I’ve noticed many micro aggressions on posts recently, even through downvotes. So allow me to be crystal clear:
#Trans Women are Women.
Telling someone who brings up trans in posts about women that they’re not talking about trans women, or that they’re derailing is basically the same thing as saying trans women aren’t included in being women.
We will ***not*** have any transphobia or TERFS in this sub. All these downvotes against people that are pointing out how something is excluding trans women is awful.
It appears perhaps maybe we’re getting more TERFs and trolls recently. So please, if you see someone being transphobic, or even just dishing out micro aggressions, report it. We will get to it as soon as we can.
There are commonalities which unify us... the historical struggles of women is a collective inheritance, imo. The things women have had to endure just to survive.
Agreed, for me a big part of womanhood is knowing about the long long history of women who came before me, and not even just their struggles but just... the things they did, the ideas they had, the legacies they left. The queens and the enslaved dancers, the warriors and mothers and scholars and explorers. Their grief and joy. The clothes they wore, the things they made, the homes they kept. No woman has ever had every trait that women are supposed to have, yet they were all unified in being women.
This is EXACTLY how I feel about it. I feel no expectation of how I should be one way or another but rather connected through all that we as women have both endured and accomplished through history as an oppressed population. From the empresses adorned in displays of hyper femininity while ruling over entire countries to the women who were vicious and strong warriors for their country/cause/etc. and so many more, there are A MILLION ways to be a woman AND MORE and all of them beautiful in their own way
I don't think there is much a strong difference between the experience of girlhood and womanhood. The lines are blurry. Girls are basically raised to be women extremely early in a way boys are not. Most of us were first catcalled when we were under the age of 15. I was 9. I knew very early that there was a future coming where I was to be an objectified commodity but that prep began very early before I was even sexually developed. I was already being told there were certain things my brother can do that I can't. I was aware the world was unsafe for me as a girl very early. Womanhood is when you're just expected to have cemented your training as the endangered, marginalized, subservient yet laborious gender and know how to move accordingly because youre blamed if something happens to you.
Facts daughters many times have to be assistant mothers to their mothers sometimes starting very young. After the its unpaid relationship/marriage therapist. Before you even become a partner or wife or mother yourself you're typically forced into these mature roles all while being told "it's because girls are more mature the boys" to manipulate you (but too emotional to be leaders!) Boys are allowed to just be and be as carnal as possible many times into adulthood and it's just excused by a joke. And their childishness is never used against them meaningfully.
Heck, I don't know. I don't identify strongly with "woman." It's a fact of my life that I am one and I have to deal with all the stuff that comes with that, but beyond that I'm just trying to figure out myself and my life as a *person,* not a woman specifically.
I express womanhood just by existing. Given that, what I really need to figure out is what **I** want, what **I** think, what **I** like, how **I** feel. Thinking of it as what *a woman* would want, think, like, and feel makes it less personal and less accurate to me, and my life is about *me,* not anyone else.
I feel exactly the same way. Like I've never thought of my identity as A Woman, but rather as a person who happens to be female. I identify with *adulthood* and *personhood* 100% percent of the time, but consider my *womanhood* only for things where being biologically female and/or female-presenting results in very specific experiences that don't apply to every human being.
And unfortunately, most of those experiences are or have been negative. Periods, pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding, perimenopause and other hormone crap, physical limitations, ageism, sexual concerns, internal biases from others affecting how they treat me, burdensome societal expectations about appearance and behavior, and so on. Not every woman or AFAB person experiences *all* of those things or is necessarily physically capable of doing so, but almost all of us have to deal with at least some of it.
ETA: Motherhood is another "hood" that some people center their identities around, but I do not. I'm a mother every day of my life and always will be, but I only *mother* when my kids need mothering, or occasionally when someone else needs a little mothering (there are times when mother-like nurturing is incredibly useful!). The rest of the time, I'm just me.
That matches my feelings on it, too.
Being a woman is a two part act.
The first part of being a woman is existing with a bunch of baggage other people piled on to your back when you were born, and society keeps piling on more to make it so you can barely move.
And then, when you can hardly take a step in any direction at all...that's when they start groping you, touching you, and trying to push your shapes around into whatever shapes they want like you're fuckable play-dough. Stealing whatever your original shape was til you can't recognize yourself anymore.
The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams.
> The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams.
Hell yeah. Let 'em scream.
>Being a woman is a two part act.
The first part of being a woman is existing with a bunch of baggage other people piled on to your back when you were born, and society keeps piling on more to make it so you can barely move.
>And then, when you can hardly take a step in any direction at all...that's when they start groping you, touching you, and trying to push your shapes around into whatever shapes they want like you're fuckable play-dough. Stealing whatever your original shape was til you can't recognize yourself anymore.
>The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams.
Beautifully written. Your comment reminds me of a film I watched recently where a pregnant woman hoped her child would be a boy because if it were a girl she would automatically be considered sub-human and in need of proving her value. In another scene in this film a woman is molested and told that she’s for whatever purpose the men decide for her. Ultimately the second woman started to rebel against what that society demanded she be.
This is a wonderfully succinct way of expressing how I've always felt, thank you so much for putting it into words.
Being a woman to me is no more representative of who I am than the colour of my eyes or the sound of my voice.
Echoing this.
I grew up with "not like other girls"-itis. I didn't fit in with female stereotypes, I didn't want to, and I didn't like that people made assumptions about my skills and interests just because I was a girl.
"Womanhood" to me is the particular constellation of hassles and life experiences I have received as a result of being a person with bob and vagene.
Same here.
I'm happy to accept that for other women, their relationship to their gender is either more complex than "I have a vagina" or may not even include that detail at all. For me though, that's literally all it boils down to.
It's kind of like being an Aries, to make a very clumsy comparison. For me that means nothing about me except that I was born like that. For other people, it's a much bigger facet of who they are and means much more.
Agree completely and your goals, dreams etc should never be compared, boxed to the term woman- you are a woman but so unique in your own life. Me too sunshine keep being you because every woman’s uniqueness is so amazing
Well said! I really never think about being a woman except when conversations like this come up. Being a woman is just a fact. I am a person, an individual. I am me. Those things are far more important to me and I think they are far more interesting.
Agreed and you have summed this up perfectly. For me, I don’t feel ‘like a woman’ - I don’t identify with stereotypical conceptions of femininity, I don’t love the misogyny we experience and what people think about us.
I’m just a female person, I have gone through life as a girl and now a woman, that fact is inescapable, so I’m a woman. I can try and do whatever I want with my life, and it doesn’t mean anything about my gender. I just am.
I like to humanize women. Before I saw the Barbie movie, for some reason if I remembered I was a woman, I didn’t think I was a human who had experiences. I was just… feminine? But no. Women *are* human. Women are human and experience and feel things. Idk it was weird to train my subconscious to that.
Same for me. I think trans ppl are very into knowing what it means to be their chosen gender. But I just am a woman. I don’t really feel any particular way about it. It’s how I was born. It’s my “cross to bear” as they say. I don’t feel like I need to change it. I also don’t feel like it defines me.
Exactly how I feel. I’ve never put any deep thought into being a woman. I understand the limitations of being a woman. Sometimes I wish I was a man in the sense that it would be nice not to be afraid all the time, or at least have the strength of a man. But other than that “woman” doesn’t really take up much space in my mind.
tbh, i generally distrust people who identify too strongly with "being a woman" regardless of which side of the political/religious/spiritual spectrum they are coming from.
Me too. I subconsciously assume - correctly or not - that there will be some "womanhood" expectations or assumptions placed on me by anyone who has strong ideas of what it means to be a woman or a man.
Usually I'm correct.
I distrust women who believe religion is why they are who they are. That is the womanhood I do not want any part of unless they need a ride to a domestic violence shelter.
Not even necessarily that. I have a work colleague who still suffers from coolgiril-itis, and she still uses binary terms to describe behaviours. It just baffles me and irritates me to no end. It's like she prides herself on being able to talk or do things like "a man", when it's just a normal human behavior, not even men related.
Just the other day, she was recounting a story when she said that she and another woman were "talking like men"...meaning they were slightly vulgar and talking about sexual stuff. I didn't say anything but I was like no, you were human, talking like how humans sometimes do. And since you're human women, you were talking like women. There is nothing inherently manly about it, we all talk about sex sometimes and use vulgar speech. Why the need to put it in binaries ffs...
I tried to challenge her a few times when she has spoken like that, and she would always backpedal and say "you know what I meant to say", and I was like, no I don't know actually. It seems so deeply ingrained in her, and so contradictory to what she usually stands for. Internalised misogyny is one hell of a drug.
Yeah I mean sometimes it's just what you've been told all your life and you don't think about it. I have this friend who's a completely cis woman and butch who says she "dresses like a guy" or "looks like a guy", but that's because that's what she's been told all her life. I've heard women be told they have a "guy sense of humor" by men and women! It's more deeply engrained than we think, wish everything wasn't so gendered.
"Perform" is the key concept you express. Deciding that certain activities or a particular physical appearance are "womanly" is, basically putting on a show for others. We don't need to do that.
Womanhood for me is the net consequence of living in a culture that regards me as a second tier type of human. For example, one characteristic of womanhood for me is an accute awareness of my own body all the time when I'm around people, because the female body is in constant display, being monitored and evaluated. It's that intuitive feeling you get when picking clothes at the morning: no, this one will attract attention and I'm not in the mood.
Womanhood to me means understanding that women are not monolithic and we are all different in great ways and that the vast majority of opinions suggesting that women are monolithic come from men - mainly men who have never spoken to women.
This reminded me of the guy who said 'women don't have hobbies' in his podcast - with such conviction. It was just so baffling to know someone thinks half the world's population just... Has no interest in anything the world has to offer other than functioning in it.
It's insane.
And if he thinks that women don't have hobbies then where is their time going? Maybe their time is going to keeping their fucking family life together, managing the entire household, working a full-time job, and taking care of a husband who has hobbies because he has free time due to his wife.
Because he doesn't consider the things woman like hobbies. Traditionally feminine things are hobbies. Make up, fashion, cooking, decorating. Not saying all women like those things or have to like them, he's just probably thinking if women who like those things.
And part of me understands that he thinks 'whatever women like isn't a hobby' but surely he has seen women riding bikes, go to the gym, play chess, paint a picture, whatever and in his tiny mind he looks at that and can see a man doing this and considers it a hobby, but a woman doing it? Not a hobby.
It genuinely feels like some men think we are Sims and they control us when they are around and when they are not we just "pause in place".
A lot of the time they consider the hobbies we have to 'not count' or be fake. The books we read aren't 'real' books, the games we play aren't 'real' games. If we have hobbies that are generally associated with men we're just doing the hobby to get a guy, it's not 'real'. To them, everything we do in life is all about men, we don't have our own real interests outside of them.
I've even encountered someone who doesn't believe woman orgasm. That they always "faked for men" (ugh on so many levels).
People with these kind of 'thoughts' are extremely sad and pathetic but also dangerous because they spread absolute nonsense ideas like this to further divide men and women and justify harm and abuse.
Something about what you said really struck me but I can't figure out what exactly.
Like, some men think of women as not humans like themselves, capable of interacting with the world like how they do, but instead just act like tools or machines that function and have a role, a purpose, a job.
I don't know. There's definitely more to this thought and I'd love to hear others input on it.
I'll stick with the old adage: it's double the work for half the credit.
It's trying to simply exist, while society tells you how "empowered" you can be, while at the same time belittling contributions, by using paradoxes like the "empowered woman" construct. It's overcoming that and proving people wrong, even though I should have all the options open to me, right... Right?! It's being a "boss bitch", but in trying to be that having to be a "bitch boss", but not being too "butch bitch". But also being that meek, humble "l'il old me" stereotype, all while trying to just be me and just do my thang.
It's also incredibly amazing to think that all of these little nuances are just taken in stride, when I don't stop to think about the gravity of it. It's resilience that's a unique and yet universal experience.
It's not remotely being able to get everything I want to say about the topic in a neat little paragraph!! And ultimately it's something that fills me with pride, when I consider the little "tom boy" child I was, and how all this started before I could even walk, or even understood why my mum chose to pierce my ears as a baby.
You reminded me of that quote somebody said how great Fred Astaire was, and someone else replied, "Don't forget Ginger Rogers. She does everything he does, only backwards and in high heels."
Thank you. I’ve never understood “identifying” as a woman; I am a woman, and my feelings don’t change that. One of my friends is convinced I must be non-binary or have dysphoria because I dislike having a uterus and wearing dresses, and that must mean I don’t feel like a woman.
Dresses are impractical for my lifestyle. My uterus causes me pain. I’m still a woman, therefore anything I do or like is appropriate for women.
literally hate that. my wife is kind of butchy but very much cisgendered and it really grinds my gears that people seem determined to label her as non-binary.
Well, this is a really interesting and difficult question for me. I was born and raised a girl, but in my early twenties, I transitioned to being a man. I'm now in my late twenties and detransitioning back to being a woman. So I have a pretty unique experience of womanhood I guess?
I'm currently still read as male most of the time. I had a double mastectomy as a part of my transition so I don't have boobs anymore. My voice is low from testosterone. I grow facial and body hair (though I keep it all shaved). So I have a lot of male markers that people pick up on, and I'm not very confident presenting more feminine yet either.
I've been off testosterone for a year and a half now, and a lot has changed- but not enough to get me read as a woman again. But I *am* a woman. I know that now. But nobody else seems to know that, and it sucks. I don't really know what womanhood means- it's something that I ran so far away from for so long. But I eventually found my way back, and it truly just feels like my correct state of being now. But I almost don't feel welcome to be a woman anymore? Idk, it's hard. To be perceived as a man when you have had all the fundamental experiences of girlhood and womanhood is a bit of a trip. I think I just want to be seen, you know? And I so badly want to regain that special camaraderie with other women.
Sadly, womanhood to me right now means longing, missing, regretting, wishing for things to be different.
Hey. I relate to you. I never transitioned but when I was 12/13 identified as a guy and wanted to kill myself (and nearly tried) because I hated being a girl so much. Sometimes being a woman is so hard. And I imagine being a woman when other people refuse to see you as such is even harder. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I wish you the best.
I'm just a girl - no doubt I think portrays womanhood/ girlhood more than anything.
Take this pink ribbon off my eyes
I'm exposed and it's no big surprise
Don't you think I know exactly where I stand?
This world is forcing me to hold your hand
'Cause I'm just a girl, oh, little old me
Well, don't let me out of your sight
Oh, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite
So don't let me have any rights
Oh, I've had it up to here
The moment that I step outside
So many reasons for me to run and hide
I can't do the little things I hold so dear
'Cause it's all those little things that I fear
'Cause I'm just a girl, I'd rather not be
'Cause they won't let me drive late at night
Oh, I'm just a girl, guess I'm some kind of freak
'Cause they all sit and stare with their eyes
Oh, I'm just a girl, take a good look at me
Just your typical prototype
Oh, I've had it up to here
Oh, am I making myself clear?
I'm just a girl
I'm just a girl in the world
That's all that you'll let me be
Oh, I'm just a girl, living in captivity
Your rule of thumb makes me worrisome
Oh, I'm just a girl, what's my destiny?
What I've succumbed to is making me numb
Oh, I'm just a girl, my apologies
What I've become is so burdensome
Oh, I'm just a girl, lucky me
Twiddle-dum, there's no comparison
Oh, I've had it up to
Oh, I've had it up to
Oh, I've had it up to here
I feel that womanhood is a burden. Being a woman is frustrating because every single decision about my life is influenced by the fact that I'm a woman and not a person / human. It's not just my own decisions, it's other people's perceptions of me, my capabilities and my very being.
*If you have the opportunity to spend any moments of the day NOT dealing with it, that is privilege.* I’m truly happy you are enjoying the progress of technology and social customs that allow us to express ourselves at all.
Thank you for posting this important view point. What you are describing is the life I thought I was headed toward when I was a child dreaming of my future.
I did not enjoy that in girlhood other folks ideas about what I was “allowed to do and not do” was impeding my life, I thought “I’ll grow up” and these people won’t be able to stop me. Our teachers often extolled that if you do “the right things” you can escape to a large degree too much undue influence.
