[–]daylightarmour
I think this game is a trap.
Defining womanhood is a cope.
It's either a way to make one feel better about womanhood, or a way for one to make all of womanhood out to be suffering.
There is no encompassing definition of womanhood.
Womanhood is simply experiencing life as a woman. Which can even happen to people who aren't women. Gender is complex.
For me, womanhood is my life. That's what it's always been. Womanhood was what I had before I even realised womanhood was available to me. It's just living.
I am a woman living life. Womanhood is just life impacting me as a woman.
My girlfriend telling me she loves me is womanhood.
A young man assaulting me is womanhood. Missing a deadline and restructuring my week is womanhood. Walking my dog is womanhood.
It's not special or glamorous. And not even really a gift. Certainly not a curse either.
I probably have a greater love and appreciation for womanhood because I know what it means to be denied it completely. A lot of cis women take it for granted. They assume the grass is greener.
So many cis women seem to think being a man would fix all their problems.
I've had cis women tell me I'm stupid and really, it should be they who transition, not me. But so few cis women want to transition to men.
I think this is because cis women, as much as they can't admit it, obviously love and identify with femininity (broadly)
So to me, if a woman wants to appreciate feminity, she should ask herself how she'd feel if she were robbed of it. If she simply had to watch her body masculinise. Endure people misgendering her. Have men treat her like just another man and have women treat her as a threat.
Most women would not be able to endure this after a lifetime of being cis. For the vast majority of trans women, this is apart of being alive.
[–]Taellosse
Womanhood isn't really a "gift" to me - it's just what feels
right and natural,
instead of the wearying array of expectations, limitations, performances, and physicality that go with trying to meet "manhood".
I'm not excited about
everything that comes with living as a woman - sexism (not to mention the bonus layers of transphobia piled on top) isn't a pleasant thing to be targeted by, I'm well aware!
It's more that it's a price I'm willing to pay to escape the self-loathing and existential despair that came with living as a man for me.
[–]Supernamicchi
Womanhood to me means not thinking about my gender anymore. It’s just a thing that is
When I do notice it it’s quiet pride and contentment
It’s being able to bond with other women over things women experience good and bad
It’s making girlfriends and painting nails and swapping clothes
It’s playing hockey with other girls and feeling accepted
It’s so many things and I hope you feel better c:
[–]RainCat909
Women are my tribe. Overall... Their values are my values. Their understanding of emotion and reason matches mine. Their desires and wants in life are the same as mine. I vibe with being a woman more than I ever did being a man.
Growing up
, It felt like everything men projected as "manhood" was just incredibly illogical and didn't apply to me. The obsession with sports and how they treated others... the things they thought were fun... The sense of entitlement and the unthinking lack of empathy... It was all just so stupid. Being a girl just made sense for who I already was.
From my earliest memories, I have always identified as female.
I never socialized as male. That was uncomfortable for me. I learned to mask who I was for my own safety, but I always felt like a woman disguised and living at a frat house. Constantly in danger and disgusted by the unvarnished male behavior around me.
I wish I had more to offer you on why women should enjoy being women.
But to be honest, being a woman in this world objectively makes my life worse. Patriarchy, incels, discrimination, violence, unfair social expectations... and yet, I still choose it.
I love my tribe and I choose to suffer with it rather than deny something so inherent in me that it sparks joy whenever I think about it.
A last minute thought. A large part of male and female socialization only makes sense in the context of how we relate to other people.
If you are firmly cis but you are having issues being grateful for being a woman, then consider changing the people you are around. Check out the 4B movement... Switch to a progressive church or join a women's empowerment group, or find a pagan group and become a witch... Join an LGBT group as an ally or hang out with your local lesbians. Move to a progressive state or country if you have to. Find a place where women are more socially centered and respected. F the P.
[–]SeaLingonberry59
Womanhood is a curse to me.
When I was growing up, I always got called a girl because I would play with dolls, dressup, and I loved cute things. So I just accepted that I was a woman because everyone else thought I was and I changed my body so that I could fit in more. But then I realized that
the more I looked like and called myself a woman, the worse people treat me. The whole concept of gender is a tool used by the patriarchy to justify oppression against people they deem to be women.
[–]WeeklyThighStabber
Imagine someone kidnaps you and poisons you with testosterone. It gradually masculinises you until you look like a man. Your voice drops. You grow a beard and your face develops heavier masculine features.
