What's So Great About Being Female?

I’ve spent most of my life assuming that other girls and women disliked being female as much as I did. I wrote an award-winning essay “The Year I Was a Boy” about the experience I had in fifth grade of being “Eddie” as a result of my name being mangled by the computer. I thought I would enjoy being a boy, but all that happened was that I quickly so all the disadvantages of being a boy and went back to being a girl. I didn’t like being a girl better, but it wasn’t worse, either. (Problems with being a boy included not being allowed to cry, not being allowed to touch other boys with a hug, and having to be athletic, which I was not at the time).

I asked a group of women on social media what they loved about being a woman and I was surprised by what they said. Here’s a quick list:

1. I love/loved being a mother, being pregnant, giving birth and caring for small children.

2. I love feminine, girly, adornment, design, and fashion.

3. I love the female friendships that I’ve cultivated and that I believe are deeper and more intimate than the friendships that men tend to create.

4. I love that being a woman is less strictly enforced than being male (women and girls are allowed to show masculine traits, but boys and men are not allowed to show feminine traits).

5. I love that women are more empathetic than men.

6. I love the female body, breasts, shape, and everything else about it.

7. I love that women learn emotional intelligence.

8. I love that women can have multiple (unlimited) orgasms.

9. I love women’s voices as a musical instrument.

10. I love that women solve problems with tools other than brute force.

I found myself puzzling over some of these. I don’t hate my body, but I don’t love how my boobs flop around while exercising. I love that I was able to create and grow children, but hated having periods. I loved connecting to my children, but hated that it felt like a requirement of motherhood and I hate how much women lose out on when they stay at home. I don’t love much frilly stuff, though I do love creating afghans and other yarn works. I love seeing feminine arts in general. I love reading books by women. I don’t feel the same kind of strong “I am a woman” identity that I think other women do, but I’m not particularly dysphoric about it, either. Physically, I am always conscious that I am much, much smaller than most men. I try to combat that with speed and weight training, but it’s never really going to make up the difference and I know it. I think on some level, because of my size and my childhood abuse, I am always afraid that men are going to hit me.

One of the things I puzzled over in this list was female friendships being stronger than male friendships. For most of my life, I have had about equal numbers of male and female friendships. I often found myself frustrated with the kinds of female friendships that the Mormon church presented as normal. They felt superficial to me, or at least they weren’t enough for me. I was fine having conversations about raising kids, even about sales at groceries stores. I was less interested (purely a personal preference) in conversations about fashion and makeup. When I started doing triathlon races, I found more men to talk to about that and more men were interested in talking to me than had been before. Conversations about writing were gender neutral unless they veered into social media and childcare problems.

I’m not sure that men have less intimate friendships. Maybe? Maybe they are just different than women’s friendships. But rather than poke at that beehive, I would probably just conclude by saying that mostly I am baffled by the idea that one gender or another is more or less this or that. I feel cut off from parts of myself when I feel that I have to present as a “woman” (whatever that is). I am competitive and athletic (typically masculine traits but why???) and I am also a woman who forms deep and intimate friendships with other men and women. I gave birth six times and stayed at home, but now work in the financial world, which seems traditionally male for some reason? I am also creative and fierce and have so many interests that it would be hard to find space to explain them because there are always new ones popping up. I like information and I like to read books. I am a skeptic, but also a gullible believer at times.

I am just me, Mette. I get confused when certain traits are placed in one category of gender and others in the other gender category. Why? Body parts are one thing. Genes are one thing. But interests and skills are something else entirely and I just don’t see how they are related.