Ten years of feminist activism

I haven’t blogged for a long time because I was pregnant and then I had a baby and young babies take up all your time and energy. I keep thinking that I miss blogging as it was, before ‘influencers’ and #content, before feeling like each post had to be perfectly crafted and perfectly nuanced, for the book deal, for the brand, for guarding against the accusations of ‘ranting’ or ‘lacking grace’ or ‘not having researched the subject matter sufficiently’. Blogging as it was, then, when people made the leap from Livejournal et al to setting up public, personal blogs and things weren’t quite so strategic. I guess that’s got something to do with the fact I’ve hesitated once or twice while writing this and asked myself what the point of the post is and what it’s saying. But that’s not the blogging I miss.

It’s ten years since I attended my first feminist march* and first feminist conference. Ten years. I suddenly realised this one night a couple of months ago when I came across this piece by Jess McCabe, published in 2007 and looking at the resurgence of feminist activism around that time that included marches being revived and six new feminist publications launching in the space of 18 months. The same year, The Guardian profiled some of ‘the new feminists’ who were ‘trying to rebrand the f-word’ and feminist writing and journalism was very much on the agenda. It reminded me of my copies of Subtext magazine, still in a cupboard in my bedroom - and how excited I was to find out more about feminist media at FEM 08 in Sheffield, the aforementioned first feminist conference.

FEM 08 was the fourth FEM conference organised by a team including Kat Banyard, which grew from 90 attendees at its first event in 2004 to 500 attendees the year I went. I remember the excitement of being on the train and spotting women I recognised from their newspaper columns, women with banners from organisations I followed online. Catherine Redfern and Kristin Aune were there that day handing out the surveys that would become the research behind Reclaiming the F Word. Three years later I would chat with Kristin over coffee at Watford railway station and discuss the need to bring Christian feminists together, an idea that eventually became the Christian Feminist Network, but in 2008 I don’t think I even really knew any other Christian feminists yet. I was still desperately in search of likeminded churchgoing women who didn’t believe their destiny lay in some heavily gender stereotyped ideal of ‘Biblical womanhood’.

Talks I attended at the conference included 'The Rape Conviction Rate Scandal', 'The Female Face of Poverty' and 'Challenging Destructive Masculinities', although, as my rather breathless Livejournal entry detailing the day explained, the highlight for me was the seminar entitled 'Grassroots Feminist Media' - it was 'so inspiring' to meet the women behind The F Word and Subtext magazine and I was beyond excited about the 'current explosion in feminist media'. Just two years previously I'd been immersed in the world of weekly women's magazines through work, seeing article upon article picking over celebrities' weight, clothes and relationships, 'scary skinny size 0’ celebrities on one page; on the next, shaming other celebrities for having cellulite. The state of my own body image at that time wasn't helped by the media I had consumed and the wounds were raw.

Today's plethora of feminist-flavoured online media outlets and coverage of marches and #MeToo in mainstream magazines means I often forget that the body-shaming, diet-obsessed side of women’s publishing still exists (although some magazines have closed now, as have the 'lad's mags' that were the focus of so much activism back then). Part of that, I guess, is a result of having hung out in the internet feminist bubble for so long. But really, perceptions of feminism in the mid-2000s were very different: we’d all read Female Chauvinist Pigs and its critique of ‘raunch culture’ - some of which now seems to recall almost ancient history in popular culture - Playboy merchandise, trucker hats, Paris Hilton, push up bras and thongs.

In the book, Ariel Levy argues that early noughties ‘raunch culture’ - ‘the emergence of a woman-backed trash culture’ is a ‘rebellion’ against second-wave feminism, the outworking of unresolved conflict between the feminist movement and the sexual revolution, yet also ‘a garbled attempt at continuing the work of the women’s movement’. In her conclusion, she wrote that ‘The proposition that having the most simplistic, plastic stereotypes of female sexuality constantly reiterated throughout our culture somehow proves that we are sexually liberated and personally empowered has been offered to us, and we have accepted it’. Explicitly feminist media, at the time, seemed like a breath of fresh air and for us as young women reacting against the imposition of ‘raunch culture’, crucially important.

It can certainly be argued now that once feminism began to have its cultural 'moment', at some point over the last few years, the movement started to become commercialised and exploited - for content, for developing celebrities' careers, for making money around International Women's Day. And more coverage and more hype sadly doesn’t mean that we’re any closer to getting rid of misogyny. But feminism wasn’t having that ‘moment’ yet and sitting in a student union building talking about subverting mainstream publishing with a more diverse range of articles and body positive messages seemed like revolution when you were 23 years old in 2008 and probably still does for young women, in other corners of the internet and other feminist get-togethers in 2018.

Some of the debates that would later bubble to the surface of the movement and cause pain, splintering groups and communities and friendships were only just developing among everyone involved. Germaine Greer gave the closing speech that day and received a standing ovation - let’s say no more. I also attended a talk on lapdancing clubs by Object. The following year - or maybe the same year - I'm not too sure - I remember the debates following Reclaim the Night London about the way some women had been chanting and booing outside Spearmint Rhino and how the women who worked there might feel about it. I observed the white, middle class profile of most of the attendees at the conference - people like me, it has to be said - who seemed a world apart from my work colleagues back at home. A re-reading of Female Chauvinist Pigs today throws up a host of assertions that would be seen as problematic now and online feminism itself has changed so much, particularly due to fallout caused by what’s often been referred to as call-out culture, where, as noted in this 2011 piece by Flavia Dzodan that always comes to mind when I think about the most toxic elements of call-out culture and ‘trashing’, ‘we all lose’.

In the years following 2008, discussion via Twitter and personal blogs came to define the feminist journey for so many of us, especially those not fortunate enough to live somewhere with feminist networks or groups or for those who met a lot of feminist friends online. I was continually offering to get involved in a magazine or blog that someone wanted to launch and sometimes writing several blog posts every week. Blogs felt like the resistance, the opposition to traditional, sexist media and much was being made of their democratising effect on whose voices had the potential to be heard (doesn't all this seem a bit quaint now?). Some time ago I really wanted to set up a website where women active in the movement at that time could submit pieces about their memories of what some call the beginnings of the Fourth Wave (and what some believe is still the Third Wave). I never got round to it and I worry about so many memories being lost as blogs disappear and websites close and some people take their activism offline and even ‘hashtag feminism’ has evolved.

Ten years since FEM 08, when I think of all the women I’ve met as a result of feminism and the women just starting out in activism at that time, our lives have moved on in so many ways. We’re mostly in our 30s and busy, busy, busy with work, or children, or work and children. Some have moved overseas. We still do activism and write and work with women’s organisations. We don’t always make it to things that happen in London any more because life gets in the way. We share each others’ projects and work and discuss motherhood as a feminist issue on Facebook and even celebrate each other’s books because things have moved onwards and upwards from those first blog posts and discussions on Twitter about sexism in the tabloids.

