Is sisterhood dead in the church?
I keep looking and seeing increasingly the women
helping each other less. I see them, not accepting
each other and uplifting each other.
The last 10 years things seem to have changed. I do not
know anyone who has a church where they help each like they once
did.

 

I thought it was like middle school, all the cliquishness and back stabbing.

I agree about the cliques. That’s what I remember.

When I think about how poorly I was treated by the married sisters, makes me want to show up one day and start hitting on their husbands. Lol.

Now, now. Save that for the next annual short story contest!

Authoritarian control seems to be bad for women even though they put up with it. Abuse doesn’t make people happy. Who knew? Pissed off Mormon women can’t be good on the home front. As a spouse, the church is a super high maintenance b*tch.

Sometime around the 80s the church pulled almost all social functions from the local wards.

The interactions and reliances began to fade then.

Add the introduction of "ministering" and interactions fade more.

Then top it off with no time to socialize at church, social media and no real connections with neighbors or across the generation gaps and you have a church where few people really know or care about anyone else.

GAs should WAKE UP & SMELL THE POSTUM!


Socialization is a huge part of people's lives!!!

another thing that wasn't mentioned above was the (church-wide?) ban on study groups; Why did people go to them?:ur

Weren't they getting enough religion at church meetings?

Maybe, just Maybe people wanted less church & more 'pure' religion, study of core essentials / values of Christ-Like living.

WAKE UP CHURCHCO! people aren't buying what you're peddling!!!!

The study groups were problematic in a few regards. First, the "good" ones tended to be exclusive clubs for the elite, creating yet another social tier in the wards. Second, those "good" ones tended to explore topics that the church didn't like, things like early church history. Third, the "bad" ones were fundamentalist or extreme. Among these were groups that adhered to Julie Rowe or Denver Snuffer.

The church wants to suppress all that stuff. There must be no teachings, no order, beyond the church itself.

Sorry, LW, but that's a JOKE!

as if everything else in Mormondumb isn't already stratified almost segregated!!!


Why would Wendy invite people from the trenches to her study group?

Where or where would the unwashed masses go?

--No talking in the foyer or in the hallways
--No talking in the chapel
--Do not sit with your friends; sit with your family
--Class discussions are discouraged
--Do not ask questions
--Listen and be told.
--Lessons should strictly follow the manual, no outside info
--Speakers are given topics, usually an old conference talk
--Missionaries are given a topc, and are discouraged from giving too many details about their mission.
--No missionary open houses
--No travelogs in testimony meeting (those were the best!)
--No RS luncheons
--No RS monthly birthday parties, no cultural lessons
--The operation of the RS has been taken over completely by the Priesthood.
--No VT's. (They just gave the VT message from the Ensign, anyway. I don't remember talking about religion, or anything spiritual or anything personal with VT's, ever)

When I moved to Utah, the women in our ward had a neighborhood book club, and quite a few non-Mormon neighbors attended, also. We read all kinds of interesting best-sellers, some of which were controversial, but always g-rated. The new stake president made a directive, through his wife, who was in our book club, that the club should read only Mormon-written, church-approved, Deseret-published books. The Mormons out-voted everyone, to uphold the SP's decision. The non-Mormons quit the club, and a few of us quit along with them, and we started a club of our own, sponsored by a local bookstore, and it is on-going. The Mormon book club lasted about two more years, and they read all 9 volumes of "The Work and The Glory" a few GA's books, and all the Twilight books, then dwindled down into nothing.

The attitude of most of the Mormon women was to compete with each other, rather than to help or support each other. Like most narcissists, they liked to put down others, in order to build up themselves. Hence, all the gossip and back-biting. They viewed unmarried women as competitors for their husband. (Ick-no!) I did have several divorced friends in the ward, who were my real friends. They got remarried and/or moved away, so we see each other less often than we'd like.

As far as a "support system", I gave far more than I ever got in return, but the few times I really needed help, the Mormons assigned to me really came through for me--they really did, but they were men. My TV was a doctor and the Scout leader was a carpenter. I took dinners to them when they were sick--I took dinners to a lot of people, and helped with funerals, and such. There was some merit in that community, and it's sad to think that the Mormons are leaving that behind, in their quest to hoard money.

LOL--Our ward was a lot like jr. high, with cliques and pecking-orders. The "sisters" were/are jealous of each other. I know this, becasue they have admitted this to me, many times. IMO, Jealousy is a form of hatred.

Their daughters are the same. Some of the Mormon girls in the dorms at BYU were so awful, that we had to avoid them completely. When the gossip and slander would start, I would leave the room. In my daughter's YW class, the girls would bully each other, until they cried.

I don't know if the Mormon ladies still take turns giving group bridal showers and baby showers. I wonder if they still have MLM parties, selliing supplements, elixirs, lingerie to wear over their garments, jewelry, cosmetics, Tupperware, cookware, etc. I don't know, because I'm being shunned these past 11 years I've been free.

Wow, after thinking about the lives of Mormon women, I really don't miss any of it.

precession of the religious equinoxes

Sister Hood. Bless her little heart. May she rest in peace.

She was a hood, pure and simple, and deserves whatever she gets.

Ah, good observation. Explains why she always wore a hoodie.

