A freeing realization

I wonder sometimes why things that seem to encourage and empower other women have the opposite affect on me.
I think maybe it’s because I differentiate between being female and being a woman, and in that differentiation, I don’t identify as a woman. I don’t think because I am a woman therefore I _____. I’m happiest thinking of myself as transcending gender, neither identifying as a woman or a man, just merely being a human who happens to be female.
In my mind woman and man are loaded words, filled with connotations, expectations, and rules. This dissonance between my physiology and the cry of my soul that does not identify as woman has been hard, confusing, and filled with more than my share of unneeded shame and guilt. I am still being inundated at every turn with messages about being woman, by people who embrace it and (basically) condemn it; I sometimes wish that I could reconcile the disconnect between myself and my body – because there are so many things I can’t explain about myself, and the dissonance that lies within (I love the appearance of my body, but simultaneously hate what it means for me).
The one thing that seems to help, that makes sense in my crazy little brain….is to know that I don’t identify as a woman, nor do I identify as a man. I identify as a human of the female gender, a person who’s physiology is the same as half of the species and ever so slightly different than the other half, but that’s where it ends. I am a human, like everyone else and I have both “masculine” and “feminine” traits and interests (or as I like to think of them: traits and interests).
I embrace my individuality and personhood above all else.


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