Dear all, I would fucking love to know. Why is the pope coming to my country? 

Ok, I know why the pope is coming to Britain in September. The useless Prime Minister decided to invite him, the Christian majority decided they were cool with that, and that was enough to send £20 million (is that number wrong? please tell me that number is wrong) in taxpayer money straight his way. It’s good to know, really, that the money I earned from renting out my pussy at £60 an hour is being poured into bringing a nazi virgin bigot to the country. The 20% tax I pay on my cunt can help fund a little more sexual repression. There’s something not quite right there.

Here’s what I really don’t understand though. Why does the pope want to come here? Britain is 70% Christian, as I mentioned. But we’re actually pretty liberal as a country, compared to some. We have pretty great GLBT laws, adequate abortion rights, and a very low national tolerance for pedophiles. The pope has, in fact, spoken out against our equality laws and made it pretty clear that he does not like the principals that our country takes pride in – namely, a strong anti-discrimination stance that protects the minorities from the bullshit and bigotry of the majority.

Thing is, I bitch a lot about Britain. There’s some messes in the law and in society that do make me feel discriminated against as a bisexual, as a woman and particularly recently as a sex worker. But generally speaking I like the country. I like that I have some protection under the law, some rights, and some basically decent standard of living. I don’t like seeing some ancient, fucked up fucktard being given the red carpet treatment to come shit all over that. I don’t like some cunt from another country waltzing in here criticizing our laws. I don’t want the pope in my country. Anyone else?

Edit: Thanks to Shaded Spriter for this link: National Secular Society Plan Protests

It was going well for a while, there. She asked me all the basics (and I did fucking take her to task for asking me if I’d ever had sex with gay or bisexual men. Because yeah – I have – but they were by no means the ones who’d had the most anal sex and therefore were not even close to the highest AIDS risk), and then we got onto what I’ve been up to in the last twelve months. Seven partners, six of them casual. Fine. Two female, the rest male. Fine. None unprotected, fine. Last one a few days ago, and before that?

“New Year’s Eve,” I replied.

“So that was a second casual partner, on New Year’s Eve?” She asked.

“No, that was all four of my male casual partners.” There was a silence. 

“Oh.” She was trying to be professional, but her facial expression defies description. It was a few seconds, then she busily shuffled her notes and changed the subject. I’d have loved to know what was going on in her head, but I guess her job was worth enough that she wasn’t gonna say it.

So there’s another one for the record – kicked out of troubled teen boot camp and now shocking to a doctor who deals with the sexually adventurous day in and day out. I’m still waiting for my results, but I’m optimistic. I may be a slut, but I’m a damn careful one.

The slut thing is an interesting thing. A lot of people have an automatic knee jerk reaction to sexual behaviour they consider to be too promiscuous. They’re not all religious people. A bit of it will always come down to jealousy, girls who can’t get it as easily as I do (I don’t mean to be vain, I don’t think I’m anything special to look at, but I clean up nice and I know how to work with what I’ve got) and secretly wish they could. But that’s not all of it. It’s not always religious people, either. Plenty of Atheists, Agnostics and non-practising and uninterested members of sideline Christianity. I mean, sure, religion put this idea into their heads in the first place, we all know that. The idea of sexual morality is a laughable one. But why does it stick so well?

I guess that’s what I want to know. Religion teaches against a whole bunch of things. Christianity is against casual sex and homosexuality, sure. It’s also against killing, it’s against selfishness, it’s against divorce, it’s against women in positions of power. It’s against a whole mix of things, some which are good things to stand against, some which really aren’t. Why is it that the prudish passages of the Bible have taken on such a massive amount of support from the general public? If every person who hated gay people and sexually liberated women was also a firm pacifist, I would back the fuck off them. Hell, I’d at least have a little respect for them if they followed all the hateful shit in the Bible. That’d be consistent, and it’d inconvenience them as much as it does everyone else.

