What does it mean to be a woman?

In the UK the courts have recently ruled that womanhood is defined by biological sex, a move that goes against many people’s innate sense of who they are. I first want to state that Healing Womanhood will always welcome trans women, non binary people, and people of other gender identities who feel it’s right for them. I also want to explore the concept of womanhood and what it means to me.

Inclusivity is of vital importance to me and I feel strongly that it should be reflected in the work that I do. Previously I’ve had discussions around changing the name of my business to be more welcoming to non binary people (and I really do want to be welcoming) but something in me feels that the label of woman is really important. It feels central to who I am and a part of what defines me. I imagine that’s the case for many women, regardless of what bits we were born with, and for me as I considered dropping it from the name of my work I started to feel invisible, erased and so I kept it but it’s still something I think about often and it’s not a decision I feel welded to for life.

I’ve had other conversations exploring the idea that in an ideal world we’d all be raised non binary. This fascinates me. The gender categorisation at birth and the ensuing expectations and stereotyping that we’ve all experienced have had such a ginormous impact on me (and all of us) that I can’t even imagine who I would have been or where I would be now if I’d been dropped into the ‘male’ category. A non binary world feels like an idea that carries such massive freedom of choice, of self expression, of access to our true nature that I truly can’t picture what that would look like in the world, I would deeply love to see it though.

So having said that, what is it within me that connects so strongly to the identity of woman in the world we live in?

My reality is that I wasn’t raised in a non binary utopia and as a result I share many experiences with lots of (but not all) women that I share with relatively few (but probably some) men. There’s a shared sufferring, a feeling of being weighed down by assumptions about what a woman wears and does and how a woman behaves and what choices she makes. Most of these assumptions don’t fit me at all but at various times I’ve squished myself into many of them nevertheless, have you?

Related but slightly different are the inequalities we still experience, from the gender pay gap to feeling unsafe walking alone at night.

So is the identity of woman just about the disadvantages? That doesn’t feel right to me either. There is an indefinable magic to being a woman that goes beyond just what a female body can do (though for me it does include that and I think that’s ok) although I haven’t spoken to any of my trans friends about the magic, I would guess they feel it too. Perhaps we all feel it in slightly different ways, even as it connects us, but it’s there and it matters and in holding onto it we get to keep our womanhood. I wonder if this feeling of magic would still exist in the non binary utopia described above. We can’t know but my guess is that it would be even stronger in a world where we all have the freedom to be fully ourselves. Could what I now feel as women’s magic actually just be the magic of being human and real, free to express our absolute truth in every way possible? Wouldn’t that be lovely!

If you’d like to explore what it means to be a woman with me or in community, you can book a free chat or join our women’s circle at www.healingwomanhood.com/book-online