What Makes A Woman?

[MxJackMonroe]

Hi MNers,

A couple of days ago I did an informal webchat ...

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2693127-Im-Jack-Monroe-Ask-me-anything

...and it seemed to go quite well. One of the questions that came up was 'What Is A Woman'?

I'm throwing this one open to the floor - as I am interested to hear your opinions on it.

Please try to not railroad the thread with trans-bashing; it is a wider question than that, so keep responses respectful please.

Jx

Women = female = vagina/uterus/ovaries/eggs/XX (even if any of those do not work or appear as usually expected)

I'd go with this.

A person cannot make themselves into a woman (or a man). They can choose to present themselves as the other sex, and adopt outward characteristics of the other sex.

As regards the changing room/loos debate; it comes down to why we think we have separate facilities for the different sexes. I think it's to do with outwards characteristics - therefore people should use the facilities of whichever sex they present as, regardless of their innate biology.

I really hate the idea that a boy who prefers stereotypical girl things, or a girl who prefers stereotypical boy things, should be told or decide themselves that they are "the wrong sex". The problem is with the stereotype not with their sex.

You are fair, Robins.

I didn't see another thread by the way, so I don't know what was and wasn't discussed on there.

I'm a bit sleep deprived (broken ribs) and sensitive today (broken self)!

I dislike my female body. I was aware from a very young age that my limbs were soft, and not very strong, and nothing like my brothers' or male peers' lithe, muscular limbs that lent themselves so naturally to running and leaping. I went through puberty later than most and stayed shapeless for years, apart from these nasty, poky, pointless breasts that grew. I spent a couple of years wearing bras that I adapted by sewing up the front to flatten my breasts and make them less prominent. I always tried to hunch, to be less visible. I envied boys the way they could just throw on clothes and go into the world without worrying about the space their body took up and how it poked and protruded in unwanted places.
I hated my breasts all through my 20s, then I had a baby and found that they were defective, I was right all along, and they are as pointless as I always believed.
I still resent the softness and uselessness of my limbs. I still envy my brothers their long lithe limbs and their ability to run for miles unencumbered by unnecessary flesh.
None of that makes me a not woman.

That's the thing though. When kids act out gendered behaviour, it's actually 'learned' behaviour. It's not innate. Girls don't innately like pink and princesses etc, society guides them that way. That seems to be a separate thing from physical/psychological dysphoria, which is absolutely real but a reaction to biology. The existence of the first seems to conflate the second, particularly at this point in history, when consumerism has led to our society being very harshly gendered. If we were able to stick to biological descriptors of our bodies while being allowed to act/feel as we wished without gender constraints, there would be no need to 'redefine' woman. It's the societal constructs and expectations around 'female/woman' that have been added to our biology that are problematic. And contribute to our continuing oppression because of our biology.

beyond I assumed it was because most of her beef seems to be with MN feminists and that they are the ones who disagree with her most.

Erm, no. I thought this was the right area to post it to explore the question. 'Most of my beef' is with war, poverty, benefit sanctions, child abuse, rape, FGM, etc. I'm not here to troll, and am saddened that anyone would think that.

If we were able to stick to biological descriptors of our bodies while being allowed to act/feel as we wished without gender constraints, there would be no need to 'redefine' woman. It's the societal constructs and expectations around 'female/woman' that have been added to our biology that are problematic. And contribute to our continuing oppression because of our biology.

YES YES YES YES YES.

I really struggled with it. But I carried a healthy child and ate well and looked after myself. But the changes to my body were very distressing. I've buried it somewhere deep over the last 6 or 7 years. I can't really wrench it up now, I have a wonderful son who I love dearly.

Sounds like we had very similar experiences... Which gives me a lot to mull over! I've always been an ardent feminist, and... Idk. I'm confused and scared.

Wish I was as brave as you. x

I'm a woman. I have female sex characteristics although non functioning hence I've utilised lots of nhs resources to unsuccessfully fix them.
I also wear make up and heels on a night out. They don't make me a woman. It's my broken but still unequivocally biological female characteristics that do that.
For me, being a woman is intrinsically my biology - I don't understand it when people say they feel or don't feel like a woman. I know many women (obviously!) and I have things in common with some but not all in terms of personality but we all share sex characteristics. Equally I am similar to some men in attitude, behaviour, style but I have no shared sex characteristics because they aren't women. I have no idea how anyone could extrapolate all those shared or unique experiences and distill it down to a female "feeling". I totally understand on the other hand why someone might feel like societies caricature of femininity may or may not match their internal feelings.

Jack - *If we were able to stick to biological descriptors of our bodies while being allowed to act/feel as we wished without gender constraints, there would be no need to 'redefine' woman. It's the societal constructs and expectations around 'female/woman' that have been added to our biology that are problematic. And contribute to our continuing oppression because of our biology.

