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Redefining Womanhood

Hmm.. This is a hard one to know where to start. I guess this is as good a place as any.
How do you redefine your womanhood and femininity without basing it on your reproductive organs?
A friend of mine has had a total hysterectomy, ovaries and all, at the tender age of 25. I was told at a very young age that I was never going to be able to carry a child to term, if I could get pregnant at all. So here we are, both women in our 20s, just when the biological clock is turning on, both knowing that we are never going to be birth mothers. This is challenging enough to deal with, especially as so many of our friends have recently had babies or are currently pregnant. That right there is hard to deal with. But then in the process of trying to find some books in the women studies sections of the bookstore and libraries it seemed like so much that revolved around your reporductive organs. It seems like instead of feeling relieved that my feminism and femininity have nothing to do with my uterus, lack there of or lack of a usable one, I got the exact opposite impression.
So I guess this brings me to my question. How do you redefine your womanhood and femininity without basing it on your reproductive organs?

I'll end with a quote from Tori Amos: "She's convinced she could hold back a glacier, but she couldn't keep baby alive. Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere...."

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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Clark on October 1, 2009 at 2:30pm

Thank you so much for your response. I agree, we are not defined by our reproductive organs, but it's a challenge in this world where it's already challenging to be a strong woman, even more so if you are different from the other strong women. I was hoping that some one may know of great books or reference on the subject....

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Permalink Reply by Perlita on June 12, 2010 at 6:22pm

Hi, All,

This is a very interesting thread. I guess we shold start by defining womanhood and feminity, and how they direntiate from femaleness. The issue of the transsexual brought up by Kathelene is a good one as it reminds us of what is biological and what is a sociological construct.

Recent medical/scientifc evidence indicates that deep within the brain an strucutre termed the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BST) is rposible for your gender identity. It turns out that male-to-female transseuals have a BST that is identical to that of females. So we percive ourselves as females becouse our brain says so. The question then is: is every female a woman? what makes us a woman? I think that feminity is a sociological and cultural construct. I would propose that womanhood is an interplay of our drives to express our femaleness modified by our own femenine persona that is at the core that that drives our mind.

Cheers,

Perlita