what it means to be a woman

Today I'm reminded what it means to be a woman.

In a profound way the feminine is illuminated by the ritual cycle of menstruation. Women maintain a level of exposure to harm through their vaginal opening, this is a persisting sacrifice or ongoing area that is in constant defense -- something like a forty-year wound. Women devote resources to this aspect of self over an incredible span of their lives. While primarily active, this process bends or informs a woman toward acts of compliance and mediation. When people talk about free will, I generally know they aren't women talking. When thought and behavior are directly influenced by hormones and other powerful in-body chemicals - free will isn't really free. I've often thought that choice exists but during her fertile years a woman is bent to the plow of reproduction, of raising offspring. Her body is designed to tolerate the intrusion of men, bringing with them every possible sort of crud.

Why are women less likely to sleep around? One or two bouts of hives or internal burning promptly smacks her around into understanding her risk exposure. Survival is when you limit disease.

Women pay for access. When reproduction doesn't occur women sluff off part of their body. This involves pain and a sense of loss. It involves anger and irritation, resentment and again, that certain awareness that their own body is temporarily in service to both men and species.

When women speak of empowerment, they must, also, speak of the bondage of the reproductive process. As a woman ages and her contract with men, children, species diminishes, often she feels a rise within as the unknown non-bonded woman wakens - as hormones diminish and the primeval power of the contract fades in ever lessening importance - then, the woman feels the feminine and a new neutrality that no longer devotes resources to reproductive process. It becomes less important to groom for attraction, to comply for acceptance - value is no longer measured by the number of eggs residing within her. As each thread of bondage lifts her innate energy returns, her motivations clarify, her ideas flourish. This is how women come into their power -- through the process of discarding reproduction and all its hidden vampires.