Skip to content
Main Street Plaza

A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.

Main Street Plaza

A Community for Anyone Interested in Mormonism.

The Home Economics of Testosterone

Hellmut, October 8, 2007October 8, 2007

On occasion of ECS’s post on Feminist Mormon Housewives about the benefits of home economics, I remembered how my father had taught my brother and me how to maintain our wardrobes.

My father was a career soldier. Of course, every soldier has to be able to maintain his gear in the field and to appear properly dressed on the parade ground.

It would be hard to find a modern institution that embraces male gender stereotypes more enthusiastically than the military. At the same time, the military could never work if it did not incorporate and celebrate behaviors that are supposedly female.

Look at a uniform, for example. I have never seen a woman as dolled up as General Petraeus witnessing before Congress last week: all that shiny stuff on his uniform emphasizing group membership, hierarchy and merit. It’s better than make-up.

And speaking of make-up, soldiers wear that too. Only the Queen wears better hats than military personnel, and the military is even into choreography.

And without home making skills, soldiers cannot sustain themselves.

If you don’t polish your shoes then you will get sick from wet feet. The same is true if you cannot keep your jacket closed because you tore off all your buttons. If soldiers don’t clean the latrine, cholera will soon claim more victims than the enemy.

Home economics is similarly important to fire fighters and, may be, to a lesser degree to police officers. Of course, in most countries there are female soldiers, fire fighters, and police officers today. The point that I am trying to make, however, is that gender stereotypes really do not make much sense when stereotypically male enterprises cannot be sustained without carefully integrating stereotypically female qualities.

When it comes to Mormonism, I probably agree with eighty percent of General Relief Society President Julie Beck’s advice during general conference. She is demonstrably wrong, however, when she limits her advice to mothers. Our mothers and grandmothers could not live that way and neither can we.

Not only shouldn’t we limit women so narrowly but men have to master the basics of home economics to survive and prosper as well. Since these skills do play a role in various professional environments and since we are living in a time of transition with respect to professional gender roles, it is probably fair to say that fathers have to play a special role in teaching home making skills and their application in various professional domains to their children.

Seeing young men in white un-ironed shirts, missionaries in dark suits but unpolished shoes is simultaneously amusing and sad. It is amusing because it is a manifestation of the bizarre results generated by the pedagogy of check lists that is so popular among Mormon leaders and their manuals. It is a sad commentary, however, on our parenting efforts.

Those phenomena reveal a lack of manners and the absence of a sense of propriety among our children that reflect poorly on parents and LDS youth programs.

Neither my father nor my family were perfect. In fact, he was a troubled person who made matters difficult for us and himself. However, there were some lessons that he taught us well. That includes basic home making skills that are relevant in many endeavors from serving in the military to operating in a bureaucratic environment, entertaining at home, and to asserting one’s autonomy as an individual.

With notable exceptions, it is probably safe to say that manners and dress code are not a strong suit of corridor culture. May be, some of that has to do with the confused notion of gender roles that LDS leaders are trying to propagate.

PS: Wanna see some guys in make-up? Youtube presents Panzergrenadiers like my dad. Can you feel the testosterone?

Advice Appearances Family Manners Parenting Patriarchy Sex and Gender

Post navigation

Previous post
Next post

Related Posts

Idaho Local TV Report Asks: What Is A Family?

June 24, 2009October 20, 2010
Read More

The Bishop’s Daughter

April 2, 2007January 15, 2011

Cross-posted from Fiddley.com ——————– Back in 1969, my grandfather was the Bishop in the Monument Park Stake on the very exclusive, very Mormon, east bench of Salt Lake City, Utah. This was at a time where there were only, believe it or not, eight stakes in the Salt Lake valley….

Read More

Gay People Do Exist – Coming out to my Grandparents

July 11, 2012July 11, 2012

Gay People Do Exist! Coming Out to My Grandparents My grandparents were/are committed Christians. They’ve taught 3rd and 4th grade Sunday school for as long as I can remember. On the infrequent occasions when I attended their church, from kindergarten until I was about 12, I always pulled up a…

Read More

Comment

  1. ru612476 says:
    February 26, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    vimos nydizyzo gekma
    roti http://ru612476.rlvvpvs.net/sitemap13.html [url=http://ru612476.rlvvpvs.net/sitemap13.html ]mero[/url] zamiv

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Mormon Alumni Association Books

Latest Comments:

  1. termal kamerayla su kaçak tespiti on LDS vs LGBTQ:  Nathan Kitchen sheds false binariesJune 21, 2025

    termal kamerayla su kaçak tespiti Ekip çok organize, kaça?? an?nda bulup çözdüler. https://bence.net/read-blog/25188

  2. Cara B. Klein on My conspiracy theory #2April 26, 2025

    Wow, I had never thought about it in that way before You have really opened my eyes to a new…

  3. chanson on LDS vs LGBTQ:  Nathan Kitchen sheds false binariesApril 16, 2025

    The haiku at the end is lovely. Sounds like a great book!

  4. Donna Banta on LDS vs LGBTQ:  Nathan Kitchen sheds false binariesApril 14, 2025

    I imagine anyone who has tried to change the church from within will identify with Kitchen's story. I especially like…

  5. Johnny Townsend on LDS vs LGBTQ:  Nathan Kitchen sheds false binariesApril 14, 2025

    This was a painful review to read. For many years, I held the same hope, that the LDS church would…

8: The Mormon Proposition Acceptance of Gays Add new tag Affirmation angry exmormon awards Book Reviews BYU comments Conformity Dallin H. Oaks DAMU disaffected mormon underground Dustin Lance Black Ex-Mormon Exclusion policy Excommunicated exmormon faith Family feminism Gay Gay Love Gay Marriage Gay Relationships General Conference Happiness Homosexual Homosexuality LDS LGBT LGBTQ Link Bomb missionaries Modesty Mormon Mormon Alumni Association Mormonism motherhood peace politics Polygamy priesthood ban Sunstone temple

Awards

William Law X-Mormon of the Year:

  • 2023: Adam Steed
  • 2022: David Archuleta
  • 2021: Jeff T. Green
  • 2020: Jacinda Ardern
  • 2019: David Nielsen
  • 2018: Sam Young
  • 2017: Savannah
  • 2016: Jeremy Runnells
  • 2015: John Dehlin
  • 2014: Kate Kelly
  • 2013: J. Seth Anderson and Michael Ferguson
  • 2012: David Tweede
  • 2011: Joanna Brooks
  • 2010: Monica Bielanko
  • 2009: Walter Kirn

Other Cool Sites!

WasMormon.org
©2025 Main Street Plaza | WordPress Theme by SuperbThemes