I frequently feel like I’ve walked through the looking-glass into Alice’s familiar-yet-totally-alien world when I read posts, status updates, newspaper articles, and long comment threads where lifelong Latter-day Saints report what they were “always taught” about this or that doctrine or social issue. Sometimes I understand what they’re talking about; sometimes what they report is utterly alien to my own experience.
The current discussions over Mormon teachings and rape are, for me, an Alice’s-adventures-through-the-looking-glass moment. The things people claim are being taught, or have been taught, are things that I do not recognize, and that sometimes explicitly contradict what I was taught as a teenager.
Please note – and I’m bolding this so you have no excuse for not seeing it – in this post I am NOT discounting the personal experiences of others. Your memories and experiences may well be different from mine, and you’re entitled to full credit and belief if what you report is at all within the realm of reason. (I reserve that slim right to doubt at the extreme fringes of credibility, but it is a slim right reserved for, say, a claim that you were taught such-and-such by the Angel Moroni who came to your room one night accompanied by the tooth fairy and Mary Poppins.)
But my experiences are also entitled to full credit and belief when I report what I was taught.
I have a pretty good memory of my youth, and when I report below that I was taught such-and-such, it isn’t a general claim that I think these things were the subject of some lesson; in this post I report only those things where I have a distinct memory of a particular lesson – that is, I remember generally a lot of discussion about the kind of young man we wanted to marry, but I would report that in this post only if I had a distinct memory of a particular class on that topic. My memory is fallible in the way all human memory is, but I suspect it is more reliable when I can call to mind that evening when I was a Laurel in the Charleston St. chapel in Las Vegas, when the teacher, Barbara Albright, passed out 3×5 cards for us to list our desired traits, than if I were just remembering in general that yeah, we talked a lot about marriage without recalling a specific instance.
I went to high school in three different states (California, Missouri, and Nevada), and graduated from high school in 1976. I fully accept that teaching in one generation may be different from teaching in another generation. Know, however, that I didn’t go to school and get my youth lessons in any bubble.
I was taught that there was no double standard. Boys were as responsible for being clean (we called it that, then, “being clean” rather than “being chaste” or “staying a virgin”) as girls were. “No double standard” was almost a mantra, as familiar as the MIA theme we stood and recited each week.
To the best of my memory, I was never explicitly taught that I was responsible for keeping a boy’s appetites in check, but it would have made no sense to teach me that. He was responsible to be clean because there was no double standard. I was responsible to be clean, but so was he.
We talked about modesty a lot. In that generation, the particular taboos for frequent discussion were too-short skirts, bikinis, bare shoulders and backs on prom dresses, and sleeveless blouses. This is probably the weakest area of my teaching in regard to sexual issues: Teaching was all rule-based (“skirts must reach to here”) – that is, I don’t recall any particular teaching about respect for the body, or appropriateness for activity (except that wearing curlers to the grocery store was absolutely frowned on!), or simplicity rather than extravagance.
My memories are at odds with current Bloggernacle wisdom on at least one point in this area:
While sleeveless blouses were presented as unacceptable, it had nothing whatsoever to do with “bare shoulders inflaming a boy’s passions” as is mockingly cited in the ’nacle now for the seemingly inexplicable rule. The explanation that we were given on at least two occasions during my MIA years was that sleeveless blouses too often exposed more of our bodies than we ought to – that may be more understandable to those of my age who remember that our clothes in the ’70s were seldom t-shirts that cling to the body and almost always woven fabrics that were cut loose and bloused out from the body. Even when armholes weren’t cut especially large, a side view of a girl’s chest very often did include a full view of her bra … if she were wearing one. It was the ’70s.
I was not taught that I was responsible for men’s sexual behavior. First, see “No double standard.” I was taught that boys were as responsible for their behavior as girls were, and that there was no excuse for a boy to break the law of chastity.
