In which I will change again and again

If I have a child I hope to one day turn to them and say
"You are not fixed. You are not permanent. You are not a full stop, you are a continuous line. You have permission to change. Change again and change again."

It's the most important lesson I've ever had.
When I left university I thought that person was who I was set to be forever. "Learning is done now! Education has happened! Now you get a job and things are the same forever and ever."
I thought that all my flaws of bitterness and sarcasm at sixth form were who I was.
I thought that my insecurities would always hold me back.

But now I am stronger than I ever was. I am mighty. I am better than I ever was. 

"Who'm I better than? I'm better than I used to be,
I'ma keep on getting better so you better just get used to me"

I grew more than I ever expected. As I joke about my pixie cut, or wearing lipstick these things are symptons of something else. Of being who I've always wanted to be. I can wear my silver shoes and dress like a cyborg because I'm no longer afraid to stand out and be noticed. If you want to hurt me because you see me I will fight you back.

I am changing the world. 

I became a little less selfish, a little more self aware, and whole lot more self confident. 

As I thought about this,  I built a theme of giving myself permission. 

Permission to be beautiful

Permission to be bi

Permission to be wrong 
Permission to be right

Permission to be a campaigner
Permission to be depressed 
Permission to be cool
Permission to be ill
Permission to change and change and change.

I have held myself back on all of these over and over, with the concept that I wasn't cool enough, or I hadn't done X things in order to fit into these categories. For every single one of these I built an Imposter Syndrome, a sense that I was never enough. 

And it's messed up. I didn't even see myself as ill enough to see a doctor at times - I would literally say to my husband "there are people who need a doctor more than me". I wouldn't do obvious basic things to make life better because I was never enough.

And this year I saw messages like this: 

You don't need anyone else's confirmation to give your own labels. 

I saw so much beautiful stuff on tumblr, little text posts that changed my world. 

And this year, I'm taking charge. I'm fixing the things that are wrong. I'm going to get therapy. 
I've taken initiative to go and talk at a conference on a campaign issue I'm passionate about. I have confronted my boss about sexism. I have taken on leadership roles. I have fought with all my passion and I have made things change. 

I have made white men in charge who run their NGOs and their communities listen and change their language and their framing. Become more inclusive and intersectional. To tilt their heads and something in them switches as they too accept that same lesson: You are not fixed. You can do something new.

It feels great.
______________

At the start of last year on Twitter I said something stupid – I said that sometimes I was afraid to speak about feminism for fear of being shouted at for saying something wrong. And someone responded in a way that hurt me: they said that maybe I shouldn’t speak at all then. Maybe it was time I listened. I raged and I sulked, but then I did. I decided to listen.

I decided to try to listen to the feminists I was afraid of, to the anger. To listen to issues that weren’t in my spaces, to trans rights and racism especially. And over the year my knowledge of another world of problems grew. I became sick with hearing about black people being killed by police, and of abuses of refugees. Where I barely knew anything about what ‘trans’ meant, I found myself angrily defending their right to womens' spaces. And that all came from listening first. So thank you for the criticism.  
_____________

In amongst all the listening people said a lot of things that really resonated with me and I became aware of a politics of self-love. That isn't a politics of 'I'm right and other people should know so' but a way of accepting who I am. 

So this is the outcome one year of self-love. 

I recommend it. 

You are not fixed. 

In which Agatha Christie leaves me conflicted

I've recently been delving into some Agatha Christie novels which I always feel are comforting for winter days. There's something strangely cosy about a classic murder story, especially one solved by a little old lady and where justice and romance are always found. Right?

Not as much as I though. As I read I found myself thinking about the moral judgements we place on books and authors, and the lines we draw on acceptable racism, sexism and homophobia in literature.

You see Agatha Christie's books are racist and sexist. Sometimes I can ignore or skim over the prejudice, but as I read Nemesis this week these lines jarred my enjoyment:

“It seemed to me highly unlikely that it was a definite case of rape. Girls you must remember are far more ready to be raped than they used to be. Their mother's insist that they should call it rape. The girl in question had had several boy-friends who had gone further than friendship. I did not think it counted very greatly against him.”

Professor Wanstead p96 [emphasis mine]

and then here:

“Well we all know what rape is nowadays. Mum tells the girl she's got to accuse the young man of rape even if the young man hasn't had much chance with the girl at him all the time to come to the house Mum's away at work, or Dad's gone on holiday. Doesn't stop badgering him until she's forced him to sleep with her. Then as I say Mum tells her to call it rape”

Mr Broadribb p114

These lines are referring to a character who is convicted of rape several times, and then a murder. The plot in the novel is that he didn't commit the murder – so the other characters fall over themselves to excuse the rape too. The rape-case is never investigated by Miss Marple and everyone just agrees with this victim-blaming rhetoric.

