EP 129: Mormon Feminist Lays Down the Law: Get to Know Abby Hansen!

a [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey everybody Welcome to the Mormon news Roundup we have a giant episode on Top here we have literally a threein one episode we have a normal fantastic episode with Abby Hansen a legend of feminist podcasting there's literally a documentary about this woman that you can watch on Netflix she's going to give us all the down and dirty about everything that's happening in Mormonism then we're going to get some transgender updates from cult's Channel over at the cultural Hall Show over on YouTube and then finally we're going to get McKenzie Vance and the ballerina farm this is a threein one episode there's also the ability here folks for us to have the after show a call-in program at the end of the show if you follow the link you can interact with your humble Host this is going to be a fantastic episode I can't wait to share it with you welcome to the Mormon news Roundup your goto source for the latest headlines and critical analysis on all things LDS breaking news join DV Mormon news round up that's talent on loan from every Sunday and Monday night we will uncover the truth behind the news that matters most to the Mormon Community welcome brothers and sisters to the weekly Mormon news Rand up I am your humble host DB and that is Talent on loan from collab it's August 20th of 2024 this is episode 129 we have a giant episode on hands here every week my crew and I week ruminate on the great and spacious beehive so thanks so much for joining us to discuss the current events in Mormonism I'd like to welcome on to my program my fabulous co-host Abby Abby how's it going good hi DB it's great to have you on the program now what is your one minute Mormon story who are you and what are you all about I'm on here as a Mormon feminist I grew up in Utah in Davis County and then I went to BYU I came from a family with two convert parents I don't have any extended Mormon family members but we were very Orthodox very believing and very faithful I got married in the temple at BYU I became a stay-at home mom a couple years later I started having kind of questions and doubts around the age of 25 about homosexuality and gay marriage it just didn't quite line up for me what we were teaching and I think I spent about 5 years trying to come to peace with that and I finally decided when I was about 30 years old that I disagreed with the church that we were wrong about this and it was a big thing we were wrong about and so another year or two passed and ordained women came on to the scene when I was about 32 and went to Temple Square the first time and I think because I had spent five years changing my opinion about gay marriage it took me about 5 hours to be totally converted to morbin feminism and to realize yeah I've never thought about this in my life but I do think women should be ordained to the priesthood and we should be equal and I and it opened up a whole new world to me something I'd never thought about I became really involved in ordering women there's even a documentary a really great documentary made by a Netflix documentary filmmaker that got nominated for a bafta that you can watch about my experience and I took the first group of women into the marot center to priesthood session back in 2014 so I was really involved kind of in that scene and I started blogging for exponent 2 just over five years ago and I've written at least once a month since then and I'm really involved in the exponent community and online feminism and then I am now here that sounds absolutely tremendous and that does remind me how do you like this thumbnail here Mormon feminist lays down the law what do you think about that it looks great I'll try to lay down a nice friendly law that's me very nice and what is our agenda here what are we going to be discussing on today's Mormon news Roundup episode Secret Lives of Mormon wives ballerina Farm talking about Mormon Trad wives beauty standards for LDS women in leadership that's a post that I put up on exponent this week and then we are going to talk about the part that I think is most important which is the LDS handbooks transgender updates sounds absolutely fantastic let's Jump Right In Here this is still percolating out there we've covered this for a number of weeks in a row but it is still really really hot out there and literally in multiple ways here The Secret Lives of Mormon wives they're The Talk of the Town T okay and this is a little bit unusual here because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints has released an official statement in response to Hulu's upcoming The Secret Lives of Mormon wives in which the church said that they decry the idea that there are media Productions that distort the faith of the church and more specifically even a linking into the hashtag secrets on Hulu and part of the um explanation here says the Church of Jesus Christ a Latter Day Saints like other prominent Global Faith Comm commities often finds itself the focus and of the attention of the entertainment industry some portrayals are fair and accurate but others resort to stereotypes of gross misrepresentations that are in portas and have real life consequences for people of Faith so Abby why is it that the church has come out with a particular statement on this I mean there's a million Mormon Tik toks out there the church doesn't release anything about those there's lots of YouTube channels but the church has decided to weigh in on this particular issue it seems like the Secret Lives of Mormon Wives has really gotten under the church's SK skin it has it's also gotten under the skin of so many of my female Mormon friends like people have been sharing around I know we have in a upcoming slides some of the stuff that people have been sharing around I can't answer why specifically that the church has decided to come out about this but I do have some thoughts on the issue as far as why so many people are getting so up in arms over it including like said a lot of different Mormon women I have another friend an exponent blogger named Ken Olive who is a therapist IST and she talked about the idea that women are so wrapped up in their Mormon identity and it's so important to them that when someone attacks the Mormon church or makes the Mormon Church look a certain way that doesn't reflect who they are it's really stressful for them and they feel like they need to come out and defend it and say it's wrong and I was thinking about other identities that I have like I'm an army wife and if a show came out that said The Secret Lives of Army Wives and it had women having Affairs during their husband's deployment ments you know I wouldn't feel like I needed to come out on Facebook and everywhere and say this is not me I did not have any Affairs on any of my husband's deployments I wouldn't feel that because my identity isn't so wrapped up in it and I feel like that's why a lot of people are getting really agitated by this yeah let's take a look here even on Latter Day St manare we have Maurice Proctor August 18th 2024 just a short time ago who says why Hulu's The Secret Lives of Mormon wives series is so offensive the ancient Hulu might as well well stand for hit job noting the number of time the company has oper Productions about latterday saints that are both Grievous misrepresentations of the faith and disdainful stereotypes of our people is this just anti-mormonism and persecution complex or is this actually an offensive production even though it hasn't been released what do you think I think it's reality TV like if we don't know already in 2024 that reality TV is going to be sensationalized and over the top no one's going to watch it and be like oh my gosh I didn't know that all Mormon women were actually Secret swingers like we obviously know that's not the case it's frustrating because the church's statement talks about the millions and millions of people that you know adhere to this faith and you know that woman talking about how this doesn't represent our faith the church really loves to talk about their numbers like their membership numbers about how we have over 17 million people in the church and we all know that out of those 17 million members there are lots of people who are inactive and who do not follow the church's moral standards at all but we count everybody if they've been baptized or blessed and they're on the records we count them forever so it feels really insincere to say to want to brag about 17 million members all the time but then to say but not these ones they don't represent us if you want to count those women on your roles then you have to claim them they could go step it back and say actually we only have about three or four million active members who have Temple recommends who hold up all of our standards and do what we tell them to do then that would be accurate and they could put these women down but they can't have it both ways I guess that's something that's frustrating that's very interesting now there is a program out there that has a conservative LDS bent to it's called word radio and they talked about Hulu's exploitation of Mormon women and that the show has crossed the line and they take great issue here with one of the thumbnails of the program which has the secret lies of Mormon wives the women in front of the Provo Temple can you describe that picture out there for those of us who are in podcast land and can't necessarily see it sure it's got the Old Provo Temple and it's got all of these women in a row in front of it holding hands I think it's supposed to kind of be handmaid's tail right handmaid tail yes they're all holding hands wearing matching coat it's obviously done kind of in poor taste and to sensationalize and to get people I'm sure they wanted to get people talking about it and people riled up they're in it for the clicks no doubt about it they're really there to rile people up I do want to get one take here this is a one minute clip where they talk about this particular show okay is this a hit job or is it actually represent a small portion of latterday Saint women let's just watch the first minute of this which is entitled dear Hulu stop messing with sacred spaces you do not mess with sacred spots like this is crossing a line for a reason Macy I need you to twerk your my goal was really just to be able to Prov for my family bye like I like somebody just take the wheel for a second while I gather my thoughts please okay well it gets better so then they all start swinging with each other Megan you lie like a dog Britney no they all get drunk party and they swing it's so tacky and it's so classless and such a repulsive misrepresentation of Our Fate and I'm sick to death of people coming after us stop treating us like lwh hanging f grp they claim to still be members I wish that the church would take more of a stance instead of just a statement I wish there was more call to action from the church instead of individual members feeling like we have to step up and have a call to action ourselves like why isn't the church doing a lawsuit why isn't the church excommunicating those people maybe they did I don't know why is it up to individual members I I think it's valuable though to show that like this is seriously concerning for anyone in the church actually have a one good point here that the church could sue Hulu because the church owns the copyright to the word Mormon and in fact if you go back to Heather Gray from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City she wrote the Memoir bad Mormon and got sued by the church so technically yes the church could sue Hulu for using the word Mormon but they haven't what's your reaction to the stop missing with sacred spaces here and these very conservative Latter-Day Saint women again like I said before these women have every right to claim Mormon especially because we don't use the word Mormon anymore to describe ourselves like it feels like it's up for grabs maybe another reaction I have on the same topic I'll give you like a feminist take how's that since you have a Mormon feminist on I just notice how much we go after women when they are behaving badly because it is tacky like they said it's not meant to be full of class or anything elegant or well representing Mormon women but we go after women who are in consensual adult sexual relationships they're swingers and you can like that or not but they're not doing anything illegal or wrong while at the same time in our church our early male church leaders behaved very much like these women like if we're really being honest these leaders especially the higher up you got in the 1800s as our church was founding the more sexual partners these men were able to have and of course we called it polygamy and we said it was ordained by God but it had a lot of really gross things that happened it would men in their 50s and 60s you know who already had 27 sexual partners taking underage girls as brides and you know these older men getting 15-year-old girls pregnant immediately and so we take these men and we make Sunday school manuals out of their teachings and we hold them up as prophets we put them on a pedestal but then when there are women who are doing something similar but it's not ordained by the church we call them tacky and gross and maybe it's all all tacky and gross but could we call all of it for what it is it's all bad behavior but we tend to really focus on women that's an interesting double standard that I hadn't really considered and if you look at the picture here I don't see a lot of disrespect of the Provo Temple here they're literally just holding hands in front of the temple which by the way no longer exists I don't see any twerking I don't see any people who are ridiculing the church beliefs it's just a photo that anyone can go onto the uh Provo Temple grounds and take a picture of it I don't see that they've messed with a sacred space and I don't see the issue here but there you brought this to my attention what's going on with change.org some people want to cancel this thing what's going on just more of the same the same vein of thinking of this is unfair we're being persecuted this doesn't represent us it's just more people trying to control The Narrative of what it means to be Mormon I don't think you get to do that if you're claiming these people in your church good point for those of you out there listening can you leave us a festar review can you give us a thumbs up leave us a comment in the comments section what do you think of this new production that Hulu is putting on is it a cheap shot is it a hit job are these people defiling sacred spaces or are they trying to reconcile their faith and their 2024 ideals in the best way that they know how let us know in the comments we'd be very grateful for that in the same vein here we also have the uh ballerina farm and the problem with Choice how the debate is dividing LDS women and Utah's Hannah needlman and a recent profile of the internet influencer have become a tests in a long-standing sensitive conversation around latterday Saint women and the freedom of self-determination Hannah here is really taking the internet bya storm in fact there was a podcast on her on Mormon stories and she's really making the rounds what do you think of the so-called ballerina Farm adherent here that's been a really interesting conversation to follow among Mormon feminists we've covered some of that on the exponent blog as well we had a woman come in and write about leaving her Opera career to become a mom one thing I kind of have realized just any anything that's covered by news media everybody's going to get everything wrong she's a business she's putting on a show she's performing she's a performer she's performing and I don't know how to judge her or pick apart her life or anything my friend Ashley who wrote that about leaving her Opera career what I think I can offer there's this divide there's women who are saying oh she's such a great example and other women especially Mormon feminists who are frustrated by her and are saying oh this is a bad situation and I think what's happening is a lot of women especially women my age I'm 43 so I grew up in the 80s and 90s I went through the young women's program in the 1990s and I started BYU fall of 1999 and I think a lot of women my age learned that we were only allowed to seek motherhood and getting married as young as we can having babies staying at home that seeking a career seeking education having Ambitions and goals outside of wife and mother were not okay for us and so a lot of us set aside dreams that we had when we met someone who wanted to get married I met my husband when I was still 19 and I got married when I was 21 and I hadn't wanted to get married in college and I didn't really get excited about having babies and I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom but I did it all on faith because I had been taught that this was what God wanted me to do and that it's what would make me the most fulfilled and happy and I think a lot of us are now reaching our midlife and we're realizing that oh we have especially our kids are getting older and we have more free time and we're not as busy with little kids we're realizing like the last couple decades of our life we put all of the eggs in our husband's basket not just his career and his education and his resume but just like his the ability to like self-actualize and like improve and learn new things and meet with CEOs and travel the world on business trips and get promotions and stuff and we're seeing our like my husband has two very successful careers he is a in the Army he's got a really successful army career and he's very successful he's a manager at eBay and I look back and I think wow the reason why he's so successful at those things is because I was willing to step back and say I won't have a job I will handle everything at