Equality

A father and son go camping together. In a tragic event the father is killed by a bear while the boy is only severely injured. The boy is rushed to the hospital and brought before the head surgeon. After identifying the patient the doctor says “I’m can’t operate on him. He’s my son.”

How is this possible? The boy’s father was killed by a bear. I imagine what you’re thinking - Easy, the boy has two fathers in a happy homosexual marriage because there is nothing wrong with gay love. Actually, this was a riddle intended as a poke to gender equality because the doctor was his mom. Turns out certain genitals are not required to be a doctor.

The truth is that the only difference between male and female homo sapiens is external or internal reproductive organs. I was actually surprised to find out that an embryo will develop exactly the same until after a whole NINE weeks will the fetus begin to grow its genitals as an innie or an outtie. Because of these facts I find it rather odd that religions preach some supposed spiritual destiny of inequality. Thankfully Mormonism isn’t as bad as other religions which dictate how their women dress. However, my former religion is saturated with gender specific roles and responsibilities, or as a rational person might say, gender inequality. I’m not going to discuss all the infractions of sexism the Mormon church perpetuates for the sake of time, but there are a few points I would like to illustrate.

First of all, where does the doctrine come from? If a supposed god is going to assign different responsibilities to people with certain genitals, that god needs to be explicitly clear if she intends to hold us accountable for following the rules. Different religions, prophets, scriptures, and organizations each claim different and contradicting teachings. Should we force women to dress in burqas or just not ordain them with priesthood authority? There is no evident way of verifying these claims so we can’t be held accountable for breaking the rules. Surely, you wouldn’t just take someone's word for it on blind faith. What if the teachings are wrong? How can we know with reasonable certainty?

Secondly, I don’t mean to promote unequal encouragement. When I was studying Mechanical Engineering I was bothered by the University’s intense effort to encourage more women to be engineers. What if they just don’t want to? If by chance 99% of engineers are men and 99% of nurses were women what does it really matter? Again, neither of these professions require certain genitals to be successful. The Universities should promote humans to study whatever they want. However, if a person who happens to have a vagina wants to study engineering, great! By all means go for it. But, if that same person wants to pass the sacrament in their church, well that’s too goddamn bad because girls are not allowed - said god. If a women wants to XYZ in the church and it doesn’t require her genitals to perform XYZ, then let her do it. If she doesn’t want to XYZ, that’s okay too.

Lastly, I want to mention what I think is the most sexist practice in Mormonism. At the pinnacle of Mormon righteousness members will go to the super castle temples and make covenants with a god. Here the women promise to follow their husband’s council while the men promise to follow this god’s commands. In a healthy marriage (man-woman, man-man, or woman-woman) both partners are EQUAL!!! There’s no CEO boss and his subordinate, but rather two equal 50/50 partners that agree on decisions together. *Fortunately, this practice has finally been revised after 177 years.

There is NO reason for gender inequality short of the actual God manifesting herself in all her glory and declaring the laws by authority. Humans with certain genitals are not better OR worse then others but equal.