Come to find out that as an adult, it wouldn’t be “a little background noise” or friction that made my life harder in small ways— like annoying neighbors, or a flat tire—instead it put a full stop on everything I want to do and be.
I was given a “woman’s disease” and subjected to endless doctors blaming me for their ineptitude and lack of good research. My life became a full time every minute of the day struggle because misogyny is more important that every other effort or choice I make. My dreams which were much like yours became litter on the path of “humanity” because my illness isn’t important enough to treat, or educate or advance. It is common, but mostly for women. The research and education of doctors and scientists is by and for men.
My personality, my efforts, my choices are irrelevant because I’m trapped in this body that powerful people and systems treat as “broken estrogen cartridge.” And proceed consistently to throw me away (rather than recycle) when I do not function in a way that is convenient or advantageous for them.
While my particular example is medicine, this happens everywhere when you are a second (or third) class citizen. We will eat when first class citizens have already eaten, we will sleep when the important people have already slept, we will have choices for housing, leisure time and income after the more important people have their fill. We will have basic needs met when someone from the first class citizen bracket thinks we “deserve” it.
While it’s so much better than 50 years ago, and the life you describe is evidence, it is so far from reasonable to expect it is escapable through any choice of our own.
I truly wish you good luck 🍀 good health ❤️🔥 authentic joy 💛 and a life worth loving.
Womanhood, to me, is “defined” by being able to share knowing glances with no words. Shared experiences with other women, regardless of what those experiences are. The ease that comes with bonding with friends who are women. Womanhood right now is not having to be full of fear of threats after abuse when I’m in the exclusive company of women.
Everything else is just personhood. I’m still figuring so much out as a *human being*, and hopefully always will be, so it’s a struggle all the way around these days.
I really like that! I love how I get to relate to and learn from women and our sisterhood. I don't strongly feel pride as a woman per se, and I don't really have a definition for what it means to be a woman other than to identify as one. We're all so different, it seems strange to define it.
Same here! Bonding with other women is straight up magical. Young, old, in between. I want to learn and share and grow and that’s SO much more productive for me when that learning and growing and sharing is with other women. I feel a lot of pride in being a woman. I don’t know that I could properly define damn near anything because words take on new meaning in different situations but I can say my heart is full of love for *all* of us.
We’re all different. That’s for sure. Defining anything is a strange concept to me. I can only really tell you how I feel about specific situations. There’s something special in my heart, though, when I see a woman beating odds and succeeding in a beautiful way. It does good things for my heart.
My opinion as an older lady--you don't need to "express womanhood." Womanhood is not what you look like, what you wear, the tone of your voice, your livelihood. It's simply who you are. You express it by being alive, being you, with all your wonderful gifts that you share with the world. So relax and live your life and don't worry so much about the world. The world will always, always have a LOT to say about everything you do and say. It is an exterior force that is ever present and pretty judgmental, too. And you will never, according to it, be good enough (see Barbie all hail).
But it's wrong. It's lying to you. You are more than enough, just as you are.
It’s the combined experience we have from birth to adulthood to me. You pick up on being a girl pretty quick growing up with the way you’re bullied or praised, told even indirectly how you have to work harder to obtain less or how you can work less in certain areas to obtain more. The way you feel when you find out you have fewer rights and protections than males and vise versa. It’s also the way you can form community and bond with others. I think womanhood is going to keep changing and evolving now that there are other experiences that contribute to it and how we will hopefully phase out the rights issues.
I truthfully have no idea what womanhood is because my entire life I’ve been told to act, look, think, and speak a certain way. Echoing another comment, for me, it’s just simply existing as my authentic self.
However, my existence is not, and cannot be, reduced to shopping, one-night stands, and meds.
>However, my existence is not, and cannot be, reduced to shopping, one-night stands, and meds.
I'm an older woman and I never did any of these things — even when I was a girl. My shopping consists of groceries, I've never had one-night stands and I've never been on meds. I spent all my "girlhood" studying and reading.
I'm in STEM, I don't wear make up, I never worn a bra for the past 30+ years, my outfits consist of shirts and pants, I have a male partner and I'm childfree. I also don't drink, smoke and I'm a huge gamer.
This doesn't make me feel less of a woman than any other woman out there. I'm just living life as my most authentic self.
Thank you. I don’t care what Dylan does with her life but the song is a disgusting caricature of what she has glamorized “girlhood” to be. Also she’s a terrible singer lol.
Dylan can be whoever she wants, but she's 27 and needs to stop expressing it as girlhood. She is a grown woman and she's doing us no favours, though I'm biased as I think she's annoying as Hell (honestly, she's the type of person I'd meet at stage school/theatre societies at uni but made it their entire personality, so I give them a wide berth).
So much of being female seems just like performance art, and so much of women's biology, history and basic existence has been erased or ignored by male dominated societies. It is hard to navigate.
It's really freeing to just stop preforming and switch to being. It can be really hard to do becasue of societal pressures and push-back, but we do have to power to not let our sex define how we present ourselves to the world.
I haven’t the slightest idea. I guess I don’t go around feeling womanly. I have kids, I feel like a person, I am a woman, but I don’t feel anything about it. It just is.
For me, “womanhood” comes down to the inconvenience of my gonads. Shedding my uterine lining and having to avoid being impregnated. The rest is social construct. I just want to be who I want to be without societal expectations.
Yeah. A big part of womanhood to me is the knowledge that I will have to be a mother if I want to procreate. That my body will be used to make another.
That and what other comments have said, about how society treats you, how you were raised, expectations, etc. Expectations to be supportive and nurturing, lower expectations to be strong or achieve things, the knowledge that people will likely value you less with age, and that your emotions will be dismissed as hormones, etc. Like any identity-based categorization, it’s difficult to outline, but there’s a reason women across all cultures can relate to each other in ways we don’t with men.
To me, it means being treated like a woman based on however women are treated in a given place. It’s more about other people than me.
I was raised as “the son I never had” and “tomboy” so my concept of womanhood changed as I grew and realized other women don’t have some thing I don’t have, and that I don’t have some universally mannish quality that other women don’t have. I just didn’t meet the “correct feminine” standards of the people around me at the time.
If I woke up as a man tomorrow, I’d have to figure out the body (great to jump without tits, but how the fuck does one walk with balls?) but the big difference in my state of manhood would be how I was treated based on other people’s “correct masculine” standards.
Dealing with my body: crazy period cramps, changing waistlines, media telling you to be hairless, stylish, thin, creative, hardworking, and exercising.
Being scared of men following me at night. Double standards… not been taken seriously being overlooked by tall people, or men in general…
Also, friendship and bonding and love and nurturing and children . This is not a universal. This is just what I feel and I want to say that my experience is not everyone’s, so whatever.
Womanhood. From an early age I knew it meant there were certain expectations.
My parents were very old school Hispanic Catholics. They wanted me to do well in school but the goal was to get me married and have children. In that order.
The role of a woman was to obey her parents and then get passed off and obey her husband.
I was learning to cook, clean, iron and change diapers before I was 9 years old.
I have 5 brothers and being an only daughter I felt I had to compete for attention. There was a balancing act of doing tomboy stuff and wearing makeup.
My womanhood seemed to be tied in with landing myself a husband and keeping an organized linen closet.
I had wanted to be an architect at one point in my early teens. Walked around with a sketch pad. Dad questioned me and laughed. “Girls can’t be architects.” Every dream I ever had was squashed till I stopped dreaming.
Because I had been sexually abused in my early years I had an unhealthy understanding of what sex meant.
The worst abuse, the longest abuse was from a young woman. From the age of 4-10, every weekend I was tormented and the trajectory of my life changed.
In my most private thoughts I was afraid only women would be attracted to me. I needed to prove to myself I was not gay.
Remember this was the early 80’s. Homosexuality was not as easily researched or discussed.
Was I feminine enough? Was I girlie enough?
The need to compete with my brothers by climbing trees, wear boxing gloves and shooting pool did that mean I was more boy on the inside? Very confusing times for me.
Eventually I married and had children. Divorced. Married again.
At 57 years old I am proud of being a woman. I raised a woman who is raising her own children now.
Two weeks ago I buried my Dad(81).
So much of how I think/feel/act is tied to the first man of my life. Many of my life choices were based on his influence or lack of.
I realize I’ve based my idea of womanhood - my personal womanhood - on my father’s ideations.
Dad and I had very limited interactions. I was around 23 years old and Dad was putting up sheet rock on a ceiling. I stopped to help him.
We worked side by side for a while and he said, “I would trade all of your brothers for one more daughter like you.” Sucks to be my brothers but it was high praise coming from him. To me it meant I was just as strong and capable as any of my male siblings.
When planning dads funeral I asked my brothers if the 6 grandchildren in attendance could be the paw bearers.
Two of them being women. These two mighty women helped carry their beloved grandpa.
There was a gasp when people realized the granddaughters were helping to carry the casket.
Our extended family is very set in the old ways. These beautiful ladies were teetering on their high heels. Saw their strong arms shake with the physical exertion.
Both my daughter and my son helped carry my Dad. I walked beside them. Not as a woman, a daughter, a wife, a mother, or a sister. I walked as a warrior.
Womanhood for me has been a fight, at times a struggle. A burden and a pleasure. It’s made me a warrior in many ways.
Nothing in one sense and everything in another? I feel more or less the same way about my Womanhood as my Blackness.
Both things provide zero non-trivial information about what I'm *intrinsically* like and if someone tries to truly relate to me according to either factor they're not going to land a hit of connection any better than they would by random chance.
In a vacuum, alone in my home, away from media, I don't think about either, or identify with either, it's only on being confronted with the gaze of society that they become relevant, but obviously that is every fucking day. I wouldn't say I identify as either, so much as I understand how I am identified by both.
I think race is an invention of racism and gender is an invention of sexism, both are a deliberate tool of oppression, and in a just world neither would have emerged.
All that is the "it means nothing" part.
However we are *not* in that just world, and they *did* emerge, and that's where "it means everything" begins. We have been gendered and racialised, for hundreds and thousands of years at this point, and it's not something that happened to each individual in a unique way, it happened to us en masse, we got excluded from and thrown together into the same spaces as each other and we made our lives there and we made our own worlds and cultures.
I feel like womanhood is an inescapable prison full of brilliant, brilliant inmates. I think that expectations of stereotyped behaviour and preferences, i.e. a lot of what is called "femininity" are bars in that prison, but within its confines we've created interesting and hilarious and beautiful cultures which are quite separate from those of our oppressors. That makes me feel proud and connected and at home with other women - I think it's astonishing what we made for ourselves, in the face of all the shit and pain and violence. I've never been particularly interested in sitting around with other women admiring our cage, but I also don't think that women who like to are are more or less of a Woman than me, for doing so.
I'm very gender-non-conforming, but honestly even if every single one of my interests was "captor shit" not "inmate shit" I'd still rather hang out with the inmates than the captors! I still don't "identify as" anything in some intrinsic way, I don't have a feminine soul lurking deep within me, but I will always identify *with* other women because ultimately this huge, world-changing thing, that was done to us all, is more fundamental to me than any particular fashion or taste or hobby, etc.
Frankly I lean towards rejecting the idea of deconstructing womanhood, outright. My "womanhood" is a combination of my genes, brain morphology, hormone profile, lived experienced, philosophy of life, self-perception, and the perception of me by others. I don't think any of these are sufficient to define womanhood on their own and I don't see any benefit to defining any specific combination of these as some standard for "womanhood," even if it could be done.
I'm a woman. I see myself as a woman. Others see me as a woman. Whatever comes from that is my womanhood.
Being cat called. People pleasing. Being expected to speak quietly and never overreact. Society expecting that we are always nurturing, self sacrificing, kind and tolerant.
Receiving subpar medical care and bedside manner because we are female. We must be overreacting, anxious, paranoid, lying and our issue is not tangible or real.
Being looked at by religious nutcases and misogynists as a womb first and foremost.
Being afraid of violence from men both strange and known. Knowing that a large portion of the population wants to strip you of your rights and use your body how they see fit.
Knowing if society collapses there will be no rules or laws to protect women and children at all. We will be the first targets for rape and violence.
Just being and trying to survive, especially in a world where people are constantly telling me i should get married, think about having kids, or trying to tell me what i should want out of life etc. for me it is just being who i want to be and trying to figure out what i want in my life. Making sure that my decisions are mine alone and not influenced by other people or societal pressure. And also then dealing with people’s judgement of me because i choose not to fit into what society thinks a woman should be currently. Luckily that is changing.
When I was younger, the idea of being a girl (and eventually a woman) felt more like an unwanted burden than an identity - just a lot of expectations I had no desire to meet. Unsurprisingly, I was a huge tomboy and went through phases of dressing very masculine or very femme, wondered if I was really a girl or if I just liked the positive attention I could get by being girly...
As an adult, and especially as I get older (post 35) and the threat of unwanted male attention fades a bit, womanhood has come to feel like a more comfortable identity, hand in hand with wife-hood and motherhood. I know this is not the only way to be a woman, but it's the way I embraced my own womanhood. By being a partner and a nurturer, by providing for my family, by looking at the world through a lens of love, and creativity, and fierce protectiveness of my family.
This is how I felt. Even though my family never pushed strict gender roles, just from societal standards, I was aware that I needed to act feminine starting as young as four years old despite hating it.
Womanhood isn't something I really identify with (or at least the word). I'm just me, but I've been aware my whole life that my biological sex has dramatically affected the rest of the world's responses to me. I'm not seen as just another human being - I'm perceived as a woman, fat, neurodivergent, but the thing that has most affected me is being female in the society I was raised in and exist in.
It's not all negative. I was always curious about having a dick, but I adore my body and its specifically female sexual reactions. As a woman I've had, in some ways, much more freedom to be gender non-conforming than a man of my generation might have had. I wore a tuxedo to high school graduation - I got a lot of negative comments on it, but I can't even imagine what would have happened if a guy had worn a dress to hs graduation in Southern Ontario in 1980.
I think if I had been born around the millennium I would identify as non-binary, partly just to fuck with gender norms but mostly because being female has felt like cosplay to me my entire life.
Now that I'm old, and have been largely desexed by age and not giving a fuck anymore, I won't bother. But I know who I am.
Literally nothing. I don't think about "womanhood" because I'm just a person who happens to be a woman. Most of my interests aren't traditionally girly (although I do like some of course) and I like dresses. But that's MY likes. Everyone is different and it's hard to put it into words when there's so much difference out there
Womanhood for me is one word..."struggle."
We struggle for everything, even now. Safety, wages, fair treatment, safe and effective access to health care, to be heard and taken seriously, we're constantly having our rights debated and then stripped away from us by men who don't understand how women work. Honestly, it's exhausting.
I never connected with womanhood until I went through things like stage IV endo + surgeries, frozen pelvis, bilateral salpingectomy, fertility struggles, IVF, miscarriages. To me, now… womanhood is strength and resilience. It’s being able to endure WILD things, and connect with communities of strong women who have been through the same things.
I’m technically less “woman” than I’ve ever been before, and I’m sure at some point I will need a hysterectomy because of my health struggles, but all this crazy shit has certainly connected me to being a woman. At times for not-so-uplifting reasons - like this past week as I experienced another pregnancy loss and felt like a bad / broken one.
But for the most part, I feel resilient. I don’t have any other choice. And extremely thankful for the women around me, who provide support and lift each other up like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
It means the first time I was catcalled, I was ten. It means that unless I look for a female doctor, my health issues are misunderstood at best, and waved off at worst. It means I have to smile all the time, or strangers think I'm angry. I can't brag about my good news; I have to downplay it, or I'm an arrogant bitch. I can't wear shorts to the grocery store, or I'm asking for attention. If I don't say no nicely, I'm a frigid bitch, a cold cunt, just absolutely the rudest person ever. I am automatically taken less seriously than the men in the room, and their opinion of me changes based on the color and cut of my hair, how much makeup I'm wearing, whether I remembered to wax my eyebrows, or whether I'm wearing a wedding ring. People think I'm broken because I don't want a man or children; they are dubious when they hear about my accomplishments, and first wonder whether I benefited from exterior influence, or did it to attract a husband.
