For those who are curious, my preferred pronouns are she/they. I consider myself an androgynous woman–one who combines elements of several genders but who identifies, politically, as a woman. When I use “woman” in a poem such as “Brave Women’s Amulet,” I am using the word as a political category.
“Woman” –even when it is used to include all who identify as women, no matter what their assigned sex at birth–is a problematic word right now. Many people have stopped using it. I sympathize. I am happy to acknowledge, for example, that abortion is a human right , not just a woman’s right; some people who do not identify as women still need abortions, No harm is done to anyone by acknowledging this truth and using the phrase “people who need abortions” rather than “women who need abortions.” This is good, useful, fair, and empowering to all. Even as a worshipper of Goddesses, someone for whom the Divine Feminine is a huge liberation, I am happy to acknowledge that Goddess is an energetic phenomenon, that the Divine Feminine can be present in all of us.
In the communities I create and classes I teach, I focus on those who identify as women and gender-expansive, gender-nonconforming people. I love cis-men and am married to one, and many cis-men appreciate my poems, poetics, books, and performances, which makes me very happy and grateful. But in order to help empower the feminine energy on this planet, I choose to share my teaching and community-building energy in CMF (cis-men-free) spaces. I appreciate men who understand the need for this. My spaces are open to gender-nonconforming and gender-expansive people, in addition to those who identify as women, because I feel that people who explore gender boundaries are allies in helping liberate all of us from the narrow rigid gender identities of patriarchy.
That said, there are times when the category of “women” is useful. and important. I identify as a woman in solidarity with my sisters across the globe who suffer rape, burning, torture, imprisonment, economic disempowerment, reproductive slavery, and more solely because of our shared sex. I identify as a woman in order to make sure that, even in “developed” countries where feminism is supposedly respected, we can keep accurate track of the numbers of women represented in politics, in publishing, and in the economy. I identify as a woman in order to better understand how patriarchy works in my own life and that of other women I know, and how other social systems such as matriculture can be possible and necessary.
And finally, I identify as a woman in solidarity with the suffering and oppression of my mother who was unable to have a credit card in her own name, my grandmothers who were unable to vote, my great-grandmothers who were unable to get an education, my great-great-grandmothers, great-great-great grandmothers, and great-great-great-great grandmothers whose labor was owned by their husbands, who were separated from their daughters and had no control over where or how they lived, back 11 generations to my 11th great grandmother who was imprisoned as a witch in Salem, back through 5000 years of patriarchy until we come at last to the time when women’s spiritual, sexual, mental, physical, and emotional power was honored, when statues such as this “sheela-na-gig” from Ireland were carved, and further back to the time of the Goddesses. I identify as a woman so the spirits of these women will know me and recognize me when I thank them and honor them for what they endured.