If this scenario appeals to you, you might be trans.
If this scenario fills you with horror, maybe contemplating it might help you appreciate that it isn't happening to you.
Estrogen saved my life, but I have to inject it every week.
You have a built in estrogen factory inside your body. Free automatic HRT. Sounds pretty neat to me. Almost like... a gift.. or something.
;P
[–]Hannah_Seba_De
It means that one’s sense of worth doesn’t come from competition or comparison, but from the ability to cooperate.Being a woman, to me, means seeing reality as it is rather than following a fixed framework of ideas.
It also means being able to acknowledge my own weaknesses without feeling the need to hide them — to give them space in a pragmatic way.
Ultimately, being a woman means being allowed to be empathetic, to give others space, without feeling that it threatens my own.
[–]Salty_Permit4437
To me it means being me.
A mother figure, and someone who helps her sisters up.
[–]TooLateForMeTFTrans-Lesbian 16 points 3 hours ago
Well. That's not an easy thing to sum up, but I'll try!
On one level, womanhood is just a fact:
There exists a category of people, for which we use the label "women", and I am a member of that category. Not by choice, but by birth.
Granted, my body confuses a lot of people about that, but deep down in my core I know that I belong to this category.
Put that way, it doesn't feel like it means much. And yet, it means everything.
It means everything because of how miserable I was when nothing about my life affirmed my membership in that group, and everything about my life disaffirmed it. (This, by the way, is just
how gender identity works.) It means everything because of how good I feel now that so many parts of my life affirm that membership and so many fewer parts disaffirm it.
It means everything because by showing my womanhood on the outside, the rest of the world now recognizes my membership in that category, and thus treats me like a woman too.
This is especially true of other women;
I'm gay AF so I couldn't give less of a sh!t what men think of me, but it matters to me greatly how other women treat me. I cannot describe the anguish I once felt that my sisters couldn't see me as one of them. That they didn't treat me as one of them. And worse, that they saw me and reacted to me as other. As a man. No matter how much I just craved to be friends, to have gal-pals and share and talk in the ways women do
, they'd see my masculinity and react with guarded caution (quite understandably, of course; men don't have a great track record of treating women like people). And
to approach with friendship but be met with immediate distrust, every single time, is heartbreaking. It's soul-crushing. It made me so unbearably sad and so lonely.
So to reach a point where I can embody enough femininity to flip that script, well. It means everything. It means connection. It means community.
It means I get to have gal-pals now. It means I get to be a gal-pal now! Bliss!
And that's just about my relationship with other people. Which, you know, is really important given that humans are a deeply social species. We
need connections with others to be truly healthy and happy. And
before I could manifest enough femininity to have the connections I truly needed, I suffered deeply.
But of course womanhood--or rather, femininity, which is the embodiment of womanhood--also affects my relationship with myself. Profoundly. I used to not be able to look in the mirror because what I saw was so different from my internal conception of myself that it was just unbearable. To look in the mirror and see a face that you
know is you but that some part of you simply cannot
accept as you, that'll f*ck you up.
I used to have a constant physical ache beneath my sternum, because I didn't have any breasts but desperately needed them. It was so bad I couldn't sleep at night. I used to have a wardrobe of clothes so ill-suited to who I am that getting dressed in the morning was like putting on a suit woven of pure depression. Now, I can look at myself in the mirror, and with a bit of hair styling and makeup, I
like what I see. I start to feel like that visage
is me; the feeling and the knowing start to come into alignment.
Now, I have modest B-cups and that old ache is now gone and I sleep with deep contentment. Now, I have a closet full of clothes that I'm excited to wear every morning.
All of which culminates in the resolution of a deep-seated and longstanding cognitive dissonance I had about myself.
I knew I was a woman but--lacking all femininity--I didn't feel like a woman. Now that I'm able to embody a good chunk of femininity (not as much as I'd like, of course, but I'm still working on it!), the feeling comes into alignment with the knowing, and the cognitive dissonance fades. I feel at home and content in my body, in my skin, in my life.
On one level, womanhood is just a fact. But on another level, womanhood coupled with femininity means being able to enjoy and experience the authenticity of myself, which brings on a peace and a joy that may well be impossible to convey to anyone who hasn't also felt what its like to live without the authenticity of themselves.