Second, I do not recall any association of modesty with preventing unwanted sexual attention. This is a point where I admit that my memory may be faulty, because it seems hard to believe, even in the face of my own memories, that immodesty had no connection with drawing unwanted sexual attention. It may have been taught and gone right past me, or I may have forgotten. But I do not recall any teaching along the lines of “You must dress modestly in order not to inflame a boy’s passions.”
We were taught, of course, that our behavior could affect others. That’s the whole point of all those lessons on “being an example” – your behavior could attract or repulse someone’s interest in the Church. Your behavior could set an example for your friends. I remember one lesson about not being too familiar with young people who didn’t keep the Word of Wisdom – mostly for our own safety in not riding with drivers who had been drinking; but also in a sense of the old “lips that touch wine will never touch mine” of the Temperance movement: if you modeled having fun without alcohol, you might persuade someone else to forego alcohol.
But that is very different from being taught that I was responsible to keep someone else from drinking, or responsible to guarantee that someone joined the Church because of my example. I was never taught that – and I was never taught that I was responsible to keep someone else chaste. I could model being clean, yes, but I wasn’t responsible if someone else wasn’t.
I was not taught that “good Mormon girls” don’t have sexual feelings. Quite the contrary. I remember a youth conference held on some college campus – Mary-Something-or-Other in Missouri (or perhaps Kansas, as our stake covered a wide swath of both states) – where they made a graphic demonstration. Two volunteers, one girl and one boy, were hooked up to something like a simple lie detector, where we in the audience could watch their pulse rate while the demonstrator talked about the body’s reaction to stimulation. Their pulse was high at first, then went down as they got used to standing in front of everybody. Then the demonstrator asked them to hold hands – and their pulse shot up, then gradually lowered. Then they were asked to interlace their fingers – up shot the pulse. When that wore off, they were asked to stand with one arm around the other’s waist – skyrocketing pulse. (I think that was as far as the demonstration went.) There were two points to be made: First was that we get used to something that is at first exciting, and want to do more to rekindle the excitement. And second, the girl’s response was every bit as pronounced as the boy’s – girls have sexual feelings. We all knew it anyway, I think, but there we saw evidence of it in what seemed to be scientific terms.
I knew what “necking” and “petting” were. I keep reading that nobody understands those terms, so how can young people know when they are crossing a line? My personal experience is, How could you not understand those words? “Petting” is what you do with a dog or cat – your hands are all over the animal’s body, stroking head to tail; if a guy put his hands on your body, stroking where you didn’t ordinarily invite another’s touch, that was petting. “Necking” was passionate kissing beyond the lips, typically including the neck and lower; it wasn’t just a peck on the cheek that went astray, but ongoing kissing where partners focused on the body and the pleasure it gave, rather than on the person whose body it was which, in my personal experience, was still typically the focus of kissing on the lips.
My youth leaders were pretty frank about such things, and they didn’t fall back on a lot of rules about “he can touch you here but he can’t touch you there” – we talked about what it would feel like, physically and spiritually, when you approached the line, regardless of what specific touch might be involved.
I was taught about repentance – both sides of repentance. I’ve read Bloggernacle discussion that claims Mormons teach that once the law of chastity is violated, there is no hope. A woman – and it’s always presented online as if the unforgiveable sinner is a woman – is damaged goods and can never hope for forgiveness and marriage to a good priesthood holder. If you claim that’s what you were taught, okay, I’ll believe your report – but I’ll also condemn whatever teachers presumed to teach you that. I knew as a teenager that that wasn’t so – I knew there was always repentance and forgiveness. Maybe I knew it much, much younger than that, when my mother hired an unmarried pregnant teenager in the ward to babysit my brothers and me every day after school until Mom got home from her job. The woman who recommended the teenager told my mother – right there in front of me! – that the girl was pregnant, in case that bothered my mother. It didn’t. Mom talked to us about what that meant, but she didn’t consider for a moment that this made the girl unworthy to come into our home and take care of her kids.
