woman, women
- my first girlfriend i was like 14 or 15
- my next girlfriend i was like 18?
- i met gf when i was 19 and we moved in together by like 20
i am surrounded by women and also not surrounded by them enough.
my high school english teachers (we had two—one for english literature and the other for english language, whatever that means) share a first name and they are my favorite adult women figure in my life
i’ve never met my grandfathers from either side of my parents because they died before i was born. that and my dad not being present made the lack of an adult man figure in my life kind of a default
i know how i feel about women but i don’t know how i feel about womanhood. there are some things about it that i hate. i hate that woman is discussed in context of a pre-existing man. that we have man in the word woman. that feminism is a response, kind of, to man.
so much of it makes my head hurt. i don’t want to be a man, don’t want to identify as one, don’t hate my non-man body. but i also dont like being in the context of one.
it’s hard to talk gender and feminist theory without presence of man. i want so much for a third more sinister thing that can be talked about without man as pretext, but i want it in a way that doesn’t leave me out of womanhood completely because i don’t hate being a woman, just some nuances of it
maybe the problem is that i want too much. i could be just selfish but i also think it’s what feels right. at least for right now