home during your long deployments I'll take care of the kids I'll have babies while you're deployed I'll run everything in the background and I'm having that realization now where if you had asked me you know 10 years ago 15 years ago I probably would have answered a lot like Hannah neilan from ballerina Farm I would have said no my life is great I'm so happy I'm following the prophet I'm doing what I'm supposed to do and I think some of us with a little more perspective are like Hannah might feel like us in a decade and she might look back and say wow I dropped my dream of being a ballerina so fast because a man asked me to marry him and I felt like I needed to be a wife and mother and so I think a lot of us are maybe projecting our younger selves on her and feeling that pain and frustration and regret that we made choices based on what Spencer W Kimble and you know president Benson said we had to do to be good women again just going back to exponent blog there was a fantastic guest post this week by a woman who went through her young women's manuals and she pulled out all of the quotes and all the things that we were taught that said it's sinful to want anything other than motherhood and so when we look at Hannah nean giving up ballet all of those memories come back to us I think of all the things that we gave up to follow the prophet and how a lot of us regret it and wish we could go back and make a different choice we saw that with the general Release Society president as well Camille Johnson who recently released some information that was brought out by the church about how she was a successful lawyer in the corporate sphere at the same time that these messaging coming from president Benson president Kimbell said that women go home that was literally the title of the conference address but she ignored that now she's been promoted to the highest position that a woman can have in the church and people are naturally asking the question how do you reconcile not following the church's Council for so long and now the church is trotting her out as an example for all of us to follow now as far as this uh ballerina Farm here you know she has a crew of people that assist her and I understand that she doesn't have any nannies but she is extraordinarily wealthy I mean she has her husband is worth a lot of money her father-in-law is the founder of JetBlue so her husband is worth I don't know millions and her father-in-law is worth billions of dollars you know one of the wealthiest men around that really helps when you're trying to put together this unbelievable idealized life here and these pictures are just absolutely remarkable you know this family is a very handsome family it's the idealized version I mean this is really go back to like 1950s Mormonism this is what the picture if you could have put it an into general conference this is what it would have looked like literally out on a farm as a social influencer though with millions of followers able to bring home money on your own and she has access to this money and you know fitness trainers and nutritionists and things that most women don't even have a possibility of you know having those access to those type of things it's an idealized version that I wouldn't call it the Trad wife but some people have put that label on it it's a tough ideal messaging to give to other women I'm really curious to see what Hannah is like 10 years from now 20 years from now I'm really curious if she'll continue saying the same things she's saying now yeah if you look at this picture she's also a not only is she a successful a farm operator not only does she have millions of followers she's also a beauty queen I believe she was the Miss Idaho beauty queen and and she was also M Utah America as well she's just balancing everything in here um she's putting her life out there the real question here Abby is why does ballerina Farm make moms so mad oh I think there's as many answers as there are women to that there are some women who are mad because they are making it look like this impossible lifestyle should be the standard for women and so some women are mad about that some when we're mad like the reasons that I'm talking about where we look at it and we see our situation and think oh my God she's doing exactly what I did you know I she's throwing everything away she's making other people mad because they're like oh my gosh I wish I had billions of dollars to back everything and to not worry about the day-to-day things that most regular people stress about and then some people love her and just think she's a fantastic example of motherhood and Mormonism and understanding her role and divine calling in life and all of us are wrong because none of us actually know her so any of the opinions any of us form are going to be wrong if you go back and look at the Daily Mail article that was an interview of her a couple of weeks ago she talked about how the stress of her Farm life and keeping up appearances has literally made it so that she could not get out of bed for a week at a time that does not seem healthy to me you know Mormonism really teaches you to have an outward facing appearances we're going to talk about very very soon of perfection and not that only not only goes with your family about being a parent but it's about your physical presence as well and it seems like that exhaustion has taken a toll on her I definitely do wish her the very best but this type of lifestyle is quite a challenge to be able to keep up appearances keep up and be on the top of everything have 15% body fat you know always have a smile on your face you know always shovel things under the rug that might be uh personal struggles in your own life I wonder about the healthiness of that type of situation what's your last thoughts here on the ballerina farm and M needleman Let's do an update podcast 15 years from now and see ifg survived and stayed the same I do wish them the very best there's no doubt about that your article here this week what did you write in the exponent about the beauty standards for LDS women in leadership this is the post I put up this month uh there's been stuff in the news right now about plastic surgery in Utah I have a whole list of blog posts I've written and never actually got around to publishing and I was like oh this is a good one to go with the theme that everyone's talking about right now so I pulled it out what I had done is I had looked at all of the women's General auxiliary presidents not the counselors but just the presidents because they are all chosen by men women in the relas society do not choose their own leaders what is there an unconscious bias uh do is there a do the Brethren have a type that they look at and choose as leaders and yes they do uh the majority of women look very similar they have the same blonde hair they have the same type of you know traditional beauty standards they have they're thin they're white and there's nothing wrong with any of them like to be clear there beautiful women but they're also talented capable women the question is just Are there women who aren't meeting this specific physical Beauty standard criteria that is probably an unconscious bias that these men who are choosing our leaders have and are these women not even being put into consideration because they don't look like what the men think they should look like what I noticed in the article that you brought out number one is there seems to be a double standard because if you look at the Quorum of the 15 no offense but no one would mistake these gentlemen for being part of a beauty pageant of any of any kind it doesn't seem like the male leadership physical appearance matters at all but when you look at the female leadership there seems to be a striking similarity in a particular type that is preferred by the people who call these individuals into these positions which of course is men there's a double standard here and that's why you wrote in the article is physical Beauty important for women called into positions of influence in the church and it's not just at the general Release Society letter level or at the Young women's leadership level or at the Sunday School level you also point out that this also seems to have an effect at least anecdotally at the local level at the state callings the Relief Society it seems like this is a permeated thing that is taking place throughout the church as a woman in the church and having been a lifelong member of the church and the wide variety of my friends are also Mormon or postm Mormon women something that I've really recognized in like past few years has been how much women have very little power and influence other than our looks we don't get called to callings on our own but we can by being married to a man who gets a high calling for example a mission president you know I remember being a teenage girl and girls would say oh I want to grow up and be a mission president's wife someday we don't have a lot of things that we can aspire to ourselves so we can have a man pick us who is going to go a lot of places in life and in church callings and that can get us a leg up or we can be noticed by local leaders ship or top leadership if the bishop thinks that we have the right look and that we're cool he might call us to be in charge of the teenage girls for a few years for example but everything we do has to get the attention of a man first does that contribute to the high levels of plastic surgery here in Utah for women you know does that lead to frustrating experiences uh for women who don't fit those ideal beauty standards it's an interesting thing and I've seen it myself doing it yeah you brought it up in your article that it's not just in the recent past that you've established that phenomenon but if you actually go back and look at the general presidents of the Release Society you also noted that there's something going on there too what did you notice about going back even in Mormon history not just the current Administration what I said with this image that I made was the top row plus part of the second row all of those women were polygamous wives of Top Male leadership so what is worse is it in the past when you had to be sleeping with a general authority to get a calling of power as a woman or now when you have to fit into a narrow Beauty standard I don't know they're both terrible I produced a video on this particular topic here I sometimes release short videos and hopefully I did this article Justice it's about 3 minutes long I want to play it for you and hopefully you'll enjoy what I did for that I run our Instagram page and I do a lot on our Facebook I've just just reactivated in the last few months it would be so fun to have like a Tik Tok page or something another way to reach young especially to reach younger women in the church everyone today I'm diving into a topic that's thought-provoking and honestly quite eye openening our beauty standards shaping leadership in the LDS church so here's the Scoop Abby Hansen an insightful author recently wrote an article that explores how physical appearance might influence the selection of female leaders within the LDS church imagine this recent female leaders seem to fit a particular mold thin blonde and conventionally attractive this raises an essential question are qualified women being excluded simply because they don't match these narrow beauty standards Hansen points out that male leaders primarily choose female leaders which could unintentionally perpetuate these biases think about it most female leaders are white and adhere to traditional Beauty Norms it makes you wonder would we see a broader range of women in leadership roles if female church members had more say now this isn't about discrediting those who are chosen it's about examining the systemic factors that might limit opportunities for women who don't fit a specific mold and let's be real women in the church might feel pressured to conform to these beauty standards Utah's High rate of cosmetic surgery might be a clue here's a bright spot though Barbara Thompson she was a former counselor in the Relief Society General presidency and didn't fit the typical mold many admired her relatable appearance but she also faced harsh criticism for not conforming to Conventional beauty standards this example showcases the double bind women fa striving for diverse representation but also facing resistance greater representation of women with diverse appearances in leadership roles could shift perceptions and create a more inclusive environment imagine leaders who reflect a broader spectrum of body types ages and ethnicities it could Inspire younger generations and challenge the notion that leadership TI look Abby Hansen advocates for a more inclusive selection process where women have a more prominent voice in choosing their leaders this shift could lead to a wider range of women being recognized for their leadership qualities regardless of their physical appearance ultimately it's about creating a more Equitable and representative Church a church where all women feel seen valued and empowered to lead let's keep the conversation going and work towards a more inclusive future thanks for tuning in and don't forget to like share and subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions catch you next time I don't want to look pretty anymore I always put a joke in at the end of the videos I don't want to be pretty anymore how' I do on the video what's your thoughts about it you did an awesome job there's one part that I want to uh add a little bit onto or correct uh there's at the beginning it says something like female leaders are primarily chosen by male leaders I forgot exactly what the sentence was you would need to change that word from primarily to exclusively no women from W level up to the top General presidencies no women are involved in choosing the leaders of the Relief Society I think lot time times as women in Relief Society I'm a member of the Relief Society we like to tell ourselves stories that make ourselves sound cooler than we are and we always say we are the largest women's organization in the world and that's not true like literally you can Google it and find a dozen women's organizations that are bigger like the YWCA or the National Organization for Women there there's lots of groups that are bigger but we always say that these other groups don't consider us a women's organization even if we had numbers that rivaled theirs we would not be considered a women's organization because we don't choose our own leaders and it would just be absurd to any of them to say you know we're the National Organization for Women we need a new president let's go to a group of men and say hey guys who can we have for our next female president of our female organization and the men said okay let us pick someone for you here you go and if every single President we had for a decade and a half was a beautiful blonde thin Pretty Woman everyone would be like this is very suspicious and so other women-led organizations if you look at their leadership there's so much more variety and it's because women are actually choosing their own leaders so that's the only thing I would add I thought it was an awesome video thank you excellent feedback I appreciate that if you go and look at this picture it is very striking what you put together that's a fascinating look there and it really kind of gets into the idea here of which states are most obsessed with cosmetic surgery and we brought that up in your article which I also referenced in the video and it turns out that Utah is the one of the most obsessed states with plastic surgery in general having second per capita in plastic surgeons in the Salt Lake City in particular only behind Miami and even ahead of places like Los Angeles which is surprising and it is the single most obsessed State when it comes to breast augmentation and it is in general obsessed with plastic surgery to a degree of a tenth out of all of the states and that is in contrast here to the supposedly conservative ideals that the church trots out why is there such a disconnect here between the church's supposed messaging which says that you're not even supposed to have two ear piercings and tattoos are not supposed to be done and yet we see cosmetic surgery at such a high clip in Utah and in latterday Saints in particular in fact there was a study that was recently done by a couple of BYU authors that says that it is absolutely pervasive and that Latter-Day Saints get plastic surgery at a rate of seven times the normal rate how can all of these things be reconciled well we definitely talk about these issues I don't know if we've ever came up with the perfect answer it doesn't surprise me when you realize that as women in a very patriarchal system our only way of getting ahead is like I said before getting a man to notice us and so our looks become our most important character trait what's the word I'm looking for like our best asset commodity yeah commodity yes like I said I have lived in Utah my entire life other than a few months here or there so I can't really compare what it's like here compared to somewhere else but I live in Utah County in very densely Mormon populated city and I know a lot of women who have had mommy makeovers and breast augmentation I can name so many just like I can think of a whole bunch of people like oh and her and her and her and her but I probably am missing a whole bunch funny side note I remember talking to my husband a few years back and saying there are women in our W who've had breast augmentations but I'm not going to tell you who they are because that's I don't want to like they confidently or told me in confidentiality that they had had one and my husband said oh was it her her and her and I said oh you already know and he said didn't you know literally I would never notice that a woman had a boob job in a million years unless she specifically