But I was also taught the other side of repentance. Do you remember the firestorm a year or two ago about Wendy Nelson’s book The Not Even Once Club, and the indignant claims that it denied repentance and taught that “even once” made you forever unclean? No, it didn’t. I was taught that repentance was always the path to making things right – but I was also taught that repentance wasn’t necessarily easy, and that forgiveness might not come overnight, and that no matter how repentant you might be, there still might be consequences that could linger even after you were free of the sin – STDs (we called them VD then), or pregnancy, didn’t vanish just because you said you were sorry. It was better to avoid the sin in the first place – join the “Not Even Once Club” – than to take it for granted that repentance was quick and easy and would erase all consequences.
I don’t recall any particular teaching about rape. Commenters in the current discussion are claiming they were taught that being raped is as sinful as willful fornication, and that they know women who were disfellowshipped for being raped. If those are your memories, I can’t dispute them – but I can fairly assert that they were not part of my teaching or experience as a young woman.
I do remember lessons about self-defense – carrying keys interlaced in our fingers, and even a mock demonstration of kneeing a man in the groin or gouging at his eyes, so that we wouldn’t be too timid or repulsed if we ever needed to do that. But – and I can’t emphasize this enough – these self-defense techniques were never, never taught with the idea that we were responsible for preventing ourselves from being raped, or that we were guilty of sin if we became rape victims. I do not understand the very frequent protests I read in social media against taking any steps whatsoever to protect yourself, as if you’re sustaining rape culture by doing what you can reasonably do to protect yourself. To me, it makes as much sense as locking a door – you aren’t to blame if someone does break in, but if the lock successfully acts as a deterrent without unduly restricting your life, why wouldn’t you lock the dang door?! Certainly my Church never taught me I was to blame were I to be the victim of a rapist, anymore than it taught me I would be at fault were a burglar to break into my house.
-oOo-
So that’s what I was taught. Obviously my mileage varies from that frequently voiced in the current debate, but I hardly think it is unique. This is what the Church taught, as much as any contrary claims.
Thank you, Ardis. I don’t always comment on them, but I always appreciate your thoughts on the pertinent issues of the day. You have a great way of turning down the volume, stepping back, and presenting a well-considered piece.
My wife and I have had many conversations about the differences between the church in which I was raised and the one in which she was raised. And yes we were both raised LDS. I have found myself apologizing for the things she was taught. There are many reasons for the differences. Academic education level, economic and social expectations, even basic sex education all played a role, and little of it had to do with the Church itself. For her it was mostly about the family in which she was raised and what they thought about the Church. The worst stuff came from her parents.
In the comparison of our upbringing I can almost see how correlation might have started because some Church leaders saw the problems that would result from people “winging it” when it came to doctrine.
I remember being surprised when my mission companion taught about modesty. She said that immodesty caused other people think impure thoughts. After the discussion I asked her what she was talking about. That’s the first time I had heard about that. I had been taught many times about modesty without being responsible for men’s sins.
I haven’t had to relearn anything from my Mutual lessons. I’m regularly confused by what they say is always taught at church.
1980s, Arizona, heard most of that (licked cupcake, female responsible for male behavior, etc.) and much of it from seminary teachers and the professional speakers on the youth conference circuit. The stake standards nights seemed to be pretty egalitarian in preaching the dangers of sin. Same standards for young men and young women, if I remember correctly.
I think like Bruce said, it might be a local thing, and it might depend on the decade, and definitely varied from teacher to teacher.
Thanks for sharing your experiences, Ardis. I particularly liked that lie detector demonstration one – what an effective way to capture the attention of a group of youth and teach an important message!
All of this sounds pretty familiar to me. I think there was some false doctrine taught, but not on this subject.
However, I do remember once having a teacher attempt the ‘nobody wants someone else’s leftovers’ lesson. She passed around a plate of cookies, one of which (she thought) had an obvious bite out of it. When the plate was passed all the way around, she discovered that the bitten cookie was gone. When she asked about it, one of the other adult leaders admitting to being on a diet and deliberately choosing the ‘broken’ cookie so she wasn’t eating as much. So–message here? People aren’t cookies. Don’t bite them. (Does not apply to my orthodontist, who deserved it.)
