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We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
To the We Are More Pod cast. My name is Alyssa. And my name is Bree. We're two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism. We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach his word.
Speaker 1:And apparently, that's controversial. Get comfy.
Speaker 2:Bonjour. Good day. How is your family? Should I stop there?
Speaker 1:No. I think you should sing the entire song.
Speaker 2:I don't think so because I think we're gonna get in trouble if
Speaker 1:I do. You never know. Disney could not listen to this.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna bet you dollars for donuts, they don't. Disney, are
Speaker 1:you out there? If you are, can we have free tickets?
Speaker 2:And can I finish this song? That's the more important question. We're gonna go to Disney regardless. I don't care like, I care if we get free tickets, but I'm going to go regardless. But can I sing this song?
Speaker 2:Don't tell
Speaker 1:them that. You're really ruining my whole argument.
Speaker 2:I'll never go again. I shall never see you again.
Speaker 1:Pride and prejudice?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Alright. I'm sure that's for many things. Lucy, the father was just to speak with you. So I've been listening to audiobooks lately because I am desperately trying to hit my Goodreads goal, and I just am behind. I'm really behind.
Speaker 1:Okay? But I I just downloaded the Pride and Prejudice whatever. And I started listening to it, and I was like, I've read Pride and Prejudice before, and this is certainly not it. It's like some weird dramatization that they did, and it's so short.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's like just the dialogue, but not actually pulled from the book. It's just kind of like, this was the vibe of what they meant. Here you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Pride and Prejudice inspired. Mhmm. It's cute, but it's not the book.
Speaker 2:And we know the book. We do. And the movie. I could probably there are a few things out there in the world that I could probably quote at you the whole way through. One of them is Jim Carrey's The Grinch.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say that. And the other is the what did we say? Five or six Six hours. Six hour long version of Pride and Prejudice. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:I could probably quote that entire thing to you.
Speaker 1:I think people don't know as much
Speaker 2:about that one, though.
Speaker 1:That one came from the BBC in, like, the early nineties.
Speaker 2:I think more people know about it than you think. But they have to be the the the people who would like Pride and Prejudice, anyways. Actually,
Speaker 1:it was just recently Jane Austen's birthday.
Speaker 2:I know. Actually, this is a side note. They had Jane Austen's birthday party at the bookstore downtown. Mhmm. And I had it in my calendar.
Speaker 2:Did we miss it? And we missed it.
Speaker 1:Oh, dang it. We're very irresponsible. Yeah. Especially around the holidays. There's no hope for us.
Speaker 2:I had, like, three things in my calendar that day, and none of them really happened. That's a little bit depressing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So speaking of strong women. Hey. And also the holidays.
Speaker 2:Happy holidays. Look at that transition.
Speaker 1:We know what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1:So last week, we talked about Saint Lucia.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And this week, we are gonna talk about another woman who influenced Christmas to a degree, but influenced women, women's health. Just a really important figure that I never
Speaker 2:heard about. And her name's Martha May Houvier. That's not it.
Speaker 1:Breathe determined that that's her name.
Speaker 2:Her name is Martha. And if your name is Martha, it has to be Martha May Houvier. There's no other Martha's that
Speaker 1:I know of. For those of you out there that are confused, that's also from Jim Carrey's The Grinch.
Speaker 2:Well, from just The Grinch, but specifically.
Speaker 1:Is it only from the Jim Carrey version? Think it might be. I don't think she's in any of the other versions.
Speaker 2:And it's what's her face? Betty. Yeah. That's not actually Hi. Forget her name.
Speaker 2:How do
Speaker 1:you burn out? So the woman we're actually talking about today is Martha Hughes Cannon. And she was the first female US state senator. And she was in Utah. And this was in The eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1:The very late eighteen hundreds, like the eighteen nineties. So she lived between 1857 and 1932, and she became the state senator in 1896. And so when you think about that timeline versus, you know, the timeline of The United States. Right? That's not so long ago.
Speaker 2:That's not so long ago. And I think so often we erase women from history Mhmm. To suit certain people's agendas. And I like bringing to light and speaking her name, like, the things that she's done. And I think we picked her because relating to Christmas, she had a major influence on, like, big social gatherings and keeping those social gatherings healthy and safe.
Speaker 2:So you think, like, you're getting together with your 47 other family members, and that kid over there's nose is running. She influenced that in a way to make those times where you don't wanna have to worry a little bit more worry free. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So she was born in Wales, and her family emigrated to The United States with the Mormon church.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Which is super interesting because I've talked before about how much I watch Mormon content. So I've heard about this, like, mass immigration
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Because the Mormons believed that Utah was the place to be, the leader
Speaker 2:of their So Lake City.
Speaker 1:So her family emigrated here on the way. Her father died, and her mom still kept going.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. She was only four
Speaker 1:years old. Martha was only four years old. Her mom probably wasn't.
