Not attached to "Womanhood"

I am a bi femme cis woman, I have never felt attached to “womanhood”

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art by Arty Guava

I am a bi femme cis woman, I have never felt attached to “womanhood.” Not my own nor society’s definition.

I have thought about this for many years off and on. I don’t have gender dysphoria, and so I can’t speak from that experience. I very much feel comfortable as my assigned sex at birth. I very much feel that it suits me. That being said, I do not relate to “womanhood” in the way that many cis women seem to relate to it. I do not think of my period as “empowering” or “defining.” I do not think of my womb as “magical.” I do not believe specific body parts are what make a woman. I think birth is rad and it’s amazing that people can do it. However, I don’t see that as being attached to womanhood, like our society would have you believe.

Whenever I hear/see these words used in conjunction with genitals, my TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) radar perks up. I think about my gender queer, nonbinary, and trans friends who are most often left out and excluded.

I see many new agey accounts on social media talking about wombs, vaginas, menstruation, pregnancy and birth as ✨magical✨ things and it makes me want to smash my head against a wall. While, yes, pregnancy and birth are pretty fucking magical, having a womb is not inherently magical. Having a vagina is not inherently magical. Having a period is SUPER not magical.

I have personally never bought into the magic of menstruation. For a while, I wondered if it was possibly due to some internalized misogyny. But then I realized, no, because getting a period is not a woman-only experience. I feel uncomfortable being involved in any rhetoric that is trans-exclusive. People of various genders have a period. These online spaces of “your-menstrual-blood-is-the-key-to-your-femininity-and-womanhood-and existance” are outright excluding folks who do not align with womanhood or femininity. It’s also just really fucking weird to frame shit like that. I am not someone who hates my period (most of the time), but I also merely see it as a thing I deal with once a month that reminds me I’m not pregnant. I’m all for witchy and woo-woo shit, but I will never support the idea that my monthly bleed is a symbol of my “womanhood.”

Gender Essentialism bores me. It’s rigid and keeps us all boxed in.

I continue to see disturbing language like “female bodied people” or “female nervous system” in my social media feeds, and I cannot adequately tell you how gross this language makes me feel. First, there is no such thing as “female bodied.” I get that people who use this are (sometimes) using it to be inclusive, but it’s the complete opposite. The terms “female” and “male” should really only be used when talking about animals.

Second, there is NO SUCH THING AS A “FEMALE NERVOUS SYSTEM.” I see people in the Somatics realm use this and it’s truly just a way to sell you a something. We don’t have “male” and “female” nervous systems. We just have nervous systems. Obviously our nervous systems are all different and varied due to our own lived experiences in our individual bodies. But our nervous systems are not gendered!

All of this gender binary bullshit makes me think of the book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. I’ve never read this book, but the title and premise are enough to make me puke.

I love being a woman in the way that I love my personality, which is to say—I love my expression and decoration of womanhood. It just is. I have never once felt threatened by other versions of “womanhood.” I have never once cared enough to be upset by someone doing “womanhood” differently than me. It’s all performance anyways, right? I like performing my version of what being a woman is to me, and though this is in some ways in line with what society purports a woman to be, my femme-ness is subversive in a culture that thinks so little of queer femininity.

I think there’s space for all of us—all of our varying shapes of what being a woman can look and feel like. How amazingly spacious that is!

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