The rape-apologist narrative is so frequent that flicking through the book to pull out a sample quote it didn't take me long to grab just these two. There was also a bit about it not mattering as much that one of the girls murdered in the story is dead because she probably would have only ended up on the streets anyway. Too many boyfriends you know? I found it genuinely upsetting and sickening to see these lines. The concept of 'genuine rape' is something that hasn't gone away in a 100 years. Politicians still say it. It's not so far from the “Some girls rape easy” comment you may remember from that time when Republicans just couldn't stop offending rape victims, women and decent human beings.

And yet, I already knew Agatha Christie was hideously prejudiced. I don't read the less well known Tommy and Tuppence spy books she wrote with their racist observations “Darn, we should have known he was the spy from the Russian shape of his jaw line”. (Not an exact quote but the kind of thing I remember reading.) But it has never stopped me reading her before, unsettling as it may be.

But today it got me thinking, what should I read? Where do we draw the lines between censorship and boycotting? What is too offensive to read?

You see I have abandoned, boycotted and railed against some books and some writers. I don't read Game of Thrones. In the face of all the Tumblrs and Twitters who love it, I do my best to cut it from my life, because I believe the books to be sexist. However, I've especially got problems where the book is good but the author is highly objectionable. 

I'm talking Orson Scott Card here, for example. He was on the board of directors for the American group the National Organisation for Marriage. This group are vile, and consistently campaign against any equality for gay, lesbian and trans* people. So Orson Scott Card? I really despise him. But his teen fiction sci-fi novel Ender's Game? I liked it. I thought it was bloody fantastic in fact, well before I ever knew anything about the author. When faced with that dichotomy do you keep reading?

In my English Literature course we talked about Roland Bathes' Death of the Author. The concept that we should interpret books aside from the life of the writer and accept the works themselves as existing outside of the hands that penned it. Yet, sometimes the author is very much alive. Very much raking in the cash.

When Orson Scott Card was planned to pen a new Superman series, there was a huge response that he was completely unsuitable to write the classic hero and could not represent the values that Superman stands for. The sustained pressure and boycotts left DC pulling his stories before they were published. Yet when all that was happening, I saw some people declare that this was 'censorship'. They declared it in fact a hate campaign, shutting down and destroying one man's career.

Every year in banned books week I read the published list of books that were banned in schools in that year. It's often utterly sad and bizarre where you see Judy Blume or non-fiction books about Cuba banned. You read how parents want to shut down Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere because of one line about sex in it, one they've probably heard and giggled about on the playground since primary days. So I stand against censorship of books. I stand for education and knowledge and challenging, interesting stories.

When it comes to a boycott stopping a book being published – I am a little torn. In truth I am glad that Card got told by the world that his views aren't supported.

Freedom of expression doesn't mean freedom from consequences. If what you say consistently pisses people off so much the thought of you writing something new and mainstream makes people sick, then those are the consequences. It's not a hate campaign to refuse to buy something. We all choose what we spend money on.

But then Lolita and Fahrenheit 451 both spent a long time trying to get published because for different reasons people thought those books were unsuitable for public viewing. They were censored by Editors like many other unpublished books we'll never see or hear from. In time we love those stories for things we hated them for, and books that were once loved come round to be hated and slipped out of the bookshops.

Trying desperately to bring this to a conclusion, to tie it in to Agatha Christe. And I am realising that I just don't know how to. I hold a set of opinions that often contradict one another, and I tie myself in knots trying to come up with a personal set of answers that are full and righteous moral codes. Ones I could defend to the last - and I can't. As it is there are simply these few points. I work in and defend freedom of expression all the time. I think people should be free to read books they judge appropriate for themselves. I think racism and sexism are real and we can't hide from them. I'm not going to give any money to homophobic dicks.  I'm going to keep liking Ender's Game: I'd just rather read the series from the library than from a bookshop.

Mostly, I wish I could go back in time and give Agatha Christie a shake and go 'You've got all this stuff wrong!'

What do you think? Do you ever have moral dilemmas over reading books, or even watching films, made by people you don't like? 

Do you ever give up on an otherwise good book because of it's politics? 

In which I look at tropes vs Lego

Female scientists proposed set on Lego CUSOO. The original post is here.

