General Conference women

“This is the Saturday morning session of the one hundred and seventy-(number) annual General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints… music for this session is provided by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir… this broadcast is furnished as a public service by Bonneville International. Any reproduction, recording, transcription, or other use of this program, without written consent, is prohibited.” I can hear this in the measured, confident and reassuring tones of the man whose voice has, in my memory, always said these words. Either it’s the same man now as it was in my youth, or they found someone with an equally calm, matter-of-fact tone and similar timbre. As a child myself and then with my children, I could recite the last two lines, about Bonneville, now Bonneville Distribution, and “any reproduction, recording, transcription… is prohibited.” They’re now up to the 194th annual General Conference, in April, 2024. I learned the meaning of “semi-annual” by listening to the opening of the October conferences, always the first weekend in October.

There have been, in my memory, always five sessions of General Conference: three on Saturday and two on Sunday. The third Saturday session used to be just for priesthood holders, i.e. men age 12 and up. They would gather at the church for the broadcast and afterwards they would eat ice cream. On the Saturday a week before conference would be the women’s session, so the men could babysit and their wives could attend. The women served cake or pie and fruit, or snack trays of meat, cheese, and grapes, with crackers or rolls. Women have always spoken up in our church; they make it work and they do more to train the children. But it took a long time for the society at large to accept women’s place as alongside, not ahead and not behind, men. The leaders of the church, after all, are products of their society.

So there are still five sessions but the Saturday evening session is for everyone. I hear people claiming that eventually women will receive the priesthood and become world leaders as the men are. I doubt that. Women are already world leaders; they just don’t wield their influence in the same ways. We conquer the small children; it’s so hard, just love and serve and change diapers and dry tears and hug and feed and change their clothes and jump in puddles with them and rock them to sleep. I don’t feel the need of the priesthood as a separate responsibility. That’s what it is, you know, a responsibility. It’s not all fun and games to stand up there in front of everyone and keep people in line. I do quite enough wrangling my children and helping people in my every day life. I don’t need to become president or king or prophet, to do good things.