YES YES YES YES YES*

This is what I don't get! You agree with this - we agree, I agree with the agreeing! So why can't we say: some women have short hair, like to sleep with other women rather than men, don't really go for 'feminine' names or nicknames, have tattoos, but guess what - also, they might have children, be really good at cooking.... or literally any combination of all the ways one can dress, people one can fancy or fall in love with, hairstyles one can have, bits of the body one can be proud of or dislike..... and that doesn't mean they're not a woman, or are 'genderqueer' or exceptionally non-binary - just that that's what they're like?

The rest of us aren't 'binary' or 'gender straight' - having terms like this just enforces the idea that gender is not something we can escape, but something we either adopt or have to very consciously oppose our own individual selves to, and by doing so, actually make it more of a 'thing'!

Effing bold fail again - up to and including 'YES YES YES' should be bold there, sorry!

I am a woman. I have xx chromosomes, female reproductive system and a genetic disorder that only females get.
I have ALWAYS been a "tomboy". As a child, in my mind I was a boy. I dressed like a boy, played with boys toys and identified as a boy.
I am 43 and still dress in masculine clothing, have a "boys bike" and basically still look like a tomboy.
People ask if I want to be a man.
I'm a woman, I'm proud to be a woman, but I'm a woman that looks like how society expect a man to look.
Thankfully, as an adult, I appreciate that I can dress how in want, have my hair how I want, and not conform to gender stereotypes and embrace this as my womanhood.

OT to Jack and PLEASE don't flame me as I've lurked for years and years on the feminist forum and you ladies have changed my political views and made me an all round, better person.

But... (And PLEASE don't flame me!!) How do you know the difference between 'non stereotype woman' and... Well, something isn't quite 'right?'I've felt 'wrong' for so many years, and have spent most of them presenting a stereotypical (if hippy!) giggly, ditzy stereotype to the world. But that's not really me

What does all that mean????

Biology makes me a woman. I am a woman. I don't feel like a woman. I am one.

I have absolutely no idea what feeling like a woman means, so do struggle with the trans stuff as feel like I must be missing some major part of my life so far surely? What is this elusive 'feeling' that I don't have?

There are women of all sorts and natures and I feel similar to some and not so much others, but that's no different from feeling the same with men. I think one time you may 'feel like a woman' is perhaps whilst breast feeding, feeling a baby kick inside you and panicking in the middle of a meeting when you get your period. Those things make me feel like a woman I guess because I am very aware that I am dealing with female bodily functions and yes, you may 'identify with being a woman' when another woman approaches you at work and asks if you have a spare tampon.

I have been racking my brains to think of any other times or reasons I feel like a woman that don't involve sexual/reproductive parts of my body = biology.

However, those feelings don't make me a woman, they are a result of me being one.

*If we were able to stick to biological descriptors of our bodies while being allowed to act/feel as we wished without gender constraints, there would be no need to 'redefine' woman. It's the societal constructs and expectations around 'female/woman' that have been added to our biology that are problematic. And contribute to our continuing oppression because of our biology.

YES YES YES YES YES*

This year I've been to events featuring Germaine Greer, Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, Julia Long, Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel and Stephanie Davies-Arai. Each and every one of them said the above.

So Jack, why on earth aren't you standing with them to eliminate gender?

Paperkins - I agree with you. When I have thought in the past about what makes me "feel" like a woman, it's feelings like fear when I'm walking alone at night and a male approaches. Feeling pain my breasts before my period (god how I hate having breasts now that they have served their biological purpose). Feeling weak and small. But also pride in having grown, given birth to, nurtured and fed two children All innately connected to my biology and nothing to do with my clothing, hobbies, job or penchant for a certain colour.

Well, I wanted to be a boy when I was little because I could see from a very early age that life was different for boys in ways I envied. Tom-boy they used to call me. (Read the William Satire 'Person paper on purity in language for how squirmy I now find that term).

I once read a comment about how 'all this talk of 'women' sounds a bit terf-y' and that to me is entirely the fucking problem in this whole deebate. The erasure of woman as a meaningful class around whom a politics is possible. Woman is a sex class, and feminity is a political project that subjugates them on the basis of their belonging to that sex class. The answer to this is not to deny the sex class but to deny this as a legitimate grounds for subjugation. For me anyway.

Yy to everything FloraFox says.

Great post by Robin above.

And also this:

WOMAN is not an 'identity'. It is a biological reality. Anyone with female anatomy (whether normal & functioning or not) and an XX chromosome is a woman.

It is very clear to me what a woman is, even as a woman who likes doing sport, works in an industry dominated by men, likes DIY, cars, maths and physics, doesn't wear pretty dresses and has no interest in "traditional gender roles". None of this makes me any less of a woman.

Someone on the earlier thread (apologies, can't find it now to reference) used an explanation that I love as it really struck a chord.