I have had similar experience Ardis in my growing up.
Thank you for writing this. I have been sad to hear everything that people experienced–but also a bit bemused because that wasn’t my experience. Like you, I don’t want to invalidate what other people lived. But I was never taught any kind of a double-standard (if anything, it was that a priesthood holder committed the greater sin, etc.), nor do I ever remember hearing anything that made me believe that somehow I was not responsible for my own actions and feelings. I appreciate your blog.
For what it’s worth, here are my experiences going up in northeast Provo in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s:
No double standard: Yes.
Talking about modesty a lot: Yes. Though my memory is that the girls received more of this than the boys, especially in terms of clothing.
Not taught that girls are responsible for boys’ sexual behavior: Yes. Again, though, girls were encouraged more than boys not to wear provocative clothing.
“Good” Mormon girls not having sexual feelings: I don’t recall this ever being addressed. Perhaps it was in forums I did not attend.
Necking and petting: This is more nuanced for me. I think I had a better understanding of necking, but petting was a mystery for a while. (In fact, I think back now with some embarrassment about the misinformation I thought was accurate.)
Taught about repentance: Yes, no question about this (the primary text was definitely President Kimball’s Miracle of Forgiveness).
Teachings about rape: Agree, I don’t recall this ever being raised.
The issue of “better dead clean than alive unclean” is difficult and problematic. I do recall this counsel being stressed but never to the extent that death would be preferable to life. Still, I can understand how such advice could be interpreted in ways that were never intended.
I do remember one really weird Sunday when all of the youth were herded into the multi-purpose room for a joint meeting. Our leaders played ‘inspirational’ music from Saturday’s Warriors and then gave us a lecture on all sorts of things I never would have done anyway. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. At the end, I asked one of the leaders who said something to the effect of, “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you about it.” I have the feeling that if I actually remembered anything they said, I probably would have misunderstood it, but fortunately I don’t.
There was also a prominent LDS woman in my ward when I was a teen (my nemesis, unfortunately) who once urged the women in some meeting to take care of themselves and make sure they were attractive and beautiful to keep their husbands from straying and committing adultery. At a stake meeting shortly thereafter, the stake president made a short correction statement that sins committed by melchezedik priesthood holders have nothing to do with anything their wives do or don’t do, much less how they look. I heard about that whole situation from my mother.
I was a teen in the late 90s/early 2000s. I remember having a few misconceptions (nobody would want to marry someone who wasn’t a virgin, being immodest makes you vulnerable to rape), but I don’t think any particular leader or my parents taught me those things and at some point there were church lessons or conversations with my parents where those misconceptions were cleared up for me and I had little difficulty changing my mind.
I did feel confused by the words necking and petting, but even without knowing what those words mean I think the For Strength of Youth pamphlet is pretty clear about what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. Perhaps it might be better if they used some of the modern jargon (“hooking up”, “making out”) to make the pamphlet a little more approachable for today’s youth, but then again that would be hard to translate and I felt that the wording was clear enough. For Strength of Youth was also very clear that victims of rape and incest are not guilty of any sin and do not need to repent.
I do wish that someone had openly explained sex to me earlier. Unfortunately my first exposure to it was when at age 10 when a friend showed me her grandfather’s porn at a sleepover, which gave me a really bad impression of intimacy. I had no idea how to get out of that situation and I was afraid to ask my parents to come get me because it was late at night, although now I realize they would have been glad to come get me. But my parents and other leaders did talk to me several times about how sex is good and sacred, so I was eventually able to get over that impression that it’s dirty. I’ve already talked to my kids several times about pornography and what to do if they see it.
In one particular lesson my YW leaders gave a lot of clear guidance about what kind of physical stuff is okay when you’re dating someone. I specifically remember one leader explaining what kind of kissing was okay (i.e. a peck on the lips is okay). That lesson was really helpful to me. I would have appreciated some guidance about what my boundaries should be once I was old enough for steady dating since I didn’t date anyone exclusively until I had left for college.
