Agenda Pushing is Futile

Of course we all have agendas. Fox News does. Oprah does. My mom certainly does. I know I do, even though I try not to. I catch myself forcing my agenda everyday, whether that is for my daughter to love reading, my husband to put his dirty socks in the laundry hamper (not the floor), or my neighbors to agree with me that our mayor stinks because she pushes an agenda I don't agree with. I know I do this, but I really don't want to do this. I want to be free from agenda pushing. I really got sick of it all when I was an undergraduate and my entire family fell apart because of agenda pushing. (Well, my family fell apart long before that, but it all came to an ugly head then.) I consciously decided then to stop judging people (still working on that) and to just let people live their lives. It is much too stressful to try to control others' thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is futile.

So, that's why I figure my students will figure things out for themselves. And, that is why I don't like agendas. But, we all have them. I have definitely pursued a feminist perspective in my class, as did Whitby, with the marriage readings. Many of my students had the same ideas yours did: that they would get married (in the temple) and live happily ever after. Well, I knew this wasn't true (see family crisis above) so I tried to help my students to see the point of view the authors' were taking. The authors were realistic about marriage and family and having children. I like realism. Apparently, however, my students have a few more years of life before they will agree with me. I'm okay with that. I did not get upset or try to push them further. I just gave them my perspective and reaction to the texts and moved on.

My next example is a little off topic, but I am wondering if you, as LDS feminist women and as a transplant to Utah and therefore an observer of LDS culture, would find yourselves as frustrated as I was in this situation. I attended a neighborhood book club a few years ago (yes, trouble already). When I suggested a book, which had a single mother suffering from depression and therefore neglecting her kids in it, the women were in an uproar. They all criticized the character heavily and vowed that nobody ever acted like that and if they did act that way, they had no excuse or reason for doing so. They promoted this perfect ideal of wife and mother, one that always held it together, even when their husband left for another woman (or man!). They absolutely could not empathize with the character nor could they understand her. They did not want to. So, have any of you run into this very naive attitude toward life among LDS people? I just wondered at that book club how many of them would change their feelings in a few years once their husbands left, or they suffered from depression, or their children "strayed." What do you think?

Maybe I was trying to push my agenda and I'm just sore that it didn't take!