Alexis Rivera_Ethno_Four

I am Woman, Hear me Roar: On Womanhood in the 21st Century

I walked into the bathroom, and my cousin Amanda was already inside the shower. This was typical; I was only about eight years old, and not yet able to fully comprehend the sexualization of naked bodies. Showering with Amanda was customary – in fact, it was an amusing childhood experience. Playing with dolls in the bathtub, talking in the shower, creating fake beards and crazy hair with the soapy water. But it had been a while since we had showered together, and something was different. She is older than me, about six years older than me, and her body was changing and shifting in ways that mine was not. I was confused and anxious as I looked in on her through the glass and steam. Hair had grown in places where there hadn’t been any before, and there were hills and valleys across her body where things used to be flat.

As soon as I got the opportunity, I frantically questioned my mom about what I had seen. What was different? Was my body going to do the same things that Amanda’s had? My mom answered calmly, explaining that Amanda was becoming a woman, and indeed, I too would go through similar changes in the future. Becoming a woman? What does that mean? What does it mean to be a woman? And now I ask, what does it mean to be a woman in the 21^st century?

Claire Heuchan is a self-described Black radical feminist and is the author of the blog Sister Outrider. She won the Best Blog category for the 2016 Write to End Violence Against Women Awards and was shortlisted for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize.

Her blog details a five-part series on sex, gender, and sexuality, and inadvertently attempts to provide an answer to my questions. Her blog post entitled “Binary or Spectrum, Gender is a Hierarchy,” is intriguing, and I discovered it simply through happenstance. In this piece, she argues that it matters little if gender is understood in terms of a binary between males and females or as a spectrum with a multitude of possible gender identities: gender is still a socially constructed concept, and only serves to grant one group of people (namely, men) dominion over a subordinate counterpart (evidently, women). Heuchan argues that when completely broken down and examined, gender is why women who have been abused or raped get the brunt of the blame, since “she was asking for it” “she shouldn’t have been walking alone at night in an unsafe part of town,” or “she must have provoked him in some way.” Gender is why women are condemned for their sexuality, why only men are allowed to discuss pornography and masturbation, and why women are labeled “sluts” if they allow men sexual access to their bodies. And because people are gendered even before they’re born, it becomes impossible to “opt out” of the oppression so inherent within society.

Present day, Amanda is 28 years old, with a daughter of her own turning one in just under a week, and has another child on the way. Before the birth of my second cousin, Amanda was given not one but two baby showers, and had a third “gender reveal” party. This is not uncommon; in fact, this type of party seems like a trend that an increasing number of expectant mothers adhere to. She had two different types of punch side-by-side, one blue and one pink. She had M&Ms in bowls with either “Nuts” or “No Nuts,” more commonly stated as “Peanut M&Ms” and “Plain M&Ms.” Her closest friend made cupcakes complete with pink and blue icing inside, and we were all able to guess the sex of the baby on paper ballots before the actual reveal. The guests were called outside into the backyard when the moment was right, and Amanda and her husband stood together with a giant black balloon and a long needle in their hands, ready to pop it. The countdown began, and soon enough pink confetti was swirling toward the ground as her guests squealed in delight.

Alice Domurat Dreger is a historian, bioethicist, author, and former professor. She works with people at what she calls the edge of anatomy, such as conjoined twins and “intersexed people.” Her TED Talk entitled “Is anatomy destiny?” calls into question the hard lines drawn between our social categories, lines that are much blurrier in nature: between male and female for instance, among other anatomical distinctions.

Within her talk on a destiny designed by anatomy, Alice Dreger presents an intriguing yet familiar scenario. She mentions that despite being physically healthy, surgeons will often work to “normalize” their patients, essentially ridding them of anything out of the ordinary. Why? Simply because they threaten the status quo, they threaten our social categories. If someone doesn’t have the “correct” anatomy that fits with a particular identity, alterations must be made accordingly. As a society, we hold the concept that what it means to be a woman is to have a female identity, what it means to be a man is to have a male identity. But sex and gender is more complicated than this. Nature doesn’t draw the line for us between female and male, but rather, we draw that line on nature.

Amanda gave birth in early December, at a women’s hospital in Mission Viejo, California. It was late in the evening, already dark outside, and cold enough to grab a jacket out of the backseat of my car. As I walked through the hospital, I followed the signs plastered on the corridor walls until I reached the right room number. Family already surrounded my cousin in a swarm of bright pink, my grandmother having made matching shirts that read “Great Grandma,” “Grandma” “Uncle” and “Daddy,” to name a few. My second cousin was resting near the bed, in a tiny box-like incubator provided by the hospital. She was gorgeous, and “had all the right parts” I was quickly assured by Amanda’s younger brother, Jacob. This received a chorus of laughter from my family, and I smiled along with them.

Madeline Brown, a young scholar at Chapman University, spoke to me about a woman’s role from a traditional, albeit outdated, point of view. She noted that women customarily displayed feminine qualities and attributes, and if keeping in line with the usual stigma, “it was very much the stay-at-home, working woman kind of thing.” However, she also acknowledges a recent shift in the stereotypes that surround women. In her point of view, what it means to be a woman today is much more broad, complex, and has changed both for the better and for worse. Madeline argues that “in a perfect world, there shouldn’t have to be a fight to be treated as an equal person, but in reality, we (as with a lot of other groups in history) have been held back in certain ways because of the gender that we identify with.”

I sat on the couch in the living room of Amanda’s home, and held my second cousin on my lap. Her name is Kealani, and she was around nine months at the time. Her smile lights up her entire face, and her legs look and feel like the Michelin man’s. She tugged at my long black hair, and I did not mind one bit; in fact, I couldn’t seem to get enough of her laughter. Her goofy grin makes my nose crinkle, and her giggling makes me chuckle alongside of her. Her father sat down next to me, and Kealani reached out to him. He took her without further prompting, and I happily gushed from the unfolding scene: “She’s impossibly cute.” He smiled at me, and without skipping a beat responded, “I know. She’ll be breaking hearts left and right.”

What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a woman in the 21^st century? Maybe it means that as a society, we need to let go of gender altogether. Rather than asking what it means to be a woman, I may need to instead focus on what it means to be a human being. Or perhaps it means that anatomy should no longer be used as a basis for gender, as what sits between the legs of an individual may or may not tie to their larger gender identity. It may simply mean that we stop defining women in terms of what men feel and think. This would mean that as a society, we would allow women to have an identity outside of the context of men.

Honorable possibilities, but more likely, being a woman in the 21^st century means whatever we want it to mean.

Works Cited

Dreger, Alice Domurat. “Is Anatomy Destiny?” TED Talk. TEDxNorthwesternU, Dec. 2010, Evanston, Illinois.

Heuchan, Claire. “Binary or Spectrum, Gender Is a Hierarchy.” Sister Outrider , 5 Sept. 2017, sisteroutrider.wordpress.com/2017/09/05/binary-or-spectrum-gender-is-a hierarchy/.

Rivera, Alexis. “Interview with Madeline.” 3 Dec. 2018.

Thelilynews. “Gender-Reveal Parties Are Increasingly Popular. Are They Problematic? – TheLily.” Https://Www.thelily.com, The Lily, 21 May 2018, http://www.thelily.com/gender-reveal-parties-are-increasingly-popular-are-they-problematic/.