It has been far too long since there was anything approaching a toy post on this blog.  You will start to forget that it is one of my key interests.

The truth is for a while I've not seen much Lego or Playmobil that is screaming for me to buy it. However, I went into the toy shop at the weekend with money ready to spend. Christmas presents in mind, maybe a small wee thing for me, toy time!

But when I went to the Lego section I couldn't see a single set with a girl figure in. I mean, I've complained about the sexism before, but this was amazingly bad. I've bought Wolverine and Deadpool and I'm not exclusively about the women-sets before you say it. However, it's simple wish: I like to get sets with women in. Doing cool things or doing normal things. But when I looked around, perhaps to get my sister a Christmas present, there weren't any. Nada.

A surfer, a robber, a knight, a life guard, an eagle-man, a roadworks guy, a policeman, a lighthouse keeper, duelling wizards, hobbits, racing car drivers, and several superheroes. All men.


So with this in mind I thought I'd respond to Anita Sarkeesian's latest in her tropes vs women video series. The Feminist Frequency video today was an interesting look at two tropes in women's gaming: The Ms. Female Character and the Smurfette Principle. I decided to do a little look today at how the first can beat the second - when it comes to Lego.

So the Smurfette principle is basically where you have a team of men, and one token female character. The Smurfette. Or the Toadette even. It's where women exist as a gesture, a platitude, but not real representation. The Ms. Female Character trope is where the creators offer a feminised version of the male protagonist. Think Amy from Sonic, or as Anita Sarkeesian suggests - the original Ms. Pacman. These characters usually look much like the male version except they have some standardised icon, like a bow or pink hair to show you they are a girl. Watch her video for the full explanation.



 Lego is one massive Smurfette principle. You have to hunt far and wide to find the single female minifig in a given series. You have to go to several shops in fact it turns out to buy a girl minifig for your sister.

My beloved Monster Fighters steampunk-esque Lego sets have one women fighter in a team of six (Ann Lee) and two female monsters (Zombie Bride and Vampire's Bride.). The imbalance is self-evident. However, the thing I love about Lego is that I can use the Ms. Female Character idea to mess with their system.


For example, here is a classic male minifigure:



And then I made this brand new secret agent.

I make the 'Ms. Waiter' into something awesome using the exact male template they sell.

I'd also like to introduce you to what I call the Cap-Problem. The Cap Problem is where you have a minifigure with no gender signifiers at all, an old-school Lego figure, but the assumption is that the figure is male because of the cap. Where there is no hair or outfit to tell by, the very lack of any signifier tells you it's a guy. Because people are male. Duh.  In order to make the figure female you have to add a made-up face or a pony tail. They are rather like the game heroes, handed out gender stereotypes in the form of big lips and eyelashes because they illustrate womanhood.

Got to be a Mr. Builder right?

Simplistic shapes change everything.

In my mind this could be the same person, just with a different hairstyle, or wearing make-up for work one day. They can be in gender neutral form, or various presentations of womanhood. But the gender signifiers change the original massively. 

I have bought into their own presentations and assumptions. For instance I didn't count the surfer set I nearly bought as having a woman, despite the fact that there were no male signifiers on the life guard or surfer. I end up thinking in that way, that man is a default setting. The aforementioned builder could be a gender neutral figure but I feel that the system I've grown up in says it is a male figure by its neutrality.

I nearly bought this set, because of shark!

However, the truth is I often don't mind that Lego choose to represent women in over the top ways. I use these stereotypes of women in make up they provide to make way more interesting characters.To make female characters that don't otherwise exist in the universe, and to make more of them. I don't really think an arctic explorer would layer on the mascara (who knows) but I like making it clear that women are here. I've had this one set up exactly the same since I was a little girl.

I used the lipstick from a minifig at the beach in her bikini to make my lovely arctic explorer. I just really want to get the Yeti for my monster sets to go with her.

It's all rather silly really. Yet, one of the things I love is being able to take a female figure and let a few pieces of signifier populate a whole set of characters. Almost all of my female Monster Fighters team have make-up on, big massive lips and silly eyelashes. But I've used male body parts (shocking) and accessories to make them the awesome team I have now.

One female figure can be divided up into her made-up face, her long hair and perhaps even a skirt or boob outline. I can then make many new types of people, chucking all my stubble faces away in the box. Therefore of the other things I love about Lego is that in its nature I can subvert the gender stereotypes it produces.

This was a motobrike daredevil figure which I made into an engineer for my alt Firefly team.

