Being a better Christian means listening to women
Latter-day Saint women appear to be more in touch with marginalization based on race, LGBTQ+, and gender. Us Latter-day Saint men should follow suit.
When I started writing this Substack, I also started an Instagram account where I could post my essays. Instagram gives you some analytics; data on engagement, most popular posts, etc. What caught my eye, though, was the gender distribution of the people following the account.
70% female, 30% male1.
There are a couple of ways to think about this. Some of my most popular content has been about Heavenly Mother, so maybe the account has gotten more female followers from those posts. Or maybe the account already had more female followers, and that’s why the Heavenly Mother posts were more popular than others. Chicken and egg.
But my hunch was that there was more to it than that, so I looked at some other major LDS Instagram accounts, to see if they also had more female followers. But what I really wanted to see was how the gender breakdown worked for accounts that approach Church topics with nuance, and otherwise address race, LGBTQ+, and women’s issues in the Church.
While these numbers aren’t precise, they give us a good idea that, yes indeed, more women than men are following these accounts2:
Latter-day Stonecatchers: 77% of followers are women
LDS Equality Project: 79%
LDS Changemakers: 80%
LDS Project Empathy: 84%
At Last She Said It: 87%
The Vision Beautiful: 89%
Meetinghouse Mosaic: 89%
Some of these probably run high because they are run by women, they target women, or they post about women’s issues. But do all these accounts have more women following them than men? Sometimes by a lot? They sure do. And why is that?
I’m realizing that women in the Church may be more plugged into content that deals with tough questions because they can’t help but face them. As a woman in the Church, you can’t get around eventually confronting the specter of polygamy, not holding the priesthood, expectations as a wife and mother, and other gender incongruities in the Church. That, in turn, can put you more in tune with people of other races, other sexual orientations and identities, and others that must have similar reckonings in the Church.
As a man, you can go your whole life and not have to face any of those things.
My wife assures me that, while this seemed like a lightning bolt of revelation to me, women across the Church are rolling their eyes as another man comes to this realization. But maybe, possibly, there are other men out there who need to hear this message (although maybe I’m wasting my breath, as we’ve established that only 30% of my readers are men).
Susan M. Hinckley, of the podcast At Last She Said It, backs this up3:
Some things are simply outside the experience of even the best of our brothers. …
I’ve loved so many aspects of my faith as an active Latter-day Saint and continue to pursue my faith in this church by choice. But I have also felt undervalued, underappreciated, underserved, and misunderstood at some critical points along the way. …
If we want to remain in the church, women simply must be willing to accept, overlook, and in some ways sacrifice more than men do. There—I said it.
And maybe it isn’t a surprise to most, that women in the Church tend to be more aware, in addition to women’s issues, of issues of race, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized groups in the Church. At risk of over-generalizing, women in the Church understand much better what it means to be the man beaten and left by the side of the road for the Samaritan to find, and the woman who suffered with the issue of blood for so many years. Because they’ve been there. There’s no way to avoid it.
I have to assume that the prophet and Apostles have at least some thumb on the pulse of these issues, including the needs of women and other marginalized groups in the Church. But that’s not always true at the local level; bishops and stake presidencies are just men (clearly) who either may be in touch with these things, or may simply never think about them. The fact that the idea of “leadership roulette” or “bishop roulette” comes up in the Church bears this out: sometimes you’ll get lucky and have leaders who understand; other times, you won’t.
Obviously, the best way to understand what marginalized groups are facing in the Church is to listen to them. But many of us aren’t doing that at all. Brené Brown, a professor and researcher who knows what she’s talking about, adds that in addition to listening, we need to believe people when their experience doesn’t match with our own:
I can't walk in the shoes of someone who doesn't have my privilege around my education, around my race, around the resources I have access to. I can't do that, and to do it ends up causing people pain.
What do we do instead…?
Listen.
And there's a second part… We believe people when they tell us what their experience in their shoes felt like, and we believe them when that does not reconcile with our own experience.
The first time I read a book about anti-racism, it broke my perspective wide open. For the first time, I could see (even if just a little bit) how I assumed everything was fine when that wasn’t the case4. I needed help seeing it. We don’t always have books about these things specific to the Church to help us. But we can always listen.
Paying attention to women’s voices is hardly a new concept. It’s something General Authorities have talked about in General Conference, but generally in the sense of “we should listen to women as much as men,” and not so much in the “women likely have more to contribute” way. Elder Neil L. Andersen said:
Sincerely asking for and listening to the thoughts and concerns voiced by women is vital in life, in marriage, and in building the kingdom of God.
Although, ironically, he said so in a General Conference session that had no women speakers. Elder M. Russell Ballard added these thoughts:
I have a deep and abiding feeling about women and about the crucial difference they make in every important setting—particularly in the family and in the Church. I have spoken boldly about the role women must play in the council system of the Church. We cannot fulfill our mission as a Church without the inspired insight and support of women…
Many, many times, the voice of women in a ward council is the most important voice that a bishop can hear.
The scriptures tell these stories, too, of women who had a greater sense of the needs of others, and were leaders in Christ-like behavior. Jesus’s first miracle during His mortal ministry, turning the water to wine at the marriage in Cana, came because His mother Mary was sensitive to the needs of those around her. At the end of Jesus’s mortal life, Mary Magdalene was the first to the empty tomb, and the last to leave. After she alerted Peter and John, they came, saw the tomb, and went home. But Mary stayed; the record says, “But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping.” While the experience at the tomb was meaningful to the two Apostles, Mary’s spiritual connection to Christ kept her at the tomb, where she saw the angels and eventually was the first to see the risen Lord.
Ultimately, if you’re a man who happens to be reading this, and especially if you’re in a calling of leadership, listen to the women around you. Even (and especially!) if you think everything is fine, listen to what they have to say about how your ward and stake is teaching about the “least of these”—not just women, but other marginalized people. This is what the Savior taught, through His words and actions. This is the very basics of Christianity.
And if the women around you tell you something different than what you see? Doubt your own biased perception before you doubt theirs. They’ve seen a lot more than you have.
Instagram does not give any options other than female and male.
I took a convenience sample of 200+ followers from each account. Based on the stated first name of each follower, I calculated the probability of it being either male or female (again, binary only, which leaves a lot to be desired) using SSA.gov data. The numbers are more directional than precise; the account owners could give a more precise answer.
From Kimball, Christian, Living on the Inside of the Edge: A Survival Guide (BCC Press, 2023) 211-212.
And even that was written by a white person.