Femininity My Way

You might want to know if I’m a feminist. Honestly, I don’t know; there are so many definitions nowadays. I do get rather annoyed with people who tell me I’ve ‘betrayed my sex’ for various reasons, but I’m not going to go into that right now. Instead of talking about what I may be, I’m going to talk about what I am. I’m going to set feminism aside and focus instead on femininity.

I struggle with the concept of femininity. For those of you who know what the MBTI is, I’m an INTJ. For those of you who don’t know, that means a lot of my traits are those traditionally considered more male; I’m calm, decisive, rational, direct, goal-oriented, and strong-willed. I’d generally rather have respect than affection. I work for the military, and I’m very career-oriented. My mother occasionally told me exasperatedly that I ‘thought like a man’ when I didn’t get hints, and multiple males have told me they believe I could beat them up (and some of them I probably could).

But despite all these traits, I am unequivocally female. Female is something I am, not something I’m like. I believe that I’m not just a collection of atoms or traits; I am a particular being over and above my body, and my essence includes not only rationality and moral agency, but femininity as well. Because I believe in the soul, because I believe that we are not only collections of atoms, but spiritual beings, I believe in binary gender. There’s no spectrum that we choose from when looking at gender. There’s just us – male and female, he created them.

Now, at first glance, this may appear very restrictive. How can I still be female and remain the way I am? Don’t I have to give up trying to focus on my career, or being strong-willed, or focusing on the facts, and switch to focusing on raising a family, submitting to my husband, and nurturing others’ feelings? Aren’t I tying myself down to oppressive, outdated structures that won’t be able to handle my ambitions? I once told my grandmother that I was planning on having a full-time career even after I had kids, and I would expect my husband to split the time taking care of them. She told me to talk to her when I’d gotten out of fairytale land. Doesn’t a traditional view of the sexes tie me down to all these limitations, or else force me to admit that I’m just not cut out to be female?

No, it doesn’t, because that’s looking at it backwards. See, we’ve lost our metaphysical grounding for our gender identity, we’ve lost ourselves, and we’re desperately trying to get ourselves back. As a result, we’ve begun to place excessive weight on social conventions and traits and even dress and legal status as quantifiable ways of breaking down who, exactly, we are. We’re now locked into our conventions and feelings and increasingly convoluted lists of traits, because if we don’t fit them exactly, we won’t have an identity anymore. But if we realize that the conventions and traits have nothing to do with determining our identities, the locks disappear.

G. K. Chesterton once told a story about a group of children playing by the side of a thousand-foot cliff. They careen and play and wrestle with reckless abandon, because there is a wall separating them from the sheer drop. The wall may seem restrictive, but it’s actually a foundation that allows them the freedom to do what they really wish to do anyway.

This is the same way. When we stop basing our identity on what we’re like and realize that it’s what we are, that I can’t lose my femininity any more than I can lose my personhood, we’re free to be whoever we want to be, without worrying about losing our identities. I don’t have to look at my decisiveness and figure out if it makes me more male or female. I start knowing I’m female, and so I know I’m a decisive female, and I get to figure out what that looks like.

To be honest, I haven’t finished figuring out what it looks like just yet; I’m barely a woman, much less a mature one. And this is not to say that I shouldn’t raise a family, or respect my husband, or comfort and console my friends when they need it. But I can do it in my own, strong, feminine, Christian way.

For instance, I wear makeup. Why do I wear makeup? Because good grooming makes you look professional; professionalism gains you respect. I believe I was meant to make a change in this world, and in order to do that, I need respect. So I need to look professional. So I need to wear makeup. My reasons for wearing makeup are my own. They are decisive (I switched my entire wardrobe in about a month after deciding this); they are rational; and they are goal-oriented. And for all that they are no less feminine.