Real Women Have...

I did not go to the Women's March today. For some of the reasons that I will write here and other reasons I won't. I envy the folks who were able to feel camaraderie and community in this action. I'm glad that they/you were able to feel that.

When Mary and I were in college we made a joke about the phrase "real women have curves." It started with a discussion of how some women felt like left out by this statement. So we started brainstorming, what is it that "real" women have? We started at the obvious uterus but decided that was transphobic and left out intersex folks and women who had had hysterectomy. Then we went to the living human things: spinal cords, which we realized was ableist and tried to make better by saying, "real women have partial spinal cords." But that felt weird because men also have partial spinal cords. Eventually we landed on "real women say they're women." It doesn't sound like it from the way I'm retelling it but we were in hysterics during this conversation. It was so silly that we were trying to find the THING that makes women.

Today the Women's March tried to do that again, as many feminists before them have tried to do. They brought together people around the idea of supporting the essential thing that is a woman. But what IS that thing anyway? At the end of the day does it even exist?

I saw a lot of folks on my feed going the route of me and Mary's first statement: "real women have uteruses" or rather pussies. I want to be clear that in no way do I find vulvas and vaginas and the mention of them offensive or vulgar. I am a queer women that has sex with women. I am quite fond of and familiar with vulvas and vaginas. But as photo after photo came up of women referencing their genitals I started to feel upset. I started to feel like yet again women's experiences and even our resistance is about our pussies. And the worst part is that THEY (Trump, Republicans, etc)  made it about our pussies and here we were taking their message and running with it. It felt like once again people were equating women with pussies. And then doing this weird thing where they made pussies cute and sassy like pink knit caps with cat ears on them or giant bedazzled vulva signs. And the thing is that the march did really try to include the voices of all women, including women who may not have pussies. Also I don't know if anyone knows this but...ALL PUSSIES ARE NOT PINK. But patriarchy has made everything about women centered around our lady parts so that the second someone says "women" we think BOOBS, VULVAS, PUSSIES!

This body-centric focus coupled with the fact that standing up for sex workers was taken off of the women's march declaration is also upsetting. Because we only want to reference genitals when they aren't about sex and the moment they become about how women's bodies and sex exist in a capitalist system there's no room for boobs and pussies. The grim reality is that often the most lucrative part of women is still our pussies.

Women are real. Women are varied and nuanced and no two are alike. We shouldn't have to be. Equity is about getting people what they need and most of the time what we need is not the same. As a queer woman in a monogamous relationship with another woman, access to birth control isn't something that I need. But I understand that for other people it's vitally important. So I will fight for that, not because it is how we are the same, but because I know that "you're liberation is bound up with mine."

But honestly I'm afraid that when my needs as a Black Queer woman aren't the same as "all women" they might not show up the same way for me. I hope they'll prove me wrong.