer. It's amazing what I've learned about my role as a woman in the church at the Temple. Then endowment and other ordinances really clear the confusion if you pay close attention :). You're gonna love all the answers you'll get there :). Hope this helps!

Caitlin Carroll said...

Honestly, the temple is great but it didn't help my understanding with this at all because there is still a gender hierarchy that drove me crazy that I couldn't go for a few months until I calmed down about the whole thing and had some heart to hearts with my husband and a few other feminist female friends who had the same issues. Now I feel a little better about it but for awhile it was rough. I think it's still a cultural tradition and I think that Joseph Smith was trying to put into place something he didn't completely understand and it was difficult for him to put it in such a context that the people would understand and tolerate it. Just the fact that it's changed dramatically in the past few decades is a testament to our changing cultural beliefs on gender roles and how Heavenly Father is accomodating that by giving us further knowledge.

I really like Elder and Sister Hafen's talk on this that pretty much says this is a mistranslation. Where it says "rule over thee" it really means "rule with thee".

The exact quote: "Genesis 3:16 states that Adam is to “rule over” Eve, but this doesn’t make Adam a dictator. A ruler can be a measuring tool that sets standards. Then Adam would live so that others may measure the rightness of their conduct by watching his. Being a ruler is not so much a privilege of power as an obligation to practice what a man preaches. Also, over in “rule over” uses the Hebrew bet, which means ruling with, not ruling over."

Read the talk: http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=8365f3782aef3110VgnVCM100000176f620a____&hideNav=1

Hope that helps.