To paraphrase:

Sex is the biological class of being female (egg producing) or male (sperm producing).

Gender is the little boxes that society puts us in based on our sex (though the trappings of the boxes vary by society).

Transgender is "I'm in the wrong box" (which validates the concept of having boxes in the first place).

Nonbinary is "I want a different box" (which validates the concept of having boxes in the first place).

Feminism is "Fuck off with the boxes!" (which denies the whole premise of society associating sex with behaviour).

So anyone coming from the trans or nonbinary perspective is in philosophical opposition to someone coming from the feminist perspective, because one wants to validate gender boxes and the other does not.

Jack you've said a few times that you think gender isn't real and is socially-imposed bullshit. Hell yeah! That's the feminist perspective too. But then you seem to contradict it when you describe yourself as trans and nonbinary, because those perspectives are grounded in the assumption that the gender boxes are real and meaningful (even if individuals want to get out of the box they felt they were in).

I'm not trying to criticise you unfairly and I don't think you're being hypocritical or anything, but you seem to be trying to embrace two conflicting philosophies at the moment. Saying "gender is bullshit but I'm in transition to nonbinary" is mashing together two philosophies that can't work as they are internally inconsistent, which is where some of the irritation on the previous thread came from.

Saying "gender is bullshit and I'll behave however I want (and harm none...)" is internally consistent and feminist in denying the premise of gender boxes.

Saying "gender does not fit me personally and I'm in transition to nonbinary" is internally consistent and trans/nonbinary in validating the existence of gender boxes.

Which of the consistent descriptions do you prefer?

"A woman is an adult human female. She will be of the sex class that is perceived to be able to bear young and due to that perception, she will be treated as lesser than men from before she she is born. "

Agree.

Jack - I admit I expected less openness from you, but actually, I think you are being remarkably open to new ideas. I do hope you understand how very frustrated many women are with how womanhood is being defined, redefined and then bastardised some more.

I also think that we are SO close to bridging the gap. Plenty of times you have said gender is a cage, a prison, a dangerous societal expectation etc. Non-binary theory is almost there with placing people outside of the spectrum. But we need to go further in saying there's no spectrum either. What's crucial too, is that biology IS important and is real, else we lose a tremendous amount of support and have women's issues erases e.g. in childbirth.

Another transgender person, Miranda Yardley, has written about feminism in the context of the trans movement. I'd recommend a read when you get a moment:

www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-cb92-The-conflict-between-feminism-and-the-transgender-movement

And as geeka says, sod the boxes. We don't need them.

I agree that a woman is an adult human female, a person of the biological sex which produces eggs, generally with an XX genotype, and I would include those intersex individuals with a Y chromosome who have been raised and socialised as girls. I don't support an identity based classification system because I think that for medical, legal and political reasons it's important that we have a word to describe people who are biologically female and who share a reproductive function and a set of externally imposed expectations, restrictions and stereotypes based on that. I think it's much more important that we stress that human personalities and interests come in a huge, diverse variety which is to be celebrated as long as it doesn't hurt others, and that whilst some studies may have shown that an average of 100 men might be ever so slightly more likely to score more highly on a measure of a certain personality trait than the average of 100 women, this tells is nothing useful about what individual men and women are or should be like. I agree, let's smash the boxes, not try to squash people into the one that is the least worst fit of those available. As for growing up thinking of ourselves as boys, didn’t most of us to some degree? I was the scruffy kid in the wellies interested in space and dinosaurs, wanting to be the hero of the story, not the passive victim or prize too. It's no wonder so many girls don't see themselves in that mould and want to reject it. Have you ever heard the song "when I was a boy" by Dar Williams? I like how she expresses that feeling.

Need to catch up properly with the thread, but...

freypie
"something isn't quite 'right?'I've felt 'wrong' for so many years, and have spent most of them presenting a stereotypical (if hippy!) giggly, ditzy stereotype to the world. But that's not really me"

What "solved" this for me was my asd diagnosis. Probably not unrelated that asd and transgenderism are strongly correlated.

Diana, I just wanted to add to your post (which I agree with) - I did want to fit that mould - I grew up watching Hollywood golden era movies and romances and totally dreamt of being the prize as you phrased it and in my day dreams I was frequently passively being rescued or helped. I was encouraged to be ambitious - but within constraints (ie within the parameters of what my working class family expected of a good salary for a woman). I hit a huge hurdle at an early age - I can still recall vividly my utter distress when I realised that I wasn't a gorgeous Hollywood blonde but dark haired and full of physical "flaws". It took a long time to actually value myself beyond the images I was seeing around me and like myself.
I think lots of young girls don't always reject the "box" but try and shoehorn themselves in without even realising they are comforting themselves. I was ashamed for a LONG time that I didn't fit into the box.