I think in many facets of life we get misconceptions about things and then at some point if we really want to know the truth we realize we are wrong and change our minds. I’ve never seen a need to be bitter about the misconceptions I had.
I’ve had several friends share the story about Elizabeth Smart thinking she was like a chewed-up piece of gum after she was raped the first time. What doesn’t seem to be mentioned as much is that she heard the gum analogy from a teacher at school, not her parents. Later in her speech she also said that one of the only things that kept her going during her captivity was remembering the many times her parents had told her that they loved her and they would always love her no matter what she did. So she knew that whenever she was reunited with them they would still love her despite all she had been through. I think it’s sad that the gum part is emphasized so much since clearly her parents’ expressions of love for her were such a source of power and comfort.
As a male youth, I was certainly filled with enough fear and dread of sexual impurity that it kept me safe from serious trouble. I knew who would be responsible if somebody messed up – Me. I heard no doctrine that girls were responsible to protect my chastity. That was all on me – Except for one odd thing my dad said once about how if you fool around a woman might pretend to be pregnant to trick you into marriage. Hunh? That didn’t seem applicable in my allegedly vulnerable years.
Please note: While I am not discounting contrary personal experiences, neither am I hosting a forum for the airing of those contrary personal experiences, especially when there is no context as to time or place — there are countless Facebook and blog discussions elsewhere hosting that. As always, regular supporters of Keepa have far more leeway than readers who have not built community ties here.
Sorry. Not all comments can appear here.
Growing up in Arizona in the 90’s I remember two relevant experiences.
In seminary one year I had a teacher, Brother Wade, who also happened to be seminary school principle in a rather large seminary with 10+ seminary teachers. He would have us anonymously write questions on a piece of paper, put it in a jar, and then randomly pull one out and answer the question. One day someone submitted a question about sexual abuse and whether or not it was the fault of the person abused. To his credit, Brother Wade took the time to seriously talk about abuse to my class. One of the things he stressed above all else was that the person who is abused is not responsible. He was very clear that the victim does not need to repent and that the idea that the victim is at fault is a pernicious lie told by the abuser. He reiterated that point again, and again, that if anyone is ever abused or raped they should never feel that it was their fault.
My second experience that I remember was a lesson about the law of chastity taught by one of my young men’s leaders. At one point during the lesson he rather emphatically told us that if we could not even look at a girl without thinking about her as a sex object then we had a problem. He made it very clear that treating a girl as an object for our pleasure, or even thinking about it, was a most grievous sin that must be repented of, and that if that if we even thought that way then we needed to talk to the Bishop and get some help.
As Ardis mentioned, there may be some members who had negative experiences but, as evidenced by so many people who had positive experiences, it is not a systematic problem in the church. Given the number of people in the church it is just a statistical certainty that someone somewhere will be taught “incorrectly” but as a whole it is not a problem.
I grew up a Mormon teenager on the East Coast in the 80s. My youth cohort was pretty rough on our youth teachers—our goal was to run our Sunday School teachers off within six months, and we were generally wildly successful. (Well, until a member of the bishopric took over our class in my later teens and didn’t let go—but he also treated us like we had a collective clue, which was a nice change of pace. But i digress.)
Anyway, this meant that i had a lot of Sunday teachers as a youth—and some of them vectored teachings about sex- and sexuality-related themes that were based in straight-up doctrine, while others were, um, more of a folkloric nature.
So yes, my cohort got (to give one example) the nail-in-a-board object lesson—and we also, a bit later, got a fairly in-depth lesson about how that misrepresented the doctrine of repentance.
TL;DR: So yeah, i can totally understand why different people come to the discussion saying that Mormons are taught X, while others say the exact opposite—it may well be a simple case of overgeneralization from personal experience.
I was taught a definite double standard: As a priesthood holder, I was much more culpable for any shenanigans with a girl than she was. I quite recently heard a variant of this idea from a Sunday School teacher who taught that Bathsheba was totally not to blame for the business with David, because David was such a powerful male figure.