Speaker 2:Her mom was only four. But, I mean, her mom probably had other children too. Right. Her mom may have been in a plural marriage as well. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:So, like, hopefully she had some kind of support. Mhmm. But still, her husband died mid journey. Right. And not on the Oregon Trail and not of dysentery.
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 1:Martha and her mom and her family get to Utah. She grows up there. She eventually actually enters into a plural marriage herself.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Now sources are kind of disagreeing on which wife she was. I found that she was the second wife in the marriage. Brie found that
Speaker 2:she was the fourth wife. But we know
Speaker 1:for sure she wasn't the first. We do know that.
Speaker 2:Which means that she didn't have as many rights as an actual married person would because she's not number one.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And she was one of several.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And the interesting thing as I researched her and we'll get into why this is important. But it's not in this case, you
Speaker 2:know, we I'm sure most of
Speaker 1:us have watched Sister Wives once or twice in our lives. And so you kind of see that picture of everybody living in one house, contributing to the financial pot, and, you know, supporting everyone. That's not what her story was.
Speaker 2:I don't think they all live in the same house
Speaker 1:anymore, but they did at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Oh. When they when
Speaker 1:it first started, they were all in one house. And it
Speaker 2:went from room to room? Yeah. Pretty much. Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:So she lived on her own separate from the other wives and basically had to support herself. She wasn't getting a lot of financial support from her husband whose name was Angus?
Speaker 2:His name was Angus.
Speaker 1:Angus. Yeah. Yes. Angus Muncannon. And he was a major figure in the LDS church, but she kinda had to do her own thing.
Speaker 2:He was a major figure in the church and a political figure as well, which is interesting. She didn't just marry anyone. Right. She married, like, a big someone. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so she, in order to support herself, went to college, which for a woman in the late eighteen hundreds is not a thing.
Speaker 2:I think everything that she did along the way was, like, taboo Mhmm. For the time. She's in a plural marriage. She's gonna educate herself. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:She's a woman. Just existing as a woman. Existing as a woman. Like, she has so many strikes against her. And
Speaker 1:not only did she get her bachelor's degree, so she went all through all through university to get her bachelor's degree in chemistry at the University of Utah. She then went on to get her doctorate from the University of Michigan, which
Speaker 2:is really cool for us. Which is really cool and crazy that we haven't heard of her.
Speaker 1:Right. So this woman was a doctor. Mhmm. A medical doctor. Again, not happening for women.
Speaker 1:I don't know how many women were in her class at the University of Michigan, but I'm gonna guess zero. Like, it was her and a bunch of men. Imagine being that woman. You know how we sometimes like to try and make people more real for you guys? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Imagine sitting in that
Speaker 2:seat in your corset and dress uncomfortably. Your family's back in Utah. And not only are you the only woman, so just looking around, that's uncomfortable. Every man is looking at you in that room and space and thinking that you don't belong there. Right.
Speaker 2:And you're constantly having to prove yourself. Not only prove that you can get into this school, but now you have to prove your value in so many ways. You have to prove that you're educated enough to get into the school. And then once you're there, you have to be even better Mhmm. Than the other students.
Speaker 2:Because if you're just at the same level, they don't care. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And because you're different, the goal of your classmates is going to be to make you feel like you shouldn't be here. They're gonna haze you.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Well, they don't see women as equal to them. Right. So it's almost a slap in the face to them in that room that you're there with them. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So after her education actually, I'm not sure
Speaker 1:if this is after her education or before, but I think it's after. Martha left the country. She said, see you. Bye. She had to actually flee because there was kind of an anti polygamy crusade going through Utah at that point.
Speaker 1:And she was pregnant. Right. So she ran away to Europe. And according to her Wikipedia page, she did that because she didn't want to have to testify against her husband. Oh.
Speaker 1:So here she is uprooting herself, uprooting her life because she knows that her husband is gonna go to jail, that that's gonna destroy her family if she is forced to testify against him. So she left. Eventually comes back. And when she comes back She's inspired. While she was there, she learned
Speaker 2:a ton of stuff about public health. Yeah. Women's health. Women's health, public health, and she was inspired by their practices in Europe and how they were, you know, listening to science and how that affected people's day to day lives,
Speaker 1:and she wanted to bring that back to The US. I think what's fascinating about that too is that she was removed from her hyper conservative space in in many ways when she was getting educated. Now she's in Europe. She's learning new things that she would never have learned in her small community, like so many of us as Christians.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Where you sit determines what you see. Right. And she moved her seat around. Right.
Speaker 1:And when she came back, now the place that she had been was no longer satisfying to her. Mhmm. She needed to do something more. She needed to be something more.
Speaker 2:And so she ran for state senate. Mhmm. And interestingly, ran against her husband. Can you imagine the conversation at the dinner table?
Speaker 1:No. Sorry, honey. I know this is a dream of yours, but I've also put my name in the ring.
Speaker 2:Screw you. And I will be rallying against you. Yeah. Sucks to suck.
