You Don’t Have to Recognize My Womanhood

But You Do Have to Recognize My Humanity

There’s this weird thing that happens when you’re an out trans woman on the internet. All sorts of self-proclaimed experts on sex and gender pop out of the woodwork to tell you what sex and gender really are — as if you’ve never thought about it before. This sort of thing takes different forms depending on the theoretical sophistication of the individual.

I have gotten everything from “you have peepee not vajayjay” — which is only a slight exaggeration — to “‘woman’ is a social class used to oppress those assigned female, and since you were not assigned female, you cannot possibly be a woman.” However, both of these comments are roughly equivalent at their core. They are both motivated by a wish to deny the fact I am a woman, and a strange need to vocalize that denial to me. It is almost as if these people think that by vocally denying my womanhood it will cease to exist, and that I will “change my mind” or be hurt in some way.

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

But here’s the thing: I don’t need anyone to recognize or validate the fact that I am a woman.

Really. Honestly. Consider this an open invitation to not recognize my womanhood. Go for it. I will not stop you. For that matter, I can’t stop you. If you really want to think of me as a “pervert” or a “man in a dress” or a “male transsexual” or any other thing with the goal of dismissing my womanhood, there is nothing I can do about it.

Now, depending on how someone goes about telling me I’m not a woman, I might share a bit of potentially helpful information. I might even engage in a theoretical debate here and there if I think it might benefit the other individual or people that might come across it. However, at no point in the course of these interactions will I ever demand that someone else recognize my womanhood, and I will not “fight to be recognized as a woman.” That’s simply not something I feel the need to do.

My womanhood exists. It requires no defense. You can deny that it exists in as much as you can deny anything else exists. However, like the sun, the stars, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, denying my womanhood’s existence does nothing to change the fact that it exists — no matter how badly you wish it didn’t.

I recognize that I say this from a place of privilege. Various racial, educational, economic, geographic and genetic factors — just to name a few —have come together to put me in a place where in the real world, my womanhood is never denied. I can’t say it’s ever really questioned, even. If it is, such questions are never vocalized. Because of this, I am not at risk of violence at the hands of those who deny my womanhood in my day to day life.

So I get that my saying that I do not need others to recognize or validate the fact that I am a woman might come across to other folks as problematic or at best blasé. After all, many trans women have their womanhood denied on a daily basis. And many are at great danger and susceptible to horrific violence at the hands of those who do not recognize their womanhood. For many trans women, particularly trans women of color, coming across someone who denies their womanhood can result in death — and even in death people will try to deny their womanhood.

But that does not mean their womanhood doesn’t exist. That does not mean that it somehow requires defense.

Ultimately, the violence done to trans women has nothing to do with people denying our womanhood. It has to do with people denying our humanity.

This is why we say trans rights are human rights. The fact of our humanity — and the sheer depth and personal resolve it contains — may be inconvenient for bigots, but we are not here to make things convenient. Many of us have spent years of our lives making things convenient for bigots and have disavowed ever doing so again. Our humanity demands that we stand up and be recognized as persons, and deserving of the same rights afforded to others.

So no, you don’t have to recognize my womanhood. No, you don’t have to agree with my definitions of sex and gender. No, you don’t even have to understand me. And no, you sure as hell don’t have to like me.

But yes, you do have to recognize my humanity. Yes, you do have to agree that I have rights. Yes, you do have to understand that your opinion does nothing to change the fact of my existence.