Things have also become more complicated. We learned that for all the talk of the internet promoting a more diverse range of voices, privileged voices were always favoured and promoted over more marginalised ones. Pushback against this has been vitally important but hard work; change has been slow; listening and addressing assumptions isn’t always easy. Online, people talk of moving on from being a ‘baby feminist’, learning much as they ‘grow up’. Sometimes we forget that everyone starts somewhere. For us, that somewhere was the mid Noughties, when social media was still a thing for ‘internet people’ - and it was life-changing.

*The very first Million Women Rise march. I didn't know anyone else who was going so I volunteered to be a steward. It rained quite a lot and I was posted at the door of the loos in Trafalgar Square during the rally so missed the speeches but the march itself was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.

Scripted vulnerability

Everything bad that happens to you doesn’t have to be a teachable moment. 

It’s probably a product of the boom in confessional journalism and its Christian equivalent, the storytelling boom. We’re all storytellers now and perhaps we’ve internalised the idea that every significant event in our lives must be presented as a carefully-structured essay, a sermon of sorts, or like so many sermons a list of points that speak of the learning and practical application that have come out of our pain. 

We hold off writing about things, not simply until we’ve got our thoughts on the subject organised, but also until we’ve got a structured message, some clear takeaways for our readers and an opportunity to be inspirational - perhaps with a few key ‘shareables’ highlighted specifically for that purpose. 

This week a friend shared a lengthy update on social media, informing people of the tough year they’ve been having and being thankful that things have turned out ok, even though they still have a lot to work through. As people commented with love and support, expressing admiration for how open and ‘real’ my friend had been, it struck me that much of the post's perceived ‘realness’ lay in the fact it didn’t follow what I’m now recognising as the script we, as Christians, often follow (consciously, unconsciously, who knows?) when reflecting on difficult times. 

We describe the difficulties and pain; we bring the focus back to God; we give thanks and count our blessings; we move into reflecting on any positives that have come out of the situation and our lessons learned. We can hit ‘publish’ safe in the knowledge that we’ve followed the approved framework for dealing with life’s knocks and that people will like it. 

Don’t misunderstand me: this ‘script’ isn’t wrong. It’s helpful sometimes and yes, it can be inspirational. It’s quite natural for many people and in many circumstances - but sometimes it’s hard to get there. Sometimes it feels like we’re never going to get there at all. Our feelings aren’t so neatly organised and I wonder if we’ve perhaps lost something in shying away from sharing the messiness of our thought processes, preferring instead, by the time we’re ready to share on our blogs or on Facebook, to tie it all up neatly into a set of inspirational learning points that make us seem like real writers, or teachers, or ‘thought leaders’. Or at least the right sort of Christian. 

We should be able to write about our struggles - if we want to - without waiting for the perfect time to share, when our attitudes are right and we can say all the ‘right’ things. We should understand that praising people and telling them how inspirational they are when they describe their pain using the ‘right’ narrative isn’t always helpful. We pick up on what we see and keep quiet accordingly when our emotions and thoughts and questions don’t follow the approved script because we worry what people might think. Our thoughts aren’t for everyone to see unless they’re ordered correctly. That's something I've been guilty of in recent times, my head a swirling mess of half written essays not considered well-formed enough to be shared because there's no teachable moment for you, or because things are still difficult, or because I can't look at them objectively and give you some life application fat to chew on.

Everything bad that happens to you doesn’t have to be a teachable moment. When being ‘real’ becomes scripted, it doesn’t seem so authentic any more. We can share our truths without completing a checklist of themes and words. And the difference will show, as it did for me this week when I read my friend's Facebook post and as it does always when I think about the stories that have stayed with me the most.

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2014: A recap on those resolutions

Happy New Year! At the beginning of 2014 I overhauled the look and feel of this blog, and resolved to be a bit 'better' at posting. Last year, I managed a whole 12 posts. I didn't write about nearly as many of the things I would have loved to write about, and I felt as if I missed the boat on many other things due to just having too much on. But I was proud of what I did manage to produce. However, I'd made some other resolutions for 2014 as well, and I wanted to chronicle how I got on with them.

Be hospitable (and a good friend)

If you're a Christian you get to hear a lot about being hospitable. Christians just love people who are good at hospitality. They are everyone's favourite. They are the people at church that everyone just adores. We're told that it's a special gift that some people have, but we're also told how hospitality has been a key aspect of the church since ancient times. So, you know, we've got to do it. When you're an introverted couple with a non-sleeping baby and living in a flat it's not all that easy. Plus I was convinced I hadn't been at the front of the queue when the gift of hospitality was bestowed on God's people.

Everyone knows a woman (or women - and it is always women), who's a pro at sorting out a buffet or doing the refreshments for everyone. She's good at bustling round a kitchen. And when there's some sort of party, several of these women will just get everything done. They just get on in there and bustle. Now there's a very important conversation to be had here about gender and why, exactly, it's women who are the ones that do this, but my point here is that I never got this gene. When everyone with ovaries starts doing that bustling around thing and being hospitality pros, I ask if there's anything I can do. And invariably, there isn't much I can do. So I get a drink, and feel slightly guilty.

In 2014, a few things changed. We became an introverted couple, with a toddler who finally slept at night, living in a decent-sized house. Having been really rubbish at socialising for well over a year, and having moved to the periphery of church (more on this later), I really wanted to get better at hospitality. And you know what? It's still hard, but it's been working. We like cooking, and people appreciate that. We're really trying to open up our home a bit more - subject to everyone else's busy lives as well as our own, so it doesn't happen all the time, but I hope we can build on this in 2015.

Sort out The Church Thing

On 2 January 2014 I gave myself a bit of a talking-to and decided I was going to attempt to move forward on my long-running struggle with church. The year, in this respect, was full of ups and downs. I read things like A Churchless Faith and read a lot of blog posts by post-evangelicals and disaffected people and people seeking authenticity. In the process I think I learnt a lot about myself. When we say we're seeking authenticity, are we merely seeking more people like us? And what happens when you're reminded that creating communities of people like us is, really, pretty exclusionary? If those who ask questions are currently the people of the moment, surely, at some point, some answers would be helpful? Or at least, some ways to move forward. And if we have issues that we need to discuss, it's always better to discuss them rather than simmer over them and expect people to understand why we're upset, when we haven't actually told them in the first place (what do you mean, people aren't mind-readers?).

