Original Artwork: The Words of Femalehood

Female-Woman-Girl are Power Words!, 2024, Digital Collage

As a demographic, women often separate themselves from words connected to femalehood as a response to male supremacy. I’ve found myself in this place many times. The more I heal my dissociation through therapy, the more I’m able to reintegrate myself and my words.

Male supremacists make slurs and curses about femaleness to feel secure about their construction of gender and to perpetuate their belief in entitlement. They take the proper terms for women and girls and denigrate them. Being female itself is seen as an insult under male supremacy, so any proper terms connected to femaleness are an insult in and of themselves. After centuries of such bullying, we start to hate the very terms meant to describe us. When people call women and girls “female” or “females” it triggers us. When people call an adult woman “girl” it angers us. When men call us “woman” in that certain tone it puts us on the defense. Separating a class of people from pride in their personhood is a weapon of psychological domination. To oppress a group you need to make them believe they’re inherently flawed and ‘less than.’ Male supremacy primes us for self-hate, dissociation, disembodiment, and self-objectification. But this can be challenged, brick by brick. It is for us to be proud of our terms no matter what; hold dear to our terms, protect our terms, and know that there isn’t a need for reclamation but for acceptance of our words of femalehood. We don’t have to change our words, we have to correct the slandering of their meaning and worth.

I felt this personally during a conversation with my niece a few years ago. Around the age of two when she started to become verbal and was in the initial stages of learning how to categorize humans, she stated that I’m a girl just like her. I said, “Yes, but actually I’m a woman because I’m an adult.” Of course this was factually correct. But my quick response to a child who couldn’t quite grasp the difference of girl and woman wasn’t as much about her learning, but more about my automatic bristling from being called a “girl” by fellow adults throughout my life. Later when I reflected on the interaction I also realized it was because somewhere deep down, I hated the little girl inside of me. The one I compartmentalized out of the need for survival. The one that made me feel so vulnerable due to PTSD. I sat with the pain of self-hate and realized that it was never coming from inside of me, but from the external world that said girls are worthless and ok to abuse. I cried for that little girl that I was trained to hate. In that moment my perspective shifted profoundly on the words for my femaleness.

As is typical with a two year old, my niece and I stumbled into the same conversation again about our shared world of being girls. She of course didn’t remember the distinction that I’m a woman, but this time I didn’t correct her. I looked her in the eyes, squeezed her little hands, smiled as loudly as I could, and exclaimed, “Yes, we’re both girls - and so is your mom, and so is your grandma!” The room filled with the sound of her giggling with joy. And for the first time ever I felt so proud to be called a girl. I vowed that even when others tried to call me girl with the goal of denigration, I would hold my head up high and let them know that girl, female, woman are power words; and I unabashedly claim them all.

This piece is dedicated to my niece, who has shown me new ways of understanding the world.