Re: What is womanhood to you?
This is my personal opinion on chilbland's question of "What is womanhood to you?"
This will both cover my overall belief of what womanhood is, and how I relate - and sometimes unrelate - to the concept of womanhood. It's not the prettiest nor the most organized thing.
Womanhood is partly, as I understand it, how you are percieved by others and thus how you are treated by others.
You can do certain actions and wear certain things to emphasize your womanhood, to be percieved more firmly as a woman. You can do things that have the opposite effect.
But as well, there are those who'd want to strip you of your womanhood, because you don't fit their preconcieved notions of what a woman is. There are those who would want to hurt you because of your womanhood, percieved or otherwise.
Is that "correct"? Is that a "right" thing to do?
Absolutely not... But I've seen it happen time and again. It's a reality of living in a world run by humans that benefit from exerting control over others, in any way they can.
It gets to the point where governments try to enforce their perceptions of womanhood, and they "legally" refuse to identify trans women as women. If they refuse to percieve one type of woman, what stops them from refusing to percieve more? If you aren't legally recognized, how can you be legally protected? They hardly do a good job of legally protecting the women who are recognized, so it's that much worse when there are no protections in place for you, if you're to say, get hatecrimed.
And yet, it is ultimately the individual who decides whether womanhood is something they do or don't identify with, isn't it? The other half of the concept.
Matt Walsh tried to "gotchya" people by asking "What is a woman?" and by dismissing any answers that were longer than a sentence or two.
What is a woman?
Well, I think it's anybody who claims with conviction that they're a woman. Sometimes you can assume who a woman is based off of their choice of hairstyle and their clothing, but ofc people can wear whatever they please and be the opposite gender, or any gender or no gender at all. So just asking and listening to people is enough, isn't it?
The trans woman who hasn't been able to start her horomones is a woman.
The older lady who no longer can bear children is a woman.
The butch lesbian who shaves their head and who steals clothes from the men's section is a woman.
The person with DID has alters who are women.
The genderfluid person is a woman sometimes or most of the time or rarely.
Womanhood is just another diverse facet of our humanity, isn't it?
But to me?
It's a complicated relationship.
Womanhood is a concept I'm more ambivalent towards.
I don't mind when people consider me a woman, use she/her pronouns for me, call me girlypop. I don't cringe or feel bad about these distinctions.
Different things bother me...
I don't like my name being ""feminized"" too much. I don't like the feeling of being exposed when I wear a skirt or a dress, regardless of how long it is. I don't like if someone tries to insist that the hair on my head is ""too beautiful"" to cut so shortly, but then the hair all over the rest of my body needs to be eradicated with extreme prejudice.
I don't like how it feels like so many people percieve women as ""lesser than.""
So I insist rather counterintuitively "I'm a woman, but I'm More." It's my attempt to kick and scream that I'm worth something! I am a person! My life has meaning beyond biological functions!
Womanhood for me is coming to terms with the misogyny that was thrust violently and consistently onto me during my girlhood, and learning to come to terms with its presence that refuses to leave my life.
Womanhood is sharp and painful like a knife stuck in between my ribs.
It is a knife I want to rip from myself and to take into my own hand. I want to use it to violently defend myself.
Yet for now, I think it is stuck firmly inside of me, inextricable - lest I bleedout if it's removed without any care or grace.
So there it stays.
It stays as something I silently navigate and hold within my chest and my body. As useful as any foreign object introduced unwillingly to the body could ever be. It becomes quite a matter of fact.
It is a tool that I don't hold ill-will towards, because it certainly didn't thrust itself into me.
Something close to my heart, but that I know could kill me if I moved wrong. Something beautiful dug deeply into my skin, ripping the flesh and muscle, scraping against my bones.
I would very much like to keep it with me, neatly placed on my belt. An item of esteem and that would protect me.
But here it stays, stuck within me.
Something that feels closer to a sore spot than something I can look on with any real pride and joy for myself.