One of the things that really blows my mind is people who engage in sexual behaviour that most actual Christians would describe as immoral and that much of society would see as ’slutty’ – for an example, the occasional no strings attached fling and several short term monogamous relationships – yet still have the same damn attitude. Oh, sure, they’re just having fun – but anyone that’s having more of it is a goddamn whore, right? 

I wish I could close with a paragraph explaining why the bizarre concept of sexual morality has caught the public attention so well. But I can’t, because I just don’t know. Neither do they, I reckon. It’s maybe a little about control, about feeling threatened, about the idea that something that feels good has to be a little bit bad. It’s maybe a little about guilt, a little about repression, and a little about jealousy. It’s a lot about religion, but in a way that’s hard to pin down. It’s certainly about misogyny (my work-place fuckbuddy is known as a stud in the men’s locker room. I’m barely spoken to any more in the women’s). It’s about illogical reactions without thought or reason, the steady slip of the masses into a comfortable, conformist and thoughtless oblivion. It’s the same bullshit that lets people think it’s ok to hate GLBT people, or any other people who’s sexual identity they don’t understand. In the end though, it’s about nothing. It accomplishes nothing and helps no one. And in that, it is practically a religion in itself.

Yes, I am officially back with my own internet, finally. Sorry for the long absence, living on my own is complicated as all fuck.

Or at least, mostly. I have a tree, a little one, because my mum gave it to me and it looks cute in my living room. And my shiny new fuckbuddy gave me a gift, so I had to get one for him as well. And I did buy an album of Christmas music, but to be fair it is Strange Communion by Thea Gilmore, which is too good to even count.

But yeah, not celebrating Christmas. Mainly because of money. Partly to piss people off. Gotta admit, not really because of Atheism. But it’s a handy excuse.

I have stuck to a couple of Christmas time traditions of mine. The first is a breif bout of suicidal depression, which is a classic of the season. Go look up the statistics, I ain’t gonna do your work for you. People don’t like to be lonely for the holiday celebrating family, and even when I did have people around for Christmas, I’ve always been a pretty fucked up lonely person. This year I’m gonna be spending Christmas day alone, most likely drinking till I puke. Good times. If you’re feeling like shit, don’t cut people off. If there’s anyone around that you can talk to, get in touch with them. I’m bad at giving good advice but seriously, you’re not alone in this. Most people hate this time of year, at least some of the time.

The other tradition of mine was a severely fucking nasty attack of cystitis, which I get every year. Christmas time stress plus bad diet equals oh my fucking Christ what happened to my bladder. I am not well right now. I feel like I got kicked in the kidneys by a horse. If there was a God, this illness wouldn’t exist. There you go, proof. You can all pack up your bags and go home.

Enough whining, I hope you all enjoy Friday. I’m sure a bunch of you don’t celebrate Christmas, but hey, it’s a day off work. And to all my fellow retail workers out there – take a few deep breaths and a strong drink, it’ll all be over soon. Try not to kill any customers, but if you do, get one for me.

I hope to be back to the internet full time soon, I am working on articles in my notebook in my spare time, and I promise I’ve not forgotten any of you guys.

Finally, I’m just gonna throw this out there, although I doubt I can do much good. I have two spare beds in my home, at a push I could probably sleep 6 people if you’re not too fussed about privacy. If there are any GLBT readers out in Uganda right now who can get your asses on a plane to the UK, your home is my home. I can’t guarantee luxury, but you’ll be safe. Get in touch, I am entirely fucking serious.

Me and Ben split up. I’m moving into our new flat tonight instead of at the weekend,and may not have internet for as much as two weeks. I have been very busy the last couple of weeks planning the move, as well as trying to not split up with the love of my life. Things are bad and messy.

I’m sorry for the content-less post, but you all deserve to know where I am. I’ll be back soon, promise.

x Cleo

The evidence: I was dropped twice as a baby or toddler, both times by people who were responsible adults. I once attempted, completely at random, to run into a busy main road. And a final incident, proof that could not be denied. I rolled down a hill and hit my head on a metal grating.