told me I guess that's probably because I am a straight woman and my husband said well she'd been flat forever and one day she walked into church and she was a double D you really didn't notice and I was like no I don't have that DNA that you have as a guy so anyways I I'm sure there's more women that I just don't know about and and it's crazy because you're right we look so down on someone for getting a tattoo or getting an extra ear piercing or we have in the past and yet no one says anything about like literally going under the knife and in my very limited again experience of knowing who has had plastic surgery I have two friends at two different places in my life over the past 15 years who have had lifethreatening complications from uh tummy top because it's a major abdominal surgery and those are just the friends that I know about and they were embarrassed to tell anyone cuz they were embarrassed that they almost died from something that seemed vain it's such an interesting topic I don't know that I have the answer I've never had any type of cosmetic surgery I don't plan on it maybe I'll change my mind someday and I have nothing against the women who are doing it like go for it it's a very complicated topic I also don't want women to feel pressured like they have to as your article points out if all of the people who are at the top in the most powerful positions in the church if they all have a certain look that sends an explicit message to other women that they need to conformed to traditional beauty standards and part of me putting together that video I actually referenced one of the church Affiliated videos which was the manners for missionaries which talks about sister missionaries and it talks about the Aesthetics and the beauty that sister missionaries are supposed to have now that wasn't an official Church video but it was showed to many missionaries over the years and there was no Poise for elders there's a double standard in this that you're article points out and it can have serious ramifications as you mentioned some people who feel Church pressure to um have these particular procedures they can be life-threatening I mean there can be a lot of harm that comes in this and as you said I I'm not shaming anyone for any choice that they voluntarily make and I'm not here to cast a judgment on you but if you're receiving outside pressure to conform to traditional Beauty Norms in order to try to appease God and that pressure is given to you by the church leadership in my opinion that is harmful what's your last thoughts on your article in the exponent this week every woman watching this you're beautiful and perfect you don't need anything but if if you really want to get a boob job and a tummy tuck after you had eight children I am fully supportive of you sounds like you and your husband have a great relationship by the way that's uh that's very nice I appreciate that that does take us to our final article here and this is the biggest news article of the week well this is a thunderbolt across the Blogger knle and across the church as well it's the direction on transgender individuals care of sacred clothing included in church handbook update a major update here on new transgender policies in the church let's watch this video and see what the church has done with regards to the new guidance on transgender members well Brian s first off the church says anyone not seeking a type of transition from their assigned sex at Birth can still enjoy all the Privileges that come with church membership they say now one former members one former W Bishop excuse me acknowledges the changes the changes made today can be difficult for transgender kids I mean to be supportive of the church it's doctor its leaders and not advocating for changes but I just recognize also that that is painful for transgender lty Saints cuz they can't fit in this binary Richard oser hosts listen learn and love a podcast where lgbtq plus church members share their experience I had to listen to trans people to better understand how to support trans people in the reality of their situation church leaders say they're against people pursuing Surgical and Medical transitions or a person changing their names pronouns or the way they dress the disciple of Christ is to validate your pain sit with you in your pain and listen to your story and not say things like You're overthinking this or you should not feel this way transgender people may be hurt by these statements and by these restrictions updates in the church's General handbook say taking these actions will lead to some church membership restrictions that includes receiving or exercising the priesthood getting a temple recommend and serving in church callings first thing I'd say is there's nothing the church has put out to say that the reality of your situation um is in inv valid they're not pointing to a a random study dismissing the reality of people that feel gender dysphoria the first presidency says anyone is still welcome to attend sacrament meeting even if they do Transition from their assigned sex at Birth okay Abby this is the first part of this episode we're going to be dissecting this in great detail here in a moment and get into the actual details here but what are your first thoughts on the church's update to the handbook of instruction with regards to the transgender members I'm really glad that I have you on on this particular episode because I know that this is an an issue that is near and dear to your heart we planned to do an episode together a couple months ago three months ago it's been a while and we had no idea what the news topics were going to be the week that we ended up recording and uh the fact that the transgender handbook changes it feels like the universe like knew what topics I would want to talk about I will say first I am so sorry like I get really emotional here and it's just so dorky I don't know I can't talk about this without crying but I love the transgender community so much and people who are non-binary gender queer um gender expansive whatever term they are comfortable with I remember hearing an author talk about I can't remember the author who said it but she talked about finally getting so fed up with a system that she was ready to throw her body onto the cogs of the machine to stop it because it was hurting so many people and that's how I feel I feel that way about multiple things I feel that way about equality for women and girls in the church and I feel that way about all lgbtq issues but I have such a special place in my heart for the trans Community I have so many so many things that I can say about this topic so I had an interesting experience that taught me about what it means to be transgender and the science and the biology behind it that it's not something that's just in people's head that it's not a mental illness that they're not just making it up and especially that they're not just choosing to sin so I want anyone who is watching this I know a transgender person a closeted or out trans person or non-binary person or someone who's just not sure what they are yet might be watching this and I want them to know that they are perfect and that we are the ones who are wrong the rest of the world we are still trying to figure this out and we will catch up at some point but nothing is wrong with you you are perfect I had a BYU professor back the fall of 1999 his name is Bill Bradshaw and I took biology 101 from him in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in the auditorium with like hundreds of other freshmen and I just would have forgotten about him and never thought about him again but over the years Bill Bradshaw remains to this day an active faithful member of the LDS church he has served as a mission president so he's had higher callings I mean he's a very active engaged man he also has a gay son and he also has I can't remember one or two I think two phds in biology in something smart he knows a lot about biology and he knows a lot about human biology and as a biologist he looked at his gay son and said my son came out of the womb fabulous like very different than his brothers and he said this is not a choice like my gay son did not choose to be gay he has always been this way and so Bill Bradshaw with all of his Brilliance and and his latterday saint faith he really began to study the biological backgrounds and causes of homosexuality and he has expanded into other topics like why is someone transgender so it was really interesting to me I had been learning a lot about the and i' had been making a lot of friends in the transor over the years and then in the fall of 2019 I went to a class taught by Bill Bradshaw it was such a like come ramp full circle moment for me to such an incredible class that he taught at an in Circle event and it was an hourlong class on the biological causes of being transgender and I was like am I 18 years old again like I'm sitting here listening to my BYU professor talk about this for anyone watching this who even if you're a progressive Mormon or you're an active Mormon or a postmormon and you're like I still just can't quite get oh there you go you found him yes that's Bill Bradshaw just a fantastic human being if you don't understand what it means to be transgender yet and you're still thinking I don't understand how someone can have a male body and then just decide one day they're female it sounds crazy it sounds creepy it sounds weird it sounds odd it sounds like they're mentally ill there's lots of great resources online bill Bradshaw is one of them to understand that it is part of normal beautiful expansive human biology what I came to understand from him is that most of us have basically a kindergarten level understanding of how human biology and our gender and sex work we just think like there's male and there's female and you're one of the two and you get together and make babies and that's kind of how it works but it's so much more complex and so much more beautiful than that there's a lot of other things that I have a kindergarten level understanding of like how electricity works if the general population doesn't really understand how electricity works or how the weather really works other than this very basic kindergarten level it doesn't hurt anyone but the fact that so many of us have this kindergarten level understanding of how human biology when it comes to sex works it's hurting people I don't feel like it's right for us to all live in ignorance and misinformation and Bill Bradshaw taught me he's like there is male there is female and then there's this beautiful transition between the two we always look at one way we always look at just external gentia on a baby and we say if it's a boy or a girl but and all these things you can go and research other places but there are so there's chromosomes and hormones and what type of G ads and do your does this body make sperm or eggs or both there's so many different ways where people people don't fit on this binary carefully and closely I just want people to understand if they don't already that this is not something in people's heads there are people who were born with bodies that look female at Birth but they really are on the Spectrum over here and they're much more comfortable masculine presenting or they're in the middle and they're non-binary and they're like really I could go either way to take something that is the way you're born like some people are born with red hair some people are born with dark skin some people are born missing a leg some people have an extra toe the beauty of The Human Experience is so expansive and to put it in a tiny little box where we only have male and we only have female is just so shortsighted and we miss so much Beauty when somebody is born anywhere in here you know the binary male and female here and they're born somewhere along here and they come and they tell us you know what this you guys are all putting me in the female box and I just I feel incredibly uncomfortable there I need to transition to the gender that I feel comfortable in and that I feel like really represents me and my spirit I know a lot of active LDS members who are trans who love the proclamation on the family where it says gender is eternal because they say yeah I know I've been a man for all of eternity and I will be a man for all of eternity and through a birth defect or an Earthly challenge I was born in a body that Dr said looked like female when I was born but I know that my spirit is a man basically Bill Bradshaw just said look people know when they're transgender they know when something is up and a lot of times you don't prove it until later in life when they have a major abdominal surgery and they cut open a woman and they tell her oh do you know you have two testicles inside of you and she says oh my gosh I have never felt fully female this makes so much sense people know just like you know when you have appendicitis or you need your gallbladder out and you say something is wrong something's hurting inside I know I'm having pain I know something's wrong I need to change something if we just looked at them and said you look fine to me I'm uncomfortable with you writhing in pain on the floor could you please stop and just sit up and act normal that's what we're telling people who are transgender it's not a small thing I I think we take the idea that prophets and apostles don't have to have any kind of Earthly training or any credentials in an area to speak on a topic that goes back to 14 fundamentals of following the prophet if you're familiar with that for sure that's wrong we need experts we need people like Bill Bradshaw oh and the greatest thing that I loved about him was at the end of that class that I went to back in 2019 someone raised their hand and said Dr Bradshaw are you concerned about church discipline because what you're teaching goes against like church doctrine and they said are you worried about like getting excommunicated or something what will happen to you and Bill Bradshaw just sighed and he said the only thing I worry about is that I am getting really old and I'm not going to be around that much longer there is so much education that still needs to happen at all levels of the church I'm not worried about any of that I'm worried I might die before I get a chance to tell enough people about this boy when I ask you to give some introductory comments you hold back do you I you know what I anyone who knows me knows I can talk for a very long time that is a good thing and that's why um your blog posts are so great now let's actually get into the actual policies here this was from gay stories this is the actual verbage here from the handbook that was updated and latter gay stories really summarized it pretty well and I I do need to read a bit of this so let's let's check it out about a year ago we were informed that attorneys and church leaders from the Mormon Church were in the process of revising the handbook of instructions with regards to transgender members at that time we immediately reached out to affirming and empathetic employees and general authorities who helped us create better dialogue and discussions surrounding these policies some of these individuals were involved in the discussions for this upcoming change the church has released a supplement to the transgender section of the general handbook and this published update is disappointing the church has clearly set a precedent that contradicts its visitors welcome and all are alike unto God theology now here's seven points that I think summarize it pretty well transitioned transgender members can no longer participate in any overnight activities they must be escorted away from the activity transitions transgender members can no longer hold callings with youth or children pronouns and preferred names are between the individual family and church members the church will allow the members to include their preferred name on their membership record transitioned members are no longer allowed to fully participate in young single adult conferences or fsy or general youth conferences number five transition members can no longer hold teaching callings six if single occupancy bathrooms are not available in the church building transitioned members should find an alternative solution and finally participation of a transitioned member in a gender specific class such as young men young women priesthood or Relief Society should be limited and rare after first receiving approval from the area presidency so what are your thoughts now uh as we're delving deeper into the actual policies here of the church's change and the way that it treats its transgender members yeah we delved into the details now of the church's actual policy of escorting people away having to have area presidency approval not having anything overnight not participating in the Release Society not participating in the elders Corum because those are gendered classes anything having to do with gender you cannot participate in that and already transgender members could not have Temple recommends and were considered what we used to call disfellowshipped but already have membership restrictions they were already second class citizens and now this is a significant step backwards it drives me nuts because I think it says in there you should treat transgender members with the utmost of respect and I hate that because then it goes right underneath it to list a whole bunch of policies that completely disrespect that are cruel policies it's like when you like saying to someone like black people please treat them with the utmost respect as we send them to the back of the bus or women uh are very important and we should listen to them and we want to hear them speak up and as men we will preside in your meetings and be the keynote speakers like it does not align with their actions I feel like they're just trying to make it so that transgender people just