Defining 'Woman'

Day 26—When I explored what it means when I say 'I am a woman'.

There seems to be a lot of talk about what defines a ‘woman’, and seeing as I love diving into the meanings and semantics of words, I thought I’d explain what being a ‘woman’ means to me.

First of all, let’s talk about frustrating definitions. You know the ones I mean—when the definition actually uses the word being defined as a way to explain said word?

Yeah. Not helpful.

I came across an example of this just the other week when watching MAFS: Australia (guilty pleasure and I will NOT apologise for it, so let’s move on). Lauren, an incredibly arrogant and insufferable character, kept describing other people on the show as ‘Boganic’. I’d never heard that term before, so I looked it up:

(adj.) Of or resembling a bogan.

See what I mean? Extremely unhelpful. I had better luck once I looked up ‘bogan’:

noun Australian derogatory, informal

1. an unfashionable, unpopular person

2. an unsophisticated, uneducated person

There we go—helpful.

Now, do you think it is helpful or unhelpful when someone defines a woman as ‘someone who internally identifies as a woman’?

I’m going to say this once—you cannot define a term by using the term itself. You need more.

But, yes, ‘woman’ may mean different things to different people. So here’s mine:

• Being a woman means being the focus of attention in primary school because I was the only girl wearing long trousers for P.E. instead of shorts because my mum reverted to Islam and we were introducing the idea of ‘modesty’.

• Being a woman means being the very last of my friends to get her period at almost 13 and being mocked by said friends for almost 2 years because it took my body ‘so long’.

• Being a woman means getting embarassed and tongue-tied when I tried to explain to my stepdad for the first time why I wasn’t praying (women don’t have to pray when they get their period. Thank God, because crouching on the floor with cramps is not the one).

• Speaking of cramps, being a woman means rolling around in pure agony on my bed, sobbing in pain, feeling like I’m going to throw up, and hearing my mum despair and say, “I don’t know what to suggest! I’ve never had cramps like this!”

• Being a woman was eventually realising I would only survive each month by taking a ridiculous amount of scary-looking, large pills. They made them pink, as if somehow that made it better.

• Being a woman was having a stalker turn up weekly at my place of work and the most I could do was call security and he still turned up the following week.

• Being a woman is feeling the pure terror when I got pregnant and trying to process exactly what my body was about to go through.

• Being a woman was having my brain chemistry literally change as I became a mother. Baby brain was real. Not the mysoginistic view that it makes you forgetful. No, the real baby brain that only happens when a woman becomes a mother and her brain literally rewires itself in order to place another being’s survival above her own. Interestingly, this change is also believed to happen when a woman adopts a child. It’s not the pregnancy that does it.

• Being a woman is donning my hijab out of love for my Lord and being told I was oppressed and brainwashed by men.

• Being a woman is showing up for my children every single day, regardless of how sick I feel, the pain I’m in (those cramps didn’t get any easier, FYI), regardless of anything—my kids come first.

• Being a woman is making the choice to home educate and work from home in order to be with my children over a career and being told by radical feminists that I’m oppressed and selling out.

• Being a woman is being told by the aggressive trans rights activists (I’m fully aware they are in the minority) that ‘cis’ women need to “shut up and know their place”. Unfortunately, the irony of that particular phrase is lost on most people.

I doubt we’re ever going to agree on a singular, simple definition of a ‘woman’, but this is what being a woman means to me. This is me as a woman. Not a ‘cis’ woman. I don’t identify with that label (it sounds like a parasitic prototype of a clone).

I am a woman and my voice matters just as much as someone else. My voice existing doesn’t mean I hate someone with a different voice. It doesn’t mean I don’t believe an opposing voice exists. It doesn’t mean I’m inciting violence.

It just means I am a woman and my experience of that is valid.

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Day 26 of my challenge to write every day for 30 days! No matter what. The aim is to break through my writer’s block, perfectionism, and procrastination. This topic has been weighing on my mind for a while. I still have more to say, but this was scary enough to publish!