It's not just about changing the male knight to a female knight - the Ms. Male Character starting point of nearly all the sets I buy. It's also about messing around with the characters, the stories and the genders. I have very much subscribed to gender binaries in my descriptions here but my imagination when I play with them gets a whole lot more creative.
t is that creativity I can apply which makes me love Lego the toy. Lego the company however seems to be confused about gender representation. I've written my conflicted thoughts on the Friends series over on Bad Reputation, but the best example of their internal issues for me is the description of Nya, from the Lego Ninjago series:

"Make no mistake - this girl is no damsel in distress. She proved that when she and Flame the fire dragon helped rescue Kai from Lord Garmadon.

Nya is fed up with the ninja's boy's club syndrome and is determined to show everyone that she can do anything they can do - only better. She trains hard to beat her brother's records and Sensi Wuu constantly reminds her that if she is patient her time will come". 

So how about it Lego? You recognise a problem enough to write it into her back story, but can you sort out the ninja's Smurfette syndrome and give Nya a hand?

In which there is a small pause in the rain

There has been far too long a gap between posting I must confess. And the reason for that is mostly rain. At some point in the year Britain has to live up to its stereotype and just rain for a couple of weeks. In fact these pictures were partly taken in the rain. It has been a very gloomy day and we popped down to the ruins in a spot of sunshine and by the time we arrived, raining once again. I'm still happy with these, even if you can tell that I'm a little damp!

I actually bought this dress several years ago, wore it for a while and then stopped after I wore it once and my husband noticed that a man was following us down the street and staring at my ass. I became very aware of how short it was and shoved it back. But you know what, everyone is wearing plaid which made me look at it again, and I'm not going to let creeps dictate my wardrobe so I thought I'd bring it back.

I went out to the pub last night and had a lovely conversation with someone until the point I bought up writing about feminism as a hobby. The guy responded to ask me 'what kind of feminist are you? A liberal feminist or a bra-burning, tree-hugging feminist'.  I ask what other time do you declare yourself in favour of equality and people feel they can respond with 'but how extreme are you?' I then deconstructed his question, challenging what on earth he thought those two things meant. It's a phenomena I see all the time, and have experienced in conversations with otherwise normal reasonable and even likeable people who say things like 'I don't like how angry lots of feminist are', or even going as far as saying 'they should moderate their views, be more about consensus'. What I hear behind those words is 'Please don't make me feel uncomfortable about my privilege'.

If I declared myself fighting for a right to water or for a fair justice system they wouldn't say, 'but I hope you don't take it seriously' 'I hope you're not one of those extreme people'. I find myself becoming more angry when I see how effectively the media, with its 'Do we really need feminism?' morning tv debates, has made people think that striving for equality is something we should always question whether it is necessary, and never take too seriously. And I refused to be conned into believing anger about injustice is something I should apologise for.

Getting a little bit wet here!

 

And ending with a picture of me running to get out of the rain.

Outfit details
Dress: Forever 21 (America)
Blazer: H&M
Hat: Charity shop find
Boots: Doc Martens
Scarf: Gift

In which I review Iron Man 3 and dance in the snow

I haven't blogged again for a while and it's not exactly that I've been busy, although I am often tired from work. I have just really been enjoying Andy's company and spending our evenings watching Star Trek or playing Mario Kart wii. We bought the wii a few weeks ago and have been obsessively trying to unlock all the achievements. I've said it many times on this blog before: when I get a new game I am gone from the Internet!

I went to see Iron Man at the weekend. Have any of you seen it? I have mixed feelings to be honest (there are spoilers below). It was enjoyable for the most part, and had some good comedy lines. However, I left feeling a little disappointed. The trailer had given me hope that Pepper was really going to DO things in this film. And she did, she did have a little bit of action time. However, in the scenes leading up to her action moments it was all a complete stock-girl-kidnap. Pepper is tied up! Pepper is crushed! She is sliding towards her doom! There is a 'reach for my hand' moment! I was just a little bored. Because generally, in films, women serve the role of plot development and character development - for the male lead. Pepper is kidnapped as a motivator for Iron Man. When he is caught you think - how will he get out of this? When she is caught you think - how will he get her out of this? There is a good Feminist Frequency about how the Damsel in Distress trope is over-used in games, but it applies to films just as much. I know that Iron Man 3 did give her some degree of agency but it felt so odd to me, to put her in that stereotypical role, and see it through to it's usual conclusion (spoiler: man rescues woman) and at the end of it all give her some action. It only served to prove to the audience that she was only tied up so that she could be rescued. Because if she was really badass and clever - which she is - she could have got herself out.
If I was making it, I would have had that scene with Iron Man trying to call his suit to get out of being tied to a bed. It's funny, it's great. How about if Pepper had escaped herself, showed up and used brains to get him out and the suit was there after all that. It would have worked with the anthropomorphism of the suit, and it wouldn't have given us that boring scene of stereotypes. Because seriously, it's not only sexist it is OLD.

