Always Female

On the BBC the other day, they had a ‘Have Your Say’ about whether or not you identified yourself more by your nationality, family, tribe, ethnicity, etc. They asked for people to send in their answers, and I was really intrigued by this question, especially since, to me, they’d left out the biggest identifier- gender. I wrote this response with the intention of actually sending it in on time, but due to its length, I didn’t get it edited down in time to submit it. This morning, I was on the grrl genius blog, and as the discussion was feminism, I was reminded of my little article, and decided to post it up. Because, really, the timing seems perfect :D



“As someone raised in two different countries, on two different continents, I tend to identify myself, of the categories on this list, by nationality- to identify myself, as the situation determines, as either English or Canadian, or ‘both’.

But what I identify myself as, first and foremost, is a woman. Although sex is (usually) the most obvious identifier of ‘what’ a person ‘is’, it is also a central part of most people’s identity, and especially for me.

My gender is the part of my identity I feel most comfortable with, perhaps because there is no confusion- while others (and even myself) may debate whether or not I am ‘truly’ Canadian or English, whether I fit better into European or North American society, what is never under debate is my gender, or how that affects how I relate to others and the world around me.

Identifying myself as a woman allows me to identify with the feelings, concerns and plight of other women, whether within my group of friends, my family, my city of residence, either of my ‘home countries’ or throughout the world. Although I can not understand the plight of refugees in the Sudan or Iraqis suffering through the insurgency there, while I have more rights than many other women around the world, I can still relate to these women as, on some level, we all share the same concerns- the concerns of caring for our families as the usual primary or sole caregiver, unequal representation and labour standards, the needs of survival, and concern for our physical safety in ways that do not apply for men.

Being female shapes my actions and concerns. I react to others as a female, I volunteer for charities that help or promote women as one day I may need their services.

I am from southern England, I am Western Canadian. I am English, I am Canadian. I am European, I am North American. But I am always female.”