In theology, at the root of such distortions as anti-feminismism the problem of conceptualizations, images and attitudes concerning God. […]Indeed, shades of ‘the old man with a beard’ – his various metaphysical equivalents – continue to appear even in the most learned speculations of theologians. They appear even more obviously and frequently in the watered-down popularized versions of these speculations, for example, in text-books, religion classes and sermons. […] Of course, no theologian or biblical scholar believes that God literally belongs to the male sex. However there are bits of evidence that the absurd idea that God is male lingers on in the mind of theologians, preachers and simple believers, on a level which is not entirely explicit and conscious. One has only to think of the predictable and spontaneous reaction of shock and embarrassment if a speaker were to stand before a group and refer to God as ‘she’.