And on that note I have to say I am a little nervous about all these characters I love. I utterly adore Star Trek, but the Into Darkness trailor whilst exciting has a lot of stock sci-fi elements. There are bad people! Explosions! A ship crashing into water! A blonde woman takes her clothes off! Men say brave things! 



*yawn*
I am totally going to see it of course, but even if it reaches beyond those motifs, the very fact they felt the need to put a moment of Dr Carol Marcus in her pants says JJ Abrams has let me down.

It's all so silly. The Bechdel test has been circulating since the 80s. Girls have read comics, liked sci-fi since it began. Every so often a film gets it right and is successful... I wrote that. Then I went away for twenty minutes on the Bechdel test website to look at action films that pass. Um. So, the only one that passes 'with flying colours' is the Hunger Games. But my point is that a good writer and director wouldn't feel the need to stub in tropes to their work. If they can show women saving the day in a few minutes, don't spend the rest of it showing them like stock characters!

Anyway, I didn't mean to turn my Iron Man 3 review into such a long piece. In the mean time, here are some pictures of me and our wedding venue in the snow. We went back to check it out and refresh ourselves - only we had to avoid snow drifts! It's not going to be like that on the day I trust.

And here is my ceramic sheep riding a toy scooter.

What did you think of Iron Man 3?

In which I have big shoulders and a love of learning

The top I am wearing in these photos has pretty much the exact same shoulders as my sweater-dress a few posts ago. I absolutely love big poufy shoulder things. I hadn’t worn this for nearly a year when I brought it out the other day. It is a white top with a brown stain on it. Happened in the wash one time where it came out worse than it went in. However my long hair and scarf covers the splodge up so you’d never know! Except that I just went into great detail about it…

I’ve spent a huge amount of time this week thinking and reading about feminism. I am always interested, but lately it feels like there has just been so much to talk about. That’s why my previous post is about Christians using the term ‘stumbling blocks’ to justify keeping women down. But I’ve also been reading about calling people out of their privilege and how telling people not to do so aggressively can be a form of silencing. All of this might make me angry about the world, but it does make me really happy to be still educating myself. Over my cheese on toast at lunch I was considering how much I feel like I am still learning since uni, and not just how to use office software, but writing better and understanding society and theory. I am so glad that I’m still loving learning and getting better at it.

Dress: HMV, Shoes: Office, Top: Matalan, Jacket: XXI, Scarf: gift

I'm not really sure why I'm keeping the picture he took of me taking my jacket off, but it works as a transition

Look! No jacket!

It's another picture of my face

This is a rare occassion when I am wearing my second pair of glasses. I usually wear the brown and turquoise ones but I was breaking the red ones out to match the colours in my outfit. I think my usual pair suit me much better, but when I was shopping for them the sales assisstant made me feel so silly for spending about half an hour trying on nearly every pair in Specsavers. If I'd had another half hour I might have gone for another pair I'd actually wear! And that's an insight into my indecisive shopping style.

In which I address the issue of 'stumbling blocks' and talk about feminism

I have already done a blog post today that is more along the usual lines of this blog, a bit of fashion and a bit of life. If you want to read that, please do, it's just below this one or here. This blog sometimes talks about feminism so it is not an alien subject here but it isn't the usual fare. I've talked about in regards to toys like Lego and Playmobil and I've talked about the despair I feel about Todd Akin and the "legitimate rape" issue. However below I have written a piece about feminism and Christianity and saying some things I really needed to get off my chest.

I have been thinking about faith and human rights recently, things that have come up in conversations and that are both a key part of my life. I have been meditating on some of the reasons I really struggle with Christianity and wish to write about one of the fundamental problems I have with it (not the only one, I would also suggest: belief in Hell; a God who needs to be worshipped; a God who creates a range of sexualities and then apparently favours only one – I could go on)

But I will deal with this one thing here and now. The use of the phrase ‘stumbling block’ to privilege keeping people Christian above all other concerns, especially human rights ones.

The best way to illustrate what I mean by this is with an experience at university that disturbed me so much that the resulting rage and confusion still lingers enough to keep me up at night two years later.

