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"?

mans shirts, short skirts, but mostly, the prerogative to have a little fun!

Thank you, you have articulated how I feel better than I could.

Another woman who has never been broody here. I've got two kids and love them very much but my husband had to persuade me to have them. If we hadn't been able to conceive there would have been absolutely no way I'd have had any fertility treatment.

I feel like me whatever that means.
Not all women are the same, not all men are the same

I don't particularly know what it "feels like" to be a woman because I have never been anything else, have nothing to compare it to. I must admit I've never really given it much consideration either, with the exception of being ravaged by period pains when I'm usually muttering "it must be so bloody easy to be a man".

It surprises me not at all that someone who mocks women for "mooning about" also uses the Laugh reaction in a mocking way.

There is a social/political movement that wants all women to be "just" mothers, preoccupied with motherhood. I disagree with that movement. Not all women want to be mothers and not all mothers are particularly broody. Everyone makes their own different contributions to society.

But the fact remains that there are some women who are strongly broody, motivated to become mothers, overriding their other ambitions. They don't deserve scorn for that.

If you're not like that, there's obviously nothing wrong with that, but implying that you're better than those women is really "I'm not like other girls".

I last felt like a woman in 2015 when I couldn't get the washing machine to work and my technical genius partner was away. I phoned a male friend to ask what he would do, he informed me he'd probably give it a good kick, so I did and it worked!

@Sifflet
Interesting choice of example... due to a neuro condition (see username for details) I do actually feel gravity - sometimes it feels like every nerve in my body is a guy-rope tethered to the ground.
I don't know how to define 'feeling like a woman' though, despite being one; also wouldn't know if I feel like other women, pretty sure it's nothing to do with wanting (or not) children.

I am a woman, I don't know what that's supposed to feel like, it's just a biological fact.

Many men want to have a baby/child/family of their own. There's a bloke on MAFS right now who doesn't want to be married to a single mum because he very strongly wants his own child and not to raise someone else's.

The difference between men and women though is that women can only have their own child up until a certain age whereas men can father children most of their lives - so it feels much more of a pressing, bigger thing IMO when you're a woman and you are constantly made aware you contain 'a ticking clock'.

oh I know there are plenty who wouldn’t. I just meant , you could, because you’re stronger and I have no way of knowing what you’re thinking, and so I have to be aware that any of the bipeds with a penis has that power. And that is the reality of being the impregnee class.

someone has said to me what about many women's instinctive longing for a baby of their own?

What reductive, patronising bollocks (which, incidentally, undermines its own premise with that 'many').

Plenty of women don't have that longing - this doesn't make them men, nor does it mean they 'feel like' men. Plenty of men do have it- that doesn't make them women, nor does it mean they 'feel like' women. The vast majority of women who do feel it, do so for only a small proportion of their lives - they don't spend 20 years feeling like a woman and 50 feeling like a man.

And as far as I know there's no research showing that people with a trans identity are any more (or less) likely to have the feeling than others of their sex. If there is a hormonal basis to the feeling, it's an embodied - literally embodied - aspect of sex; not gender. So it's not part of 'gender identity'.

Funnily enough, I when I had only read the title of this thread I thought to myself, ‘Well I feel very pregnant and very much like a woman in this moment’.

I don’t think I particularly feel like a woman when I’m not pregnant, I don’t know why (I’m not saying I normally feel like a man).

Fyi I’m 3rd trimester with my 2nd child.

Nah. I have a child (well he's 40 this year!) but although I love him dearly he was a contraception error - I never really wanted kids and never had another.

I'm just an adult human female, as a PP said I am a person with a personality. I'm a woman due to biology not feelings.

I feel like “me” too but certain things make me feel feminine I guess, like my period believe it or not… doing my hair, make up, clothing, my mannerisms. All socially constructed yes, but I’m just being honest. That’s how I feel…

I wouldn’t say I feel like a woman because I don’t know what “feeling like a woman” feels like. I have no idea what other women think/feel.

