‘Please, please, please can I have a motorbike helmet for my birthday?’
I remember seeing the helmet in the window of a toy shop and it was all I could think about. It was coming up to my fourth birthday and it was the only present I wanted. Imagine my excitement when the big day came and I unwrapped the box to discover my parents had bought it for me! I wore it for the whole day and only lifted the visor to eat my cake.
When I was a child, I wasn’t interested in dolls or wearing dresses and I’m thankful that my parents were happy to let me wear tracksuits or dungarees and buy me a Scalextric set for Christmas. I’d climb trees, ride motorbikes, shoot cap guns and wrestle with my brother. My parents didn’t try to force me to fit a gender stereotype, and they also recognised that it’s perfectly legitimate for a girl to prefer typically ‘boy’ things.
As I got older, my experience of being a non-girly girl turned into a deeper confusion about my gender. Even though I couldn’t really articulate it, I had a sense that I would grow up to be a man and marry a woman. There was something very uncomfortable for me about being a girl. Even pre-puberty, I was always delighted when my Christmas cracker had one of those fake moustaches in it. I remember on a residential nature-spotting weekend, I refused to go in the girls’ dormitory because it felt completely wrong to me, so I slept in the boys’ dorm with my brother.
Puberty was a really painful time. I remember being told that I couldn’t run around with my top off anymore, and I was horrified at having to wear a bra. As a teenager, I used to pretend to shave my chin, I bound my breasts in private and put socks down the front of my pants. I knew I was female, but I wanted to be male. There was no internet in those days, so I wasn’t getting these ideas from anything external. I just had a deep discomfort with being a woman.
At my secondary school, girls weren’t allowed to wear trousers. Every day I felt like I was in drag. It knocked my confidence because I didn’t feel like myself. I had no self-worth when I looked in the mirror at a girl with long hair, school blouse and box pleat skirt.
This was the 1970s to 90s when the cultural climate was completely different. There was no internet with its YouTube influencers or social media. I’d never heard of trans (and I’m only now realising that some of my experience maps onto this label). I had no idea that anyone else felt like I did or was doing the things I was doing.
Fortunately, my gender confusion did ease when I went off to university. I could wear trousers, have short hair and embrace everything that I liked doing while still being a woman. I had some strong female role models who showed me that I didn’t have to be stereotypically girly to be a proper woman.
Jesus values me and dignifies me as a woman with my unique personality and gifts.
When I became a Christian, the most important thing for me was finding my identity in Christ and that has transformed my life in so many ways. I’ve struggled with gender stereotypes in church culture, but have found that Jesus values me and dignifies me as a woman with my unique personality and gifts.
Now, I’m happy as a woman and I’m glad I’m a woman. I have found huge freedom and peace in the fact that I’m a woman because God says I’m a woman through my female body. I can be secure in my identity as a woman, not because I fit a particular stereotype, but because God says I’m his precious daughter. I don’t have to be ‘girly’ in the typical ways. I love playing pool and squash, eating steak and drumming. I have short hair, lots of tattoos, live in jeans and trainers and don’t like cooking, crafts, shoes, makeup or rom-coms.
And it’s ok to be like that. It doesn’t make me a man. It makes me a woman who prefers leather jackets to lip gloss and has flown a plane but isn’t exactly sure what a soufflé is. And there are lots of other women like me. Christ doesn’t call us to a cultural gender stereotype. He calls us to be godly with the wonderfully unique personality and set of gifts he’s given us. I’m so thankful to God that I have the freedom to be the woman he has made me to be.