disappear that trans youth don't end up going to activities that transgender people just don't attend they're trying to make it so uncomfortable that these people that make them uncomfortable just don't keep showing up with the bathroom stuff and the attend the meetings of your biological sex at Birth I feel like the people writing these too just do not have a lot of experience actually knowing transgender people because there are a lot of trans people out there that you interact with on a daily basis and have no idea that they were a different gender when they were born there are big Burly men with like a full beard and a deep voice and broad shoulders and muscles they would look in incredibly out of place in Release Society or walking into a Ren's restroom the idea that we're going to force them to go back to their biological sex is just crazy like weird and these overnight activities this is something that I know a lot of people feel strongly about should we be letting queer people at all go to girls camp for example so in my ward there are two trans men who are now just out of high school or college age who grew up and went through the young women's program in my War just that I know of there are transgender members and every single word just assume it they're not out of the closet very rarely are they out of the closet but they are always there and this friend of mine who is train he's probably about 23 now he's written a couple blog posts for me at exponent 2 about his experience growing up and going through the young women's program for leaders to read and stuff you know what to do for Trans kids in your ward and he talks about going to Young Women's camp and how meaningful that was to him and how much he loved the other girls even though he knew he didn't really belong cuz he wasn't really a girl he really enjoyed that friendship and that Community it would have been really wrong to keep him out now when he was in high school still presenting as female and going to Young Women's he did come out and say I'm a lesbian because I'm attracted to girls so maybe I'm a lesbian a lot of people do that on their way to realizing oh I'm actually trans the priesthood leaders in our war did not want to send this teenager to Girls Camp because they said we can't send a lesbian to Girls Camp that's wrong and to the credit of awesome young women leaders they pushed back hard and they were like no we are bringing this teenager to Girls Camp it does not matter what their sexuality is they're coming and they look back fondly on those memories and as time passed and they graduated from high school and he came out as trans I became friends with him at that point I wasn't a young women's leader when he was in the program he's a good friend of mine today and the night before he started testosterone me and several of his former young women's leaders we knew that his family was not going to sell celebrate him starting testosterone and we're not supportive at all of his transition and so us group of women we took him out to dinner to celebrate and to say we love you I look back in my experience talking to him how important that was for him so the idea of trying to just make it so that it's harder for Trans kids to participate in normal and I'm trying to think of the word sorry normal rights of Passage and going to the same camps and the same programs that the other kids in their Ward and their neighborhood are going to I think that's really harmful and cruel it was a good thing for him to go to those stuff like they're treating them as if they're Predators just for again a biological variation in how their body was when they were born and how they were created by God if you believe in God if we are going to take a group of people and say this group of people is more likely to assault women and children so we're going to keep them away or we're going to uh not allow them to have alone time with women and children that is not transgender people that is straight cisgender men and what do we do with them we call that group of people to be Bishops to take women and girls and children alone into an office and ask them sexually explicit questions and say you have to answer these things there's much more abuse coming from straight cisgender men than there is from trans women it's just frustrating seeing a really beautiful part of the population being treated as if they're more likely to harm people just because of who they are and their bodies it's really it's painful and it's gross this is the same thing that the church went through with homosexuality especially back in the 70s they said we have we can't let them be Boy Scout leaders we can't let them be Associated because so-called gayus would rub off on it this is where we get Hartman recor Jr in his incredibly harmful general conference talk turning to Hearts where he said that homosexuality was an acquired Addiction in other words if you're around these people then you will become these people this is an absolutely antiquated and debunked concept that the church has doubled down on and this policy was not prayed upon by prophets seers and revelators it was literally crafted by lawyers and it is a certainly a significant step back and I saw a couple of memes that went along with this which we're going to get into it says you cannot treat people like garbage and worship God at the same time that doesn't make any sense now I want to get into probably the most explosive video which talked about this was over there on Greg on quick media show and his entire show really talks a lot about queer identity and uh gender Theory and this is the new LDS pronouns and transgender policy this video has 50,000 views for those of you out there that is huge in the Mormon Community really Greg represents a significant portion of the faithful LDS members who agree with these policies but don't want to come out and denounce them because in their heart they really believe them that's why he has such resonance this is a huge video and we're going to queue up a few of these clips here for you Abby are you ready for these clips to see what we got here yeah they're Terri terrible but yeah go ahead okay let's see what we got here okay so the first one that Greg says is no one should let your kid attend a church class with a transperson should have because there are some wards that have put leaders in place that push this identitarianism and queer Theory and gender gender ideology and and what are you going to do if my kid was in in a class like that I wouldn't let him go I would speak with the bishop and if there's no change there either with what the person is talking about or changing the person out who's instructing or the leader then I'm not going to attend the second hour it's not going to happen Yeah so basically the idea here is transgender people should never be around children and if Greg's kids were in a class that had a transgender person who was involved with it he would yank them out or he would even boycott the church first it's wild that he feels like it's totally socially acceptable to say I don't feel comfortable around transgender people so I really sit in that discomfort for a minute like why is there a person that you are not comfortable being around it's crazy to me but uh what it reminds me of is a story that I heard very recently from that brand new book that is is coming out about blacks and the priesthood and LDS church called second class Saints second class Saints by Matt Harris it actually was released on July 1 so it's actually out already that's right okay there was a story I heard in this book on I was probably on Mormon stories podcast and I can't remember exact details or what podcast it was on so if you know the details you can fill them in but there was a situation that he talked about where there were two black women who started attending a relief society and the white women were uncomfortable with this they didn't like these black women sitting in their Relief Society that had been their safe space before and they went to their stake president and the State president was someone important that became an apostle or Prophet later like it was Spencer W Kimble or somebody like that and they went to their State president and the State president wrote To Church Headquarters and said what do I do in this situation and they wrote back and said we're going to leave that in your hands you do what you think is best in your stake and so his decision was to approach the black women and say the white women aren't comfortable with you coming to Release Society so he either said we're going to set a place for you off to the side and in the back where you can sit or okay was it the hall I couldn't remember I'm like maybe I was thinking maybe they said just don't attend that hour to because the white women are uncomfortable and looking back obviously that was the wrong answer like the right answer would have been okay I'll go to the white women and say guess what if you're uncomfortable with the black women here you can go sit in the hall like they are welcome here and I feel like it's there's so many similarities between how we treated black members of the church and how we are treating transgender or any type of queer member of the church right now the idea that he can't sit in that discomfort or be around a person who is different than him it's something that's going to sound just as terrible 50 years from now as that story does to us now in 2024 like it's not going to age well you know it's amazing that he has no problem with prophet seers and revelators who en engaged in a 22y year long investment scam was fined $5 million for fraudulently and shamefully hoarding 3300 billion but he can't be in a Sunday school class or his children in a Sunday school class where somebody is trying to teach you about Jesus if they're transgender we're seeing a disconnect here of amazing proportions now in his next clip he says that we shouldn't call people by their preferred pronouns but I will not call an individual a trans individual by a different pronoun than what their biological sex is what's the problem here Abby with calling somebody by their preferred pronouns I don't see what the issue is it's so frustrating and I know I'm not the first one at all to say this but it has to be said that if you went up to this guy and said hey you're a Mormon right he would say uh stop Mormon is actually offensive to me I do not like that term I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint and I need you to call me that and he would expect you to respect that but if a transgender person walks up to him and says hey I know you've always called me Christine but I'm more comfortable with just Chris so can you just call me Chris instead of Christine he would say absolutely not I will not do that it offends me anyways just the hypocrisy has to be called out because it's so aggravating it's such a small thing to do to use someone's preferred pronouns probably the most controversial aspect of all of this is the church's policy that says that bathroom guards are needed for transpersons at church this is unbelievable let's hear about that or one that corresponds to the individual's feeling of their inner sense of gender with a trusted person ensuring that others are not using the restroom at the same time that seems reasonable to me that's very reasonable have someone stand outside the door and say hey someone is in here that identifies as a woman he's actually a man I'm just here to let you know this you may want to use a different restroom or you can wait do transgender members of the church do they need bathroom guards to keep everyone safe no it's and I think slightly past this on the clip he had said this is totally reasonable and I'm like it's not it's cruel it's not reasonable I'm never GNA gonna convince him and he's never gonna convince me we see things very differently I propose a different policy for um a trans person who needs to use the restroom during church I think sure they should have someone always go with them they should have someone of the same gender as they identify with to go to the bathroom with them just in case anyone is a jerk to them that they have a friend there to defend them and to stand up for them and in the case of me I'd be going with the Trans wom so that there's someone to tell her that she looks really pretty and make sure that her skirt isn't tucked into her panty hose and to be her hype woman like like we do when we go to the bathroom together as women that is the policy that I could get behind was we we are going to do everything we can to protect trans people and make sure they are comfortable and safe not the other way around if you are uncomfortable going into a bathroom where there might be a transgender person you can just hold your pee till you get home because transgender people do that all the time everywhere in their daily lives they wait until they get home to go to the bathroom unless it's an absolute emergency because they're worried about violence or someone bothering them and so if there's one thing we can give to them that would be CH like it would be to say hey on Sundays at church you don't have to do that we will all hold RP if we're uncomfortable being in the bathroom with you even though that's dumb we don't have time to go through every one of his Clips but he compares transpersons to drug addiction smokers atheists liars and a bunch of other things but he says that we can't really even tolerate these individuals he says that true charity the Pure Love Of Christ does not even tolerate transp person's mere existence and this is our final clip off of Greg Matson charity does not tolerate sin it does not tolerate lies it does not tolerate going against the doctrine of God this is scriptural this will become more and more confusing as Society piles on the deconstruction of identity and biological sex actually none of this is scriptural the entire handbook update doesn't reference the scriptures at all it's not in any of the standard works this is nothing but a policy that was written by lawyers and it's not grounded in church whatsoever and more importantly it's not grounded in science and what we know about human flourishing Greg is just wrong at every aspect here true charity means that we love each other and we don't post bathroom guards we don't disenfranchise people we don't demonize them we don't compare them to Sinners and call them Liars that's not true charity yep I agree it's a misunderstanding of science it's not understanding how things actually work calling it a sin calling it a lie these are terrible things and I hate that he's able to f feel like he can back these things up with church doctrine because I don't think he's probably a bad guy he's probably not wanting to hurt people but he is and he's using his platform to do that and he feels comfortable doing that because of what church leaders have done and taught and I hate that it's awful yeah a lot of people feel a lot of resonance with that particular Channel now a couple last Twitter takes here of people who have reacted to this including on Mormon land Taylor Petri had an entire episode this week on it he said today the Church of Jesus Christ the lot the updated their policies on transgender individuals this is the first change in the policies since 2020 which had then carved out restricted membership for Trans folks instead of excommunication and he was quoted in the Salt Lake Tribune as saying taken together the policies contribute to fears that transgender members presence is a danger to other people while giving into right-wing fearmongering none of this has anything to do with the church teachings about priesthood Temple or long-standing customs of gender specific classes the church is really doubling down on this in fact just about a year ago the church approved a very high-profile transgender baptism but it seems like the church is taking a major step back here with a fearmongering and I I don't know how to describe this any other way other than really hate for an individual's identity it's really really troubling it's awful I had been coming to get to know people uh in the trans Community probably starting around 2014 I started going with Mormons Building Bridges to Pride festivals and I would March in the parade with them and I would do hugging booths and that's where I started to make friends who were transgender and I hadn't ever met anyone or known anyone before then and I started to find that they were some of the most beautiful unique wonderful people I'd ever met because they had this perspective that wasn't just male or female they were just incredibly wonderful human beings and many of them are still my friend to this day I love them very much I've gone to the bathroom with lots of trans women and nothing bad happened we just talked about our hair it was Thanksgiving of 2015 I remember because it was Thanksgiving week week and it was right after the November 5th policy had just exploded everywhere uh which was the exclusion policy saying that kids that had gay parents could not get baptized into the church or get a blessing at this point in time I was visiting other churches I was kind of doing like a church tour and my favorite one by far still for me was the Unitarian Universalist Church there was one in Salt Lake City I would drive to and their meeting I think was like at 10:30 in the morning and my met at 1:00 at the time so I could actually go to both of the meetings in one day and I went and that congregation had a ton of variety like you would walk in and you would see people dressed very differently you would see like a woman in a cocktail dress with tattoos and you would see a gay couple and you would see a more traditional looking family you'd see someone who looked like the Relief Society president in her Ward people would be in jeans some people would be dressed up there was different races and