Reconciling Feminism and Mormonism (or not)

I was recently asked a question on my formspring that I didn't expect (mostly because I didn't expect to get many, if any questions asked). I put too much time and thought into the answer (even if most of it was written stream of consciousness style) to not share it a little more broadly, so I'm reprinting it here, as is.

Is it difficult to reconcile being a feminist with being Mormon? If so, how do you?

Yes. Oh heavens yes. How do I do it? Well, in all honesty, most of the time I don't. Most of the time I have giant contradictions in my head between what I know to be true, what I'm told is true and what I want to be true. There are some truths in feminism that I know just as strongly as some gospel truths. And generally those truths aren’t in conflict, quite the opposite in fact, the same principles I love in the gospel about equality, charity, mercy, agency, etc are the same things that draw me to feminism– it’s all the other things that get packaged with those ideologies that get messy.

Different things work better on different days. For the longest time I just tried to put troubling things on the shelf and trusting that I would understand latter, or accepting that maybe I just didn’t need to know. Then my shelf broke. It’s a decent temporary fix, but long term I just can’t not think about things that are so important to me.

Some days I try to explain things by thinking that we all look at the world through the tinted lenses of our own experience and culture. So doctrines, culture, practices whatever in the church that bother me are just the result of good people striving for truth but ultimately being restrained or colored by the world they grew up in. As things change and those lenses cease to be, so will the things that bother me. That isn't 100% satisfactory - I want the church to rise above all that cultural stuff. I want pure truth. (And I want that truth to conform to what I think/want to be true.)

In a similar vein, I sometimes think that maybe God just isn’t much of an interventionist. Maybe the church is deeply flawed and some things it teaches just plain aren’t true, but God doesn’t correct them because he’s letting us work things out. I do believe in agency, and it makes some sense that God won’t force truth on those who don’t want it. However, if I accept that premise, it’s hard to know when to stop – what things to keep and what to personally throw out. I do think that ultimately I’m responsible for my own salvation, so I should bear responsibility for accepting and acting on what I think is true and not delegate that to church leaders. But I’m not quite arrogant enough to think that my opinions and perceptions are the final word on what is true and what isn’t (close, but not quite).

I've tried going the route where motherhood really does equal priesthood and patriarchy means something different in the church than it does in other contexts (and hearken for that matter) and everything else really is for the best, but frankly it never works for me. It tends to sound like double speak and flimsy excuses.

On my more depressed days, I get tired of trying to contort to make everything work, and I wonder if maybe the simplest explanation is true. Unfortunately the simplest explanation seems to be that women are less than men in the eyes of God. It doesn’t take much mental work to explain everything this way, but it doesn’t leave me liking God very much. I don't like those days.

And other times I willfully try to just ignore it all.

Most of time I just think. I wonder about what equality means to me. I think about what I want and believe, and if maybe I'm wrong? I try to look deeper at the doctrine and understand why it is what it is, or if it even is what I think it is. I try to separate culture from doctrine. I try to look at the simple principles, the things I know are true and build from there. I just try to understand it all. Every now and again I come up with something that almost works, but mostly I just get a headache.

So I suppose I usually don't reconcile things. I have quite a bit of pain, but I have so many good things and truths that I cannot seem to let go of, that I can't fully leave either camp.