There was a CU, a Christian Union, at my university. You may be familiar with similar entities at your own university. This particular organised group of students were not allowed to be an official university society because they did not have an equal opportunities policy: no woman could be president or take the lead speaking role at an event.

Rather than recognising this exclusion from the mainstream university as a sign that they were doing something wrong, they embraced and accepted it. This is another thing modern Christians love to play at –being a victim. “Jesus said we would persecuted” they say, and lo! as the world criticises the church for inequality or mock them in a cartoon for being close-minded they cheer themselves on “that is it! This is what Jesus warned about, we are being despised for our faith!”

Yes, being kicked out of the student union for inequality is the global persecution of the church epitomised.

I believe that they play at victimisation, appropriating such language to hide the truth that they are the ones who victimise others as they propagate and defend a position of privilege as being somehow holy.

So I have explained that we had this group who don’t let women speak, but this itself is not the core problem I am referring to. Instead it is the defence that is used to justify it. Back to my real-world example:

Within that group and outside of it were young women training to be historians, local preachers, political analysts –who lead youth groups, study feminism and have ambition. Yet they did not speak out against being placed second because of the clever use of one phrase: ‘stumbling block’.

The argument goes that

-Women don’t have a problem with male preachers

-Some men (and some women) have a problem with women preachers

-Therefore women speaking could put a ‘stumbling block’ in front of those who find this an issue

-If a women becomes president the men might lose their faith! It might make them struggle with being Christian! Or ultimately Stop Believing in God if they find the hegemony of their patriarchal world challenged. (this what stumbling block means, providing people with difficulties)

-Keeping people Christian is an issue of eternal life

-Therefore those who think women can and should preach should put these feelings aside in favour of ensuring the men get eternal life.

-Therefore only men should preach and lead

There are those who have varied interpretations of:

Romans 14: 13 Let us not therefore judge one another anymore: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother's way.

1 Timothy 2: 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man; she must be quiet

(And you know, those other verses about shellfish and periods and stonings)

The same women and men who accept that women can be called to be preachers –they still swallow the stumbling block argument when the faith of their Christian brothers is at stake. Here is the crux of my problem. They put Christianity first. Ensuring that those who are Christians stay so comes before equality, before human rights. The leadership of the CU, and similar groups, have successfully convinced women that their equality is a secondary concern, a barrier to faith. Despite there being female ministers in a number of denominations who are called by God and who have that calling tested over years of training and experience, if these same women upset a male (or female) member of the congregation who have taken Paul’s select verses to heart, they are the ones who are silenced. They are the ones the CU passes over when selecting event speakers.

Because a person like myself, losing their faith over a sexist and homophobic church does not rank equally to those men whose faith is at risk of tripping over those loud-mouthed theologically trained women preachers.

I have come to realise that the church does not put people first. It does not stretch its neck out to defend human rights. Even those churches that do want equal marriage or women preachers, they are slow to condemn those who continue to propagate privilege. They do this because Christian brotherhood (interdenominational love!) comes first. Prayers are so readily given, heads so solemnly bowed for “the persecuted church around the world” but so slowly for the persecuted and the marginalised in our own country, like those whose religious parents have kicked them out of the home for expressing a non-cis sexuality. Always Christian first.

You see the first commandment is to Love God. Ultimately church is about God. Love your neighbour might be second, but if people were of such importance I would not be near exploding point thinking of the ways that the church has and does keep the marginalised in their place.

I can never be like that. For me feminism, human rights, equal rights are my very first concern. I am Christian second.

Perhaps because I know people exist. I see their suffering and I care. This eternal life I may be granted if I start accepting my secondary place in the world, whilst something I could, have and perhaps still do believe in, is always only a belief. I do not see that the real people of this world should be second.

I would also like to add that as a student I was clearly not a member of the CU. I went to a couple of meetings, enough to experience their style of theology. Instead I went to Methsoc. A lovely small group of more liberal-minded Christians with a history of female leaders. I was even one of them, leading debates and discussions on numerous occasions. I loved it. I loved my Methodist university church. But it is these type of people, the ones I love, who still want to defend the churches they disagree with, who use the stumbling block phrase. It is those who believe in women preachers who are tripped up by the stumbling block argument.

My own faith fluctuates. It is never and never will be a problem with the existence of a God. It is a problem with a world that gives God such a patriarchal aspect, so wrathful and so judgemental. My God is a god of love. And I hope there is room for that somewhere.

But my God? She puts equality first.