Living as a woman

I felt as if a thousand hands were beside mine during those nights, sisterhood across centuries and millennia. 💐and 💪and 😢to everyone who has posted.
@SuperLemonCrush
Thanks for putting that into words. I have also felt that connection to the women who have gone before me. Not in such emotional times, but when I pick the meat off the leftover roast chicken bones. I think of all the women who went before me doing the same task, but with the urgent pressure of finding enough meat to feed their families.

Realising that so many men born in the same year that I was have died. And those who haven't are likely to have dementia. Long life is not always a blessing.

Wishing you all the very best. Labour is hard work, but you can do it. ❤

One could read this thread and think about what men have told us about why they think they're somehow women and get a bit ragey.

I've been thinking about your question, OP, and the thing that is hovering for me is not just the experiences but how I've navigated them.

Apologising to midwives for swearing during contractions.
Being friendly to the man who raped me out of some confused mix of fear and denial.
The guilt at having PND.

It's the extra that womanhood layers on top of all the experiences - how we are expected to do it all backwards, in heels, while smiling.

Being sexually assaulted as a child. I know that happens to men, bet, as the phrase goes, not all men.

Feeling excited and also scared and nervous about having an induction this weekend.

Although given what so many women on this thread have been through, I’ve got off lightly.

Being in perimenopause and having no idea whether my next period will start today or in three weeks’ time.

Finding out in my mid 30s, when my fourth was just a baby that I had Stage 3B breast cancer and that I only had four days to wean him off breastfeeding before I had to have both my breasts amputated then go on to have months and months of treatment that would not only hopefully save/prolong my life, but that would leave me infertile and with lifelong physical and mental complications.

Being raped at 15yo by a 28yo male who was in a position of power over me and whom I trusted.

Being verbally harassed and then chased off a train by a group of 20ish year old guys, at 11pm on the way home, which was witnessed, and ignored by several other passengers. They stopped when they saw I was running towards a taxi rank, but I tripped and fell and took skin off my hands and face and tore the knees out my jeans. The first taxi driver didn’t want to take me because he “didn’t want me getting blood all over his car”. When I got home my husband thought I’d been in a car accident.

Being ignored in favour of my male partner as an emergency services worker, even though I was the senior officer.

I could go on…

This thread is beautiful and devastating and everything in between.

@MissScarletInTheBallroom I feel like we're reclaiming the phrase "live as a woman" from the people who took it without asking. The people who attempted to reduce our status in the group "woman" to that of mere objects.

Huge love to all the women posting here.

Being able to counsel and support many friends and almost unknown women my beloved midwife had sent my way on breastfeeding (and especially BFing twins, which I would never have even attempted if I had not been strongly encouraged by my lovely aunt).

Feeling like a hero for giving liters and liters of mother's milk to help feed little premature babies, and hoping I helped them thrive.

Using the French expression "I had the balls to do this and that", only with ovaries. Delightful.

Having my third baby all to myself for 10 minutes after he was born (could not spend this time with the others after an emergency C section). The purest joy ever after the agony of giving birth without anesthetics

Getting called "my little girl" at work when you have the audacity to tell facts which contradict a man's opinion

Being told by a random man "if you don't give me your bag, I'll plant my knife in your belly. Ooh' that will hurt the baby" while 5 month pregnant with twins.

My experience of living as a woman
Projectile vomiting due to period pain
Passing out every month due to perimenopause
Paying a luxury tax for tampons
Taking the pill so my partner doesn't have to wear condoms
Being unable to open a jar of jam and having to take it to work so a man could open it for me.
Smears and soon to be mammograms
Being paid less than stupid men- because they have "a family to support"
My male friend being spoken to when I am asking questions about something I am going to pay for.
Waiting until 2025 for abortion to be decimalised

What is "not living as a woman"
Enjoying having shaved legs
Enjoying painting your nails/toenails
Wearing tights/Stockings/heels/skirts/dresses.
Having long hair
Referring to yourself or any other person as a "doll"
Bubble baths
Botox/Filler
Having a fun party in the public toilets
Having sex with men
Thinking a woman is something that is something that you "feel" rather than objectively experience.
Waving at women after they have had gynae surgery while being on a female only ward

Being sexually abused as a toddler and trafficked not long after. Having a cop call me a slag when I was 3 and he found a group of teens assaulting me in the loo. Being told that bc I was a girl, I was only good for sex and I wasn't much good at that either. Not being believed by adults but also told that I shouldn't say anything or they would throw me in prison and that I shouldn't ruin good men by telling. IOW, them assaulting me wasn't the problem, me talking about it was. And they were still good men while I was now a slag, who had no value and shouldn't be believed.

I was very young when I learned just how much men hate women and girls and that many women go along with it. I see rape culture almost everywhere.

I was told not to bother w uni bc education was wasted on women.

I also relate to many of the posts about child and familial care. Like some PP, I told my DC's school to call my husband instead of me. He told them that, too but they still always called me.

Never felt so womanly as the time the Registrar was getting frustrated with me because my legs kept falling off the stirrups when he was trying to stop a vaginal haemorrhage caused by forceps. I'd had an epidural and couldn't actually feel my legs. It was awesome when I looked around at just the right time to see a midwife walk off with a large bowl of my own blood. It was so affirming to dizzily limp to the bathroom to enjoy my daily shower including trying to catch giant clots before they splattered on the bathroom floor (didn't always suceed). I revelled in the allergic reaction to maternity pads, which attracted a crowd of healthcare professionals one morning. It was so great that they insisted I kept curtains open at all times, so that I could maintain the fear of walkers-by seeing my adjust my allergic pads every time I moved. Never felt so womanly and feminine in my life!

Peri-menopausal flooding on the passenger seat of a colleague’s car.

@DustyWindowsills I was a feminist by about age 5! I had a brother and it was obvious to me we were treated differently - some of this was inconsquential stuff, but sibling rivalry being what it is, I wanted what he had. That wasn't the only reason, mind you, as I only had to look around me to see that men and boys were treated better, and many of them saw women and girls as inferior.

At age 4, having a tiny pink spade for the garden sandpit while my brother had a much bigger blue one.

While hammering a nail into a piece of furniture I had designed, being told by a man "I don't like to see you doing that."

Being told by an abusive, lying ex that women are supposed to be forgiving.

I did, thank you! Three and a half years later. I walked through with the pregnancy test, showed my husband and just said 'does that say what I think it does' and we just stared at each other in shock. Took a while to sink in for both of us I think.

Love your story about the clinic person phoning - I bet they loved being the one to tell you, once the surprise at your reaction wore off!