Speaker 1:She ran as a Democrat, and she and he ran as a Republican. So I mean, seriously, can you imagine? What was that like in a married couple?
Speaker 2:In a married couple that already had a lot of stressors. Right. Right? Their their marriage was under a microscope all of the time. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And now this? Yeah. How did they stay together? I would have left.
Speaker 1:Well, he had, like, five other options. True.
Speaker 2:Maybe it was, like, less pressure that way. Maybe.
Speaker 1:But she ran against him and actually another man as well. And she won.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. In the eighteen nineties. Which is insane. The first female to win. Yes.
Speaker 2:She's educated. She's a doctor. She's a Mormon. Mhmm. She's in a plural marriage.
Speaker 2:And she won that. That is a lot of strikes against her Mhmm.
Speaker 1:In broader society and what broader society was looking
Speaker 2:at. Mhmm. So Martha was part of the suffrage movement, which women were fighting for equal rights. She was actually recognized by Susan B. Anthony, who was a major suffragette.
Speaker 2:Women in Utah gained the right to vote in 1870, but they lost it due to federal law targeting Mormons specifically, which I find very interesting. And then they regained it in 1896 when Utah became a state. So the same year that she won
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Women had just gotten the right to vote in Utah specifically. Now federally, women didn't gain the right to vote until 1920, is which when the nineteenth amendment was ratified. So interesting that the year that they can vote is the year that she is elected. Interesting in this, the year of 2025.
Speaker 2:Where we're at politically. Right. And I'm just gonna leave that there.
Speaker 1:And we've been able to vote for a while. Yeah. Now one of the quotes that I found that I really liked, it says, you don't have to approve of a system to acknowledge the brilliance of a woman surviving inside of it. And I think that's really valid for a lot of religious spaces. A lot of times we'll look at other faiths or our own faith even and look at the women inside of it and say, alright.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't like the way you're living. Therefore, I can't give you any validity. And I think that's maybe why we don't hear about her. Because she was living in this plural marriage, which is very controversial topic. She was in a very conservative society, things like that.
Speaker 1:And so we dismiss her because of those things. But the reality is just because she had a part of her life that maybe we don't necessarily agree with in this plural marriage, she still did really important stuff.
Speaker 2:I think it's also important to recognize what people in power like to do. Mhmm. And they like to stay in power. And if you give them a reason to question their power, they don't like that. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:So Martha's entire existence shows that women can be educated, can make major changes. They're worthy of taking on leadership roles. And if you look back and see all these women who have leadership roles, you'll realize they can do this. People like Kamala Harris, people like Michelle Obama, people like, I don't know, Beyonce. But we wanna erase their stories
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Because it suits certain people's agendas. Mhmm. We don't wanna remember that women can lead. Right. Oh, women have never led before.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. We're not ready for it yet. But we were ready then. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And when the country said, okay, we're behind you, look at what she did. Because Martha stepped into the public health space. Remember, she's a doctor. She went to The UK, and she studied medicine. She understood what public health looked like.
Speaker 1:And so it makes sense that once she jumped into this role, that was her purpose. She focused on women's health. She focused on children's health. Now at this point in the late eighteen hundreds, infant mortality was about a hundred and fifty to two hundred deaths per thousand births. So that's twenty percent.
Speaker 1:It's a huge amount. That's insane. And about six to nine women per thousand births died. So not only was it risky for the babies, it was risky for mom as well. And one of the things that I was reading because we were talking about, like, connecting this to Christmas and things like that.
Speaker 1:And it said that one of the greatest miracles of Jesus' birth was that Mary lived through it. That's so true. Because even back then, it would have been much worse even. And so Martha focused on that. And what can we do to change that?
Speaker 1:She was the founder and obviously a member of Utah's first state board of health. So Utah became a state, and she was like, we need to
Speaker 2:work on this, guys. Guess what we're doing. She also, for Utah, created systems for vaccination clinics, school physicals, sanitation laws, and tuberculosis prevention programs.
Speaker 1:She also improved state sanitation standards across the board and talked about infectious disease control, educated people on it, walked into spaces where an educated woman wouldn't have been welcome Mhmm. And said, I'm going to stand here even if it makes you uncomfortable, and we're going to fix the problem.
Speaker 2:On some of the research I looked up, it says that her male medical colleagues, some of them, not all of them, but some of them accused her of being too bold and too confident. How dare she? Which of the time Mhmm. Could get you institutionalized. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:Alyssa and I looked up nineteenth century women's health, like, they believed about women's health. Mhmm. And it's kind of crazy. Now, we've heard we've talked about bike face and stuff, like, didn't want women to ride bicycles because it could make them crazy. But they believed hysteria.
Speaker 2:Hysteria was something that, like, all women could be diagnosed with. All of the time. Anytime you had symptoms include crying, irritability, fainting, strong emotions, sexual desire, or lack of sexual desire. So, like, being alive. -Mm -And the word hysteria comes from the Greek word hysteria, which literally translates to uterus.
