If gender is eternal, as the church teaches, it is impossible for girls to become like their Heavenly Father. This props up the narrative that women’s only important/valued role is motherhood, and our girls deserve better than that. Motherhood (and parenthood) is important, but it’s incredibly concerning that the only area where men and women are even close to equally represented is when it comes to motherhood. The disparity here is pretty negligible, and in our culture we tend to emphasize motherhood at the expense of fatherhood. Mother was mentioned in 9 songs father/daddy was mentioned in 7. To see how mothers and fathers were represented in the Songbook, I only counted songs that mentioned mother OR father (excluding “Heavenly Father” references) songs that mentioned both were not counted.
Forty four songs contain male specific words ten songs contain female specific words. In addition to the names of men and women mentioned in song, I also looked for gendered language (indicated by pronouns, words that refer to men/women (with the exception of father/mother), or nouns paired with masculine/feminine pronouns) in the lyrics.
Including duplicates, men are named 55 times women are named nine times. Several of the people are in named in more than one song. Songs in the Children’s Songbook mention 42 men and only three women by name. If we want our daughters to see that there’s a place for them in the church and, more importantly, to know that God loves and values them, we need the language we use, the songs we sing, the stories we tell, and the lessons we teach to reflect that and include them. named women there are, as well as made note of other gendered language and how the song lyrics gender God. I’ve gone through the entire current Children’s Songbook and tallied up how many named men vs. I am excited for the changes they’ve promised (particularly hymns from other cultures and languages–yay!), and I’m desperately hoping for more female representation in the pronouns, names, and words of our new songbooks. The church recently announced that they are going to be compiling new music for the Hymnbook and Children’s Songbook, and they’ve asked for input in an unprecedented way. female names, stories, and quotes doesn’t seem quite as trivial.
#Childrens songbook lds manual#
As an LDS feminist, I agree with her that this would, indeed, be silly.īut what if it’s not just that one manual? What if every manual has 8% more men’s stories than women’s stories? Or 8% more men quoted than women? Or 8% more named men than named women? What if the disparity never goes the other way, and it’s always women who are less represented than men?Īnd what if it’s not 8% at all, but more like 80% across the board? Suddenly, fighting for an approximately equal representation of male vs. My friend imagined LDS feminists getting up in arms about 134 men versus 115 women mentioned in stories in one manual and demanding exactly equal representation. girl mentioned in a story or shown in a picture seems extremely trivial. My friend has a point: if all things are more or less equal, going through and counting every boy vs. “I mean, how nit-picky can you get? It just seems so petty to go through and count like that.”
#Childrens songbook lds manuals#
“They want equal mentions of men and women in stories and equal numbers of men and women in pictures in manuals and promotional materials,” she said incredulously. I remember discussing some items she’d read on an “LDS feminist agenda” several years ago, and she got a bit scoffy at a couple things on the wishlist. A friend of mine has feminist leanings, but when it comes to gender issues in the church, she can have a bit of a blind spot.
0 kommentar(er)
