I’ve viewed every part of this journey through many lenses, not the least of which is one we call ‘WOMAN.’

I say all this because suddenly and tragically there is a movement afoot to erase womanhood. The “woke left,” progressives, some well-meaning conservatives, and even my own President have decided that in order to appease the tiniest of slivers of humanity who believe they can change their genders by surgically altering their bodies they must completely erase womanhood for all of us. It has come to the point where our own governmental and academic institutions have replaced the word “mother” with “birthing person,” as if that is some type of equality.

You’ll notice we are not replacing “father” with “sperm producer” or some other idiot term. There is something so grossly misogynistic about the movement to erase womanhood. It’s as if none of the notions of women have changed in the last 1000 years. One philosophy is to the far right and one is to the far left, but both paint womanhood as inherently disgusting, flawed, misshapen, and grotesque. The natural form and function of our bodies are repulsive to each extreme. One extreme sought to eliminate our gender through silence – keeping us tucked away at home, away from the reaches of “civilized” society. The other extreme seeks to eliminate our gender through erasure – denying us the privilege of the markers that make us different than men and seeking to nullify the most beautiful aspects of our bodies. It is vile.

I am not a “birthing person.” I am a mother. I am not a “person who menstruates.” I am a woman. My body and my gender deserve your recognition. God knows I have fought a bloody and emotional battle to obtain that recognition. I have earned the respect of womanhood. How dare anyone suggest that because some people are gender bigots that I do not deserve the respect I have earned in this body?

I have given birth to the very future of humanity. That is the privilege of motherhood and the function of womanhood. And if one happens to be a woman who can’t give birth, or who chooses not to give birth, rest assured she is taking those journeys as a woman. She is dealing with the emotional fallout from how that affects her life as a woman. Those things still fall under the umbrella of womanhood and yes, motherhood. Because motherhood – the choosing of it or the absence of it – is an exclusively female function. //

Live your life how you want, but you will not steal my God-given and gloriously created form. You will not reduce me to a function – a person who can give birth. You will address me with the respect I deserve, the respect my mother and her mother and her mother before her fought for. The respect I deserve and I have earned as a WOMAN.

My gender is not your social experiment.