different orientations and just everyone it was very very mixed and they make a really big emphasis on everyone is welcome here we love you it doesn't matter if you're atheist doesn't matter if you are Christian doesn't matter if you don't know what you believe you can be Mormon in come everyone is accepted and there were two transgender women at the time who attended this I call it the uyu church attended their services and they looked obviously transgender they were very tall sometimes they wouldn't have shaved yet and stuff in the mornings and you could tell that they were probably pretty new to wearing makeup and wearing heels and dresses and so they did kind of stand out like it was easy to notice them and I never talked to either of them but I had this experience one day where I came in I dropped my daughter off in the nursery I came up dropped my kids off at the kids classes I think and I came up and I slipped into the very back row and one of the trans women came and sat directly in front of me on the second of back row and we weren't talking to each other or anything the meeting was about to start I was by myself she was by herself a probably a guy about my age probably in his 30s came and sat down on the road a few seats away he looked up he saw her and his whole face lit up and he said hey and he said her name how are you and he said come sit by me and they scooted next to each other and the way it worked out they were both right in front of me so I was like a foot and a half away from their little private conversation they were having they had no idea I was listening to it that I was a Mormon mom that I had not had a lot of experience you know seeing transgender people in a church setting before and this guy reached up and he gave her a side hug and said how are you and was so friendly to her and then the opening hymn started and they were singing that it was a song they weren't very familiar with and it was kind of weird it had like a second ending and both of them saying the wrong ending together like started singing loudly the wrong part and then they both got the giggles and started laughing and I heard them whisper they had something like I don't know why so and so hasn't asked us to be in the choir yet haha you know like they just had this little like moment of friendship and it was so seemingly just a simple moment but it was such a big moment for me because I saw a transgender woman sitting down at church and another person who wasn't transgender seeing her and loving her and putting his arm around her and treating her like a totally normal human being and it was like the heavens opened up and it was like this is what it's supposed to be and it was a beautiful moment for me to see so I went back to my ward after this and I went into Sunday school and like I said it was right after the exclusion policy had happened the Sunday school teacher decided to start talking about it because it was the thing everyone was talking about and I I remember looking around the room and seeing how different it was than the Unitarian Universalist Church where there was such a variety of people and everyone was there showing up as their authentic s and those trans women I don't know that those trans women probably based on how how awkward they kind of looked I'm guessing that might have been the only place that they felt comfortable dressing up in feminine clothing the whole week long may that's the only place I felt safe well I looked around my Sunday school class and I saw everybody looked exactly the same all the men were in white shirts and ties we all had the same haircuts uh the women all looked really similar there wasn't any variety it felt more fake like we were all trying to present ourselves the same to be accepted and then the Sunday school teacher started saying you know this new policy out there you know if you don't like it you're the one who has the problem you need to get in line with the prophets we don't tell the prophets what to say and everybody started talking and it and I remember like it was such a contrast to what I had just seen a couple hours before and I remember like everybody was talking and I part of me wanted to raise my hand and say something but I remember thinking I cannot I had my head down and like hot tears were falling onto the floor and I remember thinking I cannot move an inch because if I mve I will stand up and scream and it will be really awkward and weird forever I remember just thinking there's some higher power and it's telling me that I'm been in the wrong group that my whole life I had been saying hey you know many times i' thought I'm in the true church and this is the way God wants me to be and to live my life and it was like something was telling me I want to give you the greatest object lesson of all time and I want you to see that you are in the wrong group that this is not how it's supposed to be um I feel like that's what I'm seeing with this transgender policy we're wrong and I don't know how long it'll take before the church figures that out and we fix it but it's wrong it's not the trans people who are wrong it's everybody else that needs to get it right I do wonder you know when the church had the policy of exclusion they changed their mind after only three and a half years I do wonder if that will happen again in this case there's obviously a great deal of hypocrisy that's associated with this because as somebody pointed out uh Debbie tweeted out in my stake there is a level two registered sex offender who went to prison for 6 years but he's now teaching gospel Doctrine but the the church decided that if someone transitions they are immediately and permanently rejected as a teacher it doesn't matter who they are or what they have done I'm furious there's a double standard in the church if you're an Axe Murderer if you have embezzled money if you've committed incest you can still teach children in the church the only people who cannot are members who are trans that appears to elevate the idea of being trans as an almost unforgivable sin that is above even the most reprehensible conduct there's absolutely no cause for that and people are naturally questioning why this is such a Draconian policy I don't have an answer it's terrible let me give you another reaction here honestly I think the most hurtful thing is the contrast between the reaction to this and the 2015 handbook changes in terms of just being much more muted so-called allies among Progressive Mormons don't have our backs the way they have the backs of the CIS gays and if you go back to the policy of exclusion in 2015 Mark Nagel over at quit Mormon said that that was the largest spike in Mormon resignation in history of him doing resignations for the past six years but we haven't seen the outcry for this transgender policy in the same way even though in many ways it is far more harmful than the lgbtq policy of exclusion which said that if your parents are gay you can't join Jesus's Church why has the response seemingly have been so muted on this one as opposed to the one back in the policy of exclusion in 2015 I would guess that because the 2015 policy was impacting a lot of children that got the attention of even active members of the church uh my husband was really upset about it and he was a very active member of the church I think that might have something to do with it and also just the fact that we've moved further forward in understanding and accepting gay members of the church than we have transgender members which is sad that's absolutely true let me give you one last uh Twitter reaction here and it says sorry but if we let people choose their own gender then what's next something else that none of my business and won't harm me in the slightest I mean where does it end of course that's a tongue-and-cheek tweet there that says you know if we let people be their authentic selves I don't see the harm and I reject all of the demagoguery and really the idea that you're supposed to Love The Sinner and hate the sin there is absolutely no way in which you can reasonably or rationally accomplish that and here's the final meme that I got for you that somebody tweeted out and I saw it on the internet it says the Church of Jesus Christ a latterday Saints visitors are welcome with an asterisk that says exclusions apply see handbook for details not everyone is welcome in the church in the same way this is seems to be a very harmful policy I do sincerely hope that it changes and it's a very regressive step back in my opinion what's your last thoughts here on the church's rolling out of the transgender policy which I know has deeply affected you in many ways trans gender issues are a feminist issue first and foremost because the church operates on a binary where there's male and there's female and men and women have very specific different gender roles so people who are transgender or queer or anything other than straight cisgender married man and women messes with that structure and if you are a woman who wants to dismantle the patriarchy the best thing you can do is support your trans and gay and non-binary friends because they are proving that there is more than just men preside men have the priesthood women stay home and have babies and get presided over it's showing that there are lots of different relationships and maybe our temples need to stop having different covenants for men versus women because what do we do with the non-binary people or the trans people how about we just cut out any gender roles anywhere in the eternities and we just let people be people well thanks so much for uh being on this episode here but before we let you go you know we've got the Mormon news Rand up poll of the week and what is the poll of the week this time here uh Abby it's the top 10 reasons to read the exponent too absolutely fantastic now I didn't talk about my moniker but if you see I re myself exponent Fanboy how do you like that I love that thank you we would love you in our fan club very nice uh let's give you top 10 choices now we release new episodes of the Mormon news round up every Monday night at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time if you come on over to YouTube at that time you can interact with your humble hosts and we're going to give you 10 options Abby if you'd be the first person to take our poll we'd be very grateful for that and um what's option number one it's the perfect way to convert your friends to feminism without leaving the comfort of your couch talking about the blog of course there is a print Magazine and there is a Blog so that one's talking about the blog gotcha or how about number two imagine Relief Society with a modern twist like discussing gender equality while baking gluten-free cookies now that's a church meeting I like I do like that one a lot there that's these AI photos I do enjoy or how about number three be the coolest LDS Grandma imagine being the grandma who talks about intersectional feminism at family gatherings your grandkids will think you're the coolest person ever wow intersectional feminism at the family gatherings that usually is going to win a lot of friends and influenced people right depends on who the people are depends on your relatives certainly does or how about number four where else can you read about feminist takes on LDS culture while also debating the merits of Jane Austin's matchmaking skills it's a matchup made in heaven absolutely I acally visited Jane Austin's ch um home a couple of years ago so big Jane Austin fan or how about number five struggling to make small talk at w parties drop a reference to an article from the Mormon exponent and watch everyone gather around for a lively discussion on gender equality it certainly depends on what word you're in though that's for sure right that's true that is definitely true or the number six reason to read the exponent when you leave the magazine slightly sticking out of your church bag it's a quiet signal for finding like-minded sisters or simply to tell someone who needs it that they are not alone ah that makes a lot of sense or how about number seven you can get to be the well actually self-styled LDS historian in your Sunday school class and that's sure to win a lot of friends as well if you're the will actually person uh how about number eight if you don't have the words to express your feminist opinion at church search 20 years of blog content from Smart women on your phone raise your hand copy what they said and sound like a genius makes a lot of sense uh finally or uh number nine smash the patriarchy one article at a time you betcha or finally number 10 exponent two is the most beautiful feminist publication you will ever read the artwork is subversive and spiritual fantastic now here's your top 10 choices here for those of you out in the live chat if you could cast your votes at this time please do so and Abby if you'd be the first person to take our poll I'd be very grateful for that what is the number one reason for people to read the exponent out there I'll vote for number nine smash the patriarchy one article at a Time Magazine and blog makes a lot of sense I'm glad I could um at least participate a little bit in that in that I released a video that has several thousand views on YouTube of course based off of your article that was a real pleasure to put together that's does take us to our final segment here which is the Mormon news Round Up joke of the week and I believe that you have that for us it's a dad joke from a Mormon dad to a trans friend of mine who transitioned from female uh to male and had a had their breast tissue all removed and it was talking about how great his dad was because his dad called him up like was across country called him up immediately after surgery and said oh son I bet that's a big weight off your chest oh very nice very nice now Abby what projects are you working on how can people get in touch with you I know that you're doing the Rainbow Connection here with the um back to school pride night in 2024 what's going on with that exponent 2 is going to have a booth at the back to school pride night in Provo on September 14th I don't think we've ever had a booth at Pride I would really like to change that and be at all the Prides we can be at in the future so come and see me there I'll probably be at that booth that whole time fabulous and also you can find you on the exponent uh magazine blog what do you got going on there we have all kinds of stuff going on I just happen to currently be working on a series of about being fat and female in the church so if there you go that weighing in that's our last uh most recent post there if you want to submit a guest post to that I would love to take that but we take guest posts on every single topic of Mormon feminism uh there's two Instagram Pages this one you're on right now with the green thing exponent toore blog I curate all the content for this page so I'm not a graphic designer so it's not going to be as pretty but there's fantastic content so come follow that on Instagram if you go to the next one uh it's exponent toore mag these are my friends we're all the same organization but this is the magazine and you'll have much more curated beautiful content there like artwork and articles and stuff uh follow both places that sounds fantastic and as far as the things that I'm working on tomorrow night we're having another edition of the Mormon movie reviews where we go back and watch some old LDS Classics and tomorrow night we're going to be reviewing the RM here starring Kirby haburn he's the return missionary who comes back finds out that his life is completely out of control he lost his girlfriend he lost his job it's a lot of laughs you ever watched the RM Abby I sure have in fact I think I played it at a youth conference that I was in charge of now now that you mention it yes it's I think it's a fabulous movie we're going to review that and also on Tuesday we're going to be reviewing the top five most liked Mormon Tik toks of all time if you go on to uh Tik Tok search for the # Mormon we did a review here with colch at the cultural Hall with the top five most liked Mormon Tik toks of all time it's a very interesting episode I'd really like to thank you so much Abby for coming on to the Mormon news Roundup thanks so much for your insights you're welcome thanks for having me with all my talking I appreciate it absolutely you bet I'd like to thank weird Alma on bandcamp.com for this episode's music I'd like to thank everyone for ruminating with us on the great and spacious beehive I'd like to thank my patreon supporters it's a means a great deal to me and also those people who support this program on YouTube if you can make a donation out there if you listening I'd be very grateful for that Abby always thinks Celestial and remember remember no unhallowed hand can stop this podcast from [Laughter] progressing when it comes to nicknames of the church such as LDS church the Mormon church to remove the lord's name from the Lord's church is a major victory for Satan Satan Satan and remember remember here's the tagline What did I say I'm sorry what is it the tagline is no unhollow hand can stop this podcast from progressing got it okay do you want me do you want to line it up again nope I'll just cut it straight in okay okay there hey look before we all let you go you can join the show uh if you follow the link in the bot I welcome the haters I have no problems with that whatsoever we're going to add a little extra here I know kulch premiered this over on his channel but he took a shot at the uh he took a shot here at the new transgender policy it's 12 minutes long he's going to let us play here this clip here with Jasmine from scripture plus let's just check this out real quick here if you want to stay with me and join the show you certainly can so let's give you some bonus content here thanks for sticking with me this is a complicated issue transgender