The concept of gender to me is interesting because, like many other identity markers, it doesn’t really mean anything but there are real life consequences that result because of it and it can feel like something that’s extremely innate. As I’ve gotten older and have started to let go of constructs that have always felt somewhat imposed onto me, I’ve realized that gender is something that many people wholeheartedly embrace and inhabit but frankly just has no significance to me. 

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Whenever Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” comes on, my internal response is normally “Yeah I guess biologically I am a woman, but what does it mean to feel like a woman? What if I just feel like a general person?” Sure, physically, others view me as a woman. But when I try to list off things that could potentially count as ‘feeling like a woman’ like wearing dresses and skirts, enjoying makeup and hair, feeling pretty when I put effort into my appearance, all of these are also actions and feelings that not just women can experience as well. 

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Dresses and skirts, while historically associated with femininity, are not gender-specific; and even the historical association isn’t true since men wear skirt or dress-like clothes in multiple different cultures. Makeup and hair is also a ritual that is done across genders, and men can also experience feeling pretty. Why is it that there’s so much pride in ‘feeling like a woman’ or ‘feeling like a man’? I just feel good in the body that I’ve been given and relaxed in my own self. 

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This utilitarian view of my own gender could have come from observing how my mom carries herself. She is the most no-frills woman I know, no makeup, no overthought in clothes, and she has never shaved an inch of her body. Sure, I recognize that she is a woman, but I’ve always felt like she was first and foremost just a person.

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It was only when I started being perceived as not a child anymore that I felt femininity being assigned to me, which I have just shrugged and accepted. But when that femininity started to become sexualized (being a woman vs being a child), it was a harder pill for me to swallow and I don’t think I’ve ever been able to fully digest it.

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Maybe my rejection of this grown-up, sexualized version of gender is my absolute repulsion of being objectified that comes with being a man or woman. A memory that repeats itself inside my mind is of walking down a nightlife-crowded Miami street with my friends, just continuously being catcalled and even photographed by random men. I remember, in that moment, never wanting anything more than to be swallowed whole by the sidewalk, my skin crawling under the gaze of predatory eyes that felt like perversion.

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This is the point of tension that I struggle with in accepting my identity as a woman. I don’t take any issue with biologically being one and the assigned feminine connotation that comes with it, but I feel suffocated by society’s rigid attachments to it.

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What does womanhood mean socially? It means being a mother, being a wife, being a little girl, being an object of sexual desire, being a ‘girlboss,’ being a secretary. It means having very specific places in society and being expected to embrace those roles as an inseparable part of your identity as a woman. The notion that these roles are some kind of female destiny simultaneously traps many women in, locks other women out, and leaves some women wholly unrecognized.

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I want to be someone with no strings attached. Although it personally doesn’t affect me whether others recognize my fluidity, there are many who experience genuine consequences when there’s a separation between their self and outside perceptions. So the conflict arises, can gender and a lack thereof coexist? Or do we have to choose between living in a gendered or genderless world?

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Who am I to deny anyone of their feeling of empowerment as a mother, but also why should I be forced to bear the social implications of a gender identity? In a compromise, maybe in eliminating the prescription of definitions and synonyms of genders, some will find they have more autonomy to subscribe to the interpretation of theirs.