Of all the excuses for religious female oppression in our society, there is one that is truly menacing to a lot of us:

“We didn’t set up the system this way, and we don’t know why it is like this. It’s just how God wants it to be.”

This answer is disturbing on a deeper level than many of the others (the men leading us are fallible, it’s a cultural relic from the past, we don’t want you to get your shoes dirty).

Those answers can all be worked through. They can be attributed to the foolishness of other mortals. They don’t have to say anything about you.

But if this is the way God wants it to be…. if this is how God actually views women. Man. That’s a whole different barrel of monkeys.

God wants me to access them through my husband? God doesn’t want me to minister to others with their power? God doesn’t trust me to handle the finances of my ward community? God doesn’t want me to pray in front of the general body of the church? God decided I should forever bear children throughout the eternities as a plural wife? God thinks I’m inherently ill-suited for a career?

As a woman, the temple made me feel tiny, powerless, insignificant, and spiritually dead. That’s what God wanted?

Damn.

What’d I ever do to God?

As I’ve taken part in and read through countless conversations with women in different stages of their faith over the last few years, one sadness comes up again and again.

“I have always been taught that God loves me. And now I am worried that that was wrong–what if God really does think all these awful things about me?”

This is a sadness that runs deep and fast. Giving voice to it is painful. And even if your mind tells you that of course God doesn’t hate you, of course this is the result of mortal failings, of course your eternal worth is equal to that of your brothers……. there’s still a little cloud overhead. And it’s dark, and heavy, and threatening rain.

So many women have experienced this sadness, this acute doubt. All for the sake of the institution preserving itself, justifying itself, and quieting criticism.

And that makes me mad.