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I get so frustrated when I see fellow sapphics saying that womanhood is necessarily constricting to us. Like, womanhood is so diverse and doesn’t have to be limited by the gender roles pushed on us by a heteronormative society. My butchness and masculinity don’t mean I can’t be a woman, even if I experience dysphoria and feel alienated from my gender at times. I think it’s just as important for gnc women to be able to claim that label for ourselves; we have a place in this experience and shouldn’t feel divorced from it if we still feel a connection to our womanhood.

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Something that TERFs are correct about rhetorically is that masculine women should be able to be masculine and still be women if they want to be.

“OK! That was always allowed” the queer, gender-nonconforming, and trans community would say.

You can be a woman who gets top surgery, who gets a hysterectomy, who goes on testosterone, who uses he/him pronouns. You can be a lesbian who does all this, or someone who is bisexual but has “gay sex” when it’s with men, and still be a woman.

Womanhood is good. And it is expansive and resilient. Those who were assigned female at birth, rejected almost all traditional gender expectations thereafter, but who still feel their womanhood—are right and good. More than good, they help others find their place in womanhood and/or gender nonconformity.

A butch woman with a deep voice, facial hair, mannerisms, and dress is not just expanding what is possible for cis women but helping many trans eggs crack. “If he’s a woman, and treated seriously and with respect in this queer space, maybe I can be too. Maybe I don’t have to worry about ‘passing’ or how I never will.”

Imagine how utterly revolutionary and liberating that might be to a chubby, hirsute but balding transfem egg in their 40s.

TERFs take a truth — that gender can be expansive and doesn’t require transition or being transgender — as a way of peddling their lie: that cis GNC people are in a competition with or in opposition to trans people. They, along with exclusionary queers, seek to build hard definitions and boundaries between identities where there did not used to be and cannot exist except with constant maintenance via intimidation and harassment.

It’s good to be a woman, even if it’s not for everyone. The more women there are who look like and act like all of the different ways that suit them best, the more room there will be for more people to feel comfortable staying or recognizing or feeling for this day in particular that they’re women. Which is a very powerful sisterhood.