Stop Reducing Women To Their Bodies And Fertility – Someone Who Feels Like A Woman, IS!

I was a woman who was proud to be a woman. I still am. But my definition of what a woman is has expanded.

I used to take pride in the fact that I bleed. I used to take pride in undergoing severe pain every month, no matter how much I despised it. I took pride in my fertility. I felt fertility is a sign of good health. I felt that it’s nature. That it’s natural. That I am special. That I have the power to create and nurture a life in me. That I represent Shakti.

Until I heard what it feels like to feel like a woman and not be able to bleed. To not have a uterus.

I suddenly felt bad how these amazing women, with all their existence and their presence, their talents and their skills, and intelligence and depth and intellect, were reduced to one part of their body. And the ‘lack’ of that one part of their body and life that WE define as ‘womanly’.

Just ONE part of their body.

And how I had done the same to myself

I had reduced my amazing self to one organ of my body. Just one extension of my body.

My same beautiful body that supports and nurtures me everyday and gets me going.

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How my womanhood was reduced, by myself, to ‘my test of fertility’ every month. All these years.

That these tests were mentally and emotionally more excruciating than all the physical period pain I ever faced.

We do it to mothers who don’t physically birth their baby

A few days ago a popular actress had a baby via surrogacy. She and her husband shared this wonderful news via their social media. There was mostly positive response from all sides.

Some comments, however, read –
“Motherhood can only be experienced when you yourself give birth to your child.”
“It’s a once in a lifetime experience, when you carry a life in your womb for nine months.”
“This is a new trend, if you have money you can hire a uterus.”

Others in defense, said –
“We don’t know what the couple went through.. we don’t know their story”
“Her body, her choice.”
“Who are we to judge?”

When I read the comments, I could connect to both sides. Because I have been on both sides of the fence.

Time and again, we succeed in reducing ourselves, and other women just to their bodies. Or the clothes that cover these bodies.

Why are we so hard on other women?

How does it make us educated, socially aware, rationally vocal women any different from a society that used to ostracize young girls because they could not conceive?

It forced me to think –  are us women slave to our own labour?

If motherhood is amazing, why should it be an exclusive experience? And why should it be seen as a privilege, and not a gift?

Certainly, we want to see it as a gift, but we also ridicule those who don’t have this ‘gift’.

Does only giving birth to a child makes a mother a good mother?

And yes, while I do agree that the connection of nine months with a life in your womb is irreplaceable, the warm hug of a mother is also the safest place on the face of the earth. A place that every child deserves.

But…

There are many men who are playing the role of both mother and father to their kids. There are many single women (and men) who want to adopt. There are couples who can’t conceive and still want to be parents.

And there are non-heterosexual individuals, or trans persons who are still waiting to pour all the love they have on a baby, but for now, have to keep it all locked in their hearts. Because they can’t adopt. Because they don’t have a uterus. Because a society that is created for all individuals to be supported chooses to exclude them from what it considers ‘normal’. Not realising that ‘normal’ is to love.

This world needs to have a place for all of them, for motherhood, and parenthood, is a beautiful responsibility.

And that as humans, we all need to unlock the Shakti that’s within us.
For goddess of Shakti doesn’t discriminate. She blesses all her children equally.

Editor’s Note: 31st March is Transgender Visibility Day. Let us stop reducing women to their bodies and fertility. 

Image source: Still from Netflix Series Sacred Games

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