transgender preferred pronouns preferred names social transitioning medical transitioning how to use restrooms you will no longer be able to attend the temple they are not to be called as teachers pronouns they're not to be called to work with children preferred names if they've surgically medically or socially transitioned they should leave the activity at night if you are someone who identifies as for example a transgender woman could you attend Relief Society or young wom's the answer is no pray about this I know I'm going through hey welcome back into another cultural H episode in this one we're diving into the recent changes made to the LDS Handbook of instructions regarding treatment of trans members and we're doing it with the help of Jasmine from scripture plus I'm not going to call this a hate watch episode it's more of a hate on episode and for the record we're not hating on Jasmine we're hating on a discriminatory policy the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the Mormons recently updated their church handbook and made some tweaks to the section on transgender remembers now don't get me wrong this section wasn't all that trans-friendly to begin with but the church took some major steps back with the changes that were made and for the record I admit I don't quite understand transgender sexuality being a cisgender white man it's hard for me to understand how someone could identify as a gender that differs from their biological sex but just like I don't believe being gay is a choice I don't believe being trans is a choice you know a Mormon leader once said that a testimony is found in the bearing of it and I'm going to apply that to being an ally allyship is found in acting like an ally so even though I don't completely understand I will support my trans brothers and sisters anyway let's get into this shitty policy the church just updated their policy on individuals who identify as transgender in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and here's what you need to know about it the basic premise of this policy seems to be wanting to bring more consistency to how the church ministers to individuals who identify as transgender I think they mean more consistency on how to discriminate against trans members this section in the handbook starts off by first emphasizing that gender is an essential characteristic of the Plan of Salvation and is defined as biological sex assigned at Birth the church also does not take a position on the cause of people identifying as transgender of course they appeal to the family proclamation and provide their own definition of gender which is at Birth then she says the church doesn't take a position on the underlying cause and that's actually a good thing the church could have claimed that it's a choice which is what they used to do with homosexuality before they finally got with the time if children have a happy family experience they will not want to be homosexuals which I am sure is an acquired addiction just as drugs alcohol and pornography are the promoters of homosexuality say they were born that way but I do not believe this is true and next Jasmine's going to explain the church's definition of transitioning the church defines surgical medical or social transitioning as intentionally attempting to present as anything other than the biological sex assigned at Birth by saying intentionally she's inferring that trans people choose to be trans which is just wrong this may include changing dress grooming names or pronouns a person experiencing feelings of discomfort around their gender who does not socially surgically or medically transition and who's worthy can fully participate in all aspects of the church and receive all ordinances of Salvation and exaltation the individual who socially transitions may be baptized if they receive first presidency approval but they do not participate in other ordinances they are also not to serve in certain callings if you pretend not to be trans you get it all full participation all the ordinances members won't make fun of you at least not to your face if you socially transition though you need permission to be bapt ized and your membership is going to be limited you'll be limited in your callings you'll be limited in the ordinances if you're already a baptized member of the church when you transition the baptismal ordinance still stands but you will no longer be able to attend the temple as a baptized member of the church transitioned individuals are welcome to attend sacrament meeting and participate in the church in other ways they should counsel with their local church leaders for exactly what this participation could look like now you can attend sacrament meeting in supposedly participate in other ways but they don't go into any detail on what that is transitioned individuals are not to be called to fulfill gender specific roles this would include roles like the Rel Society president the elders cor president they are not to be called as teachers and they're not to be called to work with children or youth so the primary the young men's program the young women's program now this is where starts to get real no callings that are gender specific you can't be called as a teacher any type of teacher and you're baned from being around children or youth this is discriminatory and it feeds into tropes and stereotypes that trans people are dangerous sexual deviants from what I can tell this does leave open the possibility for those individuals to Ser in callings within Communications welfare music activities technology and other specialist callings basically any calling that doesn't involve being around other people the back to the handbook itself it clarifies that members who transition but then later on decide to transition back can enjoy all of the Privileges and participation in thech but guess what if you repent change your ways and decide not to be trans anymore you can be a member in full Fellowship implementing these policies and ministering to these individuals should be done prayerfully in council with other leaders and done with the utmost sensitivity compassion and dignity for all persons involved implementing these policies should be done with compassion this is nothing but lip service saying this is meant to make the members feel better not trans people people this policy is void of compassion and removes the Dignity of the transgender members now let's dive into this guiding principles document referred names and pronouns membership records of the church reflect biological sex at Birth if someone has a preferred name it can be notated on the membership record however the church is not dictating how preferred names or pronouns should be used that's left up to the individual the family members the church members what could possibly go wrong if someone really wants me to call them a certain name that is an opposite gender name I'll do it but I will not call an individual a trans individual by a different pronoun than what their biological sex is I will not do that I think it's really interesting it says that local leaders should not determine or prescribe how members address an individual this can go both ways because it means a bishop can't declare unilaterally that we all now have to use so and so's preferred pronouns and it also means that a bishop unilaterally declare that we have to use so and so's name given at first members don't have to call other trans members by their preferred names and pronouns this gives bigoted members like Jacob Hansen cart blanch to misgender and dead name trans members in the middle of sacrament meeting if they want to free of any sort of consequence this is a man right is it now the case that if a man claims he's a woman the sister missionaries can meet alone with him but this man was baptized with without any regrets about his transitioning and in fact he's very proud of the fact that he transitioned I foresee this going great yeah gender specific activities and meetings if you are someone who identifies as for example a transgender woman could you attend Relief Society or young woms according to the guiding principles document for the most part the answer is no overnight activities if you are someone who identifies as a transwoman and has socially transitioned could you for example attend Girls Camp according to these guidelines the answer to that would be no for overnight activities that are for a specific gender individuals attend only the camps that align with their biological sex at Birth overnight activities are not gender specific like Trek for the strength of Youth YSA conferences youth conferences there is a little bit more flexibility an individual who identifies as transgender May attend these activities but if they've surgically medically or socially transitioned they should leave the activity at night trans members are so scary that they make them lead before dark because everyone knows that's when they really get dangerous again this is fear-mongering they think trans members are dangerous and are putting this part of the policy in place to keep them away leaders at gender specific activities are just as capable of being a danger to the youth as a trans member supposably is look no further than all the abuse cases involving LDS Scout Masters there's a reason that the church no longer participates in scouting all right let's get into this bathroom Church restrooms can I person who identifies his transgender and has socially transitioned use the restroom they feel is more in line with their identifying gender the church's response is it depends the church suggests that the preferred course of action is for these individual to use a occupancy restroom when available if no single occupancy restroom is available the individual could use the restroom that aligns with that individual's biological sex at Birth or they could use the restroom that corresponds to the individual's feeling of their inner sense of gender with a trusted person ensuring that others are not using the restroom at the same time now I like single occupancy bathrooms but one big problem almost no meeting houses have them so you're going to make them use a bathroom that they aren't comfortable using or you're going to assign them a bathroom babysitter to stand guard why they use the restroom of the gender that they identify as it's ridiculous the principles the church wants to emphasize here is safety privacy respect and dignity for all members of the church no they don't really give a about the respect and dignity of these members they're appeasing the other members not helping the trans members this is a complicated issue and I'm sure the church has spent years prayerfully considering all of these cases that have come before them before implementing churchwide policies so that they can support the church's unchangeable Doctrine while still allowing for sensitivity for members of all kinds I support the church's doctrine of the family and I sustain church leaders in implementing new policies but I get that this can be challenging and so I'd hope that everyone takes to Heart the council in these policies to pray about this I know I'm going to I highly doubt church leaders spent that much time on this I doubt they prayerfully considered it this policy has danin Oak's name written all over it Jasmine's advice to pray about it is worthless because as Jeffrey Holland recently said you won't get an answer that differs from the bre well that's it the Mormon church has finally said the quiet part out loud please don't misunderstand as you reach out for divine Guidance the spirit will not inspire you to do less than follow the instruction received in the temple and the prophetic Council shared by the first presidency in their recent statement so your personal revelation will never Trump the council shared by the prophets or members of the first presidency the new policy on LDS trans members will do much more harm than good it's bigoted it's discriminatory and it makes life harder for a population that already has it hard enough as it is anyone who looks at this policy can honestly thinks it comes from God is severely misguided this is 2015 all over again let's just hope it doesn't take them 3 years to reverse course on this one I appreciate everyone who's making their voice heard keep it up activism causes change this is why the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints discourages activism thanks for watching everybody I'll see you on the next one absolutely well done there culture that is a great video I hope you like my background I think this is where certain individuals like Braden think that I belong and I feel very comfortable with this Background by the way he brings up so many good points as Abby brought up a lot of good points Colts brought up a lot of good points this policy here is extremely discriminatory we seem to have gone through a history in the Church of first discriminating against black people for who they are not because of their choices but because of who they are we follow the same policy with homosexual members of the church we discriminated against them because of who they are we've done the same thing with women in the church and we continue to do so and now it's just the latest round of slam dunking on a um minority in this case in this case the trans member Community the church just Cycles through people who are not cisgender and white and that's the problem for the churches that those people um don't conform to the 1950s Mormon ideal and that's a serious problem here this policy I wonder how long it is going to be around songs of our own says that this smells a lot like Oaks and you know the thing about it is is that it really smells like Nelson and Oaks it was both of them in my opinion that helped push through the policy of exclusion in 2015 when Thomas Monson was having dementia so we saw Nelson in the Hawaii devotional in 2015 um talking about how it was a revelation and how he pleased he was in that particular policy Russell Marian Nelson is not an lgbtq II in any stretch of the imagination in any respect whatsoever and my sources some people out there have postulated like Nemo and others that he's currently out of commission I have very good sources here that say that he was at a birthday party just a few weeks ago where there's video that has been captured of him um behaving normally speaking normally and that he seems to be just fine I can't share that with you but you'll just have to take my you'll just have to take my reporting on that I don't have that much reporting that I typically do on the Mormon news random but you just have to trust me on that now we covered in the Mormon news round up we talked about the needle needleman Farm here the uh farm and actually I have one last video we're giving you a three for one here um as song says it's probably true it was probably both that's my humble opinion here um but um McKenzie Vance is one of the most fabulous channels out there honestly I remember when I invited her on the Mormon news Roundup we had about the similar amount of subscribers at that time we both had about 2,000 subscribers and in short order she's gone to 10,000 subscribers she says being ex Mormon isn't my entire personality being mentally ill is and she says that with a somewhat of a tongue and cheek because she talks about how she's had some mental health challenges throughout her life and she has a great channel oh my gosh McKenzie is in the house wow this is absolutely crazy McKenzie is the absolute goat of breaking down the Mormon tradwives these Christian fundamentalists the all of these other Mormon swo boys you can see how many of these I've watched look if you look at the video see I'm not lying see look at the red line on these videos of me watching through all of the videos here I've watched every single one of these videos about David archeleta I've literally watch all of her videos great to have you McKenzie you are the greatest now she is going to talk talk about the ballerina Farm facade here you can see that in one day her video's already gotten 10,000 views that is absolutely incredible I can't get 10,000 views if I buy a bunch of Chinese bots so you can see the difference in the quality of the content is quite significant she is going to give us an incredible breakdown here of this entire facade of the ballerina farm and the biggest thing about what McKenzie really does here is she really brings out the patriarchy of um the husband in the situation and also some of the behind thes scenes things as far as the money and the questions that they will answer and the questions that they won't answer I've got her permission to go through this and uh let's check out the ballerina hi my name is Mackenzie and fun fact about me I missed you guys did you miss me great it has been a weird few months to be sure and the drama has been ripe recently I feel like influencer after influencer is just getting wrecked right now for good reasons and the influencer I want to talk about right now is of course Hannah Nan of ballerina farm and yes it is pronounced Nan three syllables the E is not silent Hanah Hanah everyone I've seen talking about this pronounces it neilan which I also did in a past video when I mentioned her and I'm sure she's used to it but it is incorrect according to her own mouth but the pronunciation of her name is the least of the controversies surrounding her right now if you don't don't know who Hannah Neman is she is a Mormon Homemaker millionaire former ballerina New Egg apron owner and the latest victim of bitter Loveless cat ladies who hate seeing other women happy at least According to some people in her comment section A few weeks ago a journalist for the Times named Megan agnu was invited onto their 328 Acre Farm in CIS Utah to do a piece on her which she titled meet the queen of the tradwives and her eight children a pretty harmless Idol but Hannah did