Through the spring and summer, following the (extremely disheartening) disbanding of the midweek group we were attending, I was dipping in and out of visiting a couple of other churches. But when I thought about it, I just didn't feel led to make the move anywhere else. I was feeling as if I was going to become a 'done'. What ended up happening was that we discussed it and decided we needed a fresh challenge that would help us get more involved and enable us to build community again. This challenge came to us in the form of an opportunity to become the new leaders of a midweek group, and at the moment it's going really well. I still have a long way to go when it comes to Sundays, but at least one thing has changed and one thing has made a difference.

A new resolution for Twitter

I got really disillusioned with Twitter and internet activism in 2013 - more specifically, the way that a community I had once loved seemed to become primarily about performative 'call-outs' as activism, the monstering of women trying to make a difference because they haven't yet managed to focus on or solved all the world's problems, and the readiness of people to brand others  as 'vile' and 'disgusting' over things that may not have happened and may never have been said. In 2014 I pledged to do what I could to support people, signal-boost good things and be encouraging instead. I didn't entirely do away with having a bit of a rant on occasion, however (one friend I met for the first time in 2014 mentioned my 'controlled rants'!). This also meant getting rid of a lot of negative and unhelpful voices from my timeline - and in return a lot of people did away with me, often for something as simple as being seen talking to particular people or sharing their writing, which pretty much proves my point about the way things have gone.

I'll be carrying my 2014 Twitter resolution over into 2015 and keeping up with some of the wonderful people I've been talking to and getting to know over the past year. In 2014 I had the opportunity to meet some longtime Twitter friends for the first time (quite a few of these at Greenbelt).

Get fit again

I used to run half marathons, remember? The guilt of my paid-for and unused gym membership motivated me to get back to working out last year. For a time. It was all going so well - and then a particularly busy period at work happened, and my lunchtime trips to the sports centre tailed off (although I've continued to do plenty of walking). Like nearly everyone else this month, however, I'm hoping to get back into exercise for the new year.

Be kind

I didn't always manage it, particularly in the first few months of the year, but in 2014 I've been working on being a lot kinder to myself. This has involved a few different things:

- Identifying some avoidable causes of feeling anxious and/or miserable, and trying to avoid thought patterns that exacerbate these. This has had mixed success but is really getting better
- Trying to ignore impostor syndrome whenever it rears its ugly head
- Acknowledging that I do need - and deserve - downtime - and not beating myself up for failing to achieve things 24/7
- Do the little things: use the nice skincare every day rather than sporadically!

I've also been working on extending the kindness through reaching out to support friends and family. 2014 was a tough year for my extended family as both my maternal grandparents passed away (in September 2013 and January 2014), so we've been particularly trying to spend quality time with my mum.

Say yes

At the beginning of 2014 I started to become involved in more talks and get-togethers about the gender imbalance of speaker line-ups at Christian conferences, following this bit of research by my good friend and partner in crime Natalie, and the many discussions it prompted. One of the main barriers to women being more visible as speakers, as 'experts', is that we're much more likely than men to say 'no' to opportunities put our way. Sometimes that's down to a lack of confidence or impostor syndrome; sometimes it's due to responsibilities like caring for children. I was so encouraged that some organisations were really willing to talk about all this and discuss how they could make changes, and I'm really excited that out of all these discussions, Project 3:28 - a new initiative for 2015 - was born.

I knew that in 2014 I had to get better at saying 'yes' to opportunities too. And so I did some exciting things:

- I did another talk at Greenbelt (and helped organise a Christian Feminist Network worship session; and exhibited for my day job there too)
- I wrote a feature on Christianity and feminist activism for Christianity magazine
- I wrote for the New Statesman's series on second wave feminism, discussing Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time and the lessons the movement today can learn from it (particularly pertinent to my 'new resolution for Twitter above). The series generated a lot of controversy, but was also well-received by a lot of people
- I presented on 'Hashtag activism' at the Christian New Media Conference
- And I also got approached about writing a book. This was incredibly exciting, and I did a lot of thinking, praying and planning as a result. Over the summer, however, I had to concede that while writing a book would be amazing, it's not something I can commit to right now - my life is really busy already and I just don't have the spare time needed

However, the past year has really underlined for me the importance of keeping the right perspective as I 'say yes' to things, not becoming too invested in profile and self-promotion at the expense of authenticity and relationships. Unfortunately I've seen this happen to people, and I know how much hurt and disillusionment it can cause.

For 2015, I've decided to carry over all of these resolutions and build on last year's efforts, with one new addition: read more. I have a stack of new books following Christmas, and lots of things I want to learn about too.

Before I go, some mentions for the blogs I kept on reading in 2014 despite a distinct lack of free time: Glosswatch;  A Room of Our Own; Sarah Ditum; C. Jane Kendrick; Dianna E. Anderson; Messy Nessy Chic; Littlee and Bean; Lulastic and the Hippyshake; Sian and Crooked Rib; Mummy Says...

2013: A recap and a new look

2013 was an odd year. It flew by. I was extremely busy, but in some ways I feel as if I spent a lot of time procrastinating rather than doing. Here are some highlights and thoughts:

- I returned to full time work outside the home in February. I was definitely ready for this to happen and love my job, but full time work plus parenting means I don't have as much time for a lot of other things - blogging for one, hence the tumbleweeds on here (although I did write some posts that I was really happy with). Sebastian spends his days with a great childminder and is getting on brilliantly. He's well and truly into the toddler stage (which is infinitely more fun and rewarding than the baby stage, even taking tantrums into consideration) and keeps us constantly busy. It took him 16 months, but he's also now sleeping through the night, which is amazing.

- I attended Million Women Rise with Christian Feminist Network pals in March.

- I achieved my breastfeeding goal (and then some). Go boobs! I was thankful to be able to continue feeding after my return to work and am thankful to have had such a positive experience.

- I survived my first family holiday (in France; we drove to the south-west coast with a 13-month-old Sebastian) and had a wonderful couple of weeks there.

- I had a great time speaking at Greenbelt and attending the festival for the very first time - you can now watch the video. Tasked to speak on the topic 'When I'm 40...', I realised that 40 is not as far away as I think.

- I took part in a panel discussion on blogging at the Christian New Media Conference.

- I did a lot of thinking about the Christian feminist world, and worried that all too often it ends up shutting itself off from the wider movement. This works both ways - there will always be a need to advocate for greater inclusion of women of faith in feminism - but I think we need to be careful that we don't end up going round in circles repeatedly justifying why we believe in gender equality, or why we believe other people should do the same. I've done that many a time and I fully agree with the woman I heard speak at Greenbelt that I no longer "feel the need to prove I have a right to an opinion and a voice", which includes making anything I have to say 'palatable' to appear more appealing to those who don't believe in equality. We need to move the conversation on - that's why I'm so grateful for the Gathering of Women Leaders, which does just that.