She taught me how to protect myself. Through God, through prayer. She warned me that evil spirits could attack me if I read about witch craft, that it would open me up to danger. She told me how my grandmother was haunted by a demon that sat at the foot of her bed hiding it’s face. She taught me about martyrs, and how admirable it was to die for your beliefs.

She told me how my life would work out, that God had plans for me. That the Devil personally wanted me dead because I was going to do great things for God. I think she saw me as a missionary, or a minister, or an author of books about Christianity, like her. Whatever God’s plans, whatever my destiny, it was big enough to scare Satan himself. 

Well, I was a pretty curious kid. I believed in God, but he didn’t seem all that interesting. I knew that my mother loved him more than she loved me, I knew we were supposed to be willing to die in his name. I knew he could read all my thoughts and see everything I did, and I knew that all my friends were going to hell because they didn’t believe in him. But he’d never tried to kill me, and he’d never talked to me either. So I decided to try to get in touch with someone a bit more believable. 

I knew 666 was supposed to be the number of the Devil. So I tried telephoning him. 

It didn’t work (obviously), but I was patient. I kept trying. I wanted to talk to the supernatural being that wanted me dead because hey, at least he wanted me at all. They used to tell us in Sunday School that talking to God was like talking on the telephone, but he hadn’t left a number and he didn’t seem to pick up when I talked to him in my head like they told us to. He seemed to me distant, bored with humanity. Satan was the character in the stories who took an interest, who mixed with people. Sure, he was the bad guy, but I always found that more interesting anyway.

Eventually, I lost interest in the pair of them, and became Christian by default. I didn’t know there was another option, not really. I knew Atheists existed, but I hadn’t ever thought it through. In everything I’d been given to read Atheists were portrayed as two dimensional characters who’s sole purpose was to attack Christians and commit sins. They did things deliberately to spite God, because they didn’t understand love and didn’t want to. Some time around age eight or nine I decided a nice thing to do would be to make a Birthday present for Jesus. I made a rough globe out of paper and colored it in to look like the world. I don’t know the thought process exactly, something to do with God making the world? Loving the world? I put it under my bed on Christmas Eve and waited for it to disappear. It didn’t. I left it for months, eventually the foster child living with us at the time stole it to make me happy. I was, until I found out.

My chronology from there on is a little fuzzy. I always promised myself I’d remember my childhood, but that didn’t work out so well. What I do remember is this: I read the Bible. I read it cover to cover, and then I read it again. My mother had always told me that she found great comfort in reading the Bible, and felt God spoke to her through it. I had always enjoyed Bible stories as a child (and as pieces of mythology some of them really are rather good). First time round, I was confused and weighed down by the old fashioned language (I would guess I was aged nine or ten at this point) and the sheer length of the book. Second time, I started to understand. And what I understood, I did not like. 

By the time I was thirteen I was an Atheist, and no longer attended church. By the time I was fifteen I had managed to shed most of the hang ups and broken morality of Christianity (up until that age I am ashamed to say I remained pro-life and against sex outside of marriage, although I was not ever homophobic – a small comfort). The last thing to go was the belief that I was being watched. Always, constantly, unwaveringly watched by a supernatural and judgemental eye that could even hear my thoughts. Finding my way around my sexuality was hard, I found it incredibly difficult even to fantasize, and early experiments with masturbation filled me with guilt and terror. I was determined to be an Atheist, to drop the irrational beliefs I had been raised with. So I rationalized out my fear, pretended that I was scared of hidden cameras, of parental discovery, of top secret military brain reading technology. But the truth is that I was still living in fear of God.