There can’t possibly be one way to feel like a woman.

I feel like me

I happen to be female.

I don’t feel like a woman as I don think that’s a quantifiable thing.

Same

i saw children as the next step, had fertility issues so i just thought ‘ok so we won’t have kids’ and then realised how much dh wanted children

i basically had them for dh and my mum 😀

but my children are fabulous….i can never understand why people don’t stop me in the street and thank me for having them 😀😀😀😀

but I don’t feel like a woman, I just feel like me

I'll tell you what makes me feel like a woman:

Is that all right with everyone?
Are you OK carrying that?
Is that tea strong/weak enough for you?
I'm sorry I don't have any fancier biscuits!
If you're sure that's OK with you..
No, you go ahead..

and so ad infinitum🙄

I wish I cared about other people, their well-being and their feelings to a sufficiently moderate extent, but not to the extent that I do.

There's a link to a great article over on
Thank you Gina Rippon | Mumsnet
and it says that you can actually see on brain scans how women's brains are active in that 'social monitoring' kind of behaviour; and neuroplasticity teaches us that parts of the brain can be developed or overdeveloped by constant use.

So if they did a scan on my brain, they'd see a part of it with 'IS EVERYONE ALL RIGHT?' written on it in big letters, because I've been encouraged to be nice and be caring since I was a toddler.

This doesn't mean that I was born with a 'female' brain, I was born with a human brain but the stereotype of women being nice and caring has gone into a feedback loop in it.

So 'I feel like a woman', dammit, when that part of my brain makes me over- concerned about other people's wellbeing, which I recognise as the result of conditioning and gender stereotyping.

I hope that's all right with everyone...

There are certain types of experience women all share.....those that are predicated on their body and its biological function; as well as society's reaction/response to those things. I can feel a sense of empathy with females of other species too....certainly when it comes to motherhood, nest building and attachment to young.

Apart from that we are all individuals with different characteristics, talents, expectations etc

Lots of women don't feel a strong maternal drive...children arise out of relationships with men.....either consciously planned or accidentally. The instincts kick in once you become pregnant, give birth and have children.

Males can sniff out a woman who is ovulating - on a subliminal level, and on that level there can also be a deep instinctive openness in women to becoming pregnant. After all that is the purpose of the two sexes and the body knows and understands that.

I'm a woman because...
Well I don't know really - I never thought about it.
My best friend at school would have said I'm a woman because I don't have a nozzle between my legs.
And I think that will have to do!

The only 'feeling like a woman' that every single woman has on the planet in common, and that no man on the planet has, is existing within a biologically female body. That's it. That's all.

I feel like myself.
I am a woman.
Therefore, I feel like a woman.

To be meaningful, the phrase "feel like x" must be grounded in first-person experience. I only have direct access to my own feelings, to what it is like to be me.

Since I am a woman, my 'self', the subject of those experiences, is a woman. Therefore, feeling like myself just is feeling like a woman.

Any attempt to define "feeling like a woman" in terms of comparison to others' feelings would involve epistemic overreach: I cannot access the internal states of others in the same way I access my own. Thus, any intersubjective standard is, at best, speculative.

To say "I don't feel like a woman", would amount to saying "I don't feel like myself", which is incoherent. I cannot feel otherwise than I in fact feel; I cannot step outside myself to feel what it is like to be someone else.

I would say that a 'feeling' is a type of response to any number and type of condition, stimulus or experience. Our feelings are active all of the time. Feelings are a major part of how we navaigate the world and our relationships and interactions with others in that world.

Being in a female body presents us all with a certain set of conditions which we share with every other female; including the females of other species. How we respond to those conditions will determine how we feel about being female ( a woman, or a girl). Some of those conditions are physical. Some are social.

Some social aspects of being seen/coded as female we might enjoy or appreciate; others we may not enjoy at all; depending on our particular individual nature, or depending on the plesantness or unpleasantness of the experience.

This.