There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
There have been so many posts about soaking and BYU lately that I thought you might have questions. Burner account to not dox myself
I was friends with a couple of folks from a Mormon family and so I would love your insight as a leftist.
Did you do a mission? If so, where, and how bad was it?
Did you believe your patriarchal blessing when you got it?
How old were you when you left the church and what was the main motivation?
And how much is the bigotry sugarcoated behind closed doors? I've heard Mormons being sexist, racist, homophobic, etc using dog whistles and euphemisms, but I wonder how much the mask slips when there aren't outsiders around.
Thanks for doing this ama!
Good questions! I'll answer them in order.
No. I was terrified of being sent away on a mission, it was one of the main drivers that lead to my leaving the church. I know several men (women generally don't do missions) who considered or attempted suicide during their mission because they couldn't stand it any more. I'm grateful that I stood up for myself on this one, the social pressure to do a mission is unreal.
I never got mine because the blessings usually happen around the time before you leave on a mission, which is when I was making my exit. I spoke to a lot of people about theirs though, and even as a teenager it smelled like bullshit to me. It's kind of like astrology for Mormons, some believe it word for word while others think the blessing is open to interpretation.
I was 17 when I told my family I wasn't going on a mission, then 21 when I "officially" left the church. My main motivation was researching the contradictions between what Mormons taught me at church and what teachers taught me at school. Mormons said Native Americans were descended from Jewish people, school said Native Americans crossed the Bering Straight 10,000+ years ago from Asia. One of them had to be wrong, ya know?
As an organization, the Mormon church is about as systemically bigoted as it gets. They helped genocide the indigenous people of the US West, they colonized Mexico, they believe non-whites have dark skin because of a curse, they excluded black members from full membership until the 1970s, they still don't allow gay people to be full members, and they have a $100 billion (!) investment portfolio, so they're all in on US capitalism. Individually, I think this means you get that typical white American attitude towards race/gender/sexuality - if you point out the way they benefit from systemic white supremacy, they get real mad. There's definitely a mask that comes off when Mormons aren't around non-members though.
The bigotry stuff is very interesting. We don't really get Mormons in the UK, the only one I know of is one that met and I guess tried to convert my gf at her uni. Weirdly he then added me on FB but not her (I never met the guy). Is that a sexism thing?
Is there much bigotry towards mixed people or non-Anglo/American whites? My gf is half Polish and I'm half Asian, I'm interested to know what opinions that guy might've had on it.
Hmm, maybe he tried to reach out to you because he struck out with your gf? They are tenacious proselytizers.
As for non white people, Mormonism is systemically racist. They still have books that discourage their members from marrying outside their race. On an individual level it's sort of a mixed bag. Some white Mormons are your bog standard chuds, while others are proud to accept everyone, even if that can border on tokenism.
This is all surreal. I can't imagine going to a standard Christian Sunday school and here you were taught factually wrong things with survivors of those genocide still around to respond and refute those claims.
Thanks for doing this ama and your answers!
I know you didn't ask me but:
I did a mission, not gonna fully dox myself but it was in a border state between the US and Mexico, US side. I learned Spanish as part of that. Overall it sucked very thoroughly, no personal time, you aren't allowed to use your first name so you start to lose your previous identity, they take your passport if you're not from the US (just like other human traffickers), lots of gaslighting (the reason you aren't baptizing converts and generally feel like shit isn't because you've been separated from everyone you know know and work 12+ hours a day, it's because the Spirit of god cant be with you due to the fact that you don't get up exactly on time, you aren't focused enough on scripture study, you let your companion take too long in the shower, etc, and yes those are all real). So even though noone should ever go on a mission, at the same time I do in some ways still value parts of it, I mean I wouldn't speak spanish without it. Idk it's still a weird space in my head.
Yeah, I got it and believed it. Mine was pretty easy to believe, it was pretty boring stuff, "You will get married" "you will have a career". Just added in a lot of stuff about how god felt about me, how there was this incredible plan for my life, but yeah not a lot of hard details, as one might guess. I did know a girl in college who got one that told her she would mature into a "striking beauty" and that all men would desire her, and it gave her incredible body image issues because she was overweight. If you patriarchal blessing doesn't come true, we're taught, it's because we chose the wrong path, so for her weight loss and appealing to the male gaze was a commentary on like the purity of her soul.
Late 20s, it was a result of political radicalization. I started caring about a variety of issues, including american foreign policy, and was pretty let down that the Mormon church was radio silent on all that, and instead wanted to die on the "no gay" hill. A lot of reasons, but I think that was the core of it, I began to feel that an organization actually led by an all knowing, all loving god would give his church different priorities/insist on them not being completely shitty.
Mormon's are very racist, sexist, etc, but in like a clueless grandpa kind of way, for the most part. The actual members, I mean, the top brass are just straight up racist. So like a mormon guy gets all his opinions from church leaders, so like if they tell him "gays shouldn't be married" then like yeah of course they shouldn't. You could hate gays, but chances are you really don't care, you just know that god speaks through church leaders and that's it. End of story. Not to excuse it, but it's a very effective organization when it comes to thought terminating epithets, to steal from citations needed. But yes just to be clear they are still all of those things, but not in the same way like a maga chud would be.
Thanks for your answers. It's all so fascinating from an outside perspective. The other day someone mentioned how America Mormonism is and it feels truer the more I think about it.
That detail about the blessings is really disturbing. I've only known Mormon guys and I can only imagine how horrible the ones directed at girls could be.
Yeah, after I heard about hers I always wondered about what they were like (for women). Even though I spent so much time in the mormon church, that's one thing I feel I don't have much of a clue about, since the blessings are considered sacred and supposed to be secret (I know most couples let their spouse read theirs). You're allowed to share details "if moved upon by the spirit," so occasionally you'd hear someone in a church meeting vaguely allude to theirs, or hear through the grapevine what someone said second hand. The only other "girl" blessing I heard about was one that actually did give some pretty wild specifics, like that she was going to be a musical talent who traveled the world with her husband, and her husband's position would be significant enough that she would play for dignitaries and so forth. She did end up learning an instrument at a professional level, in spite of teachers telling her she had plateaued talent wise before that. Not sure if she ever married a diplomat or whatever that would be, but yeah I mean who knows what that does to someone mentally if a blessing with that level of promise doesn't "come true" and the only explanation is "huh i guess you goofed up at some point, only god can say teehee."
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