Spending a few minutes looking through the Twitter search "Define woman" this morning. It's full of transphobes questioning random people, cis & trans alike. Aggressive, nasty, bullying tweets. Their misogynist & patriarchal tweets are very disturbing.

I am a woman.

(Thread)

To start off, I'd like to quote Simone de Beauvoir:

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

I was born.. a baby.

Now it's true that when I was born, someone took a quick look at my gentials and they jotted down on a form "Girl".

My parents named me a girls name.

My parents dressed me in pink. Introduced me to the world as their first born daughter. Yada yada... that's how it goes right?

So here I am, growing up a girl in world that is very much "a man's world". Not that I knew what that actually meant for a very long time. You see,

as a kid, you aren't particularly aware of social issues on any kind of grand scale. My childhood (up to a point) was just playing with friends, boys & girls, not stereotypical girl things either. I was very much a tomboy, although I didn't really understand what that meant...

until I was older. Going into high school, puberty kicked in, boobs started growing. I remember my girl friends were getting their periods and it wasn't something I was looking forwards too. That was pretty much the sum total of my thoughts on periods tbh. It was just a thing...

that happens to us. Having my mum explain tampons when it was time to use them. Then every month, a thing that I just had to endure, which meant I wouldn't be going swimming, so I'd be pissed off for a few days. Periods were never fun. Never something that I celebrated...

The cramps and the inconvenience of them in general have never been welcome. I never dropped to me knees and worshiped the Goddess of Fertility, thanking her for my womb and ovaries and the few days of bleeding that meant "I am a woman now!". I mean who does that? Has anyone..

..ever done that?? It wasn't until much later in life that I'd find out for all the cramps and bleeding, it was pointless anyway because even I'd wanted them, I could never actually have kids. So what even was the point? I mean if the only thing that makes me a woman is THAT...

Then turns out I fail massively at being a woman right?

Let's put my reproductive capability to side now. So I'm growing up, a girl. Learning all about boys, sexism, stereotypes, the dangers men pose to me as a girl in this man's world as I go. They're subtle things when...

you're a kid. It's not like my mother ever sat me down and laid out point for point feminist history, feminist theory, how the patriarchy works etc... Most of us just figure this stuff out as we go. Lots of my "woman education" came from TV shows, movies, the magazines, books

and having to deal with boys as I grew up. The "you play like a girl" and "girls are shit at football" and "Iz, stop punching me" etc.. I wasn't exactly a push over. Not a big kid but gobby and I'd fight anyone who tried to pick on me so not a weak little wallflower either. No...

one taught me that I shouldn't be push over. It was just something that I knew and so I wasn't an easy target at all. Learning not to take shit from boys is something that most of us do organically because boys being boys are annoying little shits. They're kinda made that way...

so most of us just naturally develop defense mechanisms that stay with us through our lives. If we're lucky, that's enough to keep us safe. In my case, it wasn't. Being a survivor of sexual assault and rape is something that I'll briefly mention here, and then move on from.

So, I'm 17, not getting on with my mother & so I decide to join the Army. I'm now out there in the big bad world. Taking care of myself and living my life. I remember vividly having trouble referring to myself as a woman. I was a girl, yes. Woman though? Not yet. Looking back...

on that, I spent a long time, years in fact, not being able to refer to myself as a woman. I didn't feel like I earned it yet maybe? I didn't old enough to qualify? It was something that stuck with me. I can't remember exactly when the shift happened from girl to woman either...

but at some point, referring myself as a woman just kind of happened. There was a whole lot of living and experience in between "girl" and "woman" too. It wasn't like I flipped a switch one day. So the point I'm trying to make here is that "born a woman" is bullshit. It takes...

a whole lot of living to grow into that role. It takes a whole lot of personal experiences to get comfortable with "woman". By comfortable I mean reaching a point in my life where I'd learned what being a woman is all about. It's never been about my womb, my ovaries, my periods.

Yes, I have all those things but having those things has never in my life been the focus of what makes me a woman. They are just things that I have. Periods are thing that I endure, but have never enjoyed or celebrated. What makes me a woman isn't about my ability (or lack...

thereof in my case) to pop out some kids. What makes me a woman is the sum total of all my experiences. I am a woman because I feel like a woman. I am a woman because I live as woman. I move through the world as woman. I celebrate the fact that inspite of things I've endured..

I have survived. I am still here. In a world that is very much stacked against women succeeding, I have managed to carve out a pretty comfortable life for myself and that is fucking victory. I see other women who aren't so lucky & who suffer and I want to lift them up. I want...

all women to be free from oppression and everything that comes with that. All the women. Not just SOME of the women. So when I see transphobes demanding "define woman" it pisses me off because what defines my womanhood, is not the thing that defines all women. This is my life.

What has shaped me throughout my life, is not what has shaped YOU. Yes, we have similar experiences but they are just that, they are not identical. We have not lived the same life. I am a woman because I've lived it. I grew into it. I was not born a woman. I learned to be one.

I've spent my life learning what it is to be a woman.

Living it = Being it.

I will never understand transphobes who deny this to trans women when they (regardless of an accident of birth) have learned what it is to be a woman in the exact same way that I did.

BY LIVING IT.

Transphobes love to say "woman = adult human female". A dictionary definition, but without experiences, without having lived it & grown into it, those are just words, with no tangible meaning. I'm more than "biology". Women are much more than a few words in a dictionary.

One last thing.

Transphobes talk about "biology" being the holy grail of womanhood.

Thing is I don't relate to women based on our biology. I relate to women EMOTIONALLY. I relate to women as fellow human beings who share some of my experiences and not because we have ovaries!