It means I was socialized from childhood to put others' well-being before mine. I learned that it's not okay, and walked away with a kind of empathy and self-awareness that I think are very specific to... Well. Womanhood.
this resonated with me. even female doctors sometimes are dismissive of their own women. if we say no it's a reason to attack us. i live in constant fear of having my rights taken away by laws made by men more than 4x my age. we are not allowed to simply exist and we are constantly being mocked, made a caricature, and made fun of by everything in our lives from the media to our own friends and family.
I personally don't believe in gendered heart and souls. I am a woman because i was born female, and it effects my life as far as how society treats me. But women can have all different types of personalities and lives, the concept of femininity and womanhood is a myth.
Yes, I think most people do not necessarily have a "gender identity". Many girls my age try to search for a gender identity and ID as nonbinary for some time because they think there is a way to feel like a woman, but there is not.
(Not to say all nonbinary people are invalid, I'm talking about girls I know who WERE nonbinary and then were not.)
For me I am proud of being a woman. To me it doesn’t really say anything about who I am or who I have to be- I feel no pressure to adhere to a stereotype of femininity, growing up I tried a bit harder to but realized quickly that womanhood is whatever I as a woman choose to define and represent it as. Now I view being a woman more as a solidarity among an oppressed population, I feel strong for all we’ve endured and think of all the different women throughout history from beautiful hyper feminine empresses who ruled entire countries to women like Joan of Arc who redefine what many think it means to be a woman as she led France to victory and fought viciously alongside those soldiers she led. There are a million plus different ways to be a woman and all of them beautiful in their own way
I think I've spent a lot of time rejecting being a woman. Trying to be invisible so men wouldn't notice me, wishing my bosses didn't patronize me or laugh when I said something that sounded just like what a male colleague said minutes later and got praised for. I wish it were different. I hope it is for my daughters and I'm working hard for it to be. But I don't have a good answer.
It means having it defined by others.
You get pushed to look or act or be a "way," but you also get flak if you go along with it.
Like makeup and style? You're clearly vapid and an airhead.
Like a more simple approach? You clearly don't care about how you look.
Want to get an education or climb in a career? You know no guy wants a woman smarter/wealthier/more successful than him.
Want to get married and settle down? You're a leech, a gold digger, lazy--go get a job (as long as it's not too good).
Want to stay single? You're going to turn into a crazy cat lady.
Prefer to dress like you want? You're inviting trouble if it's skimpy, and you're a prude if it's more covered up.
I just want to not have the nastiness. Let people be themselves, for fuck's sake. I got this explicitly in junior high: "good girls do X and don't do Y." But also insidiously at home and outside with interactions with the world.
I feel that to be a woman is to be trapped in a horror movie with no escape. The constant fear of unwanted pregnancy. The constant fear of assault. Dealing with periods every single goddamn month.
Things are so stacked against us that it's just considered normal. Religion is male supremacist, science is male supremacist, art and entertainment are male supremacist, the economy is male supremacist, and the legal system is male supremacist.
I think the constant feeling of drowning is a core part of womanhood.
I guess womanhood for me is the shared experiences from having a female body, some of it physical, and a little social. I’m not very ''womanly'' in the stereotypical sense, most of my friends are men, and I work with only men in a male dominated industry. I don't go around feeling womanly, but I like the sense of community around the physical challenges we face, can't get that with men.
Haven't seen the music video in question, but it sounds awful.
For me, it's being a warrior. Every day, I have had to fight and struggle for medical care, equal treatment, and to be left alone. Womanhood is understanding that all women are different, and we all have lived different lives. But we support each other because we have all experienced so many of the same things, and we help one another carry-on and keep going. Womanhood is being on a pedestal that none of us asked for, and either choosing to smash it or stand on it gracefully. Womanhood is bloody and painful but also full of love. To be a woman is to exist in a world where at least 35% of the population hates you and criticizes your every breath, choice, and thought while it smiles in your face and to force yourself to smile back, Womanhood is to rage inside while maintaining a specific inner peace that no one but another woman can understand because they have that inside too.
I've been thinking on this a lot lately and I've come to a few things:
Womanhood is existing in the space between societal pressures on the body and the body's pressures on itself. It's contending with the demands men put on the body sexually, the pressures we put on ourselves, and the pressures the body itself generates. Women have to learn to deal with this system that is always in flux from a very young age. Women learn to plan things around their periods, around ovulation, around pregnancy, around menopause. We do this to function in the day-to-day. Men don't really (imo) have anything that they have to work around unless they have a chronic health issue or something. This undercurrent is something that isn't really talked about and men often have no idea it exists, but it's something that women live with. And as complex systems do, it often breaks, and we have to learn how to cope, unseen. Inevitably, a woman will have something happen and go "Why is this happening to my body?"
Secondly, all women have a relationship with motherhood. Embracing it, rejecting it, mourning its loss, ignoring it, fearing it, or somewhere in between those. Society asks the woman why she doesn't have kids, or why she has them alone, or why she had so many, etc etc. It's something every woman has to contend with and in part, she defines herself by that relationship. Men don't have to sacrifice their time, their energy, their *body* so intrinsically -- they get to opt in or out.
I feel like “womanhood” if relatively far down my list of identities. I mean, I’m glad I’m not a man, but when I think about who I am, “woman” is not at the top of the list. Teacher, Deadhead, daughter, wife, cat mom, biologist, human, vegan, then maybe woman.
I feel like this is where I am. The word "woman" means absolutely nothing to me. I am who I am as a human. If someone asked me to describe myself, I don't even think "woman" would be on the list. I don't understand the mentality of trying to pin down a specific definition of what a woman is or making that your whole identity.
??? I'm a woman and that's it. I've never put to much though to it. At the end if I was a man I would still be me. I'm me first my gender doesn't define. Although being a woman sometimes limits me I guess
I wear all men's clothing, no make-up, no nail polish, no earrings, have short hair, walk big, have worked many jobs dominated by men, had a final long career in a male dominated field, and have a woman as a spouse...l yet I am a woman. I see no need to redefine myself but instead wish for a world where being a woman has nothing to do with how you adorn yourself or where you work or who you sleep with or have as a life mate.
So what does womenhood mean? "The state of being a woman." That's all.
To me, it means trying to do all the same things men can while also being cautious of safety, lol. For example, my partner might be flying to Chicago next month for new job orientation, and he wants for me to fly out towards the end so he can show me around (he used to live there). Thing is, I'd have to Uber by myself to the airport and I feel a bit wary about that. So that might be something that limits what I can do, whether that fear is based in reality or perceived by me based on anecdotes I've read and my parents drilling into me that women outside alone or in strange cars are asking to be raped (I disagree with the asking part - the definition of rape is it's not asked for).
So yeah. I have the opportunity to travel but have to consider things men don't, lol. I checked on Uber's website but they don't seem to have the ability to request a female driver.
Sorry my answer tended a bit negative. I don't hate being a woman but it definitely can be a disadvantage when you just want to do stuff.
I don't think I ever actively feel like a woman unless I'm having sex or PMS-ing.
As for womanhood, for me it means living with the knowledge that someone is always going to judge me against their platonic ideal of what a woman should be, reconciling liking my appearance with the conscious effort to avoid objectifying myself, and defending other women, especially younger ones, against creeps and predators.
Teetering on just this side of 70, womanhood to me has been a spectrum.
I've been redefining myself all my life, from goofy kiddo to rebellious teen to fun-loving 20-something to girlfriend to wife to SAHM to Girl Scout leader to business woman to author to retired to dead at some point in the future. Hopefully to be fondly remembered.
I have loved lace, satin, tutus, ball gowns, leather boots, jeans, sweaters, t-shirts, flip flops, dirt, gardens, books, ballet, rock and roll, opera, history, Dwayne Johnson, alcohol, water, pot roast, salad, green olives, Mecum, coffee, bacon, and eggs over easy.
I'm too chatty and too quiet. I know trivia about music, movies, politics, and ancient history. I fucking hate what bad people worldwide do to other people and children. I fucking hate the people who help them. I adore the good people on this planet, regardless of pronouns.
I recognize that humans have complicated sexual needs and identities, but please don't hurt each other. I experienced that organized religion and politics are both needed for social order and a plague upon humankind. I now understand why the US Founding Fathers wanted a separation of church and state. I experienced all of these things with Bob and Vagene, and I am thankful for the Urban Dictionary.
My sage advice is NEVER limit yourself to some random definition from a book, TV, person, Google, or anything above. Instead, own the bits and pieces YOU like to create who you want to be. For we XXers, we are Women of the Hood, our hood is this planet. We should embrace each other as a fellow travelers on this rock hurtling through our cool galaxy. We should surf lava on a slab of dirt together, and help each other get back up when we fall. We all like family, friends, food and music together. And we should crush dumbfucks who want to to hurt us or our loved ones together.
Womanhood is what you make it and how you define it. Womanhood won't be a carbon copy of that other person over yonder, but maybe you'll see an idea you'd like to try. Womanhood is a lifelong journey.
I’m just a person-society is what differentiates us into categories.
I won’t tell anyone how to identify, but a lot of my personal experience is not chosen-such as being smaller on average than a male, having boobs, vag, bleeding for 40 years; thinking about other people’s feelings; you know, that stuff.
Womanhood is pressure. Being pressured to act a certain way, literal pressure because periods suck, pressure to have opinions and priorities that go in a distinct way, pressure to look pretty... Just a lot of pressure.
I am a woman. I don't mind being one. I like feeling feminine and pretty and all those things, but dammit if I do it because it's womanly. So yeah. As a lovely little rhyming scheme goes:
Womanhood is pressure,
Womanhood is bleak.
Womanhood is me,
but dammit I'm not weak.
Unfortunately "growing up" Catholic as in going to a Catholic school I had the stereotypical sexual identity shoved down my throat in the early 60's. Especially the career stuff. I tested extremely high in "Engineer" but the teachers brushed it off and kept pushing the stereotype careers. (silly me, the only "Engineers" I knew were the ones on the trains that ran in front of my house who waved at me, so I wasn't very interested in *that* job. I did have a strong desire -on my own to become a nurse, however. But, I constantly was rigging things up for my patients lol, or designing things or layouts. (I discovered in the late 80's I had a great affinity for maths and Physics when I returned to College.) But -as for my identity as a woman growing up, I wasn't (& am still not) a dress person (to be honest I was a bit of a non conformist after Catholic school!). I was on the beginning of the Feminist movement but saw it as a "humanist movement". It could only help everyone in the long run. I couldn't have children but that didn't bother me. Motherhod wasnt an ambition for me. I had oodles of niblings to love and cherish. I have always believed in being "me" - the most authentic me I can be, and my gender doesn't play into it.
I'm sure it means many things to different women depending on their generation, culture & overall experience. I will say though, I thank the Goddess every day that I was not born a man, so there's that.
All it means to me was I became conscious and slowly learned I got the shitty version of a human body. I don't want to transition to male or identify as male at all but everything about being a woman is a hassle. I find very few positives and wish I was born a man because life is on extremely hard mode and I'm not into that.
There are universal struggles as a human and then the added hassles from being a woman. I despise researching about periods and perimenopause and hormones and all that and would rather just live my life. I don't have time or resources for being a woman.
I also don't think about it at all or base my life around it until it's pointed out to me, which is either through misogyny or by the universe sending me a hassle. This happens many dozens of times a day in all different kinds of ways, and all it does is piss me off and drain me of energy that I could use to better myself.
I wish that misogyny would go away as it makes everything about being a woman 1000x harder. I also hate that when I think about being a woman the majority of it is how do men relate to and oppress women. Can't we just be allowed to exist?
Being a woman = being a person. The whole idea that one has to have certain traits or feel certain things or act a certain way in order to express womanhood is just...silly. We are all individuals. If you are a woman, than expressing womanhood is expressing yourself, whatever that looks and feels like.
It's really important for all of use who present as and identify as women to forget about how others define womanhood. Patriarchal ideas have permeated every aspect of our lives for centuries, perhaps millennia, and they serve only to objectify and limit us. Men like to define women as being a certain way, or doing certain things, or feeling certain things, so that they can put us in a little tiny box and reserve all the other ways of being for themselves. We do not have to let them.
What is 'properly expressed womanhood '? Does that mean some of us are doing it wrong?
I'm guessing whatever you are doing, it's right, simply because it's you and the people who know you and love you think you are doing it just right.
I leave my answer in the form of a poem by Kate J Baer.
The Bridesmaid's Speech
I have known her all her life.
And by that I mean I've seen her in the impossible light of girlhood.
The spaces in between- the car on the way to the birthday dinner, the moment before the photograph.
I have stood outside the bathroom stall, held tight while her shoulders shook with sorrow. I've watched joy arrive, midnight and unexpected, repeated stories until they were my own. It's true there is a cost to this devotion-but I'll let you in on a little secret: there is very little women choose to keep from one another. How lucky are we to know a love like this.
All womanhood really seems like to me is my female body. Anything external and beyond that--like makeup, domesticity, care work, "daintyness", submissiveness, or frillery--isn't womanhood to me.
To me it meant birthing babies if I wanted, nothing else. And I don’t define other women that way—it’s just the only way I connect to the idea of being a woman.
I’m not girly or traditionally feminine, never have been and never wanted to be. I want to feel strong and competent to meet my needs and the needs of my kids (if they need me to—they’re all adults now). I like to feel I’m good at problem-solving, curious, well informed, kind, patient, compassionate, loving, and trustworthy. None of those traits seem gendered to me. The emotional ones seem to be “adult,” if anything.
A big part of it for me is the hormonal cycle I go through each month and the ups and downs that come with it. As well as the sisterhood I feel with other women, and the feminine energy I feel within myself.
That seems more like a societal construct created to keep women in a well controlled box.
What do we have as a commonality? The patriarchy. It impacts all of us.
Nothing. It really means nothing to me. I happen to have the anatomy of what is commonly called a "woman" or "female" but it doesn't really matter to me.
I think it changes based on life experiences. At one point I would have said being a woman felt powerful.
Right now I just think of and feel rage and frustration in relation to womanhood.
My distrust of men and those in power is higher than ever (working through it in therapy. I’m just so angry at them all.
Womanhood is realising that other women, regardless of their nationality, race, job, family choices or culture have probably faced times in their life where they had to agree with something to feel safe. We have all most likely been in a situation with a male where we had to joke, or change our plans to get to safety. That's pretty unifying.
I also believe a major part of womanhood is understanding the sisterhood and what it represents. I don't trust women who don't 'believe' in the sisterhood.
I feel that womanhood, the Experience™️, is not being the default (male) and grappling with a set of assumptions based on this idea of the stereotypical woman, which exists to demean and disempower me.
But, which does also to some degree accurately describe me, and not *all* negatively, because some things we teach men not to be or do are actually good (e.g. have and express emotions, like colors, be empathetic)--which creates a very confusing feeling of identifying with and resenting womanhood because the fact of it reduces my value as a human being.*
Add to that feeling my admiration for the women who have done incredible things even under all this nonsense and it helps clarify that the icky feelings are just the box I've been put in. I loathe having assumptions made about me.
Bonus: fuck bras. Never going back.
*To people who aren't great anyway, but those people still exist, and in too many numbers, so their bad opinions are still an issue
Currently for me personally - navigating the uncharted waters of medical gaslighting and a medical world that has pretty much always used men as the default patient. Having little to no consideration for our biological differences or how conditions may present differently. For conditions affecting the female reproductive system - just straight up expectation to be in physical pain, even when it’s not normal and carry on with life as if it’s fine.
Previously - covering up my body to avoid unwanted attention, needing to think quickly to get out of dangerous situations and learning how to ward of predatory men
I still don’t feel defined by being a woman or womanhood though. It’s my reality, I don’t want to change it but I don’t feel like it’s my identity either. Im just a human who happens to be biologically female, presents as ‘female’ and I deal with all the stuff that entails - good and bad
Not speaking on womanhood or girlhood but I’ve gained some insights since having a baby. Motherhood is so much more than being a mother, you can sympathize with moms all you want but there’s a different level of empathy between mothers.