The only time I recall hearing the nail-in-the-board analogy was from a teacher whose point was to denounce it.
The only teachings I recall on rape or abuse emphasized the innocence of the victim.
My most terrifying memory from this time is the idea (I’m not quite sure where I picked it up) that on Judgement Day I’d find myself in the docket in front of literally thousands of elders of Israel, who would examine even my very thoughts to look for any stain of sexual impurity in my life. Being a more or less sexually normal young man, with a sexually normal young man’s thoughts, this pretty much tied me up in knots.
As this is a history blog, I enjoy hearing your experiences as part of the history, Ardis.
Took me a couple days to get up the guts to respond.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s far far outside the intermountain west, a teenager in an itty-bitty branch, I experienced some of the things Ardis says she did not. Modesty wasn’t emphasized yet like it is today, so girls wore running shorts and cut-offs all the time with no shame.
It was clear to me that “necking and petting” were out, but not clear what that meant relative to forbidden sex… I must have lacked imagination because I couldn’t see how patting another person’s hair or wrapping necks around each other like giraffes was forbidden.
But it was pretty evident that letting a boy grab your boobs was right out. Which was a problem because my priesthood-bearing step-dad did exactly that. Many times. Over and under clothes. I remember a chastity lesson one evening in Mutual — I do not remember what was taught, and I do not remember the specifics of any chastity lessons — I only remember sneaking off afterward to the dark chapel to kneel down behind the organ and tearfully beg God to forgive me for not being chaste.
As a voracious reader of every book in the house, I had on my own read the copy of “Miracle of Forgiveness” that was on the family bookshelf. I was filled with self-loathing for years because I was not able to make my step-dad stop his groping, and having no one to discuss it with, I long wondered what it meant to have failed at resisting. The shame I felt was so overwhelming that I nearly split my personality into “good me” and “bad me.” Fortunately, “good me” was able to hold on to hope.
When asked in a temple recommend interview as a slightly older teen specifically whether I “let boys grab my breasts” (heaven only knows why the stake president wandered off script to that topic), I panicked at the idea of family chaos and answered “no,” justifying my answer that my step-dad wasn’t a “boy,” and indeed I had been exceptional at setting firm clear boundaries with my guy friends.
I felt guilt about that lie to a priesthood leader for years, even after I was married. I even “lost” my recommend for a while after I was married just because I felt so bad about lying to a priesthood leader. (Yes, I got myself sorted out after that, thanks to good bishops, a patient husband, serious counseling, and a renewed in-depth personal understanding of the Atonement).
So here’s my take on the things Ardis discusses. While some things may not be taught as official doctrine, and some things may be clear to many, they are not clear to all, and on the margin there may have been some who were struggling to understand how all these things work together in a chaotic imperfect life. Though I understand what President Kimball was trying to teach in his book, I personally abhor “Miracle of Forgiveness” because of the evil evil evil feelings it inspired in me. It should not be given to young women without someone to discuss it with them (and definitely not given to date rape victims, as it was to my sister-in-law, who was told to read it as part of her ‘repentance’ from that experience… this again was a different small branch in the 1980s).
I’m so sorry, “stay anon.”
Your story, and to some degree other comments here and in other places, are making me feel very much like I did when (I hope I can put this in words that make sense) I had to realize that it was more good fortune than good thinking that I came of age knowing most of the historical issues about Mormonism that shock so many when they learn about them as adults. My life, my understanding, my self image, my very testimony could be vastly different today if my experiences as a youth, or my access to specific books, or my having had this teacher instead of that teacher at a critical moment, had been even slightly different.
I’ve written before about how I got the wrong idea about repentance as a very small child, thinking that I could never be forgiven for one certain act because I couldn’t possibly follow literally one of the so-called “steps to repentance” that we teach so glibly. I should realize that anything could be misunderstood, even when it is taught with the best of intentions — combine that with a different life experience, like yours, and who knows where it would lead.
I’m sorry.
