Wednesday, December 17, 2008

I love Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

From the same woman who proclaimed "Well-behaved women seldom make history", comes this quote:

"My Mormonism and my feminism intersect in a belief in the absolute equality of all of God’s children and in a belief that we have a responsibility to make the world better."

I found it while I was flipping through notes on Soc of Gender for my final tomorrow morning. I love it. That's exactly how I feel. Equality and parity and equal opportunity and improved standard of living for all of humanity and all of God's children.

On a lighter note, our housing situation is dire. Not dire actually, we just only have one more month in our apartment and nowhere to go after that until April. I think we should live as squatters in various locations on campus to make a statement that until everyone can have adequate shelter, we don't want it. And then if BYU gives us grief, we'll just claim to be anthropology students doing an ethnographic research project. Brilliant.

**In the early 1990s, BYU board of trustees "vetoed without comment" a proposal to have Laurel Thatcher Ulrich speak in a forum at BYU because she was "too controversial" (she's a Harvard history professor, Pulitzer Prize winner, married, LDS, mother of many children, and brilliant! Is that controversial?!). That same year, Justice Clarence Thomas (after his controversial sexual harassment case), was brought to BYU to speak. VOICE (Parity's ancestor) protested, and was suspended as a BYU club. CAN YOU IMAGINE? I wish I had been around during the heyday of feminist activism at BYU. We've made strides in the past few decades, but we're not nearly finished.

6 comments:

  1. is it possible that you don't have the whole story about Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? I love that quote we got in soc. of gender too, but BYU knows what it's doing. It was the 90's, i don't think it's possible for you to have the full story

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  2. i am telling you come live above me! you have to sign a year contract but you can sell it so easy! everyone who has moved out has sold their contract in a matter of weeks!

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  3. Word on the street (or 4th floor of the JFSB, if you will) that the philosophy department has found someone-a woman- they'd like to hire as part of their for-now all male faculty. But BYU won't hire her because she's divorced (well, they've found other "reasons").

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  4. how do you know they won't hire her because she's divorced? how do you know the other "reasons" aren't valid? i'm just curious because it seems like you're drawing your own conclusion based on little if no evidence

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  5. have you read her book "well behaved women..."?
    The intro talks all about where that quote comes from and how it has been co-opted into whatever organization needs/wants it and all she meant for it to mean was that literally, women who weren't criminals or queens left very little documentation (history) of their existence.
    She also explains how she just "happened" into becoming a historian while being a mother and wife. I love how flabergasted she is with her fame and admiring fans. She is wonderful. Amen.

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  6. I'm actually surprised BYU doesn't want a divorced woman. I know they don't like married women with children, and a lot of female professors that were hired in the past two decades usually did so when they were single (Valerie Hudson, Susan Easton Black, to name two off the top of my head).

    And as for Laurel Thatcher Ulrich being controversial... she's not. Look into Michelle, there is nothing on her. And I have done quite a bit of research into the matter and read tons of primary sources, first hand accounts and letters from BYU admin to VOICE leaders, and they are all complete nonsense. I have all of the archives in boxes in the clubs office in the Kennedy Center, if you'd like to have a look. BYU was still on backlash from the ERA in the early 90's. They hated anything and anyone resembling a feminist.

    And: a husband/wife couple applied for jobs at BYU, the wife in the poli sci department. BYU wouldn't hire her even though she was HIGHLY qualified. I don't know the reasons, but I suspect...

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