Do you "feel like a woman"? What does that mean?

[Fingernailbiter]

I have always said I think it’s bollocks that everyone "knows instinctively" what gender they are, with no reference to learned stereotypes, so that a male could feel that his "authentic self" is female/a woman. I’ve always said I know I’m a woman because I’m an adult human female, but I just "feel like" a person.

But someone has said to me what about many women's instinctive longing for a baby of their own? I couldn't think of a good answer to that. I certainly longed for babies and felt very "maternal" when I had them. I know not all women feel that way, and I know some men really want children of their own, but there’s no denying that maternal urge. Could it be true that that (a hormonal thing?) counts as "feeling like a woman"?

I was talking about this to me teen recently. I don't think I feel like a woman, I just feel like me!
Although now you've mentioned broodiness I have definitely experienced that, an absolute overwhelming desire to have a child, I experienced it once in my mid twenties and again in my early forties, it was definitely an extremely overwhelming feeling, no doubt linked to biology.
I also think that most if not all woman can put their child's needs consistently above their own in a way males just don't, particularly in difficult circumstances.
I challenge anyone who disagrees to go to an eating disorder clinic for teens and see who is really consistently there for their child when the going gets really tough. Clue it's not the dad's!
On that note does the feeling of exhaustion, overwhelm by juggling a milion different responsibilities and putting yourself last count as feeling like a woman??
Other than that when I was having a period from hell I also felt like a woman.
But in a day to day level I just feel like me. I guess there are biological and societal influences which can make you feel like a woman.

Of course not. What I am is the essence of my entirely gender-free being.
I know I am a woman because of my primary sex characteristics. I enjoy aspects of being a woman; these enhance my experience of being alive in this body.

I said "mooning about" because even the broodiest of women are capable of living their lives. It's only an MRA who would think otherwise IMO, which is where I think the OP is.

Did you bother to read the rest of what I wrote? Every woman is a woman. Because of biology. Having babies isn't possible for all women, including me, and we are not less worthy or any less female than you just because you managed it when we couldn't. Or chose not to.

If a man wants to have a baby, it doesn't make him a woman.

Any more than if a woman doesn't, it makes her a man.

There are plenty of men around for whom offspring is a massive, overwhelming drive.

Henry the eighth? He fucked over six women (at least) in order to get some.

i'm not sure anyone would describe him as a woman.

How could I possibly know?

I am a woman. I feel like me. I am not, nor could I ever be, a man.

Therefore I could never compare to two things.

I think the way the world treats me and interacts with me makes me all to aware I am a woman.

Not feeling 'like a man' does not equal being a woman.
And vice versa.

We don't default to the other if we don't match gender stereotypes.

Sex is not gender.

You just ARE your sex. It's not a feeling or a philosophical belief.

I think this is an interesting question, but also one that's impossible to answer. The whole foundation gender ideology is built on is that everybody has an inner sense of gender identity, and in some people that may be at odds with one's biological sex.

In one way, I do feel like a woman, because I move through the world as a woman. That means obvious things like having periods and getting pregnant, but it also means knowing that men will always be faster and stronger than you. It means being frightened of male aggression and male violence. It means letting your world shrink because men take up more space, and pandering to men's feelings because you're taught that their feelings are more important than yours.

So those are a combination of physiological things and social things that come from being in a society where men have more power than women. But is there something else? When I was a child, I used to like playing with dolls and teddies, whereas the boys around me liked playing with toy guns and kicking a ball round. Is that innate or learnt? I don't know. From a very young age, boys felt different, and weird. So maybe there is a sense in which I felt "innately" female, and still do. What I'm saying is that even now the men I know seem different from me, not just because they're bigger and stronger and have more social status, but because their personality feels different.

I'm just musing. My instinctive answer is the same as other people's, ie I am a woman, rather than I feel like a woman. But I'm not sure.

I don’t know what it feels like to be a woman because I’m just me.
I know I’m female because I’ve given birth to 3 amazing little people.
No male person will ever experience that.

As LadyBracknellsHandbagg posted earlier, feelings don’t define you, Biology does.

No one on here said that non-mothers are less womanly or less worthy, least of all me.

You went full on defensive-offensive, using mocking words about maternal urges. Maybe examine why you feel the need to put mothers down.