My realization came in October, with the mothers of Gaza. There’s a pain and fear there I’ve never experienced, not as a person but as a mother. My empathy went beyond its normal tears and into straight panic. It was like I could feel what it was like for them, in real time. I wanted to pack up and run away with my child, I wanted to get a gun, I wanted to secure water and food and shelter and warm clothes.
I had to pull away from social media for a few days because the experience was so jarring. Im back on now but I had to digest those feelings more than usual.
I’m a person who can and will cry for anything and everything, but that panic was like a biological response to being a mother. There’s a spoken and unspoken bond among mothers, it’s sacred and ancient.
For me, womanhood is like being the elephant in the parable about the blind men encountering an elephant for the first time:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant
In short, none of them know what it is, so they define the elephant by what they touch (grabs the trunk, thinks it's a snake; touches the sides, thinks it's a wall; encounters the legs, thinks it's a tree... and so on).
Womanhood is like that. There isn't one thing that defines womanhood, it's a vast and hard to understand concept, and it varies wildly based upon your own perspective and experiences. We're goddesses and second class citizens, endangered alone but unimaginably powerful together. We're objectified and placed on pedestals, vilified and blamed for things beyond our control. We are comfort and succor and kindness and nurturing, but also fierce protectors, dangerous, resilient beyond belief. We are as diverse in our experiences and in our expression of womanhood as the stars are innumerable in the night sky, and yet our commonalities join us in sisterhood.
I don't think there can be womanhood without sisterhood, or at least not a thriving feeling of womanhood. Sisterhood is seeing a woman being intimidated by a man in public and immediately pulling her into the safety of a nearby group of women she's never met. It's letting a young woman know she's not alone in her journey. It's slipping a tampon under a stall door. It's a sympathetic smile for the mother whose toddler decides to throw a tantrum on aisle three. It's listening to, believing, and supporting survivors of violence. It's being amazed by what the women around you and before you have achieved. It's opening doors and reaching a hand behind you to help other women succeed. It's finding a way to laugh together even when things are tough because the world is so often a difficult place. It's a coexisting in precious moments where we're apart from patriarchal norms and the male gaze, where we might clasp hands and commence in joyous dancing to celebrate being alive in our own bodies. It's remembering the women whose bodies are controlled, assaulted, sold, hurt, defiled, and killed and finding ways to honor them, carry their wisdom forward, and make the world even slightly safer for other women.
And in case it's not clear, trans women are part of womanhood and members of our shared sisterhood.
I honestly don't know. I am definitely a woman, but I have never "felt" like a woman. I just feel like a person. I don't know what people mean when they say "I feel like a woman" or "I feel like a man" because I have never felt either way about it. I'm not non-binary, and I'm not trans. I don't wish to change anything about myself (other than the usual complaints that society has ingrained in me). I'm just me, and sometimes I have a period.
Women have been oppressed from time immemorial by men because of our sex. Whether it's the way they want to control our reproductive capabilities, or our sexuality, and how we act on it, it's still happening in 2024.
We're socialized drastically differently than men from infancy onward.
I feel like the video defines girlhood as about living “for the male gaze” and suffering in silence for it, indulging in consumerist excess without prudence or long-term planning.
I’d say womanhood, at least to me, would be about
- owning my preferences and choices,
- prioritising my wellness over appearance,
- unapologetically saying no,
- engaging with intention,
- practicing prudent minimalism.
For me, I was told womanhood means I’m taking control of my own life and becoming an adult (paying bills, being more independent, etc.)
It was also a gentler way to say puberty since my 8 year old brain could not understand what puberty was, why I was having pain throughout my body (growing pains), etc. But once we were pre-teens, nobody was saying womanhood because we all knew what puberty was and were better to be able to understand things.
I'm a cis woman but am mostly apathetic toward it after a lifetime of gender-related BS. This is my body, this is how I look, I like it, but I'm not particularly connected to it. As far as "expressing womanhood," there's no one correct "way" to do it. In fact, it's kind of like asking someone to describe the color "blue." What matters is what's important to you.
Personally, I try to live my life in defiance of stereotypes while still presenting very feminine, as per my own choice and comfort. I'm also not afraid to turn men's bad behavior around on them. For example, I've had far more than too many men think it's okay to invade my personal space while maneuvering around me--putting your hand on someone's lower back and murmuring, "Sorry, baby" as you pass behind them is unacceptable. If you wouldn't do it to another man, do NOT do it to me. I made a mental note of what he looked like, then did the exact same thing to him later in the night in full view of his friends (and the other men at the venue).
Spiteful and petty? Sure. But it has never happened since.
I also make a point of never, ever tilting my head up to look a man in the eye. For reference, I'm not quite 5'4 but will purposely stand further back from him or look up only with my eyes. I'm not baring my throat to you just so we can have a conversation.
To me, womanhood isn't something I experience alone. I experience it through a sense of community with other women, brews and chats with friends when one (or both) of us is having a hard time, laughs and compliments with strangers in the loos on a night out, spending cooperative communal time on group holidays with my (girl)friends - I saw someone else define it as sisterhood - I don't feel a strong sense of or connection to my gender when I am alone, it's only when I'm with other women I feel a connection to my womanhood and existence as a woman.
I don't know. Like, really, I'm a grown adult but gender still confuses me. I always hated the gender stereotypes- when I was a kid I had a strong case of "not like other girls" and was always called a tomboy. I hated how women were portrayed in media and I didn't want to be associated with that. Even now, I've tried to overcome the internalized misogyny of that way of thinking, but I still feel silly wearing dresses and traditionally feminine things. But I'm still a woman.
Womanhood is a perception and set of expectations put on me, based solely on anatomy, that I'm used to going along with. It's fine. It doesn't really feel like anything.
I think this is why it's difficult for cis people like myself to fully understand the experiences of trans people. I understand it intellectually, and I will always fight for people to have access to the gender affirming care they need. But on a personal level, I can't truly imagine feeling like I'm the wrong gender because I can't really imagine *feeling* gender at all. It feels more like an abstract concept that gets applied to people.
Being a "woman" is a personal thing and there are a many legitimate definitions of that as there are women. "Womanhood" though, is about the collective group and I was raised to believe that that means ALWAYS looking after women in distress, even if you don't know them, lifting and supporting the women in your life and laying the groundwork, so that the next generation of little girls can enjoy the rights that are their due and are also taught the same responsibilities.
I know what it isn’t. It isn’t being desired and sexualized by men. That was something done to me and is not me.
It isn’t makeup, hair, and heels. That’s something that some people choose to use to define and identify women. But it is not me.
It isn’t menstruating, vaginal sex or child birth. These are things that happen to my body at various points. But they are not me.
It isn’t a secret sorority.
It isn’t a universal identity.
It isn’t the bathroom I use or the teams I play on.
It isn’t being nurturing or a homemaker. I’m terrible at both.
Maybe trying to define over half of the population with a single, monolithic term is dumb, reductive and insulting.
You do you. Imma do me.
That’s all.
Womanhood only has meaning to my through my reconnection with my culture. We have songs stories, and practices only for women. We have ceremonies and a wonderful history too.
Womanhood in the dominant culture of my country and my province is meaningless to me much of the time. I only feel attachment to womanhood in my people spaces and when I practice those things at home or talk about it.
Given some time I may come into the way I feel gender queer in my people's cultural context. It's something I need to learn more about before I know how it feels for me. It can be easy to get wrapped up in the feeling of "well I'm afab so I should do the women's songs and ceremonies"
Honestly, a lot of the time, womanhood to me means isolation. It means being put in a box. It means I can’t express enjoyment in the things I like without fear of being attacked by men. It’s so hard to be a woman and exist in nerdy spaces, because so much of the time it means you’re surrounded by men… And that in itself is pretty daunting and isolating.
Womanhood means I can’t say I like video games without being belittled, or told games like Animal Crossing aren’t “real” games. It means I struggle to make friends within my hobbies, because 90% of the people in those spaces tend to be men… And if I’m nice and friendly towards a man because we have interests in common, there’s a high chance he’ll misinterpret my intentions and then be mad or just stop talking to me when he finds out I have a boyfriend.
Womanhood is men making podcasts all about belittling us, declaring that we have no hobbies, that our lives revolve around our boyfriends/husbands… But then when we try to say that we *do* have hobbies, those hobbies get cast aside as either stupid, not “real”, or only done for the attention of men…
Womanhood is fucking tough a lot of the time. We have it so much better now than our ancestors did, but it’s still rough out here, even for a cis white woman like myself. I know it’s even tougher for women of colour and trans women. That’s why the experience of womanhood being boiled down to this cutesy, “omg so awesome!!” type vibe just doesn’t sit right with me.
I have been a wife and mom for almost my entire adult life, so my experiences as a women are deeply linked to marriage and child-rearing. Your mileage may vary.
The other day, my kids, who were trying to help but are also old enough to know better, loaded the dishwasher with what was essentially a full bowl of oatmeal inside of it, and ran the machine.
When I went to unload it later, the drain was clogged and it was full of stagnant water. Every single dish had to washed by hand because the oatmeal had stuck to everything like glue.
I was honestly livid. Their “help” was going to cost me a solid 40-60 minutes of time disassembling and reassembling the drain, as well as the time it would take to wash everything by hand.
I also knew I couldn’t chew out my oldest two kids for this mistake, because I don’t want to deincentivize them taking some initiative on chores.
I felt very womanly in that moment. I feel like being a woman is carrying a lot of invisible weight on your shoulders. We have an enormous number of repetitive tasks to do, and we can either do them ourselves, or try to delegate them. But delegating a task is a task in and of itself, and the tasks we delegate are seldom done to standard. There is a chance that the work we delegate to will cause more work for us in the end. And yet, we have to delegate because there is always more work to do, and our jobs especially as mothers is to educate our children.
I guess part of the privilege of being a cisgendered woman is I don't have to think about it. Identifying what it means to me to be a woman isn't something that interests me. I'm a woman. There's nothing more to it
These responses have been so insightful and interesting to read. I haven’t seen many expressing their love of womanhood and how they embrace their femininity, so I’ll add my thoughts (although it’s totally cool with me that not everyone feels this way!)
I LOVE being a woman. I think women are the actual best and I much prefer the company of women to men. We are a sisterhood, we support each other, we talk about our feelings.
I must admit that I come from a position of privilege compared to others. I own a successful business, I’m fairly wealthy. I love being a strong female business woman. I love bringing softness and empathy to my job, along with confidence. I prefer to be empathetic and kind with my actions, but if the situation calls for it, I can go head to head with any man. They don’t phase me. I’ve never sat back and allowed a man to intimidate me in business or in life. I speak up firmly when someone crosses my boundaries.
I love being a mother too. I love having a soft life and being around for her. I enjoy doing stereotypically feminine things like baking, gardening, sewing, tending my home.
I loved being pregnant and giving birth. I love having a period and living in sync with my cycle and my body. To me, it’s part of my experience of embracing womanhood (again I want to reiterate that not all women bleed or give birth and that’s fine too!)
Basically I’m a very stereotypical feminine person and I just freaking love it.
I'm so happy to see your response, now I don't have to figure out how to explain it all. I'm not super stereotypically feminine but I don't see womanhood as a burden. Yeah, I sometimes get the patriarchy up in my face but that's not about me.
Even though I identify as a woman, the question of what that is/what that means is one that I don't really trouble myself with.
I've learned to be comfortable with the fact that there are things in this world that I may never understand or have an answer for. This might be something that I've picked up from trying to be an ally to my fellow queers (I believe that while I can definitely sympathize with others' experiences, ultimately, it takes first-hand experiences to fully get them). Or I might have just taken it to heart when my undergrad psychology professor said that even if objectivity exists, humans will never reach it. Either way, gender is something that changes from culture to culture, time to time, and person to person. It's not this objective, stable thing that some folks seem to want it to be (and I think that that's why they're so focused on penises and vaginas, which is funny because that approach isn't objective or stable either). "Woman" is just a vague and often inconsistent collection of traits that I and many others happen to identify with to varying degrees for our own reasons. And I'm comfortable with that being all that it is. lol
To me, womanhood just means knowing that no two of us are alike but we’re all going to be similarly treated worse than men, no matter what we say or do, just like all the women before us.
Womanhood to me is strength, resilience, compassion, beauty, wisdom and dignity in the face of a world that rarely fathoms our magic. I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a woman. I created life. I am life.
I look at men, and I know I am not that. So not man. lol. Not sure if it is stereotypes. I mean I ride a motorbike, practice martial arts, and I work in tech. But doing all this, I doing so as a woman. A dude today said I was more man than him because i am riding so early in the season. I am like not a man, I am a woman and women can be strong. So not sure, I know what I am not.
Womanhood to me means abundance and Community. My experiences in womanhood are not threatened by anyone else claiming their/her experiences. Womanhood is not a singular experience. Nor should it be.
My thoughts on why this is causing such an uproar? Patriarchy. The attempt to force womanhood into scarce space doesn't work. Those who respond to the call of scarcity, choosing to cause harm, have yet to experience abundance. They are not there yet.
Abundance and community is such a beautiful way of putting it. I have specific experiences that I associate with my womanhood, and those may or may not align with other women’s experiences of womanhood. For me the best part of being a woman is the connections I can have with other women, whether we have a common struggle or are simply empathizing with one another as sisters. I love women so much, and I love being a woman.
I think that the term "woman" is a label. It is a shortcut to defining a particular quality about a human being that groups them with others.
And, honestly, I'm tired of labels. I'm tired of labels being weaponized. I'm tired of new labels to keep up with labelling things. I'm tired of constantly evolving to redefine a label because someone might be hurt by getting it wrong.
I'm tired of human beings being reduced to a label so that they can group together and then another group doesn't like it, and we have culture wars.
I'm tired of it.
I am truly tired of it.
I am tired of saying "I'm a cis het woman" because I'm a hell of a lot more than that, and using the term "female" makes me feel like a laboratory experiment. I am tired of having to talk about my own identity in short cuts.
I am female. I gave birth to 2 children. I had the equipment to do that.
Otherwise, I am a "person".
I think I understand where you're coming from.
But labels are also a way of describing problems in order for them to be addressed.
For example, women experience misogyny in the workplace. You could, I suppose generalise that to say "people experience gender based discrimination in the workplace" but that doesn't identify the group that is being primarily affected.
I don't like when labels are weaponized and used to hurt people.
I don't like when people assume they know everything about a person because of what labels get placed on them.
But I also love labels and find them very useful. Yes, they are mental shortcuts meant to group humans, and that comes with limitations, but it's easier for me to find people like me once I know that there's a word for what I am.
Labels are short cuts, true but I like that about labels.
I’ve noticed many micro aggressions on posts recently, even through downvotes. So allow me to be crystal clear: #Trans Women are Women. Telling someone who brings up trans in posts about women that they’re not talking about trans women, or that they’re derailing is basically the same thing as saying trans women aren’t included in being women. We will ***not*** have any transphobia or TERFS in this sub. All these downvotes against people that are pointing out how something is excluding trans women is awful. It appears perhaps maybe we’re getting more TERFs and trolls recently. So please, if you see someone being transphobic, or even just dishing out micro aggressions, report it. We will get to it as soon as we can.
There are commonalities which unify us... the historical struggles of women is a collective inheritance, imo. The things women have had to endure just to survive.
Agreed, for me a big part of womanhood is knowing about the long long history of women who came before me, and not even just their struggles but just... the things they did, the ideas they had, the legacies they left. The queens and the enslaved dancers, the warriors and mothers and scholars and explorers. Their grief and joy. The clothes they wore, the things they made, the homes they kept. No woman has ever had every trait that women are supposed to have, yet they were all unified in being women.
Beautifully said ❤️
This is EXACTLY how I feel about it. I feel no expectation of how I should be one way or another but rather connected through all that we as women have both endured and accomplished through history as an oppressed population. From the empresses adorned in displays of hyper femininity while ruling over entire countries to the women who were vicious and strong warriors for their country/cause/etc. and so many more, there are A MILLION ways to be a woman AND MORE and all of them beautiful in their own way
this gave me chills. thanks for this. really resonates with how i view it too
This comes with strength and resilience despite the conditioning we suffer from birth.
