Take this with a grain of salt or, better yet, a grain of sugar because maybe I'm just bitter.

When I think of being a "Woman of God" the role doesn't really appeal to me. Honestly I think I'd rather be a "Man of God".

I've seen a lot of both men and women in leadership positions at church and school. I think Point Loma in particular does a pretty good job of not discriminating against gender when it comes to leadership positions especially (I hate that it makes sense to qualify it like this) for a religious institution. Although power seems to be pretty well distributed and is increasingly improving, respect seems to still fall mainly to the male leaders and students. One of the ways this is best illustrated I think is in chapel. I've noticed a lot more background talking and disruption when females are speaking in chapels as opposed to males.

A lot of women who are respected, but they are respected in more subtle small ways than men. Women are important and so of course they are respected but that respect often comes from their roles in relationships, I think many women lack the large-scale respect that is more often given to males.

I think a lot of people don't mean to be sexist or discriminatory either, I hear a lot of things like:
"I think it'd be great to have a woman president, I just don't want it to be Hilary" or
"I don't mind female chapel speakers I just find it difficult to track with Mary Paul."

Why don't we take these people seriously? Why supposedly aren't these women right for their positions? What would it take for a woman to gain our respect? what would she have to be like? It seems like these people are too far from the male standard of leaders and too far from our standards of female roles.

I don't know the answers to these questions and I'm not completely sure these questions are the right ones to be asking.

Is it wrong for me to want to see that respect for me and my sisters and mothers? And I'm serious about that question. Maybe the small-scale respect is what is really important and maybe asking for respect is not the way to get it and maybe even trying to earn respect is not the way to get it. Maybe this blog entry does more harm than good.

Just don't ask me to become a "woman of God" because when I think of what that means I think of becoming a children's or women's minister, being an awesome mother, or a pastor's wife. And in all actuality, I wouldn't mind becoming those things. I don't really plan on living a life that radically pushes cultural gender roles especially just for the sake of pushing them. I hope to become a nurse someday, I wouldn't mind being a stay-at-home mom for a period of time, and I'll probably shave my legs fairly regularly. I just don't want to be only those things. I want my identity to be in Christ where there is no male and female. I don't want to be respected any differently than men, I just want to be a person of God. Challenge me to be that.