Hello and welcome to Not So Molly Mormon podcast Minisodes. I'm Katie, and today's letter comes from someone that wants to be kept anonymous. They write. I'm an exmo who is trying to write about my experiences and often feel very alone. It's so therapeutic to hear you

chat casually using the language in terms of Mormonism. It is comforting the dormant cultural

language of my youth. It is additionally comforting to hear terms used blasphemously. I want to pause

here and say thank you so much. That's very kind. And it's really nice of you to say

that it's comforting to hear us be blasphemous about certain terms and things that are in

the church because it's really comforting to Sarah and I too. It feels empowering to be able to criticize and poke fun

at certain things that we were told our whole life were too sacred to even touch, right? And

it feels like taking some control back. And we get a lot of hate for doing that. We get told a lot by

members of the church that we are disrespectful and that we need to, you know, hold their

rituals and their religion as sacred or at least not make fun of it. And we feel the same as you that there's

comfort and blasphemy and it helps you take back power, honestly. Okay, continuing on. I am,

I am an art historian who is trying to write critically about cultural issues of race and gender in the LDS Church.

I'm running into a lot of mental grief regarding capitalization of all things. This proves a certain

point about indoctrination because I never thought these words, for example, general authorities,

temple baptism, the church, etc. I never thought that these couldn't be capitalized.

I didn't really think about it as part of the intentional power structuring of religion.

I thought it was just grammar because they look so weird to me uncapitalized.

Uncapitalizing seems like a good act as I worked on my project, but admittedly, I still feel very blasphemous doing so.

I'm wondering if you guys have ever felt this? Do you have any advice or a system that you use?

I'm also struggling trying to look up terms in the academic religious studies style guide because so many Mormon terms are so specific

and have not yet been added. So this is something that I hadn't really consciously thought about

until this writer wrote in. I found myself doing this as well. And through my journey, I've slowly started to not

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