On the Symbiosis and Dysbiosis of the Sexes

Matt Palmer

In Brighamite Utah, women were treated like shit. The practice of polygamy in Mormon Utah was wicked system of men abusing women. Just look at the stories of some women living in poverty while their husband’s other wives lived in luxury, knowing their husbands favored the sexual and social attention of some women over their own. It was a system driven to satisfy the male appetite at the expense of female happiness. My wife and I have reached the conclusion that this practice, to this day, has left a traumatic energetic imprint on women of the Brighamite faith, both those of polygamous ancestry and those without it.

I have personally witnessed the dysbiosis of the sexes that pervades Mormon culture. We all have seen abusive men in our lives. I have personally witnessed many good, dutiful, and conscientious men who were absolutely crushed by their women, day after day, year after year, ground down to a hopeless acceptation of misery, themselves victims of this creeping dysbiosis that was born of an uninspired attempt to correct a prior imbalance.

I contend the reasoning for this dysbiosis goes something like the following. Mormon women are trapped and burdened with a few false doctrines of particular relevance to this issue. I contend that most women look at Brighamite polygamy and feel their soul cry out with horror at the prospect of living in such a manner. But they are constantly reminded of other claims that wedge them firmly between various rocks and hard places of abusive false teaching. I’ll name a few. 1) The Living Prophets™ are literally incapable of “leading them astray.”[1] 2) The temple ordinances are the only path to fulfilling one’s divine potential, and obedience to the brethren is necessary both to receive and to fulfill one’s temple ordinances. 3) Polygamy, while not currently the practice of the church, will inevitably be practiced as it was practiced by the Brighamites either in their lifetime or in the afterlife. 4) To whatever extent we feel unfulfilled by participation in the LDS church, we are at fault for failing to take full advantage of their perfect teachings.[2] Thus, on some level, at some place within themselves, LDS women see their one husband inevitably married to and sexually active with other women, against whom they must compete for their husband’s attention and affection. When this thought causes them distress, they must contend with a new battery of unpleasant thoughts. Is following the brethren’s teaching not sufficient to produce lasting happiness? Have the brethren “led us astray” on things as important as sexual morality and familial happiness? If teaching doctrines that destroy families, promote lust, sexual immorality, and jealousy, and utterly break women’s and men’s hearts does not count as “leading us astray” what on earth does that even mean? Have I been led astray? Are these men not prophets at all? Is there something wrong with me because I don’t see the joy in this way of life? Am I destined for hell because I don’t want to live like this?

At one point or another, every LDS woman will have to grapple with these questions. My wife believes they all feel it deep down or have brought it out to the surface and grappled with it openly. And when one grapples with it openly, there are really only two conclusions: they must resign themselves to the idea of sharing their husbands with other women, or they must conclude that the Brighamite system of polygamy was uninspired or worse (and all of the life-changing implications that arise from that).

From that starting point, I believe somewhere Mormons went wrong in the other direction. Instead of healing the old dysbiosis created by the abusive Brighamite system, a new form of dysbiosis was created that portrayed women as something fundamentally superior to men. Think of the various ways this false teaching has crept up in your lived experience. “Women don’t need the priesthood because they are already morally superior to men.” “If men would just listen to the women, everything would be fine.” “Sweet sisters, . . . .”  “You are good enough just the way you are.”[3] Attached to this is the vague but pervasive notion that men are generally no-good oafs who need to abase and feminize themselves for their own good, unless, of course, they are general authorities who will make self-effacing jokes but who are to be emulated and obeyed without question. There is a dreadfully ill dysbiosis among many LDS couples.

This has produced a terminally ill culture with very few actually happy marriages. I know a great many LDS couples who profess happiness. But the sad truth is I know very few who actually want what they have forever. Mormons are some of the greatest pretenders. Just below the surface, however, is the idea that yes, I desire to be with my spouse forever, but only really until after Christ magically changes my spouse into someone that I actually want to be with forever. After all, since the LDS fancy themselves as the only full beneficiaries of the grace of Christ, they believe that all they have to do is keep a grip on that temple recommend, and they will inevitably be God. So, really then, why apply myself to being someone that my spouse should want to be with? We are sealed together, and so long as we merely live our covenants eternal happiness is ours inevitably! I hope you see the perversion in those last two sentences.

The entire western culture is deeply sick. This sickness goes far beyond the particular variant of it endemic to the LDS people I have outlined above. I read a thread on Twitter, from an author I do not know anything about, the morning I wrote the first draft of this essay. Perhaps to be expected in our day of rampant censorship, the account was suspended by Twitter later that same day. This thread was a very adept literary analysis of Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata. I regret that you cannot read it. But this particular analysis shows the misunderstanding of Lysistrata is the effect of our modern perverse ideas about the sexes.

I will do my best to paraphrase the author’s argument briefly. He argued that modern feminist retellings and understandings of Lysistrata miss Aristophanes’ point entirely. In Lysistrata, the women withheld sexual contact from the men in order to convince them to end the Peloponnesian War, which had lingered for two decades by that point. The modern feminist understanding has devolved into something as simplistic as women using men’s sexual desire to get what they want politically. However, what women wanted in Lysistrata was to get their men back from war so they could marry them and nurture a family. The women’s desires and motivations in Lysistrata do not compute with the modern feminist teachings about what it means to live a good life.

