Ontological repetition
That depends on what you mean by that innocent little word “be.”
Looked at one way it’s just an empty platitude. Looked at another way it’s an insulting lie. Suzanne Moore looks at it that second way.
The right way to react to this ridiculous mantra is surely to feel murderous. What is this slogan for? Who is it for? These endless attempts at inclusivity mean that being a woman can now even be a feeling in a man’s head. Eddie Izzard, I saw the other day, had been voted the best female comedian. Sorry, but I am not laughing.
There is no wrong way to be a woman. Are they serious? Let me list the ways. I and many women live with them every single day.
One of them is to live in fear. One woman is killed every three days in this country – a figure which has become much higher in lockdown.
And many more women are raped, groped, slapped, punched, beaten up, strangled – you get the idea. There are some drawbacks to being the weaker member of a dimorphic species.
Another wrong way to be a woman is to refuse to stop talking about what it is like living in a female body: periods, endometriosis, childbirth, miscarriage, infertility, menopause and that icky stuff. Speaking of this apparently excludes those women whose bodies don’t do those things.
And the response is torrents of threats to punch slap strangle kill the women who exclude “those” women. There’s always some good reason to get violent with the nearest woman.
Another very wrong way to be a woman is to think of yourself as more than a collection of body parts: lactators, menstruators, birthers, cervix havers. You do have to wonder what the word “woman” even means now that some organisations have banned us from saying it altogether.
One thing is clear though – if you are a woman the message you receive from birth is that you are pretty much always doing it wrong. That you will never be good enough.
But if you’re a man who identifies as a woman…you will always be good enough.
Is seven repetitions of a phrase the recommended standard for magic to work? It seems a bit overkill to me. It didn’t take that many to get Dorothy back to Kansas.
There’s no wrong way to be a lawnmower either. Thanks Humpty. :P
“If you’re a woman, then being a woman is not wrong.”
“If you’re not a woman, then it’s not wrong to not be a woman.”
Gender critical conditionals.
How many repetitions are required depends on two factors:
-the Twitter character count
-how many times one is willing to hit enter-ctrl-v.
WHY IS IT NOT IN ALL CAPS? :P
I think the main wrong way to be a woman is to actually be a man. Maybe that’s just me.
Karen, that was my thought exactly. There is no such thing as a “girl dick”. You can take my word for this; I’m a biologist.
Wait … so all that stuff that they taught us in earliest childhood, that “girls don’t have penises” and that kind of stuff — that was all true?!!!
Faints.
There is no wrong way to be female that would stop you from being a woman.
There is no way to be male that could ever make you a woman.
Being yourself cannot change your sex.
You’re fine the way you are.
Was Ilse Koch being a woman in a wrong way? Or was she a human being in a wrong way?
“There’s no wrong way to be a woman.”
Cool, we agree and look forward to you joining the ranks of the GC school of thought. That’s what they meant, right? A rejection of the straitjacket known as gender? …Right?
:(
Finally got an answer to a question I’ve asked in many places already: in South Australia, we are likely getting abortion *finally* decriminalised. Finally. But the Bill doesn’t include the words: woman, women, girl, female, sex etc. Women are instead referred to as “person” throughout.
So that’s apparently a wrong way to be a woman, we should apparently all be a “person” instead.