I turned 12 in 1959 and was immediately inundated with this fireside content. In my not-fully-formed 12-year-old brain, I didn't understand all of the verbiage, so my takeaway was that if I touched a girl, I would go to hell immediately, and my life would be over. Message received.
I grew up in Holladay we always had to wear our Sunday Best even to school and hanging out at the Mall...we even had to wear modest bathing suits for when company came over for swimming. Nowadays my parents could careless what the grandkids wear as long as they are having fun! Fun episode R & L!
Pushed me into the “proudly not wearing them” for all to see camp. I haven’t been wearing them for 6 years. After conference I refused to continue to feel shame about it. I’m done with the control and manipulation.
I have so many thoughts about this.. I was raised with the 1990 version and I distinctly remember graduating primary and then the following Sunday going to the older class and being handed the pamphlet and instructed to take any of my questions to my parents or the bishop. I ended up in a temple recommend interview to do baptisms and asked the bishop what necking and petting meant. I was told that men can't control themselves when they get aroused and so necking or heavy kissing would lead to them wanting to pet my private parts and then once that happened it was hard to stop, so it was better to avoid it all together. When I mentioned that I thought that maybe I've had that happen to me, I remember him launching into telling me how I could repent and be clean again- so he gave me the temple recommend and sent me on my way. I was being molested at home- and the person who was molesting me went on that temple trip because he was in the young men's presidency. I'm not blaming my bishop here- I remember him being a convert to the church and put in as bishop, so poor guy was just a fish out of water.. but the harmful rhetoric that a teen girl is responsible for the actions of men is a foundational teaching of the church. I'm not sure where I heard this, but it was someone in the ex-mormon sphere who was talking about the ERA and how the church was against women joining the military because when there were women on military bases there were more sexual assaults. Which presented the same argument- why is it the woman's fault that men can't control themselves around her? Which is exactly how David Morris has so eloquently explored here- when men claim to be so powerful and strong and yet so weak at the same time. Saying that men should protect women from everything, except he's the most dangerous thing to her that he's protecting her from.
I was born in 1978 and the 1990 pamphlet was the one I received when I entered into the Young Men's program. I actually thought the pamphlet was the very beginning of the For the Strength of Youth program, not realizing it was decades old. But more generally, all the anti-sex(uality) teaching caused me a lot of harm. "The Miracle of Forgiveness" and Packer's "Little Factory" and "To the One" talks were very much in use to instruct the youth (and general membership). I didn't even begin to have the slightest inkling that I was gay until I was nearly 19 because I had taken in the idea that it was immoral to be sexual at all (let alone gay). It took me until I was over 30 to finally let go of the last vestiges of shame over simple masturbation.
The standards weren't just for youth. I remember once in the early 70s I was serving as an Elder's Quorum president and the stake president told me that if I was going to serve as an EQ president, I would need to shave off my mustache. I told him I didn't see that in the scriptures anywhere and if he wanted to release me, then so be it. He did not and never brought it up again. I served 5 more years and still have the mustache today, 50 years later. But that wasn't the only time it was brought up, all the way into the 90s.
I just listened to the discussion of the FSY 1965 and now I know why girls couldn’t wear pants to school during those years in my small predominantly LDS town. The school superintendent was also the stake president so it was church doctrine and not school policy.
I'm from Michigan, probably not a single LDS member in our school and we had dress codes. Skirts or dresses for the girls, dress pants and dress shoes for the boys. This was public school in the mid to late 60's. Also, like Rebecca pointed out, girls would be found kneeling to have the skirt length measured. So, I think much more the times and not necessarily just LDS culture.
Many of the Mormon girls were already rebelling against authority and expected norms when I attended Westlake Jr High from 69 to 72 during the height (pun intended) of the mini skirt era in that they were going commando - it was clearly evident if they were running to class or walking home on a blustery day 🫣😁
Yup. I was a teen in the 60s. We were deeply shamed girls. I think the constant attacks on my femaleness affects me to this day. I am a now hard-core feminist. And so are my daughters .
It was culture shock to me coming home from my mission in England and seeing every man in my home ward dressed exactly like the missionaries. A sort of cold cult sort of feeling ran down my spine. It took a while for me to find out that it was a new church dress code. I thought to myself, what's next are we going to end up like the Amish. Leaders with nothing better to do than micro-manage how we dress.