I’ll not go into my feelings about raising children in religion again, I think I’ve covered that well. But perhaps now it is obvious why I am so personally angered by it. I feel that as a child I was damaged by religion, damage that I had to become incredibly strong willed to overcome (and overcome it I did, make no mistake). I went through my entire childhood in the belief that I had no privacy, that I could damn my soul by accidental sinful thoughts and even dreams, and that my sexuality was something to be ashamed of. I also was taught that I would live forever, that I had a great destiny and that I would change the world. It is hard to say which of these ideas it was harder to shed. 

No one should have to learn for the first time, as a teenager, that they are going to die. No one should have to be too scared to let themselves reach orgasm. No one should have to lie in the dark trying not to think of demons in case the very thought summons them. We deserve better than that.

This article (I posted the image here but it broke the tables, so I removed it) caught my eye. I much prefer this statement to the original “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Not that I disagree with that, but I felt that it was unlikely to change anyone’s minds. I actually have (perhaps a foolishly optimistic) hope that this one might actually make a few people stop and think. 

I think it would be very hard not to share what you believe to be the truth with your child. I have no intention of having children, but if I did I honestly do not know how I would approach it. I believe Atheism to be the natural state – I believe that there is no God, and so the only reason that people believe there is one is that they have been told to. Obviously, religious people believe the opposite. It’s certainly a tricky one, and not one I’m sure I have the perfect answer to. 

I suppose the ideal might be to teach a child about all beliefs as a theory, from the context of history and sociological effect, and for the mythology. There’s no denying the Bible is an important piece of literature in the Western world, with many names and quotations coming from it. Teaching a child to always question things and think them through before accepting them as fact, teaching them acceptance of others and not to be judgemental. I believe that the outcome of this would be a strong turn towards secularism, or at least less organized religion (the dangerous kind) and more general vague spirituality, which I think is nutty but fairly harmless.

The second article I want to share with you is certainly related. It is on the matter of faith schools. Can you guess how I feel about faith schools? Really fucking angry, that’s how I feel about faith schools! How is this shit legal? How in the hell do people get away with brain washing on such a grand scale? You know what, I don’t even care about the discrimination issues here! I don’t care about the working rights of anyone who would willingly attach themselves to such an establishment. 

So you have a child, a child that you supposedly love and care for. You believe in God and want your child to live a good life and go to heaven. I don’t agree with you, but I can understand the mindset. I get it, I really do. If we could make our loved ones immortal just by telling them so, wouldn’t we all? So while I think that indoctrinating children is wrong, there are degrees. I can appreciate the reasons for doing it, even if I cannot condone the actions.

But when you take away from your child the right to hear dissenting opinions, you have crossed a line. When you wrap them up in cotton wool and bubble wrap and blinkers to keep them from the world, blotting out the option of free thought and skepticism (not to mention alternative religious beliefs) then you are taking away their rights as a human. You are giving them no choice, no alternate forms of influence, no way to learn and grow.

The strongest minded children may be able to shake that off and find their own path. My boyfriend came up with his own (and, to my knowledge, unique) reason for being an atheist at age five. That’s some impressive stubbornness, I didn’t start thinking about anything along those lines until age eleven, and I wasn’t ever at a faith school. But for many, how you are raised is how you stay. With parents on one side and teachers on the other, both force feeding one set of unshakable beliefs down your throat, what chance do you stand?

I want to tell you, finally, about a girl I work with. I’ll not share her name. She is close to my age, and is a very friendly, happy person. She describes herself as Catholic. She does not know what the word Atheist means. She also did not understand my meaning when I said that, although my boyfriend’s mother is a vicar and we live in a vicarage, he and I will not be attending church this Christmas. She literally could not comprehend the possibility that someone with Christian parents might not follow their beliefs. It was completely outside the realm of her experience and thought. 

That is brainwashing in action. And it is terrifyingly successful.

I bitched about it a little, and my mum said that she had heard humanists on it before. I doubted this (my mum’s not a liar but she has the leakiest of all memories) but left it alone. Well, it turns out I was right. 

