What does it mean to be a woman?

On femininity, 'not like other girls' syndrome, and trans women.

I suppose the most important thing to establish first is that I am a feminist in every sense of the word. A 10 toes down, unconditional, life-long supporter of women.

I have loved women in every way for as long as I have been alive, and I feel an incredible sense of pride in my womanhood. Something about the knowledge that I am but one link in a long chain of women and girls, separated only by time, brings me to tears. There’s this persistent feeling that I am an extension of them, connected to them in ways more important than genetics. I like to imagine that they had similar feelings, thoughts, and desires - that I am more like my foremothers than I could ever know.

All of this is to say that I am fiercely protective and proud of women as a group.

Therefore, it is somewhat embarrassing to remember that I did not always feel this way. Not so long ago, like many girls in my generation, I went through the infamous ‘not like other girls’ phase.

I can’t remember what brought this phenomenon on, when it started, or when it ended. Something I will never forget, however, is how distraught I was at the idea of being seen as one of those girls. The silly girls. The catty girls. The inferior girls. 

During this time, I shopped in the boy’s section for clothes, and waxed lyrical about my love of sports and science. I railed against pink, princesses, and boy bands. I went on and on about how ‘boys just make better friends’ because ‘they’re less drama’. I would mock the very things I shamefully enjoyed at home. The cognitive dissonance was bizarre.

I feel sad when I think back on this time in my life. What had caused me to feel such shame over being a girl? I had never been explicitly told that to be a girl is inferior to being a boy, that to be a girl or to like girlish things is something to be embarrassed about; and yet, almost every woman I have ever met has had a similar experience. This cultural phenomenon where at some point in their childhood little girls are taught to be ashamed of themselves is just so heartbreaking. To feel so inadequate during a period that is so important for the development of self-esteem and identity is genuinely damaging.

So I feel very sorry for that younger me. I was so desperate to be seen as different. I refused to be associated with the caricature of girlhood that has been the butt of jokes for centuries - a pretty picture of frivolity and foolishness, and above all, inferiority. No, I was more than that. I was intelligent, and cared about things that mattered. I was special.

I believe it’s unsurprising that this mode of thinking was an issue for me during my transition from child to teenager. I was experiencing an identity crisis. My body was becoming weird, wrong in a way that boys’ bodies never do, and the way I was treated changed with it.

I developed breasts, grew hair where it had never been before, and began to bleed on a monthly basis. It was made extremely clear to me what the consequences of this were. I may have had a child’s mind, but it was now in a woman’s body, and to think otherwise would be so immature as to be embarrassing. I learnt that this was all happening for one reason, that I had one God-give purpose - to marry a man, and give him children. This was a privilege, I was told. A punishment from God, too. All women suffer for the sins of Eve, I learnt. Cramps, bleeding, leers, insults, pure disgust all became my cross to bear. I had become a woman, so it was time to toughen up and take things on the chin.

That was the idea of womanhood I was presented with. It was a duty, a punishment, a prison. Taking all of this into account, it therefore seems fairly reasonable that I would reject the notion of womanhood with great fervour.

A factor that certainly contributed to the issue was that it did not occur to me that biological sex could be separated from gender identity. I was completely unaware that there was a distinction for the first 15 years of my life. To be a woman and to have a vagina were intrinsically linked in my mind. I believed that you could not have one without the other, as foolish as that may sound. As a result, being a girl was synonymous with the feeling of pain and degradation associated with the female body coming of age.

I was lucky enough, however, to be introduced to the transgender community during my formative years. For trans people, specifically trans women, womanhood was not some curse that one must endure, but a form of pure self-expression. This was the first time I had ever encountered a representation of womanhood that was based not on the inferiority of an entire sex, but on pride, and self-love. Womanhood was not a prison bestowed upon those with XX chromosomes, but a form of expression open to anyone. For the first time in my mind, femininity was not synonymous with weakness, but with strength.

I used to strongly dislike the idea of ‘healing your inner child’. It seemed somewhat ridiculous to me, a bit narcissistic, even. But from that moment on, every choice I made to embrace the concept of femininity felt healing. How I decorated my spaces, the clothes I wore, the media I consumed, all things that I had previously been ashamed of, were now things I exalted in.

This experience of mine is part of the reason why I feel such incredulity at the hatred trans women receive for daring to present themselves as stereotypically feminine. The accusation that their self-expression is tantamount to ‘woman face’ - a phrase that is so ridiculous it is genuinely laughable - is undeniably a bad faith argument. Why is it that my choice to express myself in a stereotypically feminine manner is empowering, a reclamation of that which I used to feel so ashamed of, yet when the same is done by trans women they are personally degrading women as a whole? It was trans women who showed me what being a woman could look like, that womanhood was so much bigger than having a uterus.

That TERFs and transphobes are determined to argue that you cannot be a woman without having a vagina is only further reducing women to a set of specific societal roles, the irony of which is incredible. I lived many years of my life ashamed of being a girl, and I had the privilege of it being socially acceptable for me to identify and present as one. Trans women like Dylan Mulvaney who receive such vitriol for their feminine expression are just women like me who are trying to appease the little girl inside of them who was repressed and hidden for so long.

I am hardly an expert on sex and gender. Rather, I am incredibly aware of my lack of knowledge on the intricacies of this topic. I am writing this only because it has been weighing on my mind as of late. Trans women are not ‘role playing’ femininity because femininity is not something exclusive that comes with your ovaries. It is a form of self-expression, open to anybody. It is not something to be ashamed of, as so many girls are, but to be proud of.

Maggie :)

*If any trans women happen to read this, please feel free to send me your thoughts, whether they be in agreement or criticism. If I have misspoken, or unintentionally perpetuated a harmful stereotype, do not hesitate to let me know. I will fix it immediately.