not like what she ended up reading in this article and neither did her audience of wannabe stay-at-home moms who live vicariously through her life on Instagram even though Hannah presents a anyone can do what I do attitude the truth is her life is quite unattainable but Hannah believes that she's an example of what women can achieve if they work hard enough but she leaves out a lot of details of what it actually takes to get to where she is including marrying into a Harry Potter Vault worth of money the reality of her life is always going to be hidden behind a social media curtain like any other influencer and every time that curtain is whipped open People Freak the freak out but apparently any publicity is good publicity as valerina Farm has gained over 300,000 followers just from this article she's doing fine she just got her feelings hurt a little bit and she's allowed to she's a human being but let's talk about what in the H double hockey sticks happened this time's article split people into two camps one Hannah Neeman is an abused housewife stuck in her cage just longing to get out and be a ballerina again or two Hannah neilan is being attacked by Godless feminists who are just jealous and are trying to tear apart the nuclear family and I think both sides need to calm down and the truth lies somewhere in the middle so let's talk about what the article said and what the article didn't say first things first Megan agnu never called Hannah Neeman oppressed she did use the word oppression at the beginning of her article asking the question was this the ultimate Act of empowerment nean doing what she wanted or the ultimate demonstration of Oppression her tender body encased in spiky sequins she was referring to the beginning of the year when Hannah walked a beauty pageant just 12 days postpartum and the conversation that was being had around that time Megan noted that people went berserk it's how I first heard of ballerina farm and I went over my thoughts about pageants briefly in my Mormon tradwives video I don't think Beauty pageants are empowering for any woman I think they are demeaning and outdated but Megan never directly answered this question herself and left it open-ended like any good journalist does she wants the reader to make a determination themselves after this article exploded the author wrote a follow-up article where she didn't denounce anything she said but she tried to clarify her intentions going into this interview Megan says Neman has become an avatar through which people hotly debate motherhood Womanhood and freedom to choose either before I left to interview her the main question I had from friends family and colleagues was whether it was all true one of the most watched people on the internet Her Children looked chaotic and happy homeschooled and free range how did she keep it all together was she always so calm was it really like that spoiler alert no no influencer's life is like what you see online and Megan asks Hannah how she deals with all the criticism which is a bit ironic considering that Hannah would make a response to this article because of all the criticism Megan writes how did she respond to the social media storms there was one after she said at another pageant that she feels most empowered after she has a baby there were others when she encouraged the use of natural remedies over traditional medicine and another when she said Daniel had drop kicked a roll across the yard after it attacked one of their children now I am unaware of said rooster kicking incident but if I were to make a video explaining every controversy the neans have ever been in this video would be 10 hours long it takes one quick search on Reddit to learn that people have been critical of her long before this article came out as she has been blogging her life as early as 2013 that's over a decade of material for people to pick apart as they please and they do so how does Hannah respond Daniel is so good about that she says looking to her husband he says you can't lean into what people are saying or the titles people are putting on you you just have to live your life and shut that out because if not it will overtake you it doesn't have an impact on her at all I mean it does I'll hear things it's no fun like she pauses looking up at Daniel who is now standing behind her what do you think upsets us the most she asks him for whatever reason I'm kind of numb to it he says and that is the Crux of this entire article in asking Hannah a question directly Hannah not Daniel she either defers to her husband or he ends up interrupting anyway here's a few more excerpts from the article Nan is the most well-known tradwife despite never having attached herself to the movement or even used the term how does she feel about it we were already together doing what we were doing Daniel replies instead our first few years of marriage were really hard we sacrificed a lot she says but we did have this Vision this dream and Daniel interrupts we still do do you I pause and look at her fixedly plan pregnancies no Daniel says Daniel Hannah isn't going to tell you so I will shut the up ladies please do not be afraid to tell a man to stop talking did you know that most studies show that men actually talk more than women and the stereotype thaten talk more is just a myth perpetuated by the patriarchy and anyone repeating this myth has 100% chance of having a foot shoved up their ass but Megan being the professional that she is says it more delicately she writes I can't it seems get an answer out of Neman without her being corrected interrupted or answered for by either her husband or a child usually I am doing battle with Steely Hollywood publicists today I am up against an army of toddlers who all want their mom and a husband who thinks he knows better that is probably one of the greatest sentences I have ever read and it perfectly summarizes the big Mormon family experience for me let's talk about her kids for a second I am the oldest of six kids so just a few shy of Hannah's eight chaos is to be expected in any large family unit and Hannah seems to be the eye of the tornado the calm of the storm as her family just spins around her mom and I are getting ready for the day this is my OG complexion here a bronzer I like I don't like my brow all the butter fat separates have left over from the cream is called buttermilk and it's so good I just it doesn't taste like it's not cultured butter used to at the on the store anyone that's had even one small child knows that they can produce a noise that breaks the sound barrier so eight of them running around screaming as probably done a number on her eardrums but Megan reiterates that she is just as calm in real life as she appears online part of this in my opinion is that she has discovered the trick that most Mormon moms do which is that the more kids you have eventually the oldest ones take care of the younger ones which lessens your burden as a parent and as someone who was the oldest one taking care of the younger ones at a very young age I'm here to tell you it's a bad idea putting adult responsibilities on a kid kid is really harmful to their mental health and sense of self they are still children themselves but now they are expected to mature quicker and become co-parents to their siblings which is up hi I know my mom is watching this and before I get a text from her no I did not have a horrible childhood what I'm trying to say is that when you are one of the oldest siblings even if your mom is in the house or your dad is in the house you kind of are expected to look after them say the parents are busy doing something it's just expected even if it's not spoken that's all I'm trying to say okay my mom did not abandon us for days and I was left cooking and cleaning I'm just talking about the general responsibility that the oldest siblings feel when their parents have a lot of kids I personally felt like I had to be the adult a lot of the times and I was 10 or eight and I just didn't like that feeling so that's all love you mommy bye so I think the reason she manages looking after eight kids is because half of her job is being done for her by her other kids Megan witnessed this as well saying the children appear to look after each other quite well too there are so many that they seem to have become an almost self-sustaining entity still Daniel says Nilan sometimes gets so ill from exhaustion that she can't get out of bed for a week so even after all of that she still can't handle her workload according to her husband and Megan notes that they do not have a nanny which I called on in my last video and I was half right it turns out she does hire a cleaner and they have a babysitter for date nights and also Hannah is not the one exclusively homeschooling her children either as they had a teacher with the kids during this interview and there's nothing wrong with that but that is not what she presents on social media she never talks about the team she has behind her because she wants to give the impression that she does it all herself which is just physically impossible also the whole we are boat strapping Farmers just like you cosplay goes further than just Hannah as on their ballerina Farm website there is not a single word about who else works for them no meet the team page which is pretty normal for businesses these days it's just them their kids and Jesus milking the cows and the new state of the art milking system that they got for their new dairy farm who's going to tell them that's not homesteading anymore I don't know if it ever counted as homesteading when you have a fat bank account to back you up in case it goes left and Megan wrote in her article that the reason they don't hire a nanny is because quote Daniel didn't want one the did the $400 million inheritance baby just say Daniel Neman is an heir to his father David Nan's half a billion dollar Jet Blue fortune and they purchased the farm they currently live on for $2.75 million they could hire a different nanny for every day of the week they wanted and not worry about putting food on the table but God forbid they have another person interacting with their children L they become corrupted by the outside world just so that Hannah can get enough sleep at night what a selfish so not only did Megan observe Daniel being a patriarchal douchebag with her own two eyeballs Hannah and Daniel also happily give their dating backstory which to any normal person reads like a horror film she said no to going on a date with him for 6 months and instead of respecting her decision he stalked her onto an airplane remember how his daddy owned JetBlue he got a seat right next to to her forcing her into a confined space after she had already told him no for many many months if that happened to me I would cry I can't imagine seeing a guy I had rejected showing up on my flight I would literally call security because that is not romantic that's the beginning of a restraining order oh no but it's fine because they're happy and they're in love no it's not fine that is not normal behavior that is not consensual and that pattern of manipulation and coercion from Daniel continues when she finally agrees to date him doesn't want to get married yet and he says quote that's not going to work we've got to get married now so Megan is seeing and hearing all of this Daniel constantly talking over her him making major life decisions for her and she comes to the Natural conclusion that he sucks but again she words it nicer than that because she is a professional but I ain't a professional and Daniel suck my dick so once this article came out people began Di up other evidence that Daniel is not a great husband one being the birthday present video just watch okay this my birthday present from Daniel their tickets to Greece where's it from I know the boys took it off took it off from Ukraine so PL tickets a hat I can wear in GRE it's not a hat it's not oh my EG friend it it's great then you can gather eggs it's really cute it's a cute one that's the best you're welcome thanks honey not for a long time an avocado thanks she repeats like three times that she would like tickets to Greece and it ends up being an unwrapped egg apron which go for around 20 bucks on Etsy we all know he surely could afford plane tickets and I do think the Greece comments were like a half joke from her but imagine if he actually got her those tickets she would probably start sobbing with relief and people point out the fact that he said you're welcome before she ever said thank you the entire video is just awkward as hell and it's a bad birthday gift Daniel here honey here's a way of doing your chores faster so that maybe you'll spend three days in bed and not seven also Daniel's just dumb as hell Megan asks them what their stance on terminating pregnancies is and he says the church is more lenient than a lot of the United States which is just not true but he says quote and that's probably why the church tells you don't have sexual relations get married because if not you might have a kid that you regret having and all of a sudden you get an abortion and that's not good does Daniel think married people don't get abs me thinks a lot of his favorite Republican senators are very grateful that their Mistresses got abortions but like he's just a who got all of his education on women's bodies from his church and I'll bet you $1,000 this dude stuck it in her belly button on their honeymoon anyways another dumb Dum quote from him is actually from Hannah's old Blog the we took the train one it's still up you can go read it and then Megan found this blog and then she quoted this in her follow-up article so Hannah said that he was a firm believer that men make stuff work and women beautify what do you mean like he's always been this way and there's a reason he's not at the Forefront of Hannah's Instagram because he says stupid like this and it's not about the egg apron it's not about Daniel's annoying comments it's not about how they met it's everything that adds up that paints a very familiar picture for women who have been in Hannah's situation before but she doesn't see it that way she sees it as an unwarranted attack and I can understand why she's upset about this if a person who had interviewed me started taking shots at my husband I would also get defensive but I would also come with receipts Point by point I would dismantle whatever I needed to but the problem with her rebuttal is it's just like nuh-uh that's not true so like she doesn't actually have a counterargument which leads me to believe that she is just used to his behavior at this point and can no longer see the red flags and she just doesn't really care let's watch her response a couple of weeks ago we had a reporter come into our home to learn more about our family and business we thought the interview went really well very similar to the dozens of interviews we had done in recent memory we were taken back however when we saw the printed article which shocked us and shocked the World by being an attack on our family and my marriage portraying me as oppressed with my husband being the culprit this couldn't be further from the truth nothing we said in the interview implied this conclusion which leads me to believe the angle taken was predetermined for Daniel and I our priority in life is God and family everything else comes second the greatest day of my life was when Daniel and I were married 13 years ago together we have built a business from scratch we've brought eight children into this world and have prioritized our marriage all along the way we are co-parents co-ceos co- diaper Changers kitchen cleaners and decision makers we are one and I love him more today than I did 13 years ago we have many dreams still to accomplish we aren't done having babies we are excited for our new Farm s to open and I can't wait to see what the future holds for the rest of it but for now I'm doing what I love most being a mother wife a businesswoman a farmer a lover of so a few things she said I'm not oppressed I love my husband but those things are not mutually exclusive you can be both no one said she didn't love her husband they said your husband treats you like and you're putting up with it another thing in the article Megan points out is that her ballet studio the one thing she had that was just hers was converted into the kids school room and people thought the reason she filmed in her home gym was to show like see I do have a space of my own but it's not like her own gym it's also her husband's gym and apparently her small toddler's gym who has seen swinging on the equipment which Tik Tock noted was a dangerous activity and some people weren't happy that she was also holding her newborn while driving a tractor there's a whole other ongoing conversation about her kid safe safety and how she just kind of lets them run around but I am not here to Mom shame I am here to husband shame and her claim that they are co- CEOs is just like factually untrue Jenny on Tik Tok who is a mutual of mine and was also in an abusive Mormon marriage pointed out that Daniel's name is the only one on the business documents you guys this is a really big deal Hannah neilan is not the owner of ballerina Farm here's the Utah LLC report I pulled it this morning and you'll see right here the farm is owned by Daniel Hannah's name is nowhere nowhere in any of these documents now Hannah may have other ownership options not listed on the filing that are part of their internal operating agreement but Daniel right here Daniel is the owner of ballerina Farm I'm not saying that she doesn't do stuff for the business but on paper she is not a co-ceo it's technically Daniel's business and she is more the face of the brand which is something that Megan also points out in her article so if that response feels like a whole lot of nothing to you that's generally her response to these type of questions in the follow-up article Megan said