I never asked to be a woman.
The more spiritual people I know will probably disagree. “Oh, we all agree on the life we lead before we get to this world.”
Maybe, there’s something to it.
Still, I don’t remember signing and dating this specific contract.
As far as I’m concerned, I never asked.
When I was younger, people punished me for being allegedly fuckable. Men and women both, I won’t leave women off the hook. They punished me so badly that every instance of sexual violence, and other kinds of violence, that I experienced was cast, by some, as my responsibility. I was pretty, after all. I was there for the taking.
Because I was vulnerable and doubted myself, I awarded that hateful minority an outsized status.
Now that I’m older, people try to punish me for being allegedly unfuckable. Again, I don’t let women off the hook.
Please note, though, that “try to punish me” has entered the chat. Growing older and wiser means having the luxury of not giving a fuck. I tend to smile when people I don’t know offer opinions on my fuckability. I am not their concubine. My inner self is inaccessible to them, no matter how much they claw for it. And claw for it they do.
“Try to punish me” has entered the chat
I never asked to be a woman, but I rather like being a woman. And all of the extremely online fights about womanhood mostly just amuse me.
I don’t think it’s just women who are vulnerable in this world. I think men are too. In fact, I think this is why men lash out so much. Because they’re not supposed to be vulnerable, but they are. Deep inside their hearts, they know this to be the case.
As a loving mother, sister, and daughter — I have known this to be the case as well. My love allowed me to see beyond the weird gender stereotypes that exist in every society due to fear. I saw the damage inflicted on men by outsized expectations.
Even men I respect and look up to have been known to hurt me. Because we are stuck in a weird and hurtful matrix. It’s OK, or so I try to tell myself. Haven’t I hurt people in my life as well? This is such a woman thing to do, is it not? To always hold yourself back, afraid of offending the men in your life.
The men I choose to keep in my life now, though, are some of the bravest people I have ever known. I suppose war will do that.
War whittles us down to our essentials. I will never be grateful to it. But I ride the dark wave that it has sent, hissing, across my life, and I find things to hold on to.
My body and mind were made to be tough, because I am a woman. I carry on. I withstand. I have created life, even when the world around me and the body I occupy in it both screamed that life was not possible (the incurable illness I live with and only discovered years after I became a mom once made a male doctor of mine say, “And yet you carried a pregnancy to term and can build muscle strength, this is impressive.” I think about him often, and I thank him for his bluntness).
One day I will rest, and not a lot of lofty words will be said about it. Because, again, I am a woman.
Maybe I did choose this after all.
I am so grateful, either way.
Image: Tim Mossholder