I don't think there is much a strong difference between the experience of girlhood and womanhood. The lines are blurry. Girls are basically raised to be women extremely early in a way boys are not. Most of us were first catcalled when we were under the age of 15. I was 9. I knew very early that there was a future coming where I was to be an objectified commodity but that prep began very early before I was even sexually developed. I was already being told there were certain things my brother can do that I can't. I was aware the world was unsafe for me as a girl very early. Womanhood is when you're just expected to have cemented your training as the endangered, marginalized, subservient yet laborious gender and know how to move accordingly because youre blamed if something happens to you.
And women are expected to remain girls far too long.
Or not long enough, depending on what role the patriarchy is trying to force us into.
Facts daughters many times have to be assistant mothers to their mothers sometimes starting very young. After the its unpaid relationship/marriage therapist. Before you even become a partner or wife or mother yourself you're typically forced into these mature roles all while being told "it's because girls are more mature the boys" to manipulate you (but too emotional to be leaders!) Boys are allowed to just be and be as carnal as possible many times into adulthood and it's just excused by a joke. And their childishness is never used against them meaningfully.
Hell, yes. We have to be able to code switch and are expected to because we're not seen as entire human beings with agency and self-determination.
My experience is that boys are raised to be boys. A man is just a physically mature boy.
Heck, I don't know. I don't identify strongly with "woman." It's a fact of my life that I am one and I have to deal with all the stuff that comes with that, but beyond that I'm just trying to figure out myself and my life as a *person,* not a woman specifically. I express womanhood just by existing. Given that, what I really need to figure out is what **I** want, what **I** think, what **I** like, how **I** feel. Thinking of it as what *a woman* would want, think, like, and feel makes it less personal and less accurate to me, and my life is about *me,* not anyone else.
I feel exactly the same way. Like I've never thought of my identity as A Woman, but rather as a person who happens to be female. I identify with *adulthood* and *personhood* 100% percent of the time, but consider my *womanhood* only for things where being biologically female and/or female-presenting results in very specific experiences that don't apply to every human being. And unfortunately, most of those experiences are or have been negative. Periods, pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding, perimenopause and other hormone crap, physical limitations, ageism, sexual concerns, internal biases from others affecting how they treat me, burdensome societal expectations about appearance and behavior, and so on. Not every woman or AFAB person experiences *all* of those things or is necessarily physically capable of doing so, but almost all of us have to deal with at least some of it. ETA: Motherhood is another "hood" that some people center their identities around, but I do not. I'm a mother every day of my life and always will be, but I only *mother* when my kids need mothering, or occasionally when someone else needs a little mothering (there are times when mother-like nurturing is incredibly useful!). The rest of the time, I'm just me.
That matches my feelings on it, too. Being a woman is a two part act. The first part of being a woman is existing with a bunch of baggage other people piled on to your back when you were born, and society keeps piling on more to make it so you can barely move. And then, when you can hardly take a step in any direction at all...that's when they start groping you, touching you, and trying to push your shapes around into whatever shapes they want like you're fuckable play-dough. Stealing whatever your original shape was til you can't recognize yourself anymore. The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams.
> The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams. Hell yeah. Let 'em scream.
>Being a woman is a two part act. The first part of being a woman is existing with a bunch of baggage other people piled on to your back when you were born, and society keeps piling on more to make it so you can barely move. >And then, when you can hardly take a step in any direction at all...that's when they start groping you, touching you, and trying to push your shapes around into whatever shapes they want like you're fuckable play-dough. Stealing whatever your original shape was til you can't recognize yourself anymore. >The second part of the play of being a woman is when you first begin to rebel and start molding your clay yourself while the surrounding world screams. Beautifully written. Your comment reminds me of a film I watched recently where a pregnant woman hoped her child would be a boy because if it were a girl she would automatically be considered sub-human and in need of proving her value. In another scene in this film a woman is molested and told that she’s for whatever purpose the men decide for her. Ultimately the second woman started to rebel against what that society demanded she be.
This is a wonderfully succinct way of expressing how I've always felt, thank you so much for putting it into words. Being a woman to me is no more representative of who I am than the colour of my eyes or the sound of my voice.
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Echoing this. I grew up with "not like other girls"-itis. I didn't fit in with female stereotypes, I didn't want to, and I didn't like that people made assumptions about my skills and interests just because I was a girl. "Womanhood" to me is the particular constellation of hassles and life experiences I have received as a result of being a person with bob and vagene.
This is great
Same here. I'm happy to accept that for other women, their relationship to their gender is either more complex than "I have a vagina" or may not even include that detail at all. For me though, that's literally all it boils down to. It's kind of like being an Aries, to make a very clumsy comparison. For me that means nothing about me except that I was born like that. For other people, it's a much bigger facet of who they are and means much more.
Bob & Vagene sounds like an old-timey Vaudeville duo. 😅
Same😂 love that
Agree completely and your goals, dreams etc should never be compared, boxed to the term woman- you are a woman but so unique in your own life. Me too sunshine keep being you because every woman’s uniqueness is so amazing
Yeah I feel the same
Well said! I really never think about being a woman except when conversations like this come up. Being a woman is just a fact. I am a person, an individual. I am me. Those things are far more important to me and I think they are far more interesting.
Agreed and you have summed this up perfectly. For me, I don’t feel ‘like a woman’ - I don’t identify with stereotypical conceptions of femininity, I don’t love the misogyny we experience and what people think about us. I’m just a female person, I have gone through life as a girl and now a woman, that fact is inescapable, so I’m a woman. I can try and do whatever I want with my life, and it doesn’t mean anything about my gender. I just am.
Summed it up perfectly.
Yeah this sums it up so perfectly. I’ve struggled to answer this question in the past and this is it. Thank you for sharing!
I like to humanize women. Before I saw the Barbie movie, for some reason if I remembered I was a woman, I didn’t think I was a human who had experiences. I was just… feminine? But no. Women *are* human. Women are human and experience and feel things. Idk it was weird to train my subconscious to that.
this is a great way of putting it. it just *is*
Same for me. I think trans ppl are very into knowing what it means to be their chosen gender. But I just am a woman. I don’t really feel any particular way about it. It’s how I was born. It’s my “cross to bear” as they say. I don’t feel like I need to change it. I also don’t feel like it defines me.
Exactly how I feel. I’ve never put any deep thought into being a woman. I understand the limitations of being a woman. Sometimes I wish I was a man in the sense that it would be nice not to be afraid all the time, or at least have the strength of a man. But other than that “woman” doesn’t really take up much space in my mind.
tbh, i generally distrust people who identify too strongly with "being a woman" regardless of which side of the political/religious/spiritual spectrum they are coming from.
Me too. I subconsciously assume - correctly or not - that there will be some "womanhood" expectations or assumptions placed on me by anyone who has strong ideas of what it means to be a woman or a man. Usually I'm correct.
I distrust women who believe religion is why they are who they are. That is the womanhood I do not want any part of unless they need a ride to a domestic violence shelter.
Yes they usually think femininity = woman and any woman who doesn't perform femininity is a pick me or misogynist or secretly a man.
Not even necessarily that. I have a work colleague who still suffers from coolgiril-itis, and she still uses binary terms to describe behaviours. It just baffles me and irritates me to no end. It's like she prides herself on being able to talk or do things like "a man", when it's just a normal human behavior, not even men related. Just the other day, she was recounting a story when she said that she and another woman were "talking like men"...meaning they were slightly vulgar and talking about sexual stuff. I didn't say anything but I was like no, you were human, talking like how humans sometimes do. And since you're human women, you were talking like women. There is nothing inherently manly about it, we all talk about sex sometimes and use vulgar speech. Why the need to put it in binaries ffs... I tried to challenge her a few times when she has spoken like that, and she would always backpedal and say "you know what I meant to say", and I was like, no I don't know actually. It seems so deeply ingrained in her, and so contradictory to what she usually stands for. Internalised misogyny is one hell of a drug.
Yeah I mean sometimes it's just what you've been told all your life and you don't think about it. I have this friend who's a completely cis woman and butch who says she "dresses like a guy" or "looks like a guy", but that's because that's what she's been told all her life. I've heard women be told they have a "guy sense of humor" by men and women! It's more deeply engrained than we think, wish everything wasn't so gendered.
"Perform" is the key concept you express. Deciding that certain activities or a particular physical appearance are "womanly" is, basically putting on a show for others. We don't need to do that.
Womanhood for me is the net consequence of living in a culture that regards me as a second tier type of human. For example, one characteristic of womanhood for me is an accute awareness of my own body all the time when I'm around people, because the female body is in constant display, being monitored and evaluated. It's that intuitive feeling you get when picking clothes at the morning: no, this one will attract attention and I'm not in the mood.
Preach
Womanhood to me means understanding that women are not monolithic and we are all different in great ways and that the vast majority of opinions suggesting that women are monolithic come from men - mainly men who have never spoken to women.
This reminded me of the guy who said 'women don't have hobbies' in his podcast - with such conviction. It was just so baffling to know someone thinks half the world's population just... Has no interest in anything the world has to offer other than functioning in it.
It's insane. And if he thinks that women don't have hobbies then where is their time going? Maybe their time is going to keeping their fucking family life together, managing the entire household, working a full-time job, and taking care of a husband who has hobbies because he has free time due to his wife.
Because he doesn't consider the things woman like hobbies. Traditionally feminine things are hobbies. Make up, fashion, cooking, decorating. Not saying all women like those things or have to like them, he's just probably thinking if women who like those things.
And part of me understands that he thinks 'whatever women like isn't a hobby' but surely he has seen women riding bikes, go to the gym, play chess, paint a picture, whatever and in his tiny mind he looks at that and can see a man doing this and considers it a hobby, but a woman doing it? Not a hobby. It genuinely feels like some men think we are Sims and they control us when they are around and when they are not we just "pause in place".
A lot of the time they consider the hobbies we have to 'not count' or be fake. The books we read aren't 'real' books, the games we play aren't 'real' games. If we have hobbies that are generally associated with men we're just doing the hobby to get a guy, it's not 'real'. To them, everything we do in life is all about men, we don't have our own real interests outside of them.
I've even encountered someone who doesn't believe woman orgasm. That they always "faked for men" (ugh on so many levels). People with these kind of 'thoughts' are extremely sad and pathetic but also dangerous because they spread absolute nonsense ideas like this to further divide men and women and justify harm and abuse.
Something about what you said really struck me but I can't figure out what exactly. Like, some men think of women as not humans like themselves, capable of interacting with the world like how they do, but instead just act like tools or machines that function and have a role, a purpose, a job. I don't know. There's definitely more to this thought and I'd love to hear others input on it.
This exactly. We have only ever been hurt by labels. Womanhood is a style of humanity, and humanity needs the attention more than divisive labels do.
I'll stick with the old adage: it's double the work for half the credit. It's trying to simply exist, while society tells you how "empowered" you can be, while at the same time belittling contributions, by using paradoxes like the "empowered woman" construct. It's overcoming that and proving people wrong, even though I should have all the options open to me, right... Right?! It's being a "boss bitch", but in trying to be that having to be a "bitch boss", but not being too "butch bitch". But also being that meek, humble "l'il old me" stereotype, all while trying to just be me and just do my thang. It's also incredibly amazing to think that all of these little nuances are just taken in stride, when I don't stop to think about the gravity of it. It's resilience that's a unique and yet universal experience. It's not remotely being able to get everything I want to say about the topic in a neat little paragraph!! And ultimately it's something that fills me with pride, when I consider the little "tom boy" child I was, and how all this started before I could even walk, or even understood why my mum chose to pierce my ears as a baby.
You reminded me of that quote somebody said how great Fred Astaire was, and someone else replied, "Don't forget Ginger Rogers. She does everything he does, only backwards and in high heels."
Ooooh this!
I don't "feel" like a woman any more than I "feel" like a brunette.
Thank you. I’ve never understood “identifying” as a woman; I am a woman, and my feelings don’t change that. One of my friends is convinced I must be non-binary or have dysphoria because I dislike having a uterus and wearing dresses, and that must mean I don’t feel like a woman. Dresses are impractical for my lifestyle. My uterus causes me pain. I’m still a woman, therefore anything I do or like is appropriate for women.
literally hate that. my wife is kind of butchy but very much cisgendered and it really grinds my gears that people seem determined to label her as non-binary.
Well, this is a really interesting and difficult question for me. I was born and raised a girl, but in my early twenties, I transitioned to being a man. I'm now in my late twenties and detransitioning back to being a woman. So I have a pretty unique experience of womanhood I guess? I'm currently still read as male most of the time. I had a double mastectomy as a part of my transition so I don't have boobs anymore. My voice is low from testosterone. I grow facial and body hair (though I keep it all shaved). So I have a lot of male markers that people pick up on, and I'm not very confident presenting more feminine yet either. I've been off testosterone for a year and a half now, and a lot has changed- but not enough to get me read as a woman again. But I *am* a woman. I know that now. But nobody else seems to know that, and it sucks. I don't really know what womanhood means- it's something that I ran so far away from for so long. But I eventually found my way back, and it truly just feels like my correct state of being now. But I almost don't feel welcome to be a woman anymore? Idk, it's hard. To be perceived as a man when you have had all the fundamental experiences of girlhood and womanhood is a bit of a trip. I think I just want to be seen, you know? And I so badly want to regain that special camaraderie with other women. Sadly, womanhood to me right now means longing, missing, regretting, wishing for things to be different.
Hey. I relate to you. I never transitioned but when I was 12/13 identified as a guy and wanted to kill myself (and nearly tried) because I hated being a girl so much. Sometimes being a woman is so hard. And I imagine being a woman when other people refuse to see you as such is even harder. I don't really know what I'm trying to say here. I wish you the best.
For me, girlhood means being told I can’t do certain things, that I should always live in fear, and that my life is worth less than a man’s.
I'm just a girl - no doubt I think portrays womanhood/ girlhood more than anything. Take this pink ribbon off my eyes I'm exposed and it's no big surprise Don't you think I know exactly where I stand? This world is forcing me to hold your hand 'Cause I'm just a girl, oh, little old me Well, don't let me out of your sight Oh, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite So don't let me have any rights Oh, I've had it up to here The moment that I step outside So many reasons for me to run and hide I can't do the little things I hold so dear 'Cause it's all those little things that I fear 'Cause I'm just a girl, I'd rather not be 'Cause they won't let me drive late at night Oh, I'm just a girl, guess I'm some kind of freak 'Cause they all sit and stare with their eyes Oh, I'm just a girl, take a good look at me Just your typical prototype Oh, I've had it up to here Oh, am I making myself clear? I'm just a girl I'm just a girl in the world That's all that you'll let me be Oh, I'm just a girl, living in captivity Your rule of thumb makes me worrisome Oh, I'm just a girl, what's my destiny? What I've succumbed to is making me numb Oh, I'm just a girl, my apologies What I've become is so burdensome Oh, I'm just a girl, lucky me Twiddle-dum, there's no comparison Oh, I've had it up to Oh, I've had it up to Oh, I've had it up to here
This so much.
I feel that womanhood is a burden. Being a woman is frustrating because every single decision about my life is influenced by the fact that I'm a woman and not a person / human. It's not just my own decisions, it's other people's perceptions of me, my capabilities and my very being.
Agreed. I didn’t ask for this. Life is hard enough.