Speaker 2:Who
Speaker 1:knew that? That's you told me that, and that blew my mind. I know. Because any anybody who's watched, like, old movies and stuff like that, you hear that with, oh, she's hysterical. She's hysterical.
Speaker 1:And you hear that now about women as well.
Speaker 2:Anytime they show emotion. Emotion. Which is very funny because and you everybody has heard this before, but, like, men have rebranded anger into not an emotion.
Speaker 1:But you see, like, how many look at
Speaker 2:the statistics on, like, men doing crime versus women doing crime. Men killing people versus women killing people. I think men are they don't know how to deal with their emotions. And that's why there's so much violence. Maybe you should just cry.
Speaker 1:Women at the time were institutionalized
Speaker 2:for anything. Anything at all. Anytime you were out of line at all, they're like, institutionalized. Literally, one
Speaker 1:of the reasons we looked up was not being submissive enough to your husband. Yep. You could be institutionalized.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:One of the things Brie found as well was that having a period was considered a medical issue.
Speaker 2:Yes. It says, Menstruation wasn't seen as normal. It was viewed viewed as debilitating, dangerous, and proof of female weakness. So they said, avoid schools, avoid work, avoid voting, avoid decision making. And doctors argued that menstruating women could poison food.
Speaker 2:Their touch could damage crops. Their emotions were unreliable. Because of periods that we can't control. That we can't control.
Speaker 1:Now I'm in for the skipping work and school. Okay? I'm on board. Yeah. Other than that.
Speaker 1:For something that our bodies cannot control,
Speaker 2:our bodies do naturally. And they're like, oh, there's a reason that they're different from us. Mhmm. But they're they're normal Mhmm. As far as women go.
Speaker 2:But they're different from men, so that's a reason to target them and Right. Say that we're crazy.
Speaker 1:Just by existing, we're 12 steps behind. Not because of who we are, but because of the rules put on us. Mhmm. And even today, a lot of these issues stand. I was looking up just some of the the current shocking stats of women's health.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. It wasn't until 1993 that The US NIH revitalization act required federally funded clinical trials to include women. So just to put that into perspective, I was alive. I was born in 1992. I was alive for a time when women were not required to be in clinical trials, which means you could do a clinical trial on a medication that would be produced and put on the shelf.
Speaker 1:Something like Advil stuck on the shelf at your local grocery store. Men and women are both gonna take it, but women were never considered in that trial. They weren't tried at all to see how it would affect their bodies.
Speaker 2:And our bodies are different. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And to prove that point, women experience fifty to seventy five percent more adverse drug reactions than men. So it's important to know how a woman's body is gonna react because it is going to react differently than a man's body.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And if you put things on the
Speaker 2:shelf and fifty one percent of
Speaker 1:the population has an issue with it, that's gonna be a problem. Additionally, like, heart disease is the leading cause of death for women right now. For decades, research focused just on men, just on their symptoms, on how to treat it. And that's why so many women don't know that they've had a heart attack. It's a very common issue.
Speaker 1:And it's common also for women to be sent home from hospitals while having a heart attack, being told that they're just having anxiety.
Speaker 2:Well, anytime someone says that we don't need feminism anymore, just show them that. Because that shows you what the world is putting their value on and what they find important. Right. And men's health, they're saying is more important Mhmm. Or their lives are more valuable than women's.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. We are more. We are more. Hashtag.
Speaker 1:Now some of the things that Martha also required was she required that medical professionals be licensed. That's important. Things that we take for granted. Mhmm. Someone had to pioneer.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Someone had to step into that gap where people were gonna be uncomfortable because you had, like, small country doctors and things like that that you're now having to say no more.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Your crazy concoctions. There's no science behind that. Right. Maybe we stop that.
Speaker 2:The snake oil salesman.
Speaker 1:You know? So there was gonna be pushback. And we just take for granted that our medical professionals have licenses.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That also, if they have that license now, they have to do certain things to keep up that license to make sure they're still educated on, like, the latest stuff, not just when they went back to school in the '70s. There's been a few updates. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:She also works to limit dangerous and untrained medical practices across the board. So again, like those snake oil salesmen, things like that, and elevated the overall standards, not just for doctors, but also for midwives. So she started training women who had historically been helping birth all these babies. You'd think particularly in her LDS community because Lots of babies. Babies are being born.
Speaker 1:Yes. So she was training them. She was working with them. She was saying, okay. If you're gonna do this, here's how we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1:There's gonna
Speaker 2:be standards. Also, something as simple like, she helped pioneer the sanitation laws. Mhmm. As simple as washing your hands
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And how much that can cut down on literally death. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Well, it cuts down on surgical infections. It cuts down on secondary infections and just just overall health. Because people are gathering. They've got these huge families. It's Christmas time.