- I continued to find church, and building community within the church, an enormous struggle, although we did make some great new friends this year. There isn't really much else I want to say about this, to be honest. I did, however, read this post yesterday, and was able to relate to it in some ways. And time and again, I return to this post on '(not so) happy clappies'.

- I started the year off by writing about Evil Twitter Feminists, and continued the conversation in the summer with Evil Twitter Feminism 2.0. For the past month or so, I have barely even engaged with any discussion about feminism on Twitter. What was, at the beginning of the year, somewhat mythical, has become very real and very unpleasant, a situation where many people no longer feel able to speak about a whole variety of topics publicly. My feminist 2014 is going to be about building up, celebrating positives and victories, sitting back and listening and learning, building bridges and demonstrating a better way. If you can't get on board with these things, then I worry what you actually do stand for.

- A combination of being busy with work and parenting plus the above point on Twitter has meant I've really shut off from keeping up with blogs and even news over the past few months. This has made writing difficult and it's something I've really struggled with. I miss blogging, but I've felt completely stymied by some things that have happened in recent months. Blogging has changed. In 2014, I'm hoping things will change and that I'll be writing more again. One thing I wanted to do in 2013 but never achieved was revamping how this blog looks - so I finally got that done this past week. I'm now slowly working on getting every post formatted correctly.

- I bought these shoes and this was a really good idea. They're getting me through the winter and haven't made my feet sore once.

Post-Greenbelt thoughts on faith, theology and all that's really deep (ahem)

This afternoon I read this post about Greenbelt, written by Jonty Langley, that really resonated with me. The enormous struggle that church has been for me since becoming a mother; a lot of the things I've been trying to thrash out, in my own head, with very little success - this past weekend helped me to start making sense of some of them. I was overwhelmed by the programme as well as the number of friends I wanted to catch up with, and only made it to a couple of sessions each day - but the experiences and conversations I had last weekend came at the right time and are of enormous value to me. From the thought-provoking and incredibly intelligent panel discussion "What women (in the church) want", to Jim Wallis speaking on working for the common good, to a conversation about intergenerational feminism and learning from each other without hostility, to another one about meaningful church community - and then there was communion: emotional, life-affirming, and celebratory.

Last week I wondered, on Twitter (obviously), whether I should write a blog post about faith, church, theological discussion, and "feelings". For at least a year now I've had this obsession that I need to engage with theology at a deeper level. If I wasn't a full-time parent with a full-time-job, this would probably be much easier. I'd buy lots of books, and I'd read them. Part of it's due to the fact that I don't like having vague ideas about things; I like to know a subject well. I don't want to accept one version of events without coming to conclusions about it by finding about about several other versions of said events as well.

Some years ago, I stumbled across numerous articles about a controversial debate on penal substitutionary atonement that was causing a stir in the British evangelical community. At the time I was not aware that there was a debate about penal substitutionary atonement. But I needed to know what was going on and why. It horrified me that in my years as a Christian, there was so much stuff that had never been made clear to me. I remember seeing people defend subordinationism in never-resolved comment threads then seeing many, many more people brush it off as heretical. In the years since, I've managed to become more knowledgeable about a lot of issues. But I see myself at the beginning of a long journey of coming to my own conclusions in that respect. One that I barely have the time and energy for at present.

But when I wondered, last week, whether or not I should blog about all this I felt conflicted - about whether a desire for more knowledge in that respect would only lead to me becoming the sort of person I was feeling incredibly fed up with on that day in particular. I'd just seen yet another ridiculous post using snippets of things a well-known writer has said to "prove" that they are not a real evangelical, not really, so we shouldn't listen to anything they say. I was so sick of seeing people engaging in theological one-upmanship, demanding that others "prove" why they believe something is true and throwing their proof-texts, their texts of terror like so many smug little darts while on at another end of the spectrum, others try to out-theologize one another by wielding flowery prose and "stories" like a weapon.

It took a few of these excellent conversations at Greenbelt last weekend to see things in a new light. Marika Rose saying "I don't feel the need to prove that I have a right to an opinion and a voice". A very wise woman talking to me about theology and expertise. Discussing the people we are online with another equally wise woman. I know that knowing about things, and having made peace with how you feel about things, doesn't have to mean all of the mess of proving this and proving that and telling everyone else that they're wrong and dictating who they should believe and who they should listen to. But at the same time I can't step back and decide it's best not to know and best to just focus on all the positives and the surface emotions because thinking too much will only make me unhappy and we know where that leads, because that's not how I work. If there's one thing the past year or so has shown me, it's that if we're going to talk in terms of Fowler's Stages of Faith, I'm firmly in Stage 4.

As with everything faith-related and crisis-themed, I hesitated about writing this. But my experiences at the weekend made me realise that I needed to get one with processing it and dealing with it in my own way. So before I came home, I went to the Books tent. And I realised that whatever conclusions I come to and whatever knowledge I gain, I don't have it in me to become a thrower of proof-texty darts or a wielder of flowery prose.

Finally, just so you know and for anyone who'd like to recall:

I was beyond excited to spend the weekend at the festival as part of the Threads collective, one of ten contributors speaking on the topic of "When I'm 40, I hope...".

My talk was entitled "When I'm 40, I hope I'm not a brand", and reflected the fact that at the time I pitched my idea to the festival organisers, discussions among my friends about blogging, having an online presence, integrity and sincerity were giving me a lot of food for thought, adding to feelings I'd been having ever since I gave birth and stepped back from blogging somewhat.

I wanted to highlight the values I hope I can maintain a commitment to in future: authenticity, passion, right motives, and not building profile and presence out of a sense of competitiveness.

Authenticity: A Christian buzzword that often feels a bit overdone and meaningless now. But one we can all aspire to because we know too well that when it's lacking, we're turned off writers and bloggers. Real voice over personal brand.

Passion: A real interest in what I'm writing about rather than a few half-baked ideas that I'm turning into a post because I feel I need to add my voice to a debate. Quality over quantity. Not writing for the sake of it.

Right motives: I've questioned my own a lot over the past year. At one point I wondered whether I should continue blogging at all. As Christians we're often made to feel that everything we do should be about God first and foremost - to the point that we brush off praise or pretend it doesn't make us feel happy. Having the right motives doesn't mean we can't feel pleased when we succeed in something we're gifted to do or that we should stop doing something we have a gift for because we're worried about the praise we're receiving as a result.

No more competitiveness: The digital world has, for me, been a place to find true community, real friends, become involved in grassroots activism and understand perspectives different to my own. Being collaborative is a joy. Encouraging community is too. There's no need to get involved in obsessing over rankings and who's got a book deal and who's writing in a certain style to 'make it' into the 'in-crowd'.

