Counterpoint notes

I heard part of Lorie Winder Stromberg's keynote speech at the Counterpoint Conference, and I heard part of Janice Allred's part of the final panel presentation. I didn't take notes, but I'll share a few observations here.

Lorie received the Eve Award. Her thesis at BYU was on the cult of the Virgin Mary in the 12th century. She is a mother of two. She has held various church callings. She thanked the forum and discussed some of the founding mothers. She wondered which Eve's footsteps she followed in - Eve the sinner? Mary the co-redemptress? the schizophrenic LDS Eve? I know I'm forgetting a lot of what she said. She bought a She-Ra, Princess of Power book for her son when she was pregnant with her daughter. He started calling the baby She-Ra. After the baby was born, he told someone he had a little sister and he called her "She-Ra, Princess of Power" but that she wasn't as powerful as they'd hoped she would be. Lorie compared this to LDS women - not as powerful as we'd hope they would be. One of the things she said right before I left is that she saw in the 90s a false dichotomy in the church between "good" feminists (like at Exponent II) and "bad" feminists. She has participated in both groups. Afterwards Lorie told me that most of the latter part of her talk was based on her "Power Hungry" piece. Oh, yes, she also, like in that article, quoted Bruce Hafen as saying "The one category of blessing in which the role of women is not the same as that of men holding the priesthood is that of administering the gospel and governing all things." And wondered how he could say it without irony.

[11/8 edited to add] The title of her presentation, "The Angel and the Bitch: Thoughts on Motherhood and Power," comes partly from "The Angel in the House," a poem that exemplifies Victorian ideals of women, and partly from a book called The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage.

I remember two things from Janice's presentation (well, 1 2/3). She sees the priesthood in three ways: first, as the power of love, the second one I don't remember, and third as the power of unity. And she quoted the Isaiah scripture "AWAKE, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion."

Here is a summary from the Deseret News of one of the morning sessions.