This article highlights the disparity between the original “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and the contemporary musical “Wicked.” While “Wicked” reinterprets characters and presents a childish perspective of society in its story, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” conveys substantial themes of femininity, resilience, and the transformative journey of growing up, offering meaningful lessons especially for young women.
Tag: feminism
Great Profiles in Courage: Mary Dyer Executed for Religious Liberty
Mary Dyer is one of the greatest examples of true Christianity in American history. A member of the Society of Friends, a Quaker, she stood up against one of the most authoritarian and autocratic societies to ever exist in North America, the Puritan ran Massachusetts Bay Colony. While plenty of people talk about liberty and religious freedom, Mary did more than talk – she lived and died asserting her basic human rights in the face of a brutalist and oppressive society that would deny her basic rights because of her faith. She is a shining example of what it means to love liberty more than life and what it means to truly live pure Christianity. Her example is a righteous example to us all.
The Liberating Power of The First Vision for Women
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is often attacked as being “anti-woman” and as “oppressive” to women by our critics. The attacks are complete nonsense. The very opposite is true. In a world that is constantly denigrating women, that is seeking to even obliterate the reality of women, it is only the Church of Jesus Christ that promotes, defends, and upholds women and womanhood. While all else hate women and womanhood, even those who claim to be feminists, it is only in the Restored Gospel and this church that the ennobling, uplifting, and exalting truths of Divine Womanhood are found and enacted.
Brigham Young: Anti-Government Activist and First Wave Feminist
Reading through some of President Young’s sermons I have been astounded at the clarity with which he understood and addressed the threat of the State. He understood the threat of its so-called charity and he especially understood the role of public schools as indoctrination centers whose purpose was to implant loyalty and obedience into the minds of children form a tender age. He also clearly understood the threat this indoctrination posed to the Church and the Restored Gospel. Those who would support public schools he labelled as miserable apostates. Openly.
Interwoven with this are his comments about the role of women in Latter-day Saint society. He consistently calls upon them to be self-independent, to be educated, and to take their place in the workforce of Utah. The only jobs that he saw as not being for women were strenuous physical jobs, otherwise he declared a woman could perform any work any man could. Which was remarkably radical for his day.
What Mormon Women Had To Say About Polygamy- Part 1
We all know how we are supposed to think and feel about the practice of polygamy by early Latter-day Saints. We have been told that it was sexist, oppressive, abusive, and harmful to women, something we should be ashamed of, so much that even many Latter-day Saints assume the assertions are axiomatic. But, are they? Are these statements in fact true or are they, like so many other things today, merely modern anti-Mormon drivel projected onto the past?
In order to figure this out I have decided to go back to listen the voices of the women who had firsthand experience with plural marriage, the polygamous women of Utah, to see what they had to say about the practice. Needless to say what I found is quite the opposite of the malignancies spread about plural marriage today. These powerful, intelligent, educated women saw plural marriage as an essential right of theirs that brought numerous blessings and protections to their lives which they would rather die fighting to protect than give up at the demand of the law. In this series I want to make their voices heard to counter the lies falsely spread in their name in by anti-Mormons. When it comes to plural marriage, thee truth about, like everything else, will set us free of the falsehoods we believe and reaffirm the truth of the Restored Gospel.