Reading this thread induced a Jacob 3[4] moment in me. Here are these pagans who had nothing to do with the Christian gospel or doctrines. And yet, Aristophanes had a grasp on the possible symbiosis of the sexes that far exceeds any teachings of our day. He knew what it looked like out of balance, and he wrote a play about fixing it by putting it back into balance and harmony. In the play, the men had created dysbiosis between the sexes by overzealously pursuing their natural, masculine desires for adventure and combat. This left the women’s natural feminine desires for husbands and offspring unfulfilled. Instead of rejecting the need for the two sexes to come together, or by seeking to invade the domain of the men as in our day, the women acted to restore the symbiotic balance between the two sexes. The men were given to excess and needed to be tempered. But the women did not reject the potential unity. They restored it. There is great wisdom in that old pagan story. It portrays the kind of wisdom and charity that is wholly absent from our decayed western culture.

I have no easy solutions to this problem in our day. Any solution could only come one man and one woman at a time, each working on himself or herself of their own volution and motivation. All I have to offer here are a series of reflective questions that we each could ask ourselves.

• What is it about masculinity that reflects the image of God?
• What is it about femininity that reflects the image of God?
• What beliefs, attitudes, and actions should a man or a woman possess in order to rightfully lay claim to the respect, love, and complete loyalty of his wife or her husband?
  • Which of these do I possess, and which should I acquire?
  • What can my spouse rightfully expect in return of me for displaying these virtues?
  • To what extent have false teachings or evil cultural influences affected my thinking and actions in this regard in the past and currently?
• Should my spouse actually want to be with me beyond this life?
  • Should my spouse actually want to be with me next year or next month?
  • Does my spouse actually want to be with me next month, next year, and after this life?
    • Why?
• To what extent do I lie to myself or others to cope with my unhappiness in my marriage?
• Which aspects of my masculine (for men) or feminine (for women) nature should I temper or foster to maximize the potential symbiosis between my spouse and myself?
  • Which aspects of my spouse’s masculine or feminine nature should I celebrate and reward to maximize the potential symbiosis between my spouse and myself?
  • For men: to what extent am I expecting my wife to be more masculine just to please me?
  • For women: to what extent am I expecting my husband to be more feminine just to please me?
• Does my family contribute to the overall health of my nation?
• What am I willing to change in response to any of the answers to these questions?

This isn’t about who mows the lawn or who makes whom a sandwich. This is about pleasing and fulfilling a partner and in so doing being pleased and fulfilled in return. It’s about the sincere and earned exchange of loyalties. It cannot work without mutual exchange, even if one of the partners is the very best of people. Should one spouse be completely dedicated to the other’s happiness, and the other spouse not reciprocate, they will both be unfulfilled.

Any culture that views men or women as inherently lesser than the other will not be able to muster the creative energy to sustain itself. Likewise, a culture where one of the sexes fails to respect the domain of the other will suffer from severe dysbiosis. The many unhappy, unfulfilling marriages that make up that society will be among the symptoms of the diseased ideology of that people. If men are women view each other categorically as rivals, as litigants, or as dependents, that sickness will infect them. Try as they may, they will fall to the one side or the other unless and until they can find each other as helpmeets.

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[1] Perhaps an essay on this nonsensical, abusive false teaching is in order as well. The sheer volume of Brigham Young’s teachings that have been rejected by the modern church forces modern adherents of this claim and church to admit that, while the brethren are fully capable of teaching false doctrines, and indeed have taught various false doctrines, that the brethren can’t lead one astray because the Lord invariably blesses those that heed their counsel. Thus, following “the prophet” unfailingly leads to the highest blessings the Lord can offer, even if the fruits of following the prophet are unrighteousness. This is nothing more or less than gross idolatry and trusting in the arm of flesh.

[2] There is a rhetorical tactic I have observed and for which I lack sufficient terminology at this time. I have at times heard the phrase “church culture” used to describe the bottom-up influences on the lived experiences of members of the Brighamite church. It is based on the assumption that anything unpleasant or unfulfilling in connection with LDS life could not have come from the top-down; it can only be the member’s fault. It’s used to contrast the frustrating and unhappy lived experience in the LDS church with the lofty, but admittedly unfulfilled, promises of joy and happiness from following the brethren’s teachings. It’s a way of blaming members when the sales pitch doesn’t match their experience. It’s a way of saying, “I’m not abusing you. You really just suck.” It’s yet another subtle and abusive tactic of suppressing dissent and honest questions. It would be great to develop some more precise and explanatory terminology to discuss this particular rhetorical tactic deployed by apologists.

[3] This is one of my wife’s particular pet peeves. She has sat through many lessons designed to allay what she sees as the moral neurosis of LDS women, who are constantly told they should feel great about themselves just the way they are, rather than put thought and application toward and functional and living relationship with their Creator. Christ said that “there is none good but one, that is, God.” Mark 10:18. In this sense we are, indeed, always good enough for the grace of Christ, but never good of ourselves. We all should see ourselves in a realistic light as sinners, but sinners worthy of the grace of Christ and dedicated to growth as people and as married partners.  

[4]Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate because of their filthiness and the cursing which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you; for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father—that they should have save it were one wife, and concubines they should have none, and there should not be whoredoms committed among them. And now, this commandment they observe to keep; wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people. Behold, their husbands love their wives, and their wives love their husbands; and their husbands and their wives love their children; and their unbelief and their hatred towards you is because of the iniquity of their fathers; wherefore, how much better are you than they, in the sight of your great Creator? Jacob 3:5-7