As a non-member youth with an LDS girlfriend, I did not have a strong moral compass to guide me. I am eternally grateful that she was able to enforce her standards. Certainly I would have been culpable had anything untoward happened, but I probably would not have recognized it at the time. Fortunately I honored her enough to honor her boundaries. Whatever she was taught in the late ’70s was perfect from my perspective and helped lead me on into investigation and acceptance of the Gospel.
One day I was visiting teaching with a new-convert tagalong and a not-as-new convert companion, when I received a specific and very strong impression to say something along the lines of, “If you have ever been sexually abused, I want you to know that it was not your fault.” And I repeated it several times. I was facing our VT-ee, but then I heard first my companion say, “I was sexually abused when I was twelve,” and then our other companion said, “I was raped when I was eighteen.” And to this day I have no idea whether I was supposed to say that for the woman I was actually talking to, or whether it was just for the companions.
I had NO IDEA what petting was when I was an actual teenager. None. And while not knowing didn’t get me in to trouble with the law of chastity, it caused a bit of embarrassment when I was trying to explain to a semi-non-hostile audience of my peers what my standards were. No petting. What’s petting? Um…. I finally figured it out years later during an explicit, though not embarrassing, conference talk.
I and my siblings were all well aware growing up that both of our parents enjoyed sex quite a bit, and that this was the way things should be. I was an adult, visiting with one of my best friends after she married, before I realized that this was not universally understood in the church.
First, time reference for context- late 80’s growing up. I was a painfully shy teenager who desperately wanted to do the right thing, so if there were rules anywhere I followed them. Scripture reading every day? Check? Prayers morning and night? Check again. Petting and necking? I had no idea. I remember asking leaders in YW what it was because I had not a clue and no one would tell me. Maybe they were embaraced? Maybe they thought I was just messing around in class? By the late 80’s it was a dated term and no one used it outside the church and no one inside the church would define it for me. I remember having a vague idea of people rubbing their necks on eachother and could not guess why that would be desirable. My parents were no help- I never saw them hold hands let alone kiss; I have no idea how they conceived four times- maybe osmosis? The first time my mom used the word “sex” in my presence I was married with two children. The lessons on modesty and repentance have a long been forgotten but I remember the frustration of being taught to follow a rule that I could not understand.
As a teenager in the 1990s, leaders used the terms necking and petting with us, and I had absolutely no idea what they were. I sure wanted to know though! I remember being quite fascinated by the “slippery slope” illustrations leaders would draw on the board. I thought of it as more of an intimacy instructional manual (for the future). I was an obsessive rule-follower while also completely breaking the spirit of the rules. For example, I had steady boyfriends from age 14-18, but I wouldn’t allow them to hold hands with me for months, and I didn’t have my first kiss until my 18th birthday (self-imposed rule). When I was 15, my boyfriend put his arm around me in the car. Our siblings tattled on us, and BOTH sets of parents lectured us for AN HOUR about how grievous this action was, and how we had set ourselves falling fast down that aforementioned “slippery slope”. We were told very strictly never to do anything like that again.
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I think Elder Holland’s “Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments” talk is proof that there was at least a cultural belief in the church that girls were more responsible for keeping chastity issues under control than boys. He says: “I have heard all my life that it is the young woman who has to assume the responsibility for controlling the limits of intimacy in courtship because a young man cannot.”
The fact that he addressed this at a BYU devotional is proof that it must have been a fairly widespread belief, at least at BYU. But he says he has heard it “all [his] life,” suggesting it may have even been a church-wide cultural belief for many years.
It is enormously significant that his next sentence is: “What an unacceptable response to such a serious issue!” followed a few sentences later by “To say that a young woman in such a relationship has to bear her responsibility and that of the young man’s too is the least fair assertion I can imagine.” Wherever that cultural belief may have come from, he recognizes that it is not doctrinal and not what the Church intended its youth and young adults to learn. He isn’t correcting Church teaching here, but condemning a false idea that is “unacceptable” and an “[un]fair assertion.”
I am grateful that if anyone ever suggested such a thing to me, it was so seldom and so poorly taught that it never registered on my moral radar.