Speaker 1:You're all getting together to have a big meal to enjoy time together. And someone has tuberculosis. And everybody's screwed. Actually, was just I've been I've been listening to books. Right?
Speaker 1:So I was listening to I think it's Anne of the Island, so the third book in the Anne of Green Gables series. And one of the girls in the book has consumption, which I looked it up because I was like, what is consumption? Yeah. It's tuberculosis. And it's essentially a wasting disease, so it sort of saps the life from you slowly.
Speaker 1:You just have less and less to you. It takes the life out of you. And she pioneered a way to get out of that, a way for families not to have to worry about that.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That's what she did. She also was a very strong advocate. So again, she was part of the feminist movement of her time, but she was a strong advocate for consent and protection of girls. Love that. She helped raise the age of consent in Utah to 18, which might, again, we take for granted.
Speaker 1:Right? 18 is the age of consent, at least in The United States. Most of The United States. But surrounding states at the time, the average age of consent was as young as 10 to 12 years old.
Speaker 2:Which is insane because to me, I think, like, 18 is still a baby. Mhmm. When I was 18, I didn't think that. Mhmm. But now looking back, because I'm so old and aged, I think about myself as 18, you don't know at all who you are.
Speaker 2:Your brain's not fully developed. You're just wandering through life trying to, you know, make a decision. And back then, was 10 to 12. That's insane.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Which meant that not only, you know, the horrifying reality of of sex Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But marriage also was part of this.
Speaker 1:So in these very religious communities, they're marrying off these girls at 10 to 12 years old.
Speaker 2:And even still, remember guys, like, there are certain countries still just now outlawing child marriage. That's a huge trend on TikTok right now is just recognizing, oh, this country finally outlawed this in this, the year of our Lord 2025. I
Speaker 1:was just watching a TED talk the other day about a woman that was married off as a child bride and her experience and the abuse that she suffered. And because you're not marrying not that it would be acceptable anyway, but you're not marrying a young girl to a young boy. You're marrying a young girl to a fully adult man.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So she has no agency whatsoever. And again, none of that situation would be okay even if it was a young girl and a young boy. But now you've got this very young girl who doesn't have any idea how to protect herself with an adult man who knows fully what he's about to do.
Speaker 2:Doesn't know to even say no, and she can't. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So Martha saw this probably in her own community. And that's the reality I think that we have to acknowledge is that she came from the community where these things were an issue.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:She came from a community that had big families, so disease was common and present. She came from a community that was having a lot of babies, so she was seeing that infant mortality. She came from a hyper conservative and very controlling faith that probably was marrying off children. Mhmm. And so because of her experiences, because of where she sat and what she saw when she had the ability to, when she had the power to, she made a change.
Speaker 1:She fought for change.
Speaker 2:And sometimes that means being uncomfortable. Especially you think she was making pretty bold statements about her family, her community, the people that she surrounded herself with. And she's saying, this is no longer okay. This is not acceptable, and I'm gonna do something about that.
Speaker 1:That is really hard. And
Speaker 2:Alyssa and I talk about this all the time. We're not on the same scale. But in our own small way, stepping out and making ourselves uncomfortable too.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. You have to wonder what her life was like during this time and after this time. Because she probably didn't have a very comfortable space in her community the rest of her life.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No. No nowhere. Mhmm. Because she wasn't respected by her medical colleagues or her political colleagues or her family.
Speaker 2:But she was making changes Mhmm. Regardless.
Speaker 1:Sometimes you have to step out into that that scary unknown. We call it
Speaker 2:being comfortable being uncomfortable. And think of if you
Speaker 1:do step out into that unknown, and it is uncomfortable and it hurts, and no one likes that, no one wants that, but if you do, instead of thinking I'm uncomfortable, think of how many girls and women and people that she impacted from then on. She changed the lives of so many people. So she spent time uncomfortable, but how many more people got to be comfortable because of her, got to be safe because of her, Loved and cared for and healthy because of her.
Speaker 2:And that's why it's important to look back and recognize those people who did the trailblazing for us so that, you're right, we can have the luxury of voting. Mhmm. So that we can be educated. So that I can speak out about my beliefs. So that I'm not forced into marriage.
Speaker 2:That's amazing. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Another thing that she worked on was mental health reform. And that was a very big deal for women at the
Speaker 2:time because as Brie said Hysteria.
Speaker 1:You could be institutionalized for nothing. For nothing. For crying sometimes.
Speaker 2:If you're feeling any kind of way about anything. And a lot of the times it was women's husbands Mhmm. Who, if they didn't feel like they were submitting enough or if they were getting in too many arguments, he was just like, hey, she needs to be institutionalized. She's unwell.