I also wanted to highlight the pitfalls of becoming a brand - not being able to or feeling able to adapt your voice when what's needed for a certain topic, is, for example, "serious" rather than "flippant". This has been a key feature of certain recent online arguments involving high profile writers. Then there's the prioritisation of controversy and hits over integrity and truth - I illustrated this point by talking about the downfall of Hugo Schwyzer and the criticism of mainstream websites that hosted his writing.

Finally, I spoke about the way in which the internet can mean we fail to look through a person's 'brand' and see the human being underneath, drawing on Rachel Held Evans's excellent post (linked below). None of us are immune to this, I admit I've done it on many occasions - but it's something we all need to pull ourselves up on from time to time.

Some posts I quoted, and posts/comment threads that inspired my talk:

Danielle Vermeer - When I'm done playing the blogging game & An update on quitting the blogging game

Danny Webster - Liking likes, revering retweets, and passionate about pageviews

Rachel Held Evans - You don't hate me. You hate my brand. & I don't write for an audience of One

Sarah Bessey - In which I think I'm losing my blogging mojo

Evil Twitter Feminism 2.0

Warning: this is a post about Twitter. And blogging. It's really, really meta.

At the beginning of the year I wrote a post imploring people not to let the stereotype of the ‘Evil Twitter Feminist’ put them off being interested in gender equality. I think a lot of people identified with it because the increasing prominence of debates about intersectionality, inclusivity and language were causing people a lot of bother. There was quite a bit of reassessment of the actions and motives of well-known women and writers happening. Things were getting fraught. I hoped that people who felt unsure could see past the drama and continue to find community. I didn’t believe in the Evil Twitter Feminist, this increasingly bandied-about stereotype that was allegedly to blame for why young women wanted nothing to do with it all any more.

Here we all are six months later. I’ve refrained from blogging about any of this for a long time because a) it has all become a bit tedious and b) things have been so fraught, at times, and I don’t want to be the subject of a pile-on. But let’s be honest here, things are a bit of a mess.

Some of these women who were being discussed and having their actions raked over at the beginning of the year – I don’t see their tweets any more. A lot of people have unfollowed them. They don’t retweet them. Mention of their names is met with derision. This is often the start of it. You’ve got to know who’s in and who’s out. You might unwittingly retweet something because you agree with it, and only discover when the pile-on begins that you’ve associated yourself and your beliefs with someone who’s not ‘in’. They might be friends with someone who’s beyond the pale. They might support a campaign that’s really divisive. But you’ve gone there, and you might well have to endure hours of ‘engagement’ from whoever first takes umbrage with you, all their friends, and whatever hangers-on are up for some drama, until no-one even knows what they’re arguing about any more and probably about three people have deleted their accounts, while everyone subtweets everyone else, and people self-impose social media breaks for the good of their mental health.

Much of this centres on campaigns, of which there are at least three high-profile ones associated with feminists happening at present, each one of them a huge source of division. You take a side, and find out immediately who your friends are (or more likely, aren’t). If you don’t want in, you might spot people saying “we don’t want you [in the movement]”. You might spot people asking when you’ve ever set up and run a successful campaign, thank you very much. You might even spot people saying you’re anti-women, as they all tweet each other saying how much they love each other because they agree on stuff. And if you sign up, people will start asking you if you haven’t got more important concerns. What about the recession? What about welfare? What about violence against women? As if you don’t care, which isn’t fair, because you do. You just thought this one petition was a good idea, and let’s be honest, not everyone is super-invested in every single issue (a lot of people who get so angry about so many things fail to be at all bothered, or even slightly intrigued, by campaigns about maternal health and pregnancy-related issues. Just throwing that out there).

There’s always a dominant viewpoint on a subject, even if it’s going against the grain. This means that you struggle to blog about the reasons you support some aspects of a campaign, because what’s ‘in’ is to be totally against it, and you can see why, but at the end of the day, you just don’t agree. And at the end of the day, you don’t want someone tweeting “LOOK AT THIS POST; I AM SO ANGRY!” with a link to your blog, do you?

People have always said that Twitter is full of people going round in circles getting riled about stuff, whipping up Twitterstorms and organising Twittermobs full of fury until the drama dies down and no-one cares any more. That’s not what it’s about. Recent campaigns, and the way that many people have found support, new friends, formed groups, and taken action against things serves to counter that claim. But this year, I’ve seen a move towards these circles among groups that weren’t like that previously. No-resolution argument and massive fall-out, a lot of capital letters and a lot of expletives, until it dies down and people wait to see what’s going to happen next, what’s going to set off the next bust-up. Drama llamas back in the enclosure but sniffing the air expectantly, if you like.

Over the past couple of weeks, things have started to happen. Many people have already distanced themselves from a lot of this. But now others are creating new accounts, unfollowing swathes of people they’d have previously considered their friends, bowing out of certain types of discussion, not bothering to engage. It’s got too much. The tribes, the sniping, the subtweets. The whole set of people we’ve blocked because they think x about y. The voices that consistently go unchallenged because people are too nervous or too jaded to bother. The same issues that have killed off forums with a more precarious existence than Twitter (Livejournal feminism communities, I’m thinking of you). The same issues that have dogged the US online social justice community (Tumblr is renowned for it) for at least a few more years and that used to make me think “Damn, I’m glad I’m from the UK”.

I don’t even know what the solution is. At this point in time, what’s probably needed is for people to take a step back and reassess their priorities. What’s the point? Are you building up or tearing down? Helping people find community or making sure they know they’re not welcome? Criticising constructively or living for the drama? More concerned about being one of the in-crowd than speaking your mind? Celebrating success or making it clear that you couldn’t care less even though you’re broadly down with the same cause?

Come on. Don’t sacrifice debate. Not everyone has to agree about everything. You don’t even have to like everyone. But passionate activists (myself included, even though things are kind of quiet on the activism front at present) are tuning out of the conversation, calling it fatigue, calling it self-care, saying they're done, retreating into smaller communities of friends that feel safe and free from unpleasantness. Alarm bells should be ringing. Are you intent on campaigns being all about the arguments because you're fighting for what little bit of positive media coverage the movement actually gets and want it to best reflect your personal views? I will never say a movement doesn't need or shouldn't have diversity of opinion, but you also need perspective, and we need to learn from the history of the movement when it comes to trashing.

This is not a post that's directed at everyone I know, or an incitement to more fighting. It's a response to what I've seen developing over several months, a call for reflection. It's a post I've hesitated to write because I'm too tired and too busy. I want to say "too disillusioned" but maybe that's too strong - or maybe it isn't. It's not a call to "Pipe down ladies, what WILL people think of us?!" or a call to stop discussing certain issues. It's just my opinion.

But how do we move forward?

Image

Feminism lately: a round-up of sorts

Things have been a bit quiet here recently but I've been popping up elsewhere:

- I wrote a piece for the Guardian women's blog about the Christian Feminist Network (CFN) and the need for women to challenge patriarchal religion from within.

