What is a woman ?

 

So many times I see comments asking “what is a woman ?” It's mind boggling why this question even comes up, but given the amount of anti-trans narratives and the misogyny against women in general by males who seem to want to categorize all people with a female name as trans-gender and then think they can ask women, whether a trans-woman or a biological woman that question of who they are when they don't even have a foggiest idea themselves. Most males and it appears a lot of women think that it's the ability to have children, have hips, have breasts etc etc etc. The usual male ideals of what a woman should be, a sex object.

Well, a woman isn't defined that way, the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. Want to disagree with that, go argue with Audrey Hepburn, she is the one who said it. She knew what a true woman is, it's the internal self awareness a woman has, a knowledge of her own feminism.

From a physical standpoint however, there is maybe one thing that stands out as a trait that women have, that is their breasts. This is maybe one of those body parts that everyone can see on a woman, it's hard to miss. While we don't want to focus on these misogynous concepts, for many women, their breasts hold something different to them because they are more visual and like facial features, they give an overall sense of self. You get used to your shape in the mirror, yes, including your hips and waistline, so, while we try and not focus on the sexualization of ourselves, we still fall in to the trap due to social pressures and inevitably our own insecurities of our presentation to ourselves and the outside world. So while we try to just be ourselves, often we just can't, we have to live up to everyone else's expectations of female perfection.

Some women seem it necessary to label themselves “Adult Human Females”. Why a woman would want to define herself in such an abstract way is beyond me, it's reeks of insecurity, bias, a lack of understanding. It removes her from the entire sense of worth of womanhood itself, a normalization to the lowest common denominator of a person.

So what exactly then is a woman if we can't define ourselves physically without labeling us with the very labels that misogynous attitudes do ? It's something that is just us, it's what a woman has between her ear's, her mind, this is something uniquely hers and hers alone. It's her identity, her intelligence, the mother, the carer, the warrior, her ability to get up every day and decide to either be a plain Jane or embrace her inner beauty and turn that in to an external presentation of her inner self, makeup, be fashionable, be classy, be sexy, not for others, but for herself, to feel alive, to feel in control of who she is when she wants, not when other people want her to be. To be that person, that woman, that is control, that is nothing a man can dictate.

She is unique in her self and her experience.

She is a being larger than the sum of her 'parts'.