Sit Down, Daniel C. Peterson

Where to even begin with this? It's one thing to have men in the Church invalidate your concerns. It's quite another to have those men use you as a puppet as they do so.





I have served faithfully in the temple for the entire duration of my membership. The form that service has taken in my life for almost three years now is as a female ordinance worker in my local temple. Daniel Peterson does not speak for me and my experience. He is not a female ordinance worker. He has never encountered the blatant sexism, disrespect, and inequality that exists in that service. He will never understand what it means to metabolize those mortal frailties together with the supernal goodness of God.

There is so much more to the criticism he is dismissing than holding towels. And it isn't coming from women outside of those temple spaces. It also comes from within, as it has done in my case. His post represents the worst in LDS men and their inability to understand sexism in the Church: their tendency to speak over women and their own experiences as he does so.

I don't want yet another reason to sit in a chair on my temple shift. To me, this does not represent real change.

I want men to listen to me/believe me when I speak.

I want a real answer about why the exception to women officiating over initiatories and endowments without ordination doesn't also apply to performing baptisms and sealings.

I want to know why my matron and her assistants honestly don't believe they have real priesthood authority. I want to know why they feel like they have to give deference to the presidency and the sealers. I want to know who told them this.

I want to know why even though the female general presidents just issued a letter to stake leadership about not restricting menstruating Young Women from participating in the baptistry, local leaders and parents are not being trained to stop doing this.

I want to know why Heavenly Mother isn't in the temple films. She participated in the creation of the Earth and is the literal mother to the human race. But she's completely absent from those representations in our worship. It makes no sense.

As a female temple worker, I already spend a good portion of my day sitting in chairs and standing in hallways. I already struggle to find value in that work, especially now that we literally don't have enough brothers to fill the schedule.

There are so many other ways we could (and should) be improving temple service and worship for women in the church. Giving them another reason to sit in a chair and expecting them to be happy about it is not even close to the most important item we need to address.