They Day



Anonymous



To the Australian State Governments,

In response to your proposed ‘They Day’ - a once a month day to replace ‘he, she, her, him’ with the gender free pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’.

I would like to not be robbed of my identity. I am female. I am her. I am she.

I was assigned into the fairer sex in the late 1970’s in Australia and as a woman, a mother even, in 2018 I am confident in my choice and biology. I do not need, or want your politicized language. Call me woman because I am. I have earned this title and your desire to group me into a sexless pronoun is a threat and an insult to the life I have lived and to those women who have gone before me. Shame on you!

Let me femsplain to you what it means to me to be called female and why you should not, in your ignorance, ask me to forget who I am. For four decades I have earned my stripes as a female warrior, no easy task, and I will not ‘just lie back and take it’ as you have your way with me. I am woman, hear me roar!

My biology may be XX (female, in case you don’t know) however I am female also because of my history and circumstance. I am a product of the expectations placed upon me, the choices I made, and of the history before me. I knew from experience as a young girl in the 1980’s that men liked my body, as a teenager in the 1990’s that boys rated me for my looks, as a young woman in the 2000’s that men did not like to be outsmarted and that they held more value in the office and in politics than I did, and now in the 2010’s as a mother it is still expected for me to stay at home and sacrifice myself for others.

My body was made known to me to be female, as in different to males, as a child when I was taught to keep my knees together in dresses and skirts, to say ‘thank you’ when a man or boy told me I was pretty, as a teenage girl when I was made to feel shame about puberty and menstruation (at no times are period jokes funny btw) or when I worried if I was fat, ugly, or not popular enough, and as a young woman when my opinions were written off as inexperience or/and ignorance, I also wondered if I was too fat, ugly or not funny enough. Now as a woman with children, I am bombarded with a new set of expectation and rules. I’m still working through these but I can tell you for certain, there are obvious differences between the male parent and the female. He didn’t lose himself. I did…and if I thought I worried before how I looked and if people would like me, ‘turning to seed’ is a whole other level. (Notice how the male of the species never does this, he just ages like a fine wine.)

Further to the loss of self when a woman becomes a mother, the complete loss of body ownership a female can experience in pregnancy and birth is astonishing. As if the regular pap smear wasn't enough! But why the shame and embarrassment? Shouldn't I be used to people touching and looking at my body. #metoo I have been touched, kissed, spied on, spat at and harassed by boys and men without my consent. I have been made to feel ashamed about my body, its normal functions, all the while I’ve been exposed to art, books, movies, etc that absolutely sexualise it. Being female is not easy; we have to figure out this fine line between shameful and celebrated, sexy and slutty, hot or not. It’s horrible but it’s real and it takes a long time to make any sense of. Australia, don't make me forget what I've been through, what I’ve grown from, the experience and knowledge that will help to keep my children safe. Particularly now when, in the wake of #metoo and the increasing demand for real equality and when it might be the best time on earth to be female, you, the governments of Australian states, want me to deny my female identity? Shame on you.

Don’t ask me to forget the brutality that females have, and still do, experience.

I am a product of female lives before mine. Once we were all sold as property, had no rights, and were discarded at a whim. Once we were all forced into confinement even while we brought forth sons into the world. Even now as I travel the world I see many females still repressed, sexualized, and controlled by their society and culture. Do not make me forget them. Do not distance me from them. In empathy I need to demand change on their behalf in the same way women and men did for me in times past. Their suffering and petitioning brought about my freedom, the acceptance of me as equal to men in Australia and much of the world. Because of them I am autonomous and valued. I make claim to this history. I will not deny it. I am thankful for those people. I will not allow you, Australia to bundle me in as a they or them. I have no claims to the male experience. I do not share male entitlement and I do not empathize or sympathize with their (often violent) history, or the boys club mentality. I did not experience the same kind of puberty or personal development that boys did. There have been different rules and expectations for us and I have made peace with that. We are different. I am not them. They are not me. Notice how it’s not #theytoo? There are reasons for that.

Australia, I have survived as a female in a female body, do not take from me. Fighting the patriarchy is one thing, not being allowed recognition is another.

My identity is not fair game. I am female. I am woman. I am singular. I am not them, not they. I am her. I am she. And I like it.



