So, how would you explain what it is like to be a biological female?

[TopBitchoftheWitches]

Just that really....

Honestly? I don't think you can. If you are a woman you know what it's like. Women are all different and experience womanhood differently. The only thing that joins us really is our biology, which again we all experience in different ways.

I'm hoping someone more articulate will come along and explain beautifully!

Dunno. Never been anything else. It isn't my major concern in life.

Definitely someone more articulate needed...

Nope. Because it's not a state of mind. It's not how I express myself or dress or act. It just is what I am and I cannot change it.

The only way to be female is through biology.

Explain to whom? And why ?

...... sorry, that’s not very helpful, but what’s to explain ....?

It’s different on different days and at stages of my life. The marginalisation and objectification as a younger woman, the othering of society to be expected to fulfil a particular role. Physically, the immeasurable love of a much wanted baby moving inside me. Lately, the indescribable pain of my kiwi sized uterine fibroid and the fear of possible genetic female cancers.

Not much of it is to do with hair, make up, heels.

For me, it was pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding that I really felt 'female'. That is NOT to say that women who don't do any or only do some of those things are not female! It's just my personal experience.
The feel of a baby moving, birthing the baby and that burning, mama bear feeling of protectiveness over my newborn baby, as well as feeding and nurturing my baby. My baby is older now but those experiences changed me inexplicably, forever, and I can never be the person I was before that now.

We can't all pull a Tieresias (sp?). Tricky as noone would be biologically able to compare and contrast as anyone hermaphrodite is an entirely different situation.

Yes nautical I agree with you.

I don't wish to make this a taat.

Biology is the main part for me.

I have no innate sense of being a woman. I experience it physically as a series of features about my body, and psychologically by the way society has treated me throughout my life "because" of those features. If it wasn't for the latter, the former would be no more relevant to me than any of my other physical features.

The only way to describe being a biological female is that I have two X chromosomes and no Y chromosome. This means I have the associated female biology. Female is not a state of mind or a preference, it's hard wired, fixed, binary reality.

For me it's about the biology of being female and, even more so, about how society treats you because of that biology.

NotWithABang So if you didn't feel female until you became pregnant, what did you feel like beforehand ?

It's biology. It's what I have always been. Whether I liked it, or not.

It has caused me stretch marks, uncomfortable underwear, anxiety about my appearance, I've had to take drugs to control my fertility and to manage heavy periods, I've had traumatic coil insertion, I've had to worry about my dress being respectable, as my cleavage is on the generous side.

Those are all trivial things. I've also had to manage work around child care and pregnancies. I've been touched against my will multiple times and raped.

I know I am a woman. I cannot stop being a woman, no matter what I do.

Fucking shit

No real idea what "being a biological female" means. I used to have periods. Don't now. Apparently I missed the bit where I was super differently conditioned and can't piss in the same building as a penis without a nervous breakdown which some folk seem to have. I've had one very abusive partner, but mostly I've not had much of an issue being a woman. Certainly, I've never been harassed at work etc. Career hasn't suffered.

I guess there's a performative level where people expect me to wear make up and look pretty which I mildly resent but that's not really biological.

I guess there's a lot of stuff around kids that is bio woman focused like the right to an abortion and different responsibilities in child rearing, but for whatever reason, I married a man who does more with the kids than me and is a very hands on dad. So...no idea really.

I was thinking about this the other day after reading too much blood boiling threads on MN
Asked myself "how do you know you're female?"
You just are. It's a sense of being, you're female, you just are.
Both physically and mentally, just female.
Never realised how strongly I felt about being one until I heard and realised what the term "cis" meant.
Fuck off with that shit, scuse my language, but I'm a woman. Call yourself what you like but you don't get to re-label me to fit your own ideals.

I don't have to explain it (beyond pointing people at a GCSE biology textbook, specifically the chapter on human reproduction) because I simply am female. It has nothing to do with how I feel, or what I believe, or how I dress, or what I do for a living or what hobbies I have or what books or music I like, or how often I cry versus how often I manage to keep a stiff upper lip. I simply am

Because of biology, because I've had a baby, because of some societal expectations and prejudices.

Well I mean it depends. For me it means back ache from heavy breasts, a week of extreme moodiness followed by a week of blood leaking out of me, being pregnant/giving birth/not sleeping for years on end because breastfeeding.

There's the undertones of being vulnerable due to your biology. Knowing that women's health medicine is still more archaic than other branches of medicine. Having men's opinion of what is womanly nattering more than your experience of being a woman.

ALL the experiences of the biology: worrying if you haven't had periods yet, worrying if you ARE having periods at school, periods being a source of many jokes by your make classmates. Later wondering about your fertility and what it'll mean for you if you do or don't get pregnant. And so on

To me it's my biology. Women suffer discrimination because of their biology. There's no other reason.

There's no point at which I accept that any trans identified male is a woman.

I don't 'feel' like a female in any psychological sense. Obviously I don't know what it feels like, psychologically, to be a man, but I have read enough books written from a male perspective to guess that our thoughts are fundamentally similar.

To me, being a woman is about two things - the physical aspect, including having a female body, a menstrual cycle, being pregnant, breastfeeding, etc (which is not to say that you have to experience all of those things to be a woman). Secondly, it is about how you are treated by others.

I know that being unable to conceive, and therefor3 r oerience pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, motherhood made me feel less female, less like a woman. I can’t really say what it feels like to be female now.