The BBC Trust has rejected complaints about a ban on non-religious contributors to the Thought For The Day slot on Radio 4’s Today programme.

Allowing only religious content did not breach BBC guidelines on impartiality or its duty to reflect religious and other beliefs, its governing body said.

Well then, the BBC needs new guidelines, because those are a heap of shit.

I have a whole fuckton of respect for the BBC most of the time, because they have rules about impartiality. I mean, it’s infuriating sometimes when they’re reporting on something I think is disgusting (pro-lifers, for example) and acting like there’s two sides to it. But I take comfort in the fact that somewhere out there a fundie fucktard is fuming as the BBC reports on my rights with the same relaxed, fact based impartiality. 

But how? How is it goddamn* impartial to ignore the opinions and beliefs of an entire section of your audience? The title of the program is not “Religious Indoctrination for the Day”, nor is it “Entirely Unfounded Belief for the Day”. It is “Thought for the Day”. And goodness knows, thinking is something that Atheists, Skeptics and Humanists are good at. 

The BBC are very good at ignoring complaints, but I have made complaints that caused changes before and it’s worth a shot. The complaints form can be found here. 

*I hope my fellow atheists will forgive, but I like blasphemous slang. Not because it pisses of Christians, although that is a plus, but because all through my childhood I wasn’t allowed to use it and I hate censorship.

Edited to add my complaint to the BBC, because I got all wordy ‘n shit. The way I do. You get two posts in one!

My name is Cleo Rose. I am usually a fan of the BBC for their impartiality, but occasionally you guys slip up. Let me tell you how it is for me – I am an Atheist. I have been an Atheist since I was twelve years old.

But this isn’t just lack of belief, oh no. It is about taking sides. I had an abortion this year, and have been openly bisexual since I was fourteen (and closeted but self-aware for many years before). Do you start to get the idea now? Maybe? I’ll throw a little more ‘me’ at you – slut, individualist, plastic surgery enthusiast. I’m not the type of girl you take home to meet the Xtian parents.

Religion is, in my view, a poison. It is actively harmful, it is a social disease. I am shocked and disgusted when I see how accepted it has become in society. There are things I would want to change, so called rights that religious people hold that I would want to take away.

The right to free speech is not one of them. That, I would protect at any cost. The right to believe what they want, and openly express it, is a right that I firmly believe no one should be able to take away. Maybe you see what I’m getting at.

I would like to see Thought for the Day be open to people of all belief systems, and of none. Not just people who are decisively Atheist, Skeptic, Humanist, or any other labeled group (although obviously, that should be the first step). I would like to see people who align themselves to no particular group giving their thoughts. A lot of people have ideas worth sharing, and Thought for the Day would certainly promote more thought if there was true diversity of opinion.

Lets get some of the great minds of Atheism on there! That I’d tune in to listen to, you can bet on that. Or if you want a cheap option, I’ll do it for ya. I’d shake up the C of E granny crowd, if you want some controversy to raise the ratings. Stop being so goddamn middle of the road and lets make the few minutes you dedicate to thinking actually stretch people’s minds, not feed them easily palatable mush to ease them into day after day of thoughtless bliss.

In all these cases, I am the one in three. I am the statistic – I had an abortion. 

One in three – with odds like that, you don’t expect taboo. You don’t expect lies, shame and moral outrage. One in three women. I’ll say it again, until the message gets through. One. In every three. 

Think of the groups of three that you know. Three sisters, three friends, three generations. Now I’m not saying that in each sample you would find the one in three that I am, not at all. But that’s how common we’re talking. One woman, in every three. How many women do you know? Do the maths, think it over. How many women do the statistics say have had an abortion, out of the people you know? And how many would ever, ever talk about it?

