36: Learning by Sad Experience: Testimonies of Women Pt 2 - 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy: Difference between revisions

* [https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=328146 Mary Jane Mount Tanner Autobiography]

* Emmeline Wells Diaries:

  | transcript = [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbfUBqjXVpw&t=00h00m00s 00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. As always, I recommend listening to these episodes in order, or at least going through and searching the different topics that when when questions may arise, because most likely I've already done an episode on it. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 36, which will be part two of the testimonies of women. In this episode, we will look at the differences between what women believed when they were young and naive and inexperienced compared to how those beliefs sometimes changed over the years of living with experience. We will also look at the differences between women's public statements and their private sentiments, so we can try to get further to get closer to the truth through the testimonies of women. Thank you for joining us as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. I want to again thank all of those who have so generously contributed to this podcast. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your help, and I want to also invite anyone who feels Able or inclined to um donate. I would very much appreciate your support as well. So, OK, so this one has been a struggle for me. I've actually, this is my second attempt recording the entire thing, so let's hope that I feel better about it this time. There's just so much information to include that it's hard to know what to cut out and what to include, so I'm going to do my best, but I even struggled knowing what to call this one because there are two main. Topics that I want to cover. One is learning by sad experience, which I guess I am talking about sort of my own experience of being rather naive and ignorant, and then coming to a different, you know, coming to a different understanding with experience. I want to trace that story in some women's lives. But what I really wanted to call it as well was public versus private sentiment. Because that is a very important thing to look at. So we're going to look in depth at that as well to try to, um, again, OK, so I should also clarify this is part two of three that we will be doing on um the the testimonies of women because there's so much to include in so many different perspectives that we need to bring. I think it is a challenging topic because I want to elevate the voices of women, right? We want to believe women. The problem we have there is that we can't just take a single thing a woman says out of context or in a vacuum and use that to proclaim truth. I think that that does a great disservice to the women who women whose experiences we want to understand, right? So while these are complicated topics, my rule of thumb is going to be that when we are searching for truth, more information is always better than less information, right? So instead of, I feel like insisting that we just take certain things that women said because they go along with our own agenda, right? I think that that is not really Um, doing justice to these women instead of doing that, I think that we should try to gain as much understanding as we can about these women. We should take the time to consider the context of their words. We should look at the situations that they were living in, the power that was being exerted in their lives, the beliefs that were shaping their perceptions and the motivations behind. Their words and actions. So that's what I really want to try to do in this episode as we talk about more ways to understand women's voices and share more examples. Another challenge we have is that we want to believe the testimonies of women, right? But we have to ask which women because

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbfUBqjXVpw&t=00h03m56s 00:03:56] this really this Interesting period of early Utah that we're going to look at look at was the women versus the women, right? It was the Mormon women versus the non-Mormon women living in Utah and um both of them were going up against each other. It's just fascinating. I don't want to call it a girl fight because that's demeaning. It's way more profound than that. But um it's, it's just such a cool time period to look at, and we need to listen to the testimonies and the voices of all of the women, not just select a few little things from a few little women and pretend that that's how we can find truth. So first, before we go on, so I um I'm going to be more careful to not make promises. right? We are going to do another, um, a third part on the testimonies of women, and I'm planning to do that next, but I, I didn't plan on doing two episodes in between part one and part two that we're doing now. So we're finally doing part two, but I hope you'll remember, um, it probably was episode 33 where we talked about the great indignation. Um, yes, and that meeting that they had in that episode, so that was part one of women of the testimonies of women, and I guess in a way episode 34 could have been part two because it was um Jenny Anderson Frey and the anti-polygamy Society. So those were the the that was the other side, right? Testimonies of women that were opposing polygamy. So, um, so I didn't call that part two, but in a way maybe it was. So, um, anyway, I, I loved a comment that somebody made about that episode 33 because I didn't explain it quite as well as I wanted to. And so I want to recap what this was written by T Hatz and I want to thank T Hatz for this comment. I know that's not your real name, but thank you for this excellent comment. It says, I think the most important takeaway from this episode is that the women of Utah were given the incredible opportunity to discuss whatever they wished at a time when polygamy specifically was the topic on everyone's minds. The country was listening. This was their moment to bear repeated forceful testimony of the truthfulness of celestial marriage, and the result was a handful of single sentences spread out over many, many talks. See, that's what I didn't, I, I realized I pulled out the little tiny pieces where they did talk specifically about polygamy, but I didn't give the the whole context of all of, of how little that really was in the scope of the entire meeting. So I'm glad that this comment pointed that out. This was their moment to gather every righteous happy polygamist wife to the proverbial microphone and let her show the world just what they were missing out on, and they only found a couple women. The silence on the topic speaks much, much more loudly than the fiveish minutes or of so-called testimony. So that, that was, um, I thought a great comment to sum up what I should have made the how I should have better made the point in episode 33 about the great indignation. Really, it seems to me the main thing these women are doing is defending their community, as I said before, right? Polygamy just happened to be what their community was doing, but their testimonies in those meetings weren't based in in in polygamy. So the first thing I want to talk about in this episode now is a meeting, well,