The word ‘hoodle’ should exist in the English language. And whatever it is decided to mean, it should NOT rhyme with noodle.

Thank you.

at the time of the ban. One of the things they told us is that study groups were going too far including performing the true order of prayer at their meetings.

I agree with someone else above who said, WHY? Didn't they get enough church study during the week as it was? Last thing I wanted was ANOTHER church thing to go to.

(at least to me) Same 'thinking' as they :had to: eliminate the Ogden Tabernacle Choir, (St. George & others?); SL people need exclusive rights to their sacred identity, they're afraid of competition.

I loved my visiting teacher that I had the last couple years I was a member living in Provo. Although we rarely got to visit outside of our VT appointment, other than passing niceties at church, I truly felt that I had a connection with her and that she was interested in me as a person. It felt like real sisterhood.

When she found out I resigned my membership, she came over and knocked on my door and said, "I would miss our monthly visits so much so I wondered if we could compromise. Can I take you to lunch once a month so we can catch up and make sure we stay in touch if I promise not to talk about the church or give you any kind of lecture or anything? We did that for about half a year until I moved. Then it wasn't as easy to do it monthly, but she'd call me up occasionally and say "let's set a lunch date." And I knew she was truly there for me if I'd need her. I knew she cared about me and my son. And I've always remembered her and try to remind myself when I get so busy that I need to reach out to my "sisters."

THAT is what sisterhood is. And in all my years in TSCC it was the only time I truly experienced it. People who had supposedly been my very close friends for years dumped me like a hot potato when I resigned. They had no clue how to be an actual friend.

Most of my friendships with mormon women were made at work. I had a VT after I went inactive who I knew pretty good, but we got closer after she became my VT. She was assigned a woman I didn't know, who reminded me more of a polygamist because of how she dressed and wore her hair. Eventually, they wanted to change my VTs and I told them that unless I could have as least the first one I'm talking about, then I would no longer be having VT. So this lady was my VT until her death. We also went to lunch. We had a plan to go to lunch the day she collapsed and eventually died later that week at age 59.

The other woman is still my very good friend. If I run into her, we can't stop talking. She is extremely mormon, but isn't treated well by other mormon women or her husband and some of her kids. They treat her as though she is stupid.

I have another friend from the ward, who has moved away now to live by her daughter as she is in her late 80s and she has a daughter with cerebral palsy who she can no longer care for. She was one of my best friends. She was also my VT at one time and I was her's. Her oldest daughter (who is now caring for her) was also married to someone gay who died of AIDS.

I can say I have made some friends in this ward, but there were some real issues with what I'd call sisterhood. The sisterhood I have experienced in mormonism (and only in this ward, not in any other ward I lived in) was in the shadows. The bitches usually run the ward and decide who is the in crowd and who isn't.

What I was shocked about was that after my husband left and I was a single mother, I had many women stop by to tell me about their own issues with their marriages and with their husbands. The neighbor, whose husband was bishop, came to talk to me about "Would it be a problem if she left her husband while he was bishop?"

OMG, desertrat, my bishop's wife used to do that to me! I wish I had had the moxie that your mother had! I've had Mormon women pull up in their car, when I was gardening in our front yard, and they would start talking about church, and I would have to say, "I need to finish this gardening--I'm on my lunch hour, from work." I was a single working schlep, and my time was not important, because I wasn't married to anyone important.

Cl2, I had the the same thing happen to me! When I got divorced, and was still a member, women would come to me all the time with their marital problems! The bishop's counselor's wife was considering leaving her husband because he had committen serious fraud in his business. Another woman had inherited some money, and she didn't want her husband to have any share in it. Another TBM woman's husband was a woman-hating jerk. The Mormon across the street left his wife for a woman 20 years older. By best friend was married to a charming Mormon doctor,in the stake presidency, whom everybody loved, but his pleasing "bedside manner" was only for others to enjoy (including his long-time nurse), and at home he was cruel to my friend and their children. Finally, I had to start telling some of them, "I'm divorced! I'm the last person to give out marital advice!"

I was alone, and scared to death, having only my self to rely on to raise and finance the kids, and keep a roof over their head. I had my career to concentrate on. My own children needed help in recovering from their father's abuse and abandonment, you know?

All that, plus people's dating problems in the Mormon Single Adults group--I felt like I had moved from laid-back California, into a "den of iniquity." It's probably a blessing that I'm being shunned by these Mormons.

I never experienced a "sisterhood" that was recipirocal. Like some of you, I gave without receiving anything back. I just got demands and judgments and time-wasting and money-grabbing.

I don't think that it ever existed!
Before my mother joined in 1947 I always believed that she was looked down upon by the other women.
It seemed like all of them were trying to show who wa most poweeful. One time the bishop's wife senr her son in from the car to tell my mother that she wanted to speak to my mom at the car.
My mother sent back a message that she wasn't available to be summoned.

It seems all nice/dandy to have warm human interactions like Sisterhood in the Church. But thanks to the beloved Correlation program the focus is on Obedience with the late Boyd K. Packer being about the closest thing to warm that my correlated brain could ever consider thinking about. With this in mind its time for me to go spread the beloved cold facts to my neighbors on y assignment of getting them assimilated into being obedient sheep too.