Talking about sex not gender - woman means adult human female

I didn’t realise this until recently but I think the time I learnt a lot about the differences about men and women (and what makes a woman) was when I was ten and in a refuge. I overheard my mother talking about how my father had raped her. The law was only just changing but her solicitor advised her they probably wouldn’t get far mentioning it in court.

After that things like the humiliation of periods at school (I used to suffer with very bad D&V in the first few years of my periods), facial hair and shaving body hair and bleeding when losing my virginity and the guy telling everyone.

Then as an adult:

• rape by “friends” being laughed off as “a drunken fumble”
• having my first DC whilst young and being spoken to with utter contempt
• the way you’re spoken to like an animal whilst pregnant
• sexism at university
• sexism at work
• the sheer horror of the initial few months of pain with breastfeeding
• miscarriage
• c-section
• VBAC (and fighting for it)
• ovarian cysts
• uterine fibroids
• pressure to give up your name if you get married
• learning how to deal with and appease drunk men so they don’t turn violent
• learning how to deal with and appease men at work so they don’t target you
• learning how to deal with and appease men so they don’t deliberately try to humiliate you in conversation
• female pain being downplayed in comparison to male pain

From being a very small girl I have wondered what my life would have been like if I'd been born male. For substantial periods of my life I have wanted that. There came a flash of understanding, not all that long ago, that what I wanted was not to have been born male, but born into a world where being born female was to be treated and socialised as though I was as fully human and as worthy as if I'd been born male.

I'd been a feminist my whole life, and yet it took decades for me to get to the point where I understood this.

Thank you for the flowers 🌺 you go on the smiley face and it gives you options and one of them is flowers.

It was mumsnet that turned me into a feminist. 100 per cent.

pratchet i've just finished reading all of your HUGE thread yesterday. it's phenomenal. thank you thank you thank you. it has really helped me to hear all the voices of solidarity.

and i hear you re the socialisation. it is really hard to face up to, especially when you realise you are still doing it. i still can almost not bear to hurt a man's feelings, as if their pain is real and a woman's pain is, what? invisible? silent? lesser? to be expected?

My friends and I (all female) during years 7,8,9 and 10 of our secondary school years were quiet and were thought of as the 'well behaved and clever little girls'. For this reason we were split up from our small friendship group in every class except pe and made to sit with the noisy/boisterous/troublesome boys to ensure that they benefitted from our calm and studious manner. The boys I sat next to were totally disruptive and it really impacted my own learning have to act as a classroom assistant. I'm a woman. On the other hand when it came to P.E the girls had to accept whatever equipment/spaces the boys didn't use and often we were left with 7 hockey sticks between 60 of us I'm a woman. Any time I left the house I was expected to be immaculately dressed and wearing makeup/hair done nicely, my brother and my male fiends just had to get dressed - done. I'm a woman. I was expected to babysit my sisters children whenever she wanted to go out (not my brother or the childrens father) because caring is womens work obvs. I'm a woman. I should not have short hair because men don't find it attractive. I'm a woman. A homeless man stopped my then boyfriend and asked to speak to him specifically and not me because 'women are heartless bitches and they never give poor blokes a fucking penny'. I'm a woman.

I am fortunate. I am not a survivor of any kind. I was brought up in a family that was aware of and did its best to ensure I could recognise and fight against societal female socialisation and recognise potential patriarchal abuse from individuals and systems.

I want a world where every woman is as "lucky" as me. I think it's a disgrace that I see myself as "lucky".

Woman is the subordinate class in a sex caste system.

And that is why woman will always mean adult human female. Defining ourselves is fundamental, vital: it allows us to find each other, organise, and fight to liberate ourselves from control by male people, however they happen to identify.

I was socialised, big time.

Actually this is quite upsetting!

Everything about being female was embarrassing. Everything to do with periods and hormones was to be hidden. When I had a miscarriage my husband didn't talk to me for a week and I felt sorry for him. When I came home with my first baby after a section I slept on the floor in the living room so he could get a good nights sleep after running round all week getting the house ready.

It's important to keep it because the majority of human adult females identify as a woman. That's enough.

For me it has meant trying to please men and tiptoe around them all my life. This was ingrained in me from girlhood. I had tactics - how to get men to do what you want. Eyelash batting, or to say 'you're right when you say '. It worked so well. You lose credit for the idea but the idea gets done. And that was fine by me. That's how socialised I was.

Women's achievements have often been missed out of recorded history so it looks like they have made less of a contribution than they have. We only have to look at Hidden Figures to see how the incredible contribution by women of colour to NASA was nearly forgotten entirely.

Removing and attempting to redefine the word women erases that contribution still further.

For me, growing up female was absolutely fine. I had brothers and male friends (no sisters, female cousins or neighbours). I was perfectly happy being one of the gang - indeed for a long time I thought I was a boy. Until I got to the age of about 10.

Periods and breasts meant I had to dress differently. The boys realised I was different and started to leave me out. I was sent to a different secondary school where I wasn't allowed to do all three sciences (girls didn't do physics then) so had to do extra classes outside school.

A late diagnosis of endometriosis explained my excruciating pain during periods from the age of 12 to 25 - and also my infertility. Having to adopt meant I had to give up work (a high paid graduate job with a future). Being main carer of a disabled child meant I couldn't return to work.

Continual gynaecological difficulties (pain and a horrible menopause) as well as caring duties have affected my whole life. And now as a 56 year old my husband has decided to walk out on a 30 year marriage, leaving me with no money, no pension, no career. And no bank account, no credit card, no means of getting credit (they want my husband to sign for me to get a credit card, unbelievable in 2018 you might think).

I'm invisible to the state, and to society.

I am a woman.