when I asked her about how she felt about the anger of other mothers who said she only showed the good parts of motherhood rather than the struggles she was bright and sweet in her response I feel like there's so much joy in making a beautiful meal for your family it's very satisfying especially when you have had some part in growing or sourcing the food that you have a connection to she told me and hopefully I'm inspiring women to do that that didn't answer answer the question so what are the struggles of being a mom I love making meals for my family it's so pleasant oh okay I didn't ask about cooking um are there times when being a mom isn't Pleasant no never I love my family like why isn't she just admit that it's hard sometimes and that she has a lot of help here is her trying to answer a similar question so one of the questions was is how do you how to do um how do you manage it all right how do you hold the title and also run a business and motherhood and have a platform on social media and when I first started um thinking about running in a Mrs pageant I knew that I was going to have to have a platform that was going to go alongside my lifestyle and so that's when we landed on know your farmer know your food because it was something that I was already advocating and um I think a lot of the misses that I run into is they're like I just don't have time to do a pageant like I'm juggling so many other things in fact I was talking to a good friend of mine about pageants and encouraging her to compete and she was like I just have so much on my PL right now I don't know what I would do for my platform she's like I just got um promoted to the board of this um outreach program in ballet where I'm helping all these inner city kids you know experience dance for the first time and I was like well that is an amazing platform like that do something that you're already doing that you're passionate about that's going to flow well with your lifestyle because it really is hard to add another thing on top of what you're doing so what is something that you're doing that you're passionate about that you love and that you feel like could just flow into your life if that's your platform like what is she talking about she keeps giving answers like she was asked a completely different question how do I manage it all so my friend wants to do a pageant and I told her to pick something she's passionate about it feels like either I'm high or she is if anything she's just Delirious from exhaustion and the dissociation is kicking in I also found this clip of both Hannah and Daniel from their YouTube channel attempting to answer a question and completely Sid stepping it it's just so annoying that both of them do this now as you watch them answer keep in mind the question is how involved are your parents with the farm that is the question and yet they somehow forget to answer it you know we tell this to people that ask all the time but you know I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family um my dad you know all his siblings they all have their own businesses you know and I just I just grew up thinking like that's what you did you grew up you you you know you got married and then when you're ready to get serious about life like you buckled down and you started your business what is your business who cares you know what is it I don't know but I just thought that's what grown-ups did and as I'm older now I realize like that's not the case you know not everyone is an entrepreneur and not everyone can be or wants to be but that's just how I was raised and then when I met Hannah she kind of grew up her family's also entrepreneur all of her brothers have their own businesses her family has their own small flower shop like she grew up in a small business and the only difference was like her parents worked together mine didn't and so we that's what we kind of combined is you know Mom and Dad working together but we both knew we wanted to have our own business we didn't want to work for someone else yeah in fact when we were dating like a lot of you know my acquaintance as or peers that I was dancing with were like oh is he gonna go work for his dad at the airline and like that never was a thing like I was like No And Daniel was like no like I gotta go do my own I got to go PVE my own path and it took us a little bit to find out what your path is and we knew that going into it like we watched our brothers and our parents like you know you don't hit jackpot first time like we spent time working abroad Daniel's working in security I taught dance at the University like there was things that we were doing and we just somehow fell upon farming what bro what are you talking about man it's like watching Blake Lively answer a question about what her new movie is about like are your parents involved with the farm or not and they're like yeah so our family is a bunch of entrepreneurs and when we started our farm it was really hard it's like people want to know if your daddy bought your farm Daniel and them not answering it makes me think that they did or that they had a huge hand in giving them that $3 million they needed to purchase it and I know that mortgages are a thing I'm not stupid but you can't just get a $3 million loan out of nowhere so yeah I think his parents had something to do with it and I think they're being weird about it just answer the damn question question and although Megan did take many shots at Daniel in this article I think she was just seeing the tip of the iceberg to what the real issue is lying underneath which in my opinion is their Mormon religion if you are new here I was Mormon for over 30 years and I know a little bit about indoctrination I don't think Daniel forced her into this lifestyle I think it was ingrained in her since birth due to the teachings of the Mormon Church excuse me I don't think that I know that if your entire life you were being told that being a mom is your purpose on Earth that it is the greatest thing you will ever do as a woman and if you don't want to be a mom you are choosing the devil how much of a choice do you really have the Mormon Church deeply discourages women from pursuing a career or if you do just make sure you don't work too much and that having kids is your priority so even though Hannah says it was her choice to give up being a ballerina to pursue having a family I don't entirely agree with that due to the deep conditioning from her religion that shames women who choose anything other than being a homemaker one thing I did appreciate that Hannah said in this interview is that she doesn't completely identify as a traditional woman Hannah says because we are traditional in the sense that it's a man and a woman love that passive homophobia right there we have children but I do feel like we're Paving a lot of paths that haven't been paved before that is the biggest Paradox in selling the life of a stay-at-home mother Nan and the other tradwives have created High earning jobs they are being paid to act out a fantasy I'm glad that she admitted she is somewhere in the middle because she is so involved with running a business and that is not traditional and like Megan pointed out is the irony of any online tradwife content creator but she doesn't identify as a Trad wife that was a label that was put on her by the internet okay I actually want to run that back a little bit there was a quote where Hannah did let it slip that she does have a little bit of an agenda and that's okay she's allowed to have a strong opinion she is allowed to have goals with her social media presence right but this whole oh I'm 50/50 traditional and modern it's just not true I'd say it's more 7525 and here's my evidence one is a quote that she directly gives Megan when she's talking about how there's so much joy in making a meal for your family and she said quote hopefully I'm inspiring women to do that she didn't say hopefully I'm inspiring people to do that or parents to do that she wants other women to see her cooking for her family and hopes that they will do that like that is clearly not being neutral that is not someone who is just sharing their life on the internet that is someone who believes it is women's place to be in the home it is a woman's place to make the meals for your family and that's fine just say that I think she's a lot more conservative Than People realize and that's something that this article talked about and then there is this little nugget which is back to the Q&A between her and Daniel when Daniel says out of his own mouth that she takes care of the kids more than he does especially with parenting I we're very 5050 Hannah does more I do as much as I can Hannah does more Hannah does more you know I try to take care of the kids but that's a woman's job and a man's got to get his hands dirty like I just feel like we're all so aware that Daniel is more Hands-On with the business and she's more Hands-On with the kids and that's fine but they just swear up and down that's not true until sometimes they let it slip that that is true okay thank you end scene and Daniel's own father tweeted that the journalist was just spreading lies about her family Daniel's father is David Neman founder of Jet Blue Trump supporter and on his third marriage I just find it hilarious when Mormons talk about the sanctity of marriage when they actually don't give a the problem is as a journalist you can't just pull quotes out of your ass that is a defamation lawsuit waiting to happen but people persist that she was just making things up and an article came out from Eevee magazine calling the ballerina Farm times interview dishonest journalism it is extremely relevant to note that Eevee is a overtly anti-feminist magazine that the Rolling Stone calls the cosmo for the alt-right and the misinformed fearmongering articles I see on their front page seem to support this claim Eevee says a newly released audio recording suggests that the article distorted the reality of the Nan's relationship so this audio is actually from the times podcast themselves it's not like a secretly leaked audio the only thing that Evee gets right is that the quote from Hannah was not put in the article but what they are wrong about is this quote changing anything that the author wrote Let's listen and Daniel was like if you want to dance you know like go dance you know like he you know we were open to anything but I knew deep down that I wanted to raise my babies you know yep that's it Hannah saying Daniel said she could dance if she wanted to dance again centering her husband at the center of her decision-making process but the article goes on to say unlike what the audience had initially believed Hannah's husband allowed her to continue with ballet it is incredible that in a piece where they are trying to defend Hannah and say that there is no power imbalance in her relationship they say her husband allowed her to do ballet amazing first of all your husband shouldn't have to allow you to do anything secondly yes Megan agnu had a very strong opinion after observing them in their home for 4 hours but she never explicitly said that he was the reason she stopped doing ballet Hannah said that she stopped doing it in order to have kids the Times article reads was this what she always wanted I ask when we get a moment alone while Daniel checks on the animals no she says I mean I was like she pauses my goal was New York City I left home at 17 and I was so excited to get there I just loved that energy and I was going to be a ballerina I was a good Ballerina she pauses again but I knew that when I started to have kids my life would start to look different and then she asks Daniel the same question was this what he always wanted I asked him when he walks back over yes he says I expected Hannah to be more at home with the kids but she said I watched my parents working together so whatever we do we got to do it together she's not putting words in their mouths these are direct quotes she asked them both if this is the life they always wanted Hannah said no Daniel said Yes except he wanted her to be even more of a housewife than she already is which is an insane thing say Megan did not have to paint a picture when they were holding the damn paintbrush I feel like my stance on this whole thing is that everyone needs to calm down she is not being held prisoner and this is not a hitpiece commissioned by transgender furries to destroy the children I think there's a conversation being had here about the tradwife movement in general and she just happens to be the center of it because she has 10 million followers she has put her life out there for everyone to see catered it to exactly how she wants him to see it and the second someone steps foot in her home and points out the discrepancies to her she doesn't like that and no influencer is going to Showcase every single aspect of their lives I don't think that's healthy but nothing about her response or anyone else's refutes the claims being made in the article okay one last defense of my girl Megan agnu who is the author of this article in her follow-up article she said quote in recent days there has been criticism that I a childless unmarried woman didn't understand that this is the reality of having eight children all homeschooled and with no child care but I felt the exact opposite when I was there it made me understand exactly how it was to be a woman with eight children and no child care demanding and rewarding and gloriously intimate and difficult to find a space to speak just all the attacks on Megan are so unwarranted and yes I am a childless cat lady uh I no longer take offense to that term because you are not saying anything offensive I don't have kids I have a cat and there's nothing wrong with that and that rhymed it's just so stupid and people think like having kids makes you a better person on principle when Megan also points out that they're using her kids on the internet and I thought we didn't like that I thought we didn't like people who exploited their children but apparently it's okay when a millionaire does it Megan says quote but it was also a life of contradictions children not alloud screens but who are reality TV characters online for Millions a stay-at-home mother who has made a career out of being so an analog old-fashioned Farm only working because it is underwritten by social media cache are you fracking kidding me that the kids aren't allowed screens and that is such a big part of their business is her creating content on her phone I think not allowing your kids any screens is going to make them technologically illiterate like what if the one of them wants to be an app developer someday but when they're 18 and they use a computer for the first time they don't know what they're doing I'm not saying everyone should be an iPad baby I just think there's moderations to everything their kids are so blissfully unaware of the world around them and in my opinion that could do them harm in the future especially really not knowing that they are online without their consent for 10 million people every day there really really really needs to be more laws around this it is quite insane that you can make money around filming your children and they have no say in that whatsoever and to their credit they don't do the whole like oh my daughter just got her first period YouTube video crap but we know all of her kids names we know all of their faces stop exploiting your children on the internet you big weirdos I don't dislike Hannah personality wise she seems sweet we have absolutely nothing in common but I don't wish ill upon her I wish she was a little bit more honest about her life I think she needs to recognize that not everyone can do what she does because of her wealth and does she seem happy yeah of course she seems happy but how happy would she be if she actually married a poor farmer and how successful would their business be but that's just my opinion and you really never know anybody on the internet do you like my shirt daddy I love him I thought it was a propo for this video I love you guys I missed you guys let me know in the comments below what else you've been wanting me to talk about it doesn't have to be super new anything that's happened in the past few months I have some ideas but I want to make you guys happy cuz that's what makes me happy say bye to Trixie and rexie and say goodbye to Lily you want be in the video you just want to yell at [Music] me hey McKenzie thanks so much for letting us watch your video that was an incredible breakdown just like the rest of McKenzie's breakdowns I look forward to them each and every week I literally have my not I only have notifications on I I kid you not I have notifications on on McKenzie Vance and McKenzie Vance only that's the only notification I turn on she does a lot of great breakdowns thanks so much for letting us use your content really appreciate it out there um thanks so much for everybody for stopping by on another edition of the Mormon news R be sure to go over to McKenzie's channel for sure and she let us use this video but you need to stop what you're doing right now go over there and subscribe to am. Kenzie here let's get her up over 10,000 subscribers here wish I lacked critical thinking skills y all seem so happy she is the absolute queen of snark she is the uh the the the greatest EX Mormon single cat lady on the planet without question hands down yes I am a major Fanboy of McKenzie there's no doubt about that this was a Triple Decker tonight we had the regular Mormon news end up where we had Abby Hansen who laid down the law then we had cult who took on the transgender issues and then we ended with m this was a triple Wy great program out there hit the like hit the subscription really appreciate everybody colch McKenzie thanks so much really appreciate it Theus thanks for the Super Chat remember remember no unhallowed hand can stop this podcast from progressing