Speaker 1:And even when women were having legitimate issues. Because, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I have mental health issues all the time. Like, I deal with very severe anxiety. But I get the support that I need for it, and that makes me be able to function. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And women would have anxiety issues just like they do now. They would have postpartum depression Mhmm. Which is such a common issue, and not get any support and be stuck in an institution for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. In an institution. Or they would be put on, like, complete bed rest Mhmm. And told that a cure would be complete and total submission to your husband. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:That was like, oh, you you have a headache? How about this? Imagine walking into a doctor's office. Just just walk there with me. Okay?
Speaker 1:You step through the door. You sit down. And you wanna have a really serious chat. You're like, I am struggling. And he says, you know what?
Speaker 1:I understand. I hear you. That's really I'm so sorry you're going through that. I'm gonna diagnose you, and here's the treatment. And you think he's gonna hand you, like, a prescription.
Speaker 1:Right? And on the prescription pad,
Speaker 2:it says submit to your husband.
Speaker 1:I just need you to picture that scenario. But also, again, unfair to husbands
Speaker 2:to put in that position. Right? Like, wife's mental health, your wife's physical health depends on you making the right decisions.
Speaker 1:Hope you figured it out. It's a system that benefits no one. No one. Like, patriarchy and I mean, you guys know this, but it doesn't benefit men either. Mm-mm.
Speaker 1:It hurts everyone. When you walk away from equality and you decide that there's a hierarchy, particularly in God's kingdom, it hurts everybody. It hurts you. It hurts your spouse. It hurts your friends.
Speaker 1:It hurts the people outside of your faith because they are never coming in.
Speaker 2:Nope.
Speaker 1:They want nothing to do with you. But Martha also saw that in her world, probably. Oh, definitely. And so she fought for new standards for people with mental illness. She fought to have mental health treated as medical and not as a moral failing, which I find really interesting because coming from the LDS church, that I I've again, I've watched a lot of videos on this.
Speaker 1:So mental health still is often treated there as a moral failing.
Speaker 2:I would say even in, like, the Christian world as well, there's a good chunk of more conservative people who would say, You don't need therapy. You don't need mental health medication. You just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and get over it. If you just try, you can get over it.
Speaker 1:Right. You don't believe enough. You don't have enough faith. Did you read this Bible verse? And I can tell you from very personal life experience, therapy does a world of difference.
Speaker 1:Medications, if you need them, make a world of difference. And yet in you're right. In so many societies, it's a moral failing. It's a you problem.
Speaker 2:Well, it just doesn't make sense. If you have an injury anywhere else, you'll go to physical therapy or you'll get medication, whatever. But anything to do mentally, they're like, no, no, That's not part of the body. You silly goose. From the neck up doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Just powerful.
Speaker 1:And I've heard this so many times in my life. You just have to learn to deal with it. You just have to learn to deal with it. This is a you thing. Everyone else can deal with their stress.
Speaker 1:Why can't you? But I wonder if maybe and this is anecdotal, but, like, I wonder if maybe Martha dealt with this herself. Yeah. Depression? Did she deal with anxiety?
Speaker 1:Did she deal with postpartum?
Speaker 2:Or did people in her life that she loves deal with it? Right. Probably.
Speaker 1:And she saw from from her medical standpoint, because she was a doctor who had the education to see it, she could say, no, I don't think this is the fault of you not believing in God enough. I think that there's a mental medical issue here that we can treat. Mhmm. And how much hope does that give you As someone with anxiety or depression or any kind of mental health disorder, if someone says, we can help you instead of, here's a bible verse. Go fix yourself.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:We can help you, and we have the licensing to do it. Right. We're not just gonna guess.
Speaker 1:Right. Another interesting thing about Martha is that she was pregnant while in office.
Speaker 2:Which is wild, because that comes from a time where women had to go into hiding Mhmm. When they were pregnant. Or even think on I Love Lucy. Mhmm. They weren't, like, having her be shown as pregnant.
Speaker 1:I think that was the first show that I believe it was.
Speaker 2:Showed a woman being physically pregnant.
Speaker 1:Which was not that long ago. That was what, the 1950s?
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so for her to serve while pregnant, which if they thought having a period was a medical issue, imagine what pregnancy is. Yuck. Like, in a way, it's shameful. Right? Not shameful for him, but apparently shameful for her where you have to hide and you're considered less stable and things like that.
Speaker 1:And it reminds me a lot of the story of Mary, that while pregnant, women can do incredible things. And if women can do it while pregnant, men need to step the crap up.
Speaker 2:If she can literally build a savior Mhmm. In her womb Mhmm. How much more? What else can we do?
Speaker 1:I think it's cool to look at the two of them together. Not Mary and Martha from the bible, but this particular Martha and Mary, the mother
Speaker 2:of god. Martha May Houvier.
Speaker 1:No. Not her. To look at them and the things that they fought for, the things that they found important. Because Mary chose to carry Jesus. God gave her an option.
Speaker 1:We talked about that last year. And she said, yes. I will do this very hard thing even though the people in my society are going to judge me for it, even though I know I'm choosing a life that is so much harder than if I said no, even if knowing that I stayed quiet and small would still be okay. It would still be okay.