Being against abortion pits you against one third of the female population. Is it any surprise, then, that the pro-life movement is seen as inherently misogynistic? I can believe that some naively, but genuinely, think that they are doing good – but not most. Most are actively seeking to remove rights from one in three women, to punish that one in every three for her sexual freedom, for her ambitions, hopes and dreams, and for her choice.

And they get away with it. They get away with it again, and again, and again. They say that God is on their side, they say that all human decency is on their side. What they don’t tell you is that one in three women are not on their side – more, really, but at a bare minimum the one in three who made that choice for whatever reason, some easily and some after great internal or external struggles. They get away with it because we stay silent, because we let them dress us up in shame and guilt. Because talking about your abortion just isn’t done. 

I’m in the UK, things are better here, but that doesn’t mean that Stupak-Pitts doesn’t scare me. I’m scared for the women I know in America, I’m scared that this bullshit will cross the Atlantic and fuck with my rights, and the rights of my friends. But more than that, I’m angry. I’m goddamn furious. That a group of people (mostly men, I notice) get to vote on the rights of women to choose whether or not to go through a dangerous and painful nine months (followed by the even more dangerous and painful experience of childbirth) in order to create a child they do not want and cannot care for. That a group of strangers get the right to choose for us whether or not we get to continue with our lives, or have our whole world turned upside down by a piece of random chance.

I’m pissed, and I’m not staying silent. I was recently 19 when I had an abortion. If I had not I would have ruined my body, my relationship and my career. If I hadn’t had the abortion? I’d have given birth this week. I’d be an (almost certainly) single mother, with no job prospects. I would be homeless, I would have absolutely nothing. Here in UK, the National Health Service paid for my abortion. It cost me nothing at all. Because of that, I have everything I have ever wanted. I will soon move into a flat with my boyfriend, I have a wonderful job and great friends. I also have a fantastic body, not gonna lie. The only thing I don’t have? Guilt. That I do not have and do not want. The pro-life fucktards can keep it, can rot in it for all I care. Perhaps if we stop caring what they think, if women who are not ashamed and will not live in regret begin to feel able to talk about abortion honestly and openly, we can shut them down once and for all.

I’m not ‘out’ at work. That’s not to say I’m closeted, because I’m not. It’s just that it hasn’t come up yet. It hasn’t come up, and the longer I leave it the less likely it is to come up at all. The less likely it is to come up, the easier it is to let it not come up. And so it starts – I live a lie.

Here’s the thing. I get a job. I meet people, and the heterosexist norms of society kick in. They assume that the ultra-femme girl – with a boyfriend – is straight. I tell a funny story, mentioning an ex boyfriend, or comment on a hot male customer, and the impression is cemented. After all, as a bisexual, there’s a lot of “straight bits” to me. Once they’ve seen those, they don’t look much further.

See, it’s hard to drop into conversation casually. I’ve never had an actual romantic relationship with a woman, there’s no female-someone I can drop a mention of in the exes category. “This girl I fucked this one time” doesn’t roll off the tongue as easy, and is veering right into TMI territory. 

The only way I can mention it is to artificially drag a conversation around to it, force people to talk about me and my beliefs. And I’ll admit, it doesn’t feel quite right. Because I believe that bisexuality is as normal as anything else, because I don’t think it should make a difference to how people see me and interact with me, I feel that I shouldn’t be making it into an issue. After all, none of them ever came out as straight. 

So I leave it, and I leave it, and it gradually gets more and more awkward. I’ve caught myself a couple of times engaging in the pronoun game – not because I don’t want to come out and be honest, but because the timing is poor. There’s a customer there, or I’m on my way out the door, or I’m eating, or any number of other reasons why I don’t have the time or the opportunity to deal with the fallout.

Because, as I’m sure you’re all aware, there will be some fallout. I don’t think I’ve got many homophobic or biphobic coworkers (and if I do, I am enough of a cunt to take anything they throw at me. I haven’t been a victim for a long damn time). But that’s not at all the issue. As I mentioned in my last post, there are a lot of misconceptions about bisexuality. Understandably, people have questions. Imagine if I came out on the shop floor – and a coworker asked me if I’d ever had sex with a woman, in front of a customer? I won’t get fired for being bi, but I’m pretty sure discussing the details of my sex life in front of our volatile, easily offended customers would be a great way to lose my job. 