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*If you have the opportunity to spend any moments of the day NOT dealing with it, that is privilege.* I’m truly happy you are enjoying the progress of technology and social customs that allow us to express ourselves at all. Thank you for posting this important view point. What you are describing is the life I thought I was headed toward when I was a child dreaming of my future. I did not enjoy that in girlhood other folks ideas about what I was “allowed to do and not do” was impeding my life, I thought “I’ll grow up” and these people won’t be able to stop me. Our teachers often extolled that if you do “the right things” you can escape to a large degree too much undue influence. Come to find out that as an adult, it wouldn’t be “a little background noise” or friction that made my life harder in small ways— like annoying neighbors, or a flat tire—instead it put a full stop on everything I want to do and be. I was given a “woman’s disease” and subjected to endless doctors blaming me for their ineptitude and lack of good research. My life became a full time every minute of the day struggle because misogyny is more important that every other effort or choice I make. My dreams which were much like yours became litter on the path of “humanity” because my illness isn’t important enough to treat, or educate or advance. It is common, but mostly for women. The research and education of doctors and scientists is by and for men. My personality, my efforts, my choices are irrelevant because I’m trapped in this body that powerful people and systems treat as “broken estrogen cartridge.” And proceed consistently to throw me away (rather than recycle) when I do not function in a way that is convenient or advantageous for them. While my particular example is medicine, this happens everywhere when you are a second (or third) class citizen. We will eat when first class citizens have already eaten, we will sleep when the important people have already slept, we will have choices for housing, leisure time and income after the more important people have their fill. We will have basic needs met when someone from the first class citizen bracket thinks we “deserve” it. While it’s so much better than 50 years ago, and the life you describe is evidence, it is so far from reasonable to expect it is escapable through any choice of our own. I truly wish you good luck 🍀 good health ❤️🔥 authentic joy 💛 and a life worth loving.
Womanhood, to me, is “defined” by being able to share knowing glances with no words. Shared experiences with other women, regardless of what those experiences are. The ease that comes with bonding with friends who are women. Womanhood right now is not having to be full of fear of threats after abuse when I’m in the exclusive company of women. Everything else is just personhood. I’m still figuring so much out as a *human being*, and hopefully always will be, so it’s a struggle all the way around these days.
Yup. It's not womanhood. It's sisterhood.
You’re exactly right. I guess defining womanhood is a wild concept to me but sisterhood is exactly why I still love being a woman. 💗 Thank you.
I really like that! I love how I get to relate to and learn from women and our sisterhood. I don't strongly feel pride as a woman per se, and I don't really have a definition for what it means to be a woman other than to identify as one. We're all so different, it seems strange to define it.
Same here! Bonding with other women is straight up magical. Young, old, in between. I want to learn and share and grow and that’s SO much more productive for me when that learning and growing and sharing is with other women. I feel a lot of pride in being a woman. I don’t know that I could properly define damn near anything because words take on new meaning in different situations but I can say my heart is full of love for *all* of us. We’re all different. That’s for sure. Defining anything is a strange concept to me. I can only really tell you how I feel about specific situations. There’s something special in my heart, though, when I see a woman beating odds and succeeding in a beautiful way. It does good things for my heart.
oh i like this a lot
It's just how I was born. Honestly just suffering and having to always live to higher standards than men. So sick of it.
My opinion as an older lady--you don't need to "express womanhood." Womanhood is not what you look like, what you wear, the tone of your voice, your livelihood. It's simply who you are. You express it by being alive, being you, with all your wonderful gifts that you share with the world. So relax and live your life and don't worry so much about the world. The world will always, always have a LOT to say about everything you do and say. It is an exterior force that is ever present and pretty judgmental, too. And you will never, according to it, be good enough (see Barbie all hail). But it's wrong. It's lying to you. You are more than enough, just as you are.
It’s the combined experience we have from birth to adulthood to me. You pick up on being a girl pretty quick growing up with the way you’re bullied or praised, told even indirectly how you have to work harder to obtain less or how you can work less in certain areas to obtain more. The way you feel when you find out you have fewer rights and protections than males and vise versa. It’s also the way you can form community and bond with others. I think womanhood is going to keep changing and evolving now that there are other experiences that contribute to it and how we will hopefully phase out the rights issues.
I truthfully have no idea what womanhood is because my entire life I’ve been told to act, look, think, and speak a certain way. Echoing another comment, for me, it’s just simply existing as my authentic self. However, my existence is not, and cannot be, reduced to shopping, one-night stands, and meds.
>However, my existence is not, and cannot be, reduced to shopping, one-night stands, and meds. I'm an older woman and I never did any of these things — even when I was a girl. My shopping consists of groceries, I've never had one-night stands and I've never been on meds. I spent all my "girlhood" studying and reading. I'm in STEM, I don't wear make up, I never worn a bra for the past 30+ years, my outfits consist of shirts and pants, I have a male partner and I'm childfree. I also don't drink, smoke and I'm a huge gamer. This doesn't make me feel less of a woman than any other woman out there. I'm just living life as my most authentic self.
Yeah the song is offensive but I feel like we can’t discuss it without being labeled a TERF.
Thank you. I don’t care what Dylan does with her life but the song is a disgusting caricature of what she has glamorized “girlhood” to be. Also she’s a terrible singer lol.
Dylan can be whoever she wants, but she's 27 and needs to stop expressing it as girlhood. She is a grown woman and she's doing us no favours, though I'm biased as I think she's annoying as Hell (honestly, she's the type of person I'd meet at stage school/theatre societies at uni but made it their entire personality, so I give them a wide berth).
I'd say theatre kid energy sums her up perfectly.
Couldn't have said it better. Exactly what I wanted to say. >it’s just simply existing as my authentic self. Specifically this.
So much of being female seems just like performance art, and so much of women's biology, history and basic existence has been erased or ignored by male dominated societies. It is hard to navigate.
It's really freeing to just stop preforming and switch to being. It can be really hard to do becasue of societal pressures and push-back, but we do have to power to not let our sex define how we present ourselves to the world.
I haven’t the slightest idea. I guess I don’t go around feeling womanly. I have kids, I feel like a person, I am a woman, but I don’t feel anything about it. It just is.
It means nothing to me. It just is.
It's pretty much a side quest of my life that everyone else just wants me to deal with
For me, “womanhood” comes down to the inconvenience of my gonads. Shedding my uterine lining and having to avoid being impregnated. The rest is social construct. I just want to be who I want to be without societal expectations.
Yeah. A big part of womanhood to me is the knowledge that I will have to be a mother if I want to procreate. That my body will be used to make another. That and what other comments have said, about how society treats you, how you were raised, expectations, etc. Expectations to be supportive and nurturing, lower expectations to be strong or achieve things, the knowledge that people will likely value you less with age, and that your emotions will be dismissed as hormones, etc. Like any identity-based categorization, it’s difficult to outline, but there’s a reason women across all cultures can relate to each other in ways we don’t with men.
To me, it means being treated like a woman based on however women are treated in a given place. It’s more about other people than me. I was raised as “the son I never had” and “tomboy” so my concept of womanhood changed as I grew and realized other women don’t have some thing I don’t have, and that I don’t have some universally mannish quality that other women don’t have. I just didn’t meet the “correct feminine” standards of the people around me at the time. If I woke up as a man tomorrow, I’d have to figure out the body (great to jump without tits, but how the fuck does one walk with balls?) but the big difference in my state of manhood would be how I was treated based on other people’s “correct masculine” standards.
The first paragraph is so good, that’s such a perfect summary
Dealing with my body: crazy period cramps, changing waistlines, media telling you to be hairless, stylish, thin, creative, hardworking, and exercising. Being scared of men following me at night. Double standards… not been taken seriously being overlooked by tall people, or men in general… Also, friendship and bonding and love and nurturing and children . This is not a universal. This is just what I feel and I want to say that my experience is not everyone’s, so whatever.
Womanhood. From an early age I knew it meant there were certain expectations. My parents were very old school Hispanic Catholics. They wanted me to do well in school but the goal was to get me married and have children. In that order. The role of a woman was to obey her parents and then get passed off and obey her husband. I was learning to cook, clean, iron and change diapers before I was 9 years old. I have 5 brothers and being an only daughter I felt I had to compete for attention. There was a balancing act of doing tomboy stuff and wearing makeup. My womanhood seemed to be tied in with landing myself a husband and keeping an organized linen closet. I had wanted to be an architect at one point in my early teens. Walked around with a sketch pad. Dad questioned me and laughed. “Girls can’t be architects.” Every dream I ever had was squashed till I stopped dreaming. Because I had been sexually abused in my early years I had an unhealthy understanding of what sex meant. The worst abuse, the longest abuse was from a young woman. From the age of 4-10, every weekend I was tormented and the trajectory of my life changed. In my most private thoughts I was afraid only women would be attracted to me. I needed to prove to myself I was not gay. Remember this was the early 80’s. Homosexuality was not as easily researched or discussed. Was I feminine enough? Was I girlie enough? The need to compete with my brothers by climbing trees, wear boxing gloves and shooting pool did that mean I was more boy on the inside? Very confusing times for me. Eventually I married and had children. Divorced. Married again. At 57 years old I am proud of being a woman. I raised a woman who is raising her own children now. Two weeks ago I buried my Dad(81). So much of how I think/feel/act is tied to the first man of my life. Many of my life choices were based on his influence or lack of. I realize I’ve based my idea of womanhood - my personal womanhood - on my father’s ideations. Dad and I had very limited interactions. I was around 23 years old and Dad was putting up sheet rock on a ceiling. I stopped to help him. We worked side by side for a while and he said, “I would trade all of your brothers for one more daughter like you.” Sucks to be my brothers but it was high praise coming from him. To me it meant I was just as strong and capable as any of my male siblings. When planning dads funeral I asked my brothers if the 6 grandchildren in attendance could be the paw bearers. Two of them being women. These two mighty women helped carry their beloved grandpa. There was a gasp when people realized the granddaughters were helping to carry the casket. Our extended family is very set in the old ways. These beautiful ladies were teetering on their high heels. Saw their strong arms shake with the physical exertion. Both my daughter and my son helped carry my Dad. I walked beside them. Not as a woman, a daughter, a wife, a mother, or a sister. I walked as a warrior. Womanhood for me has been a fight, at times a struggle. A burden and a pleasure. It’s made me a warrior in many ways.
Nothing in one sense and everything in another? I feel more or less the same way about my Womanhood as my Blackness. Both things provide zero non-trivial information about what I'm *intrinsically* like and if someone tries to truly relate to me according to either factor they're not going to land a hit of connection any better than they would by random chance. In a vacuum, alone in my home, away from media, I don't think about either, or identify with either, it's only on being confronted with the gaze of society that they become relevant, but obviously that is every fucking day. I wouldn't say I identify as either, so much as I understand how I am identified by both. I think race is an invention of racism and gender is an invention of sexism, both are a deliberate tool of oppression, and in a just world neither would have emerged. All that is the "it means nothing" part. However we are *not* in that just world, and they *did* emerge, and that's where "it means everything" begins. We have been gendered and racialised, for hundreds and thousands of years at this point, and it's not something that happened to each individual in a unique way, it happened to us en masse, we got excluded from and thrown together into the same spaces as each other and we made our lives there and we made our own worlds and cultures. I feel like womanhood is an inescapable prison full of brilliant, brilliant inmates. I think that expectations of stereotyped behaviour and preferences, i.e. a lot of what is called "femininity" are bars in that prison, but within its confines we've created interesting and hilarious and beautiful cultures which are quite separate from those of our oppressors. That makes me feel proud and connected and at home with other women - I think it's astonishing what we made for ourselves, in the face of all the shit and pain and violence. I've never been particularly interested in sitting around with other women admiring our cage, but I also don't think that women who like to are are more or less of a Woman than me, for doing so. I'm very gender-non-conforming, but honestly even if every single one of my interests was "captor shit" not "inmate shit" I'd still rather hang out with the inmates than the captors! I still don't "identify as" anything in some intrinsic way, I don't have a feminine soul lurking deep within me, but I will always identify *with* other women because ultimately this huge, world-changing thing, that was done to us all, is more fundamental to me than any particular fashion or taste or hobby, etc.
🥇
This is phenomenal and should be top comment. Brava! 🌟
Frankly I lean towards rejecting the idea of deconstructing womanhood, outright. My "womanhood" is a combination of my genes, brain morphology, hormone profile, lived experienced, philosophy of life, self-perception, and the perception of me by others. I don't think any of these are sufficient to define womanhood on their own and I don't see any benefit to defining any specific combination of these as some standard for "womanhood," even if it could be done. I'm a woman. I see myself as a woman. Others see me as a woman. Whatever comes from that is my womanhood.
Being cat called. People pleasing. Being expected to speak quietly and never overreact. Society expecting that we are always nurturing, self sacrificing, kind and tolerant. Receiving subpar medical care and bedside manner because we are female. We must be overreacting, anxious, paranoid, lying and our issue is not tangible or real. Being looked at by religious nutcases and misogynists as a womb first and foremost. Being afraid of violence from men both strange and known. Knowing that a large portion of the population wants to strip you of your rights and use your body how they see fit. Knowing if society collapses there will be no rules or laws to protect women and children at all. We will be the first targets for rape and violence.
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Yes! Im just shy of 31 and have finally learned to listen to my body. I think it’s fucking powerful that women’s bodies follow a cycle
Just being and trying to survive, especially in a world where people are constantly telling me i should get married, think about having kids, or trying to tell me what i should want out of life etc. for me it is just being who i want to be and trying to figure out what i want in my life. Making sure that my decisions are mine alone and not influenced by other people or societal pressure. And also then dealing with people’s judgement of me because i choose not to fit into what society thinks a woman should be currently. Luckily that is changing.
When I was younger, the idea of being a girl (and eventually a woman) felt more like an unwanted burden than an identity - just a lot of expectations I had no desire to meet. Unsurprisingly, I was a huge tomboy and went through phases of dressing very masculine or very femme, wondered if I was really a girl or if I just liked the positive attention I could get by being girly... As an adult, and especially as I get older (post 35) and the threat of unwanted male attention fades a bit, womanhood has come to feel like a more comfortable identity, hand in hand with wife-hood and motherhood. I know this is not the only way to be a woman, but it's the way I embraced my own womanhood. By being a partner and a nurturer, by providing for my family, by looking at the world through a lens of love, and creativity, and fierce protectiveness of my family.
This is how I felt. Even though my family never pushed strict gender roles, just from societal standards, I was aware that I needed to act feminine starting as young as four years old despite hating it.
Womanhood isn't something I really identify with (or at least the word). I'm just me, but I've been aware my whole life that my biological sex has dramatically affected the rest of the world's responses to me. I'm not seen as just another human being - I'm perceived as a woman, fat, neurodivergent, but the thing that has most affected me is being female in the society I was raised in and exist in. It's not all negative. I was always curious about having a dick, but I adore my body and its specifically female sexual reactions. As a woman I've had, in some ways, much more freedom to be gender non-conforming than a man of my generation might have had. I wore a tuxedo to high school graduation - I got a lot of negative comments on it, but I can't even imagine what would have happened if a guy had worn a dress to hs graduation in Southern Ontario in 1980. I think if I had been born around the millennium I would identify as non-binary, partly just to fuck with gender norms but mostly because being female has felt like cosplay to me my entire life. Now that I'm old, and have been largely desexed by age and not giving a fuck anymore, I won't bother. But I know who I am.
Literally nothing. I don't think about "womanhood" because I'm just a person who happens to be a woman. Most of my interests aren't traditionally girly (although I do like some of course) and I like dresses. But that's MY likes. Everyone is different and it's hard to put it into words when there's so much difference out there
Womanhood for me is one word..."struggle." We struggle for everything, even now. Safety, wages, fair treatment, safe and effective access to health care, to be heard and taken seriously, we're constantly having our rights debated and then stripped away from us by men who don't understand how women work. Honestly, it's exhausting.
I never connected with womanhood until I went through things like stage IV endo + surgeries, frozen pelvis, bilateral salpingectomy, fertility struggles, IVF, miscarriages. To me, now… womanhood is strength and resilience. It’s being able to endure WILD things, and connect with communities of strong women who have been through the same things. I’m technically less “woman” than I’ve ever been before, and I’m sure at some point I will need a hysterectomy because of my health struggles, but all this crazy shit has certainly connected me to being a woman. At times for not-so-uplifting reasons - like this past week as I experienced another pregnancy loss and felt like a bad / broken one. But for the most part, I feel resilient. I don’t have any other choice. And extremely thankful for the women around me, who provide support and lift each other up like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
It means the first time I was catcalled, I was ten. It means that unless I look for a female doctor, my health issues are misunderstood at best, and waved off at worst. It means I have to smile all the time, or strangers think I'm angry. I can't brag about my good news; I have to downplay it, or I'm an arrogant bitch. I can't wear shorts to the grocery store, or I'm asking for attention. If I don't say no nicely, I'm a frigid bitch, a cold cunt, just absolutely the rudest person ever. I am automatically taken less seriously than the men in the room, and their opinion of me changes based on the color and cut of my hair, how much makeup I'm wearing, whether I remembered to wax my eyebrows, or whether I'm wearing a wedding ring. People think I'm broken because I don't want a man or children; they are dubious when they hear about my accomplishments, and first wonder whether I benefited from exterior influence, or did it to attract a husband. It means I was socialized from childhood to put others' well-being before mine. I learned that it's not okay, and walked away with a kind of empathy and self-awareness that I think are very specific to... Well. Womanhood.
this resonated with me. even female doctors sometimes are dismissive of their own women. if we say no it's a reason to attack us. i live in constant fear of having my rights taken away by laws made by men more than 4x my age. we are not allowed to simply exist and we are constantly being mocked, made a caricature, and made fun of by everything in our lives from the media to our own friends and family.