- I took part in a lengthy email conversation with Phil Whittall, who blogs as The Simple Pastor. Phil identifies as complementarian and the purpose of our conversation was for us to talk about gender issues in a non-confrontational way. We discussed feminism, the blogosphere, and the church's attitude towards gender issues. He has posted the conversation as a blog series.

- I wrote about busting myths and misconceptions about feminists for Threads, in a piece called "So you have concerns about feminism?" which was published on International Women's Day.

Saturday saw CFN attending Million Women Rise as a group for the very first time, complete with banners that we made at a pre-march breakfast. It was a great day with a brilliant atmosphere and we were pleased that the banners received a lot of positive attention.

In which I interview Courtney Kendrick

Courtney Kendrick is one of my favourite bloggers. I know this because I always look forward to her next post, even though since giving birth last year I've found it hard to keep up with reading the number of blogs I did in the past. This past year, Courtney Kendrick's blog has made compulsive reading.

Kendrick – “C. Jane” to her readers, has been blogging since 2005. I came across her in 2008, when she was keeping the blogosphere updated on her sister Stephanie Nielson, she who may just be the most famous Mormon Mommy Blogger of all. Stephanie, who blogs at NieNie Dialogues, had been involved in a plane crash that burned over 80 per cent of her body. She survived, but it took doctors three months to declare that she was “out of the woods”. Meanwhile, Kendrick was blogging on her behalf and caring for her children. When the children were reunited with their parents and Stephanie started writing again, Kendrick found herself with a much larger readership.

In recent months she has been chronicling the story of her life on the blog, a process that has involved dredging up painful memories as well as reminiscing. Among other things, she's dealt with body image issues, depression, her first marriage – to an abusive man, and her second, much happier marriage that came with its own challenge: infertility (the topic that was, initially, the main subject of her blog). She admits that it hasn't been easy.

“I have so much more resolution and peace now that I've examined it and written down and shared it. The process was painful and redemptive.”

One of the things that's most interested me about Kendrick's blog has been her complex relationship with gender equality and its outworking in her life. In 2010 she wrote a post entitled “I am not, it turns out”, explaining her rejection of feminism and why she did not believe in gender equality.

"Equality has never done any good for me," she wrote.

The post received almost 700 comments. While her more conservative readers cheered her on with exclamations of “Wonderful!” and “Thank you!”, what seemed much stronger was the backlash. Tensions ran high in the comment section, with some readers declaring they would stop visiting the blog altogether. In addition to commenting, I even waded in with a blog post on the problem of privileged women rejecting the idea of equality, inspired partly by Kendrick's sentiments, partly by the comments she received in support of anti-feminism.

Kendrick admits that anger about gender equality was something she'd struggled with throughout her life, “ever since I was a little girl”, and had reached the point where she felt like giving up the fight.

“When I wrote that post it was like a white flag, I decided I wasn't going to carry this anger around anymore. I was going to give up, resolve myself to a life where I no longer cared about equality between me and the men in my life. Giving up seemed like what the 'good girl' would do. That post, interestingly, was the beginning of my journey to feminism. Hitting publish was the zenith of my anger. ”

The comments Kendrick received in response to that post served as a “wake-up call”. Reading through them and seeing the intensity and frustration therein made her realise what “team” she really wanted to be on: Team Feminist. She started to meet with other Mormon feminists and study what scripture had to say about inequality, as well as praying about it. But it was, in the end, writing her life story that made her realise how things that had happened to her had given her a passion for equality.

“Telling my life story was like putting together a puzzle about my life. I was able to see how my body image issues connected with the abuse I received, which connected with my feelings on gender equality.”

“Feminists are my people. I am one of them,” she decided, finally “coming out” by way of a post last month. It was entitled “I am, it turns out”. She had come full circle.

“I feel 'home' when I say I am a feminist, it feels like me. It feels peaceful,” she wrote, detailing how she grew up believing that women were less than men, and that she could only achieve worth by getting married and having children. It was the journey from this mindset to working towards an egalitarian marriage of blurred roles and shared responsibility with her second husband, Chris, that saw some of the biggest changes in her feelings.

Kendrick says she is now trying to be more proactive about her passion for gender equality, but recognises the importance of self-care and choosing to step back.

“I am a sponge for those who feel hurt, belittled or betrayed. My greatest temptation in life is to pick up everyone's battles and fight them with them - sometimes for them. I learned that I have to put boundaries around my battles, and choose them wisely, considering the energy and time I have to devote.”

She adds that one of the things (in addition to her local community of Provo, Utah, and women in the LDS church) she will never give up fighting for is her children. After five years of struggling to conceive, she's now a mother of three, something she feels she is still adjusting to. What surprised her most of all about becoming a parent, she says, was the strength of the love she would feel for her children, the capacity of her heart. Everyone loves Kendrick's posts about her children precisely because this is so evident through her writing.

Dealing with comments as a high-profile blogger can be tiring. Dealing with comments as a high-profile blogger who identifies as somewhat progressive yet remains a member of a decidedly conservative faith seems exhausting. In 2011 I wrote a guest post for Kendrick's blog, on being a Christian feminist. Considering my post did not once mention the abortion debate, it was interesting how the comments soon ran into the hundreds, a pitched battle between pro-life and pro-choice. Other readers were keen to tell me how, as a young woman, as someone who was not (at that point) a mother, I had no idea what I was talking about when I said equality was a good thing. When Kendrick wrote about her decision to vote for Obama last November, you'd have been forgiven for thinking she'd confessed to some terrible crime, or perhaps devil-worship.

The way Kendrick's blog often serves as a forum for incredibly polarised views was never more evident than last month, when feminist activism found its way into LDS church meetings, and a storm ensued. A group of Mormon feminists formed a collective called “All Enlisted” and declared December 16^th “Wear Pants to Church Day” - a day for women to show solidarity, raise awareness of gender equality issues within LDS culture and increase the visibility of feminism in their communities. This provoked an astonishing amount of backlash from conservative church members and the members of All Enlisted found themselves on the receiving end of vitriolic attacks from men and women alike. One of the organisers received death threats.

Kendrick was one of the more well-known bloggers who came out in support of Wear Pants to Church Day, writing about it at length over several blog posts. Predictably, many of her readers weren't happy. Some comments were worded carefully and talked (in that way peculiar to the conservative religious blogger) of “disappointment”, some less so, calling her “pathetic”. So how does she feel the day changed things for LDS women?

“I went to lunch with some friends the other day and one guy said to me, 'Well, wearing pants to church achieved nothing'.”

“I said, 'What? Are you kidding me? It was the biggest moment in LDS feminist history! It was huge!' I had to realize that in my world, with my feminist friends, it achieved a lot. We are still talking about it, texting about it, emailing. It continues to inspire ideas and suggestions. And the extreme opposition, the heated comments, the death threats, I count as proof that there is work to do.”