This is what Greg Prince referred to as "Trickle Up Revelation." It takes a while, but sometimes members do influence church policy/doctrine. My guess is that at least some of this stuff is as a result of that (both the restrictions and the perceived loosening of the rules). I was from a convert family and we lived outside the corridor. I never heard stuff like this as "revelation" so much as guidance. I definitely remembered hearing about "soul kissing" at EFY and thought that was the dumbest expression I'd ever heard in my life. As an adult, I remember first hearing Pres. Hinckley's earring, hair and tattoo guidance. My assumption at the time was that he must have been getting lots of letters from parents saying, "what does the church say about tattoos/multiple piercings/crazy colored hair etc.?" Also, i first heard him give the guidance in a regional conference and it was a lot less strict than what was eventually circulated.
I recall a joint aaronic priesthood meeting convened by our bishop in the early 70s to discuss morality and the out of control masturbation problem plaguing the church!
Because I am a man I rarely noticed the harping on women's dress fashions until I brought a non-member lady to church. It was a mild hornets nest and it came from the Relief Society sisters. I told her don't let them do that to you. As a man I grew up hearing the brethren harping on the men constantly how unworthy we were of our angelic wives and how we should be ashamed as if every man was a wife beater or something. That message was spread often and even as a teen before I was dating I thought it was harmful.
We got those talks in New Jersey. They came out as rather large records which we played on a special player once we had gathered at the Church - we always met in a rental at that time in New Jersey. These were a huge deal back in the day. And as to curlers - I wonder if the leaders prefer them now to the purple and pink and neon green hair dyes now popular?
In the early '90s at girls camp, I can remember them measuring our shorts and the girls who wore shorts that were too short had to duct tape newspaper. onto their shorts. I remember it being difficult for some girls to find shorts that were long enough. My mom just sewed my clothes. I still joke with my husband about my porn shoulders when I wear sundresses.
Love that tatoos are atleast 'officially' no longer taboo. Surely that free agency wont last, but while it's here- our kids are getting tatoos they've always wanted, but couldn't have.
“I reckon that the children of Adam and Eve married one another; this is speaking to the point. I believe in sisters marrying brothers and in brothers having sisters as their wives. Why? Because we cannot do otherwise [if] there are none other for me to marry but my sisters.” -Brigham Young, Teaching of the Presidents, Volume 3, 1852-1854, page 362. So, INCEST was recommended by the “mouthpiece of God”, Brigham Young, as long as women covered their shoulders?! 🥴🤢🤮
Spencer W. Kimball was intensively focussed on sexual sins among young people. This from the man who had his future wife Camilla sitting on his lap when they were dating before marriage, which act for the time was as least as bad as anything going on in the 1950s through the 1970s, for the times, when Kimball was complaining about it. Worse, Kimball stated in his book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, that people who committed sexual sins deserved "sore embarassment" before the congregation, thereby humiliating the sinner and family of the sinner. Who humiliated him when Camilla was sitting on his lap? He was obviously ignorant of the acts of his grandfather, Heber C. Kimball (or, if not ignorant, then in denial of them). HCK, by his own words, thought no more of taking on another wife than he did buying another cow. HCK was also upset that missionaries in Europe were marrying young women converts before returning to the United States. He wanted to have the young female converts to arrive unmarried in Utah, so that he (HCK) and the other GAs "could have fair shake." While in a bank in Salt Lake City, HCK saw a woman who looked familiar, and thought that they might have met before. HCK approached her asked if they had met. The woman said: "I should look familiar to you; I was your wife." Where was SWK's chance for sore embarrassment for his grandfather? Sheer hypocrisy! Too bad the internet came about after SWK's era. It would be interesting confront him about his grandfather.
Actually, it was the war babies that the 1956-60 church pamphlets were aimed at. I was in the oldest Baby Boomer year of 1946, and was only ten in 1956, and fourteen in 1960.
@@david-morris Those in their 50s now in 2024 are Generation X, children of the Baby Boomers, like my daughter. She never listened to their shaming, and left it all. Nowadays, the even younger generation of Mormon kids are ditching the garments altogether. The Morg is really losing its grip on them. Thank goodness.
