Tuesday 08-03-2022 - 10:41

I first felt “like a woman” when I moved to university. It was like a blank canvas, an entirely new area for me to explore. I remember my little university room with its four off- white walls, single camp bed, desk, wardrobe, and drawers and thinking “this is mine”. My university room gave me a sense of individuality and freedom that I never had living at home. I got to dress my walls how I like, play my music as loud as I want, wear what I wanted to wear, dye my hair all sorts of crazy colours. I got to be me.

 

Being a woman is powerful. You are your own superhero, in a way, and not many people see that. You can’t shoot lasers out of your eyes, and you don’t have enough money to make a bionic-human suit, but you have a body that warps and changes itself constantly, a mind that makes a million decisions a day, and the strength to carry on in the face of adversity. You are a mother, daughter, granddaughter, caregiver, whatever you choose to be - and that, I believe, is the most powerful thing of all:  choosing your own identity.

 

Growing up I always knew I was going to be different. Being assigned female at birth comes with its challenges, I just didn’t realise the extent of them. The constant love-hate relationship I had with my body, the period pain that kept me off school, college and university because paracetamol and ibuprofen just didn’t cut it but being too scared to admit that to teachers and lecturers as it didn’t seem like a practical “excuse”, and the blatant misogyny shown by teachers, peers and society which has stuck with me almost seven years on.

 

Because of these, what I now call “minor adversities”, I felt as though I couldn’t reach my full potential as a feminist, which is a huge part of my identity. I felt as though I had to be constantly in love with my body because that’s what ‘a real feminist’ would do or that I had to embrace my period pain despite it leaving me virtually immobile and hovering over the toilet ready to vomit because of how unwell I feel. 

 

But now I realise that I am a superhuman, bad-ass, resilient young woman and that it’s okay to feel these things because it doesn’t make me less of one. Learning to love your body is hard - it's not as simple as an overnight fix, but I'm learning to accept my rolls, and stretch marks that look like lightning bolts, wonky eyebrows and acne that looks like constellations of stars and how my tummy pokes out a little bit because I've fed and fueled my body - something only a few months ago I would’ve grimaced or scowled at. 

 

My period pain doesn’t invalidate me. Rather, it pushes me for answers as I know the amount of pain I am in isn’t normal, which also allows me to take time to care for my body. I am now also recognising the misogyny and intolerance I faced in the past isn’t going to go away, but rather than be defeated by it I can take what they have said and done in my stride and use it as the prompt to keep me going.

 

It's being unique and special in our own way and realising that we are not carbon copies, we have our own identities which empower and fulfil us. That is what being a woman is to me.

 

- Orna-Murphy Horton, Women's Officer