This morning I found, posted in one of my "LDS Moms" Facebook groups, a lovely misogynistic quote. It was all about "not fretting" about the nation or the state of the world, and just focusing your attention on your children and your husbands. Because, after all, Satan wanted you to get distracted from THEM, your first priority. Don't you stress about America.
So screw that. I reposted it to my private page, had a good little rant about it, then went about my day.
Finally I decided that a Temple Square trip was in order. As the temple grounds themselves are under serious reconstruction, I decided it might be nice to swing by the Church History museum, run around and let the grandma missionaries fuss over my boys for twenty minutes, which socially, they're in desperate need of, then swing by Brigham Young's Beehive House, all while fussing about them with hand sanitizer.
Why the Beehive House? Because I haven't been through the missionary-led tour there in years. I haven't been there since my deep-dive into polygamy. I realized that there was a part of me that desperately wanted to walk those halls, see those rooms, and look for the women in them.
After this morning's misogyny quote, I wanted to find those women.
I wanted to walk those halls and look to see if I could find the removeable plaque that Brigham Young switched from door to door to signal to his wives who he would be spending the night with. I wanted to remember the wives who switched the plaques from their own doors to a different wife's, because Hell if that man should decide when he got to go in and see them.
I wanted to remember Zina, who explained that, "A successful polygamous wife must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy." I wanted to walk Brigham's mansion, view his excessive riches and pride, and think on how he truly had nothing, for he was a man with all the wives in the world, and no love from any of them.
Naturally, because of luck, literally everything on Temple Square was closed, including the Lion House (until 11AM), so I couldn't even get a freaking roll with gravy. Which was stupid, because their rolls with their gravy are semi-divine.
We saw no missionaries, went in no buildings, and instead watched the grounds crew putting away Christmas wreaths and replacing them with fake-fruit covered ones. The boys found this enjoyable, so we chatted with one of the guys, and watched them lower wreaths from the upper balcony via rope to the ground. When you're a toddler, it makes sense to drive an hour to see this kind of thing in action.
Then we went to watch the construction on the temple. They'd dug up all the ground, over 20 feet deep, to get at the foundations - foundations which would prove unstable given a shaking earth.
And all I could think about was misogyny, which runs in deep currents through our history, through our foundations, and through our present lives, creating women who sacrifice their souls and potential for loveless, uninspired, thwarted futures of staying home, not worrying about the rest of the world, choosing to be "refined" and "tender" wives, to a system that grants them no power. Wives, who, after their divine, heaven-sent presider husbands' deaths, may quote, "He was worthy of the death he died."
I listened to my "liked" songs playlist on the way home, singing along to choruses singing, "Do what is right. Fight for the truth. Say something that means something to you. Invest in the love, Hope for the best. Follow what's in the left side of your chest." And "Whether you're a woman or whether you're a man, Sometimes you got to take a stand Just because you think you can. You got to run. You got to run."
And I found that a little more inspiring.