Kendrick wrote about discussing the implications of Wear Pants to Church Day with her family, with mixed reactions. Her posts certainly have the potential to cause family conflict, so last year she took to emailing her relatives about the topics she was covering on the blog. She needed to explain her changing feelings on gender, church culture, and the family in the way she feels she communicates best.

“I gave up after a few months because I was too insecure and I often felt I was making things worse.”

Along with criticism of her feminist views, Kendrick receives a lot of pushback from commenters who take issue with the way she writes about her experiences. They have never, ever felt unequal to men, thank you very much, therefore her opinions on gender equality must be down to personal problems rather than LDS culture. In what's effectively a form of silencing, they accuse her of giving the church a bad name and being dishonest about the experiences of the LDS woman.

This almost certainly has a great deal to do with LDS blogging culture, typified by the oft-discussed stereotype of the Mormon mommy blogger, a blissfully happy mother-of-many who creates craft projects and hosts beautiful dinner parties, dresses in hip-yet-modest attire and lives an immaculately-styled life. Although she wants to make it clear that she only speaks for herself on this topic (there are, she says, “a bounty of Mormon Mommy Bloggers who would disagree”), she has a lot of feelings about it.

“When I portray myself as a traditional, creative, put-together, practically perfect woman I receive a healthy amount of feedback from readers of my faith thanking me for being a worthy representative of my church. It's like my people are accepting me into a place of respect and putting me up as a role model for their daughters or non-LDS friends.

“When I admit to challenging feelings, frustration, non traditional Mormon thoughts, or hint at ambiguity about church policy I receive a barrage of feedback to the opposite - I am a bad role model, I am damaging the reputation of my church, I am hurting the chances of our proselytizing.”

“Not all Mormon readers are this way, please know, I don't mean that at all,” she adds. “But the response is its own data.”

She admits that she doesn't always feel comfortable blogging about the more difficult aspects of life, but thinks it's time things changed.

“Mormon mommy bloggers should feel safe blogging from anywhere on the spectrum of humanity, but I am not sure they do.”

I wanted to ask Kendrick about her older sister, Page. Page appears occasionally on the blog – supporting her sister through the break-up of her first marriage, encouraging her on her journey towards feminism, spending hours at the hospital by Stephanie's bedside, mothering eight children. Commenters often mention that they wish Page had a blog. Kendrick admits she's one of the most important people in her life.

“Oh, my Page. She is a wonder. I honestly think Page couldn't blog because sitting down at a computer would contain her energy for too long. Really, she is one of the most complicated, intelligent, honest, earnest, intense, devoted and caring human beings I have ever met. She's a human whirlwind.”

When I ask if Kendrick has any final thoughts for me, she tells me how much she enjoys my tweets about public transport. It's weirdly representative of her personality, of the way she uses social media – from challenging to irreverent in an instant. Some people find it annoying, but I quite like it.

2012: a recap and some links

I seem to have spent most of December cleaning up the by-products of a succession of infant colds and stomach upsets, and stopping a now mobile Sebastian from eating power cables and houseplants, hence the lack of blogging here. It's now just under two months until I return to work and despite the way that time at home with a baby seems to drag, I really don't know where 2012 has gone.

This year, I:

- Got more and more pregnant

- Facilitated part of a session on faith and feminism at Go Feminist!

- Got really sick of being pregnant and found my prayers answered as I gave birth four days before my due date, two hours after arriving at the hospital

- Celebrated five years of marriage and ten years since I started dating Luke

- Found summer at home with a newborn really isolating and miserable. It was like Groundhog Day with nappies, and I really hoped it would get better.

- Took a two-month-old to a gathering of women leaders where he was the much-loved Token Male, and a  three-month-old camping (and survived)

- Found that things did get better and that however it has made me feel, it's been really important for me and for Sebastian that I've spent this time with him (even though I'm definitely looking forward to working again)

- Read barely any books, and listened to barely any music

- Felt hopelessly out of touch with what's happening in the news and on blogs

- Helped form a the collective that founded and launched a new UK Christian Feminist Network (email cfnet@ymail.com to be added to our mailing list!)

- Went for precisely one run, but generally walked several miles every day

- Struggled with "doing" church with a baby

- Was really grateful for the support of online friends

- Got into Pinterest

This month:

Image from Feminist Mormon Housewives. 

Mormon feminists wore trousers to church on December 16th as a way of raising awareness of gender equality issues, identifying themselves as feminists to their communities, and generating discussion. For something intended as a fairly innocuous, peaceful action it really didn't go down too well with those who don't believe in gender equality, don't believe in rocking the boat, or basically think that women have nothing to complain about and need to put up and shut up. Pantsgate 2012, as it became known, fascinated me for a good few days as I read posts and discussions about it. I wrote about it for BitchBuzz, but here are some interesting posts from actual LDS women:

- From C. Jane, who I might add has had a great blogging year and is one of my favourites: The Worst Thing Is Pants; The Worst Thing Is Pants Part II; Proving Myself.

- Young Mormon Feminists: Panstgate 2012

- Zelophehad's Daughters: four posts, here; here; here and here.

- Feminist Mormon Housewives: pretty much any post from the week or so leading up to Wear Pants to Church Day.

Since November I've been a curator for Threads, a blog for 20-something Christian voices that won Best Blog at the Christian New Media Awards in October. Last month I expanded on my feelings about the pro/anti-choice debate and where Christians can fit into it. This month I've written about new motherhood and the changes it brought to my emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

I also wrote my annual Year in Feminist Rage round-up for BitchBuzz.

Next year I really want to return to blogging more regularly. Where this will fit in around working full time and parenting a baby I have no idea, but I'd really like it to it to happen somehow. I was chatting to a friend a couple of months ago and she said she was so impressed that I "hadn't missed a beat" with blogging despite having a baby. Believe me, this is not how I feel about it and there are times when I've felt quite miserable about the lack of posts and lack of time to write about things I really want to write about. Here's to a more productive 2013.

50 Women to Watch: The Fallout

I was slightly late to the party in seeing Denny Burk's response to Christianity Today's list of "50 Women To Watch", and the reactions it has caused.

Burk's main concern appears to be the fact that CT's list of "women to watch" contains no discussion about the controversy surrounding different perspectives on gender roles and therefore, highlights the work and careers of women excelling in areas that some complementarians don't believe it's their place to excell in.

"In general, it regards high-achieving women excelling in their respective fields as something to be celebrated," he writes, adding that he wouldn't have a problem with celebrating women if they actually, you know, knew their place and were "excelling in roles that the scripture commands".

"I wouldn’t celebrate those that I believe are serving in roles that scripture forbids," he explains in a comment.