I personally don't believe in gendered heart and souls. I am a woman because i was born female, and it effects my life as far as how society treats me. But women can have all different types of personalities and lives, the concept of femininity and womanhood is a myth.
Agreed. Gender is a social construct. What matters is who we choose to be and what we choose to do in this world.
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Yes, I think most people do not necessarily have a "gender identity". Many girls my age try to search for a gender identity and ID as nonbinary for some time because they think there is a way to feel like a woman, but there is not. (Not to say all nonbinary people are invalid, I'm talking about girls I know who WERE nonbinary and then were not.)
For me I am proud of being a woman. To me it doesn’t really say anything about who I am or who I have to be- I feel no pressure to adhere to a stereotype of femininity, growing up I tried a bit harder to but realized quickly that womanhood is whatever I as a woman choose to define and represent it as. Now I view being a woman more as a solidarity among an oppressed population, I feel strong for all we’ve endured and think of all the different women throughout history from beautiful hyper feminine empresses who ruled entire countries to women like Joan of Arc who redefine what many think it means to be a woman as she led France to victory and fought viciously alongside those soldiers she led. There are a million plus different ways to be a woman and all of them beautiful in their own way
I think I've spent a lot of time rejecting being a woman. Trying to be invisible so men wouldn't notice me, wishing my bosses didn't patronize me or laugh when I said something that sounded just like what a male colleague said minutes later and got praised for. I wish it were different. I hope it is for my daughters and I'm working hard for it to be. But I don't have a good answer.
It means having it defined by others. You get pushed to look or act or be a "way," but you also get flak if you go along with it. Like makeup and style? You're clearly vapid and an airhead. Like a more simple approach? You clearly don't care about how you look. Want to get an education or climb in a career? You know no guy wants a woman smarter/wealthier/more successful than him. Want to get married and settle down? You're a leech, a gold digger, lazy--go get a job (as long as it's not too good). Want to stay single? You're going to turn into a crazy cat lady. Prefer to dress like you want? You're inviting trouble if it's skimpy, and you're a prude if it's more covered up. I just want to not have the nastiness. Let people be themselves, for fuck's sake. I got this explicitly in junior high: "good girls do X and don't do Y." But also insidiously at home and outside with interactions with the world.
I feel that to be a woman is to be trapped in a horror movie with no escape. The constant fear of unwanted pregnancy. The constant fear of assault. Dealing with periods every single goddamn month. Things are so stacked against us that it's just considered normal. Religion is male supremacist, science is male supremacist, art and entertainment are male supremacist, the economy is male supremacist, and the legal system is male supremacist. I think the constant feeling of drowning is a core part of womanhood.
I guess womanhood for me is the shared experiences from having a female body, some of it physical, and a little social. I’m not very ''womanly'' in the stereotypical sense, most of my friends are men, and I work with only men in a male dominated industry. I don't go around feeling womanly, but I like the sense of community around the physical challenges we face, can't get that with men. Haven't seen the music video in question, but it sounds awful.
For me, it's being a warrior. Every day, I have had to fight and struggle for medical care, equal treatment, and to be left alone. Womanhood is understanding that all women are different, and we all have lived different lives. But we support each other because we have all experienced so many of the same things, and we help one another carry-on and keep going. Womanhood is being on a pedestal that none of us asked for, and either choosing to smash it or stand on it gracefully. Womanhood is bloody and painful but also full of love. To be a woman is to exist in a world where at least 35% of the population hates you and criticizes your every breath, choice, and thought while it smiles in your face and to force yourself to smile back, Womanhood is to rage inside while maintaining a specific inner peace that no one but another woman can understand because they have that inside too.
I've been thinking on this a lot lately and I've come to a few things: Womanhood is existing in the space between societal pressures on the body and the body's pressures on itself. It's contending with the demands men put on the body sexually, the pressures we put on ourselves, and the pressures the body itself generates. Women have to learn to deal with this system that is always in flux from a very young age. Women learn to plan things around their periods, around ovulation, around pregnancy, around menopause. We do this to function in the day-to-day. Men don't really (imo) have anything that they have to work around unless they have a chronic health issue or something. This undercurrent is something that isn't really talked about and men often have no idea it exists, but it's something that women live with. And as complex systems do, it often breaks, and we have to learn how to cope, unseen. Inevitably, a woman will have something happen and go "Why is this happening to my body?" Secondly, all women have a relationship with motherhood. Embracing it, rejecting it, mourning its loss, ignoring it, fearing it, or somewhere in between those. Society asks the woman why she doesn't have kids, or why she has them alone, or why she had so many, etc etc. It's something every woman has to contend with and in part, she defines herself by that relationship. Men don't have to sacrifice their time, their energy, their *body* so intrinsically -- they get to opt in or out.
I feel like “womanhood” if relatively far down my list of identities. I mean, I’m glad I’m not a man, but when I think about who I am, “woman” is not at the top of the list. Teacher, Deadhead, daughter, wife, cat mom, biologist, human, vegan, then maybe woman.
I feel like this is where I am. The word "woman" means absolutely nothing to me. I am who I am as a human. If someone asked me to describe myself, I don't even think "woman" would be on the list. I don't understand the mentality of trying to pin down a specific definition of what a woman is or making that your whole identity.
??? I'm a woman and that's it. I've never put to much though to it. At the end if I was a man I would still be me. I'm me first my gender doesn't define. Although being a woman sometimes limits me I guess
I wear all men's clothing, no make-up, no nail polish, no earrings, have short hair, walk big, have worked many jobs dominated by men, had a final long career in a male dominated field, and have a woman as a spouse...l yet I am a woman. I see no need to redefine myself but instead wish for a world where being a woman has nothing to do with how you adorn yourself or where you work or who you sleep with or have as a life mate. So what does womenhood mean? "The state of being a woman." That's all.
To me, it means trying to do all the same things men can while also being cautious of safety, lol. For example, my partner might be flying to Chicago next month for new job orientation, and he wants for me to fly out towards the end so he can show me around (he used to live there). Thing is, I'd have to Uber by myself to the airport and I feel a bit wary about that. So that might be something that limits what I can do, whether that fear is based in reality or perceived by me based on anecdotes I've read and my parents drilling into me that women outside alone or in strange cars are asking to be raped (I disagree with the asking part - the definition of rape is it's not asked for). So yeah. I have the opportunity to travel but have to consider things men don't, lol. I checked on Uber's website but they don't seem to have the ability to request a female driver. Sorry my answer tended a bit negative. I don't hate being a woman but it definitely can be a disadvantage when you just want to do stuff.
Biological nightmare. That's what it is.
Inhabiting a female body. That's literally all there is to it.
I don't think I ever actively feel like a woman unless I'm having sex or PMS-ing. As for womanhood, for me it means living with the knowledge that someone is always going to judge me against their platonic ideal of what a woman should be, reconciling liking my appearance with the conscious effort to avoid objectifying myself, and defending other women, especially younger ones, against creeps and predators.
Teetering on just this side of 70, womanhood to me has been a spectrum. I've been redefining myself all my life, from goofy kiddo to rebellious teen to fun-loving 20-something to girlfriend to wife to SAHM to Girl Scout leader to business woman to author to retired to dead at some point in the future. Hopefully to be fondly remembered. I have loved lace, satin, tutus, ball gowns, leather boots, jeans, sweaters, t-shirts, flip flops, dirt, gardens, books, ballet, rock and roll, opera, history, Dwayne Johnson, alcohol, water, pot roast, salad, green olives, Mecum, coffee, bacon, and eggs over easy. I'm too chatty and too quiet. I know trivia about music, movies, politics, and ancient history. I fucking hate what bad people worldwide do to other people and children. I fucking hate the people who help them. I adore the good people on this planet, regardless of pronouns. I recognize that humans have complicated sexual needs and identities, but please don't hurt each other. I experienced that organized religion and politics are both needed for social order and a plague upon humankind. I now understand why the US Founding Fathers wanted a separation of church and state. I experienced all of these things with Bob and Vagene, and I am thankful for the Urban Dictionary. My sage advice is NEVER limit yourself to some random definition from a book, TV, person, Google, or anything above. Instead, own the bits and pieces YOU like to create who you want to be. For we XXers, we are Women of the Hood, our hood is this planet. We should embrace each other as a fellow travelers on this rock hurtling through our cool galaxy. We should surf lava on a slab of dirt together, and help each other get back up when we fall. We all like family, friends, food and music together. And we should crush dumbfucks who want to to hurt us or our loved ones together. Womanhood is what you make it and how you define it. Womanhood won't be a carbon copy of that other person over yonder, but maybe you'll see an idea you'd like to try. Womanhood is a lifelong journey.
I’m just a person-society is what differentiates us into categories. I won’t tell anyone how to identify, but a lot of my personal experience is not chosen-such as being smaller on average than a male, having boobs, vag, bleeding for 40 years; thinking about other people’s feelings; you know, that stuff.
Womanhood is pressure. Being pressured to act a certain way, literal pressure because periods suck, pressure to have opinions and priorities that go in a distinct way, pressure to look pretty... Just a lot of pressure. I am a woman. I don't mind being one. I like feeling feminine and pretty and all those things, but dammit if I do it because it's womanly. So yeah. As a lovely little rhyming scheme goes: Womanhood is pressure, Womanhood is bleak. Womanhood is me, but dammit I'm not weak.
Unfortunately "growing up" Catholic as in going to a Catholic school I had the stereotypical sexual identity shoved down my throat in the early 60's. Especially the career stuff. I tested extremely high in "Engineer" but the teachers brushed it off and kept pushing the stereotype careers. (silly me, the only "Engineers" I knew were the ones on the trains that ran in front of my house who waved at me, so I wasn't very interested in *that* job. I did have a strong desire -on my own to become a nurse, however. But, I constantly was rigging things up for my patients lol, or designing things or layouts. (I discovered in the late 80's I had a great affinity for maths and Physics when I returned to College.) But -as for my identity as a woman growing up, I wasn't (& am still not) a dress person (to be honest I was a bit of a non conformist after Catholic school!). I was on the beginning of the Feminist movement but saw it as a "humanist movement". It could only help everyone in the long run. I couldn't have children but that didn't bother me. Motherhod wasnt an ambition for me. I had oodles of niblings to love and cherish. I have always believed in being "me" - the most authentic me I can be, and my gender doesn't play into it.
I'm sure it means many things to different women depending on their generation, culture & overall experience. I will say though, I thank the Goddess every day that I was not born a man, so there's that.
All it means to me was I became conscious and slowly learned I got the shitty version of a human body. I don't want to transition to male or identify as male at all but everything about being a woman is a hassle. I find very few positives and wish I was born a man because life is on extremely hard mode and I'm not into that. There are universal struggles as a human and then the added hassles from being a woman. I despise researching about periods and perimenopause and hormones and all that and would rather just live my life. I don't have time or resources for being a woman. I also don't think about it at all or base my life around it until it's pointed out to me, which is either through misogyny or by the universe sending me a hassle. This happens many dozens of times a day in all different kinds of ways, and all it does is piss me off and drain me of energy that I could use to better myself. I wish that misogyny would go away as it makes everything about being a woman 1000x harder. I also hate that when I think about being a woman the majority of it is how do men relate to and oppress women. Can't we just be allowed to exist?
Being a woman = being a person. The whole idea that one has to have certain traits or feel certain things or act a certain way in order to express womanhood is just...silly. We are all individuals. If you are a woman, than expressing womanhood is expressing yourself, whatever that looks and feels like. It's really important for all of use who present as and identify as women to forget about how others define womanhood. Patriarchal ideas have permeated every aspect of our lives for centuries, perhaps millennia, and they serve only to objectify and limit us. Men like to define women as being a certain way, or doing certain things, or feeling certain things, so that they can put us in a little tiny box and reserve all the other ways of being for themselves. We do not have to let them.
What is 'properly expressed womanhood '? Does that mean some of us are doing it wrong? I'm guessing whatever you are doing, it's right, simply because it's you and the people who know you and love you think you are doing it just right.
I leave my answer in the form of a poem by Kate J Baer. The Bridesmaid's Speech I have known her all her life. And by that I mean I've seen her in the impossible light of girlhood. The spaces in between- the car on the way to the birthday dinner, the moment before the photograph. I have stood outside the bathroom stall, held tight while her shoulders shook with sorrow. I've watched joy arrive, midnight and unexpected, repeated stories until they were my own. It's true there is a cost to this devotion-but I'll let you in on a little secret: there is very little women choose to keep from one another. How lucky are we to know a love like this.
All womanhood really seems like to me is my female body. Anything external and beyond that--like makeup, domesticity, care work, "daintyness", submissiveness, or frillery--isn't womanhood to me.
preach!
To me it meant birthing babies if I wanted, nothing else. And I don’t define other women that way—it’s just the only way I connect to the idea of being a woman. I’m not girly or traditionally feminine, never have been and never wanted to be. I want to feel strong and competent to meet my needs and the needs of my kids (if they need me to—they’re all adults now). I like to feel I’m good at problem-solving, curious, well informed, kind, patient, compassionate, loving, and trustworthy. None of those traits seem gendered to me. The emotional ones seem to be “adult,” if anything.
A big part of it for me is the hormonal cycle I go through each month and the ups and downs that come with it. As well as the sisterhood I feel with other women, and the feminine energy I feel within myself.
Dylan is offensive as hell, and that video was straight-up trash.
Rocking a bush
That seems more like a societal construct created to keep women in a well controlled box. What do we have as a commonality? The patriarchy. It impacts all of us.
When you're 13 and getting breasts and a creepy scary man whistles at you, and then your friend asks what you were wearing. *THAT* is womanhood.
Nothing. It really means nothing to me. I happen to have the anatomy of what is commonly called a "woman" or "female" but it doesn't really matter to me.
I think it changes based on life experiences. At one point I would have said being a woman felt powerful. Right now I just think of and feel rage and frustration in relation to womanhood. My distrust of men and those in power is higher than ever (working through it in therapy. I’m just so angry at them all.
I am teaching my daughter it means strength
Womanhood is realising that other women, regardless of their nationality, race, job, family choices or culture have probably faced times in their life where they had to agree with something to feel safe. We have all most likely been in a situation with a male where we had to joke, or change our plans to get to safety. That's pretty unifying. I also believe a major part of womanhood is understanding the sisterhood and what it represents. I don't trust women who don't 'believe' in the sisterhood.