Speaker 2:And God would still bless her. But standing up
Speaker 1:and doing the big hard thing makes me part of history. And that's what Martha did too. She stood up and she did the big hard thing even though it would have been perfectly fine if she had stayed home and just lived a quiet life. No one
Speaker 2:would have judged her for it.
Speaker 1:History wouldn't have hated her for it, but they wouldn't have remembered her either. And so she chose to be remembered. She chose to impact everyone who came after her, just like Mary chose to impact everyone who came after her.
Speaker 2:No. I will say not every person can be like Martha. Some of us, that's a little overwhelming. Yeah. But what we can do is remember the people who do Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And celebrate those people too, which
Speaker 1:is why we're speaking her name today. And what can you do that impacts whoever comes after you? It doesn't have to be the whole world. It doesn't have to be the whole state of Utah. But there is something that you can do to impact the next generation or the next group that comes through your church or the next group that moves onto your street or whatever.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. There is something that you can do, some way that you can show love, kindness, care, and be Jesus for those people. So what is it? And sometimes it's stepping in and bringing a meal to somebody or going and holding their hand while they're going through a tough situation. And sometimes it's stopping abuses.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't know that we've talked about, like, generational trauma a lot, but standing in that way of generational trauma so that it doesn't keep going. There are many ways that you can impact the next group of people.
Speaker 2:I think it just takes opening your eyes up to opportunity. Mhmm. And it's a practice Mhmm. Because we like to think about ourselves and our, like, you know, just our little surroundings. But open your eyes up to opportunities where you can be the hands and feet of Jesus or where you can just support people in small ways, big ways, medium sized ways.
Speaker 1:Small ways and tall ways and wide ways and
Speaker 2:Left ways and up ways and down ways.
Speaker 1:Now I, as I was reading, was very curious as to why Martha is not someone we hear about. This is a big deal. Why did I not learn about her in history class? The first female state senator, that's a big thing. That's a big deal.
Speaker 1:Like, if
Speaker 2:you're gonna teach me about the suffragette movement, teach me about her. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, you just said Susan B. Anthony talked about her. Like, she should be a big figure. Right? And yet she's not now maybe some of you have heard of her.
Speaker 1:And if you have, broad value. Yeah. Good for you. But here's a theory as to why. So despite the fact that she was one of the first female politicians in The United States, she doesn't quite fit anybody's narrative.
Speaker 1:No. She's not comfortable in any box we wanna put her in. She doesn't fit the secular feminist box that feminism wants to put women in. Mhmm. And, again, like, feminism likes to put women in boxes too.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Stronger boxes, But boxes, nonetheless. And we have
Speaker 2:to recognize that people don't fit in boxes.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Like, oh, she was a religious person. Right. Yikes. She, as far as I know, stayed in her faith for her whole life.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. She was in a polygamist marriage. She was in a very patriarchal society, and she stayed there. She made different choices than many of the feminists today would make. And if we transplanted her from then to today, she probably wouldn't be very liked by many of the feminists because of those decisions.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So she doesn't fit that narrative. And yet on the flip side, she doesn't really fit in
Speaker 2:the church woman box either. Because she's educated and outspoken and calls out the wrongs that she sees within her faith. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So she's not that submissive, subservient, quiet woman. She's not staying home making dinners. So she doesn't fit for them either. So they're not gonna tell her story either. She's not some beacon of faith
Speaker 2:because she doesn't fit their story. She doesn't fit our story. So what do we do with her? Mhmm.
Speaker 1:We forget her. And that's a little bit heartbreaking. We do that a lot Mhmm.
Speaker 2:To women. We either, if we're going to remember them at all, we're gonna warp their story. Think Mary Magdalene.
Speaker 1:Or Junior. Or Junior. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:But it's so much easier just to let
Speaker 1:her slip into the abyss.
Speaker 2:Now she has been remembered in certain contexts. Not a lot. You won't hear a lot about her. There are quite a few, like
Speaker 1:not awards because she was from the eighteen nineties. Don't do it.
Speaker 2:An award. And the child mentioned a check. If you
Speaker 1:haven't seen the Grinch and you listened to this podcast, I'm gonna need you to watch the Grinch because you will understand a whole lot more of her references.
Speaker 2:Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate. Hate.
Speaker 2:Hate. Hose entirely.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, here are a few
Speaker 2:of the things, kind of
Speaker 1:the honors that have been bestowed upon her after she passed away. In 1986, the new Utah Department of Health building was dedicated and named the Martha Hughes Cannon Health building in
Speaker 2:Salt Lake weird. They said her name wrong. No. It's not Martha Mayhew. There
Speaker 1:is also an eight foot high bronze statue of her that was dedicated in 1996. Oh, good year. And was housed at the Utah State Capitol Rotunda. Her grandson actually spoke the dedication, which is There's pretty also
Speaker 2:a bronze plaque honoring her outside of one of the one of Mormon temples.