Burk goes on to turn the comments section into a highly judgmental discussion on whether or not Rachel Held Evans (who is mentioned on the CT list) is really an evangelical, even after Evans herself comments to lay the debate to rest. That, however, isn't enough for him.

"I think you and I have really different views about what an evangelical is," he tells her, stating this again and again.

Comments on the post are numerous and come from both sides. When I first read the post, I felt pretty angry. It's just another example of the "interesting" stance on gender espoused by certain prominent bloggers and teachers in the USA, a stance that often begins with judgments such as those detailed above and leads to the characterizing of women who express disagreement as "shrill", "ranting", or "extreme". It's all part of the "interesting" stance that has left many people, men and women, disillusioned with church and with Christians, as well as giving the rest of us a bad name, and has even seeped into some UK-based discussions on gender recently. It's a stance that affects the way these prominent bloggers and teachers think about wider issues, such as rape. It's a stance that obsesses over tone policing and appearing "gracious" to the extent that nothing ever gets resolved thanks to an endless cycle of opinions, disagreement, tone arguments, posts about forgiveness and grace, then returning to square one until the next time it happens.

However it didn't make me angry for long. Moreover, it struck me as incredibly sad. Disappointingly sad, but also eye-rollingly, tediously sad. Firstly, the idea that the achievements of women should not be celebrated if they dare to work outside narrowly-defined roles. I mean, really. Secondly, the insistence of Burk on judging whether or not others are Christian enough according to his narrow standards - not uncommon, but arrogant all the same. Thirdly, the message that all this sends out - that prominent Christian "names" (if not in the UK, but among US evangelicals) actually spend their time being upset that other Christians are being praised, for no other reason than their gender. What does it say to people who are already increasingly disillusioned with what constitutes US evangelical culture (which if I go by what I've read in reports and on blogs in recent months, are numerous)? Nothing positive, that's for sure.

I think about what I've seen in the couple of weeks since all these lists started to appear, these lists of  "Top Bloggers" and "Most Popular" and "Ones to Watch". I think about the drama they've caused and the debates they've started. How time and time again they out themselves as a back-slapping exercise for high-profile white men, how they veer from being something to be proud of and display a button for to something that you wouldn't want to be a part of, oh no, because that would be thinking too highly of yourself and it's not your place and oh, you're just happy to blessed by the wonderful people who actually did make the list. Isn't it wearisome, and isn't online Christian culture stuck in a rut?

Someone I was talking to a couple of weeks ago on Twitter said the same thing - that they're sick of the circular debates and the way the discussions always go. It's time to change the way we go about these things, she said. Time to stop being nice and bending over backwards for people, whether they call us shrill or say we need to change the way we say things or straight out insult and patronise us.

See also:

Gracious debate, tone arguments and silencing

Gracious debate part two: The silencing around gender issues

On a break

Expect a bit of a break from regular posting for the time being - our son Sebastian Henry James arrived (rather speedily - less than two hours after getting examined at the hospital) on May 13th, weighing in at 7lbs 8oz and making plenty of noise from the off. We are both well and I'm definitely hoping to resume normal service in the near future.

On not backing down

This week my friend Sian has found herself a target for abuse and threats due to the fact she expressed an opinion about something she feels strongly about. You can read her account of how events unfolded here. In the past couple of weeks we've been seeing, thanks to the UniLad fiasco, the way people seem to have absolutely no qualms about issuing vile threats and dealing out abuse left, right and centre to women who speak out against misogyny or simply dare to have strong view on something. The abuse leveled at Sian (which has resulted in her having conversations with the police) has been yet another reminder that when it comes to the internet, it doesn't seem to take much to have people calling for others' personal details to be published online, for them to be 'hunted down' and attacked, or for more specific injuries to be inflicted.

Since this issue finally blew up and made it into the mainstream media last year, I think more people are ready to call out this sort of thing. But that doesn't mean it's going away. I decided to moderate comments on this blog last year when something I wrote incurred the wrath of MRAs and, in their particularly reasoned and mature style, they wanted to take the opportunity to let me know how ugly I am. But it's not going to stop me from blogging, no more than me criticising them is going to stop them from writing about their dissatisfaction that people tend to think rape, sexual exploitation and domestic violence are wrong.

Something that was noticeable last year in all the newspaper coverage of the issue was the number of people intimating that threats and abuse are to be expected, and that those who 'can't deal with it' should stop blogging, or writing for the papers, or posting on forums, or commenting on things. No mention of the fact that those doling out the abuse might be out of line, more 'that's what you get'. Like the apologist who tells women they need to stop going out at night, or walking to places alone if they don't want to be attacked by rapists, those who spectacularly miss the point on internet abuse blame the person on the receiving end.

Sian has been accused of 'craving publicity' - for having an opinion. Of going on about 'things that don't matter'. Of  'crying' over nothing. She has been made to feel that, to put it bluntly, she just needs to shut up and stop whining, by people whose idea of a debate amounts to smugly stating 'but isn't feminism about CHOICE?'. That writing about her opinions on something controversial makes her an attention-seeker and a pathetic self-publicist. How many times have we seen those accusations thrown at women who write about things they feel strongly about? That they've just 'got a chip on their shoulder'? Another woman whose blog I read had a commenter flounce the other day after saying that her post about a controversial issue was just another example of 'looking for a fight and a way to be offended'. It's so wearing. You can't write about something more than a couple of times without being attacked for 'having an agenda' and you can't 'have an agenda' without people flouncing or telling you to shut up.

What does this all mean for those of us who, actually, don't fancy shutting up and stopping speaking out about things? I know that for as many of us who won't back down there are more people who have got discouraged and had their confidence worn away to the extent that they do shut up. They decide it would simply be easier for everyone if they kept quiet, put aside their dreams and gave up. And I don't blame them, because it can be really hard. This goes for people who write and speak about a whole range of issues and it's not just limited to women, but it's a particular tactic used to silence women and make us feel insignificant.

So this is for those who have made the decision to carry on despite being discouraged. Despite being made to feel as if they don't matter. Despite being told to get out of the kitchen if they can't take the heat. Despite having people unleash overly dramatic unfollows and patronising comments and snide remarks about 'another angry woman'. Despite all this, we stick at it, in the hope that one day things will change and that one day the answer to abuse and threats won't be that it's our own fault for rocking the boat. If we did all stop caring any more, the status quo would never be challenged, and imagine history without any challenges aimed at the status quo, when there were things that were so badly wrong that we look back now and wonder how such a state of affairs ever could have existed.

Never give up. Because that's what they want. And if you feel convicted to do something about an injustice,  people will roll their eyes and sneer and try to make you feel bad about it, or as if you will never change anything so really, what's the point?

Stop listening to them.