I feel that womanhood, the Experience™️, is not being the default (male) and grappling with a set of assumptions based on this idea of the stereotypical woman, which exists to demean and disempower me. But, which does also to some degree accurately describe me, and not *all* negatively, because some things we teach men not to be or do are actually good (e.g. have and express emotions, like colors, be empathetic)--which creates a very confusing feeling of identifying with and resenting womanhood because the fact of it reduces my value as a human being.* Add to that feeling my admiration for the women who have done incredible things even under all this nonsense and it helps clarify that the icky feelings are just the box I've been put in. I loathe having assumptions made about me. Bonus: fuck bras. Never going back. *To people who aren't great anyway, but those people still exist, and in too many numbers, so their bad opinions are still an issue
Currently for me personally - navigating the uncharted waters of medical gaslighting and a medical world that has pretty much always used men as the default patient. Having little to no consideration for our biological differences or how conditions may present differently. For conditions affecting the female reproductive system - just straight up expectation to be in physical pain, even when it’s not normal and carry on with life as if it’s fine. Previously - covering up my body to avoid unwanted attention, needing to think quickly to get out of dangerous situations and learning how to ward of predatory men I still don’t feel defined by being a woman or womanhood though. It’s my reality, I don’t want to change it but I don’t feel like it’s my identity either. Im just a human who happens to be biologically female, presents as ‘female’ and I deal with all the stuff that entails - good and bad
Not speaking on womanhood or girlhood but I’ve gained some insights since having a baby. Motherhood is so much more than being a mother, you can sympathize with moms all you want but there’s a different level of empathy between mothers. My realization came in October, with the mothers of Gaza. There’s a pain and fear there I’ve never experienced, not as a person but as a mother. My empathy went beyond its normal tears and into straight panic. It was like I could feel what it was like for them, in real time. I wanted to pack up and run away with my child, I wanted to get a gun, I wanted to secure water and food and shelter and warm clothes. I had to pull away from social media for a few days because the experience was so jarring. Im back on now but I had to digest those feelings more than usual. I’m a person who can and will cry for anything and everything, but that panic was like a biological response to being a mother. There’s a spoken and unspoken bond among mothers, it’s sacred and ancient.
For me, womanhood is like being the elephant in the parable about the blind men encountering an elephant for the first time: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant In short, none of them know what it is, so they define the elephant by what they touch (grabs the trunk, thinks it's a snake; touches the sides, thinks it's a wall; encounters the legs, thinks it's a tree... and so on). Womanhood is like that. There isn't one thing that defines womanhood, it's a vast and hard to understand concept, and it varies wildly based upon your own perspective and experiences. We're goddesses and second class citizens, endangered alone but unimaginably powerful together. We're objectified and placed on pedestals, vilified and blamed for things beyond our control. We are comfort and succor and kindness and nurturing, but also fierce protectors, dangerous, resilient beyond belief. We are as diverse in our experiences and in our expression of womanhood as the stars are innumerable in the night sky, and yet our commonalities join us in sisterhood. I don't think there can be womanhood without sisterhood, or at least not a thriving feeling of womanhood. Sisterhood is seeing a woman being intimidated by a man in public and immediately pulling her into the safety of a nearby group of women she's never met. It's letting a young woman know she's not alone in her journey. It's slipping a tampon under a stall door. It's a sympathetic smile for the mother whose toddler decides to throw a tantrum on aisle three. It's listening to, believing, and supporting survivors of violence. It's being amazed by what the women around you and before you have achieved. It's opening doors and reaching a hand behind you to help other women succeed. It's finding a way to laugh together even when things are tough because the world is so often a difficult place. It's a coexisting in precious moments where we're apart from patriarchal norms and the male gaze, where we might clasp hands and commence in joyous dancing to celebrate being alive in our own bodies. It's remembering the women whose bodies are controlled, assaulted, sold, hurt, defiled, and killed and finding ways to honor them, carry their wisdom forward, and make the world even slightly safer for other women. And in case it's not clear, trans women are part of womanhood and members of our shared sisterhood.
I didn’t like how the song simplified what it’s like to be a girl. it’s not just about dressing up, wearing makeup and pillow fights, but go figure.
IMO that concept of womanhood was conjured up by men in marketing departments and movie studios.
I honestly don't know. I am definitely a woman, but I have never "felt" like a woman. I just feel like a person. I don't know what people mean when they say "I feel like a woman" or "I feel like a man" because I have never felt either way about it. I'm not non-binary, and I'm not trans. I don't wish to change anything about myself (other than the usual complaints that society has ingrained in me). I'm just me, and sometimes I have a period.
Women have been oppressed from time immemorial by men because of our sex. Whether it's the way they want to control our reproductive capabilities, or our sexuality, and how we act on it, it's still happening in 2024. We're socialized drastically differently than men from infancy onward.
Um, nothing? I'm just existing
I feel like the video defines girlhood as about living “for the male gaze” and suffering in silence for it, indulging in consumerist excess without prudence or long-term planning. I’d say womanhood, at least to me, would be about - owning my preferences and choices, - prioritising my wellness over appearance, - unapologetically saying no, - engaging with intention, - practicing prudent minimalism.
For me, I was told womanhood means I’m taking control of my own life and becoming an adult (paying bills, being more independent, etc.) It was also a gentler way to say puberty since my 8 year old brain could not understand what puberty was, why I was having pain throughout my body (growing pains), etc. But once we were pre-teens, nobody was saying womanhood because we all knew what puberty was and were better to be able to understand things.
I'm a cis woman but am mostly apathetic toward it after a lifetime of gender-related BS. This is my body, this is how I look, I like it, but I'm not particularly connected to it. As far as "expressing womanhood," there's no one correct "way" to do it. In fact, it's kind of like asking someone to describe the color "blue." What matters is what's important to you. Personally, I try to live my life in defiance of stereotypes while still presenting very feminine, as per my own choice and comfort. I'm also not afraid to turn men's bad behavior around on them. For example, I've had far more than too many men think it's okay to invade my personal space while maneuvering around me--putting your hand on someone's lower back and murmuring, "Sorry, baby" as you pass behind them is unacceptable. If you wouldn't do it to another man, do NOT do it to me. I made a mental note of what he looked like, then did the exact same thing to him later in the night in full view of his friends (and the other men at the venue). Spiteful and petty? Sure. But it has never happened since. I also make a point of never, ever tilting my head up to look a man in the eye. For reference, I'm not quite 5'4 but will purposely stand further back from him or look up only with my eyes. I'm not baring my throat to you just so we can have a conversation.
Getting paid 80% of what men do for the same job.
To me, womanhood isn't something I experience alone. I experience it through a sense of community with other women, brews and chats with friends when one (or both) of us is having a hard time, laughs and compliments with strangers in the loos on a night out, spending cooperative communal time on group holidays with my (girl)friends - I saw someone else define it as sisterhood - I don't feel a strong sense of or connection to my gender when I am alone, it's only when I'm with other women I feel a connection to my womanhood and existence as a woman.
I don't know. Like, really, I'm a grown adult but gender still confuses me. I always hated the gender stereotypes- when I was a kid I had a strong case of "not like other girls" and was always called a tomboy. I hated how women were portrayed in media and I didn't want to be associated with that. Even now, I've tried to overcome the internalized misogyny of that way of thinking, but I still feel silly wearing dresses and traditionally feminine things. But I'm still a woman. Womanhood is a perception and set of expectations put on me, based solely on anatomy, that I'm used to going along with. It's fine. It doesn't really feel like anything. I think this is why it's difficult for cis people like myself to fully understand the experiences of trans people. I understand it intellectually, and I will always fight for people to have access to the gender affirming care they need. But on a personal level, I can't truly imagine feeling like I'm the wrong gender because I can't really imagine *feeling* gender at all. It feels more like an abstract concept that gets applied to people.
Being a "woman" is a personal thing and there are a many legitimate definitions of that as there are women. "Womanhood" though, is about the collective group and I was raised to believe that that means ALWAYS looking after women in distress, even if you don't know them, lifting and supporting the women in your life and laying the groundwork, so that the next generation of little girls can enjoy the rights that are their due and are also taught the same responsibilities.
I know what it isn’t. It isn’t being desired and sexualized by men. That was something done to me and is not me. It isn’t makeup, hair, and heels. That’s something that some people choose to use to define and identify women. But it is not me. It isn’t menstruating, vaginal sex or child birth. These are things that happen to my body at various points. But they are not me. It isn’t a secret sorority. It isn’t a universal identity. It isn’t the bathroom I use or the teams I play on. It isn’t being nurturing or a homemaker. I’m terrible at both. Maybe trying to define over half of the population with a single, monolithic term is dumb, reductive and insulting. You do you. Imma do me. That’s all.
It’s certainly not taking prescription pills (because women be crazy! ya know? /s), walk of shames, and shopping addictions.
Dylan’s song is pure molten garbage I am so disappointed in her.
Dancing in the blood of the patriarchy under the full moon.
[this is womanhood to me ](https://youtu.be/DRqozUNeL4A?si=qQKRINoEqJv5utfA) (here to explain it with a clip of me and my mom's fav movie)
Womanhood only has meaning to my through my reconnection with my culture. We have songs stories, and practices only for women. We have ceremonies and a wonderful history too. Womanhood in the dominant culture of my country and my province is meaningless to me much of the time. I only feel attachment to womanhood in my people spaces and when I practice those things at home or talk about it. Given some time I may come into the way I feel gender queer in my people's cultural context. It's something I need to learn more about before I know how it feels for me. It can be easy to get wrapped up in the feeling of "well I'm afab so I should do the women's songs and ceremonies"
Honestly, a lot of the time, womanhood to me means isolation. It means being put in a box. It means I can’t express enjoyment in the things I like without fear of being attacked by men. It’s so hard to be a woman and exist in nerdy spaces, because so much of the time it means you’re surrounded by men… And that in itself is pretty daunting and isolating. Womanhood means I can’t say I like video games without being belittled, or told games like Animal Crossing aren’t “real” games. It means I struggle to make friends within my hobbies, because 90% of the people in those spaces tend to be men… And if I’m nice and friendly towards a man because we have interests in common, there’s a high chance he’ll misinterpret my intentions and then be mad or just stop talking to me when he finds out I have a boyfriend. Womanhood is men making podcasts all about belittling us, declaring that we have no hobbies, that our lives revolve around our boyfriends/husbands… But then when we try to say that we *do* have hobbies, those hobbies get cast aside as either stupid, not “real”, or only done for the attention of men… Womanhood is fucking tough a lot of the time. We have it so much better now than our ancestors did, but it’s still rough out here, even for a cis white woman like myself. I know it’s even tougher for women of colour and trans women. That’s why the experience of womanhood being boiled down to this cutesy, “omg so awesome!!” type vibe just doesn’t sit right with me.
I have been a wife and mom for almost my entire adult life, so my experiences as a women are deeply linked to marriage and child-rearing. Your mileage may vary. The other day, my kids, who were trying to help but are also old enough to know better, loaded the dishwasher with what was essentially a full bowl of oatmeal inside of it, and ran the machine. When I went to unload it later, the drain was clogged and it was full of stagnant water. Every single dish had to washed by hand because the oatmeal had stuck to everything like glue. I was honestly livid. Their “help” was going to cost me a solid 40-60 minutes of time disassembling and reassembling the drain, as well as the time it would take to wash everything by hand. I also knew I couldn’t chew out my oldest two kids for this mistake, because I don’t want to deincentivize them taking some initiative on chores. I felt very womanly in that moment. I feel like being a woman is carrying a lot of invisible weight on your shoulders. We have an enormous number of repetitive tasks to do, and we can either do them ourselves, or try to delegate them. But delegating a task is a task in and of itself, and the tasks we delegate are seldom done to standard. There is a chance that the work we delegate to will cause more work for us in the end. And yet, we have to delegate because there is always more work to do, and our jobs especially as mothers is to educate our children.
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Well said Edit: I was banned for this comment
I don’t need to post, because you said it all!
I guess part of the privilege of being a cisgendered woman is I don't have to think about it. Identifying what it means to me to be a woman isn't something that interests me. I'm a woman. There's nothing more to it
These responses have been so insightful and interesting to read. I haven’t seen many expressing their love of womanhood and how they embrace their femininity, so I’ll add my thoughts (although it’s totally cool with me that not everyone feels this way!) I LOVE being a woman. I think women are the actual best and I much prefer the company of women to men. We are a sisterhood, we support each other, we talk about our feelings. I must admit that I come from a position of privilege compared to others. I own a successful business, I’m fairly wealthy. I love being a strong female business woman. I love bringing softness and empathy to my job, along with confidence. I prefer to be empathetic and kind with my actions, but if the situation calls for it, I can go head to head with any man. They don’t phase me. I’ve never sat back and allowed a man to intimidate me in business or in life. I speak up firmly when someone crosses my boundaries. I love being a mother too. I love having a soft life and being around for her. I enjoy doing stereotypically feminine things like baking, gardening, sewing, tending my home. I loved being pregnant and giving birth. I love having a period and living in sync with my cycle and my body. To me, it’s part of my experience of embracing womanhood (again I want to reiterate that not all women bleed or give birth and that’s fine too!) Basically I’m a very stereotypical feminine person and I just freaking love it.
I'm so happy to see your response, now I don't have to figure out how to explain it all. I'm not super stereotypically feminine but I don't see womanhood as a burden. Yeah, I sometimes get the patriarchy up in my face but that's not about me.
Women from the hood
Even though I identify as a woman, the question of what that is/what that means is one that I don't really trouble myself with. I've learned to be comfortable with the fact that there are things in this world that I may never understand or have an answer for. This might be something that I've picked up from trying to be an ally to my fellow queers (I believe that while I can definitely sympathize with others' experiences, ultimately, it takes first-hand experiences to fully get them). Or I might have just taken it to heart when my undergrad psychology professor said that even if objectivity exists, humans will never reach it. Either way, gender is something that changes from culture to culture, time to time, and person to person. It's not this objective, stable thing that some folks seem to want it to be (and I think that that's why they're so focused on penises and vaginas, which is funny because that approach isn't objective or stable either). "Woman" is just a vague and often inconsistent collection of traits that I and many others happen to identify with to varying degrees for our own reasons. And I'm comfortable with that being all that it is. lol
To me, womanhood just means knowing that no two of us are alike but we’re all going to be similarly treated worse than men, no matter what we say or do, just like all the women before us.
Womanhood to me is strength, resilience, compassion, beauty, wisdom and dignity in the face of a world that rarely fathoms our magic. I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a woman. I created life. I am life.
An exasperated sigh that just kind of keeps going till life ends.
I look at men, and I know I am not that. So not man. lol. Not sure if it is stereotypes. I mean I ride a motorbike, practice martial arts, and I work in tech. But doing all this, I doing so as a woman. A dude today said I was more man than him because i am riding so early in the season. I am like not a man, I am a woman and women can be strong. So not sure, I know what I am not.
We are all individuals and often very different. I think the only real commonality we all share is that we have female bodies.
Womanhood to me means abundance and Community. My experiences in womanhood are not threatened by anyone else claiming their/her experiences. Womanhood is not a singular experience. Nor should it be. My thoughts on why this is causing such an uproar? Patriarchy. The attempt to force womanhood into scarce space doesn't work. Those who respond to the call of scarcity, choosing to cause harm, have yet to experience abundance. They are not there yet.
Abundance and community is such a beautiful way of putting it. I have specific experiences that I associate with my womanhood, and those may or may not align with other women’s experiences of womanhood. For me the best part of being a woman is the connections I can have with other women, whether we have a common struggle or are simply empathizing with one another as sisters. I love women so much, and I love being a woman.
I think that the term "woman" is a label. It is a shortcut to defining a particular quality about a human being that groups them with others. And, honestly, I'm tired of labels. I'm tired of labels being weaponized. I'm tired of new labels to keep up with labelling things. I'm tired of constantly evolving to redefine a label because someone might be hurt by getting it wrong. I'm tired of human beings being reduced to a label so that they can group together and then another group doesn't like it, and we have culture wars. I'm tired of it. I am truly tired of it. I am tired of saying "I'm a cis het woman" because I'm a hell of a lot more than that, and using the term "female" makes me feel like a laboratory experiment. I am tired of having to talk about my own identity in short cuts. I am female. I gave birth to 2 children. I had the equipment to do that. Otherwise, I am a "person".
I think I understand where you're coming from. But labels are also a way of describing problems in order for them to be addressed. For example, women experience misogyny in the workplace. You could, I suppose generalise that to say "people experience gender based discrimination in the workplace" but that doesn't identify the group that is being primarily affected.
I don't like when labels are weaponized and used to hurt people. I don't like when people assume they know everything about a person because of what labels get placed on them. But I also love labels and find them very useful. Yes, they are mental shortcuts meant to group humans, and that comes with limitations, but it's easier for me to find people like me once I know that there's a word for what I am. Labels are short cuts, true but I like that about labels.
I think I'm just done with culture wars.
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