It is their privilege to make and mend, and wash, and cook for the Saints; and lodge strangers; and wash the Saints’ feet; and this is surely a most acceptable treat to the servants of God when they are weary, and their feet are sore with long travels: and we rejoice that the sisters esteem it a privilege thus to minister to our necessities; and it is their privilege, in all such things, to labour with us in the gospel, like the holy women in the days of Paul;

This is essentially a summary of Chapter 1.

I think the part that Cynthia L quoted in comment 17 is also well-supported by several parts of DIMK. A major theme I took from the book is that women are responsible for other women and children (under the direction of priesthood leaders) but never for men.

I think that is why I am struggling so much with the book. I was expecting something that would expand my understanding of women and our roles, and instead I feel like the teachings of Paul were pretty much confirmed and reinforced.

Perhaps I should have simply quoted Santayana and left it at that, since his gem is too precious to benefit from my poor attempts at embellishment:

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.

And with that, I had best take your advice to wait a little longer before commenting again. My shuttle is waiting.

The real issue here, though, is distinguishing between legitimate gender roles in the secular world of 1840, and in the LDS religious world of 1840. Even if — *if* — you could successfully argue that male physical strength made necessary and justified social gender roles (a case that would be especially difficult for you to make since you mention, for example, laundry — a feat of female strength that rather works against your justified division of labor along lines of sheer animal strength), you could not make a case that such presumed lack of physical strength disqualifies a woman from speaking in church and restricts her participation to washing and mending the clothing of the elders. You simply can’t make that case, because it is not true, not practiced today, not supported by latter-day revelation, and, to judge from Ben’s comment above, was not even a position maintained by PPP for very long.

Although the milieu of 1840 was quite different from 2011 in many ways, it is not different enough to preclude study and understanding. It is not different enough to preclude judgment. And it doesn’t take a “radical feminist explanation” or a false implication that I view the Church as an “all-oppressive patriarchy,” to reach that understanding and judgment.

This is rather a stronger comment than I usually inflict on a new commenter. Please stick around. We usually have a much friendlier atmosphere on Keepa.

It’s as true for social customs. I do not know all the reasons why they had the gender roles they did, though relative strength is a good examle of something that obviously played its part. I see convincing evidence that men and women loved each other as much back then as they do today, so I’m not buying the radical feminist explanation of the all-oppressive patriarchy. The gender roles likely served important purposes, even if I don’t entirely know what they were. Let me try a quote from G.K. Chesterton:

“In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.”

I agree that it’s hard to see why (for example) relative strength should have any bearing on who gets to emulate Christ by washing people’s feet. However, that may simply show my ignorance. And in an age when singing about raping and murdering women is deemed a Constitutionally protected form of free expression, while paying for an ad critical of an incumbent politician within 30 days of an election is not, I suggest a bit of humility may be in order when comparing our social institutions to theirs.

I love reading text from the past — I love the use of the language and the words and the phrasings. Many things that were written in the past cannot be said today, and maybe should not have been said then, but they are what they are and truth can still be found through charitable readings of the texts of imperfect men (and women). In my reading, I particularly noted Elder Pratt’s almost-passing admonitions to men in the second and fourth paragraphs — he was trying to teach them, too.

Yes, women don’t wash men’s feet anymore — but they once did in the old days, when their men came home after long walks, much as a man today might rub his wife’s feet as an expression of love after she has been standing all day. I did it for my wife just the other day after a long day of being a tourist.

There is no chatisement in my no. 7 — just an invitation to charitable reading of an old text.

And can you even imagine the possibility of any woman speaking in any LDS meeting in 1840 and instructing the men present how to treat their wives and daughters? You sat up and took note because it was startling in its novelty, but not because you thought, or suspected anyone else would think, “Hey, you woman! You don’t have the right to instruct men that way! Sit down!” That suggests that there isn’t and hasn’t been any structural barrier to a woman speaking like that for some unknown length of time, but that we aren’t aware of women having previously taken the opportunity.

Except for everybody’s favorite exception, the Primary President being over a male primary teacher, this always holds in the church: ” it is not the privilege of the sisters …to control the Elders and Officers in any manner.”

Women may be on Ward Council, but even in the new and improved version of Ward Council, I don’t think that is seen by most as meaning that women are over the men in the ward. They remain strictly over their domains (YW, RS, Primary).

I’m not sure that even Gospel Doctrine teacher goes against the paragraph. It mentions women speaking in church (even “prophesying”), but only proscribes a particular kind of “instruction,” namely, women are “not for the instruction of the Elders in their duties.” I read that as referring to being in leadership over men, rather than just teaching a class.