And so, again I leave it. And as I encourage another friend towards the door of his own personal closet this week, I feel like a liar and a hypocrite. Because I can say all I like that I’m out and proud, that I’m done with the closet and no fucker will ever get me back in… well, that’s not really true, is it? I’ll never let anyone tell me to be ashamed of myself, I’ll never let anyone deny who I am for their own comfort. But when it comes to my job, it’s too easy to let it slip out of my hands. Let them assume what they want, and make my excuses to myself. Anything for a quiet life.

Of course there are. You probably know you’re a bigoted fuck for having them, but there will be people out there reading this (and I don’t mean straight folk) who don’t believe in bisexuality. Or who think all bi girls are gigantic sluts – and hetero sluts at that – who kiss girls (and like it!) in bars to impress their boyfriends (who certainly won’t mind it).

And of course there’s the popular and utterly stupid belief that all bisexuality is a transitional phase, after which the person will “settle down” into one camp or the other. And for some people it is, of course people go through stages of confusion. But it’s not that way for everybody, and it’s not that way for me.

Let me lay it out for you. Being bisexual is about having twice as much choice, not twice as many partners. And if I kiss a girl without his permish, my boyfriend is just as pissy as if I’d kissed a guy. I’m in a long term (and hopefully permanent) relationship with a man, but that doesn’t make me straight. And if I leave him for a woman, that won’t make me gay either. And if you’re that terrified to date a bisexual in case they leave you for the opposite sex, then your insecurities will ruin any relationship you have. Good luck with that, you cunt.

What I love about bisexuality is how fluid it is (and this is what this whole rant was meant to be about, but once you get me started on biphobia I just go, go, go), how from one day to the next my sexual orientation can shift from side to side. I had a very straight day yesterday – it was game society night, and I spent four hours in a room full of hot guys. A girl can only take so much! My head didn’t have space in it for thoughts of women when it was too full of, well, we won’t go into that here. I think some of them read this blog. But a few months back, last time I had sex with a woman, I went through a few days of crisis when I was certain I was actually a lesbian, and would have to break up with my boyfriend to run off with the curvaceous 4’10 hottie we’d spent the weekend with.

That can be scary and confusing at times, but it’s also a lot of fun. Although overall I can average it out to say that physically I lean strongly towards women, but feel a better emotional connection with men, that’s simplifying massively. The day to day shifts constantly redefine me as a person, and throw up new challenges to my relationship. I feel like, though my sexuality, I learn and grow.

So how does this relate to theism? Well, it’s the opposite. My sexuality is not set in stone, it fluctuates constantly and I am open to the possibility that it may shift dramatically in the years to come. Religion, by its very nature, does not change. Oh, the followers claim otherwise, with minor dogmatic shifts. But the basic foundation of any religion is not up for debate, it cannot be swayed and it is not open to just anyone for interpretation. Because when you base your entire code of morality on what a perfect, omnipotent being said thousands of years ago, you don’t really have much in the way of wiggle room. How can things change with time when the word of God is timeless? What room is there for improvement on supposed perfection?

Religions are static, set (like the ten commandments) in stone. Human sexuality is not – whether you are bisexual or you’ve “made up your mind” (because we are, as I’m sure you’ve been told, just too greedy to pick a side) to homosexuality or heterosexuality. Human gender is not fixed either – people are male, or female, or somewhere between the two, or somewhere else entirely.  If we can’t even sort ourselves comfortably into a binary, how could we ever all fit into a “one size fits all” belief system?

There is only one way – through denying who and what we are. Religion can only function through the sacrifice of individuality, and that I will not abide.