A lot of men (DH) long to have children too. It’s not exclusively a female/woman thing.

What I mean is, you can robustly disagree with the op (and I do), without being scornful of women who are different from you.

There must be something that tells a female cat that she needs to stick around and look after her kittens until they can survive on their own, and it seems possible that men and women behave differently because their reproductive roles are so different. Elon Musk would definitely not be having 16 children if he were a woman, and he certainly wouldn't be having multiple children in his 50s.

However, we are also Homo sapiens and we can make choices. Most women spend more of their lives avoiding pregnancy than trying to get pregnant, over riding any evolutionary desire to populate the world at all costs.

It's also notable that most men who claim to be women seem more interested in sex than childcare. (Jan Morris being a notable early example)... although that might just prove that there are innate differences between men and women.

Either way, a woman with 'masculine' traits just demonstrates that those behaviours exist in women, and a man with 'feminine' traits just demonstrates that those behaviours exist in men.

It's also notable that most men who claim to be women seem more interested in sex than childcare. (Jan Morris being a notable early example)... although that might just prove that there are innate differences between men and women

That's very true - it's one of the reasons I am so sceptical about gender ideology. Men who want to be women seem very keen on dressing up and wearing make-up, but not massively keen on wiping up baby sick or caring for their elderly mum. (Mind you, I dare say women aren't that keen on those things either, but they end up doing them.)

The biological urge to reproduce exists. Not all members of the species have it but enough of us to ensure we go on.
I'm not sure it's a woman thing specifically.

I am a woman but I could not tell you what it feels like. It's not a feeling it's a biological fact.

But I suppose if I had gender dysphoria I would feel something. Maybe it's only when there's a mental disconnect between biological reality and how you perceive yourself to be that there's a feeling? Otherwise, it's not something that you think about. I don't know. I know very little about gender dysphoria

All I know is that I'm glad I am a woman and not a man.

There no feeling… it’s being

How do you feel feminine? I don’t understand this. I’ve never felt feminine. Never felt masculine either. I just feel like me.

I'm all woman, and have made it to 40 without ever wanting a baby.

I’m a woman. I have four children. I have experienced longing for a child but I don’t think that’s what makes me a woman. I am biologically female. My gender is just as it is. My personality is a variety of stereotypically masculine and feminine traits, maybe slightly more dominantly masculine. But I am still a woman. However I dress, however I present to the world, I will always intrinsically in every cell of my body, be a female.

The only way you can feel like a member of the opposite sex is to assign cultural norms based on gender roles and decide you are more feminine than masculine therefore you must feel like a woman. However, women are very masculine and are still women.

It’s a ridiculous argument because it cannot be true. You cannot feel like something you categorically cannot be. You can only assign what you think you SHOULD feel like based on the norms society expects.

I don't feel like a man or a woman. I just feel like me. The meat suit I have is female, therefore I'm a woman. If my meat suit were male I'd be a man and that wouldn't trouble me. Feelings don't come into it.

There is actually something else stopping most of us - the lack of any desire to rape. That's not to say the lack of any sexual desire, but I don't have to spend my life fighting an urge to overpower women. I have experienced the normal range of temptation that results in many people having affairs; it's easy to be attracted and to wonder about acting on the attraction, but for me it would have to be a mutual attraction, and my personal ethics encourage me to stick with my DW through thick and thin.

As for feeling like a man, I certainly am aware of being a man whenever my body catches my attention in any way. I can't really imagine being a woman, despite having observed and listened to many women. I have no idea what the physical sensations are like that are unique to women. I don't have much idea of what it's like to be 'treated as a woman' in our society, as I don't think I've ever been mistaken for one. And I don't know what it's like to have female hormones instead of male ones.

Well, putting it crudely, I 'feel' like a woman because I haven't got an "item" hanging between my legs, but I don't think I do in any other way.
In fact my competitiveness I've been told makes me masculine, but I think I was only told that BY men who were embarrassed that I was beating them at "male" activities like driving.

agree with this ^

I have feelings connected to my sex. I have feelings associated with what society on the whole has decided is my “gender”. But I don’t know if they count as ‘feeling like a woman’ because I’ve never been anything else and thus don’t know whether men have similar feelings. Nobody can know because they’re either one or the other, and never swap.