Speaker 1:Since 1990, Utah officials have been lobbying the postal service for a stamp in her honor. We have stamps in other people's honors.
Speaker 2:Like Betty White. But not Martha. But not Martha.
Speaker 1:In 2011, a group of students at Brigham Young University, which is a Mormon a primarily Mormon university, created a stage play and then a film about five strong women of faith, and she was one of them.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah. She actually had a almost one hour long documentary, which I think you can find on YouTube, I think. And that was produced in 2012. In 2025, legislators formed the Martha Hughes Cannon Caucus in an effort to encourage more women in Utah to participate in the government.
Speaker 2:What is a caucus? I don't really know. Is it anything like a carcass?
Speaker 1:No. A caucus is a meeting of members of a political party to select delegates or candidates, often involving discussion and group voting rather than a private ballot like a primary. Do they have snacks?
Speaker 2:Google doesn't say. So not a very effective caucus.
Speaker 1:And then in 2018, the Utah state legislature voted to gift a statue of Martha Hughes Cannon to The US Capitol's National Statuary Hall. So that was unveiled in 2024. Recently. Pretty recently. It also joined the statue of Brigham Young.
Speaker 1:Was waiting for you to say the Statue Of Liberty.
Speaker 2:No. She's just smaller. She's near it. Like an action figure.
Speaker 1:So interestingly so it's Brigham Young, who was one of the prophets of the Mormon church, and her. That's Utah's two statues that are present there. So that's pretty significant for her to be that big of a figure there. And yet, again, we don't know her name.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. I definitely know about Brigham Young because I've seen the Book of Mormon. So Yeah. That'll do it.
Speaker 1:I just she's such an incredible person. And we tried to tie her as best we could to Christmas because that's sort of the theme of this series.
Speaker 2:But I
Speaker 1:just kinda really wanna talk about her.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And so I was gonna tie it to Christmas whether you like it or not. So And I quoted
Speaker 2:the Grinch, so so that makes it work. So there. Am I
Speaker 1:just eating because I'm bored? Probably. Y'all are an idiot. Wow. Anybody who hasn't seen it is lost.
Speaker 2:Should I quote more?
Speaker 1:No. You've quoted half the movie. They don't even have to watch the movie now.
Speaker 2:You know what they say? One man's trash is another man's potpourri. Do you guys
Speaker 1:think she's seen this too many times per chance? I do. And I have to live with her.
Speaker 2:Christmas.
Speaker 1:Okay. So next week's episode is technically supposed to come out on Christmas day.
Speaker 2:Oh, well, lucky you. You can all sit around opening up your Christmas presents and listening to little old us.
Speaker 1:Maybe I'll put a poll on our TikTok or something and ask when you'd like the episode to
Speaker 2:come out. Christmas day, Christmas eve, day after Christmas.
Speaker 1:Because I feel like perhaps Christmas day, you might be a little busy. But Christmas eve, you might as well.
Speaker 2:True. So maybe the day after Christmas would be good. Alyssa and I have a tradition for the day after Christmas.
Speaker 1:Oh, we do. It's a great tradition.
Speaker 2:We go out, and we get ourselves a little Starbucks. And we do just stupid shopping
Speaker 1:for wrapping paper and whatever the crap we want. Yep. And we literally fill my trunk with wrapping paper. We have more wrapping gave away wrapping paper last year.
Speaker 2:Probably, like, 20 rolls.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Because we just don't know what to do
Speaker 2:with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So tune in next week on an unspecified day. Keep if you keep up with our social media, I'll let
Speaker 2:you know what day it's gonna be. Could be Wednesday.
Speaker 1:Could be Thursday. Could be Friday.
Speaker 2:Could be today.
Speaker 1:No. Today is this episode. Next week is next week.
Speaker 2:Just on a side note, something happened recently in Australia, I believe, is where Bondi Beach is. There was a Hanukkah celebration, and there were two mass shooters there. And last time I checked, there was at least 15 people that had passed away. And we just wanted to say that that is never okay. And we're so, so sorry for the families that were affected by people who now feel scared to gather in those spaces.
Speaker 2:That's just never okay. And we should respect everybody else's right to believe what they wanna believe.
Speaker 1:And we're certainly praying for those families and not just families of the loved ones that passed, but anyone that was there that was impacted by this in any way. But we also know that saying we're praying for you isn't always helpful.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:So while that is true that we are praying for you, also know that we know we we can't understand what you're going through.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And that's a harder note to end on.
Speaker 2:On that note, let's all respect each other. Let's all be there for each other. Let's open our eyes to opportunities where we can support each other and love each other. And yes, let's pray for each other, but let's hold each other's hands and
Speaker 1:stand in the gap. Yeah. All right. Well, we love you guys. We will see you next week on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.
Speaker 2:One of those days. Pick a day. Love you. Bye. Bye.