Mat Gilson

Womanhood is a multiplicity that is hard to pin down. This is the theoretical problem with female liberation. This is the root of why it is so easy for men to pull so much bullshit in such a unified front. Manhood is buffoonishly simple. Womanhood is compellingly comlicated. Womanhood is dynamic, it changes throughout one woman’s life as she transcends different iterations of herself. Men are formed, quickly, and then they are, where women remain in motion forever. 

I think the root of this is that women experience a lot of shifts in their identity. First, girlhood is an identity, then motherhood is an identity, or wife is an identity, or being single is an identity, or being career focused is an identity, and so on with any number of things. For men their core identity is always that of a man. This comes before the label of father, or single, or whatever. Man is the primary hold of identity. 

Women are not allowed to think of womanhood itself as the identity, it’s all of the things that hold up womanhood that make up the identity. It’s the performance of womanhood rather than the thing itself, because, unlike for men, there is no thing itself, it’s a shell of a label. The label of “not a man” cannot possibly contain the multitudes of what women are, cis women, trans women, gay women, women of different cultural backgrounds, women of different races; because all of these factors push so heavily against what being a woman means. 

The universal idea of manhood is much more unified. Women must confront the reality that they are not a monolith, and that is what is so cool. Women must embrace this diversity in order to rise up against the patriarchal forces that bind us all. They also all need to start buying guns, and probably using them, too. Love you guys thanks for reading <3.

Mat