Please Stop Asking Me About My Vagina.

There are people who believe the world is now feminist. As long as people can casually poll a woman on her reproductive decisions at family gatherings, this is the land of the patriarchy. So many things about womanhood is public or has the expectation of being publicized. Most specifically, the woman body.

Pregnancy comes to mind when I think about all the ways in which a woman does not have her body to herself. Biology demands that two parties come together to procreate, but I’ve never seen my boy cousins be questioned about their decision to have children. This question is not only posited from the women, the men are in on it too. What is it about a woman that makes it not odd to inquire about such a privatized event? Why are we obsessed with women this way?

I’ve realized pregnancy is not a private event, at least not for the person carrying the child. It forces the mother to animate her choices. The child grows, so does her stomach, and the private intimation becomes a public display. It’s fascinating that men have the luxury of announcing, on their own time, their pending state of fatherhood. They don’t have to be found out or plan confession like some weird ‘whodunnit’ model. They are on their own terms throughout the pregnancy. There’s something that we all must answer to in regards to how we treat women as it relates to reproduction. The reason we are so bent, as a society, on the decisions of women and on what terms they choose to participate in the family nucleus, is because we are convinced that is her most important achievement. No one will admit this outright. It’s difficult to betray a belief when the lineage of its tradition lends itself so far back into history and time. It becomes difficult to see that these beliefs enforce tropes of marginalization.

Women who swim against the culture pose a threat to all industries, making it plain to society that their expectations will not be kept. Society pretends to believe that women are the only good gatekeepers of the world as babies are all our hopes for a better world. Men cannot naturally have children, so it could not possibly be their burden to churn out the lot of kids that will save us all. Society pretends to believe this, but if this were a universal truth, there would be no need to have a war on women’s choices about their bodies. Men would not gather in private rooms to make public decisions about bodies that are not their own.

I’ve been asked about children. I’ve been made to feel guilty about not having them. Men have told me that “everyone needs at least one…” like collecting children is the rite of passage to real womanhood. It sounds creepy. I am exhausted at all the ways people pry into my life in this way, but I am also offended that I don’t get more questions about my vision for my career, the writing I do, or my latest travels. I’m not saying that people don’t ever inquire about these things, but they do so in a way that feels like they are rushed and hurrying it aside to get to the more important stuff. Many seem to think having children is so important, that every other endeavor either leads to it, or has to be directly impacted by it. For example, “Travel now because when those babies come…” Children are gifts, yes, but the beauty of the a gift is that it is not imposed. You shouldn’t have to compel me to accept it. It is offensive that it is odd to be a woman with little interest in having children. Reproduction is only one of the possibilities of my vagina, and that is optional. There are many other uses for it.

By policing women about their reproductive choices in such a casual way, the assumption becomes that a type of essential womanhood exists and that all women are participatory. Among the many pragmatic reasons to weigh the options of having or not having children, essential womanhood reduces women to a body void of distinct thought. Womanhood is not a monolith. Women vary. We are not all the same. It’s easy to think that we are when you don’t look at us. Women are individuals with more timelessness and advancement than any other biological being. We want to create art. We want to tell jokes. We want to run marathons and run for president. We don’t want to be asked about our vaginas over drinks. It’s boring. Get creative and come up with other questions.

The question, for me, always comes up. I give the same answer. They give me the same look. It’s a look of acceptance backed with the secret knowledge that I’ll change my mind. The world has been conditioned to see women — families even — as incomplete without children. That is a lie that exposes the belief in women as being born into lack.

My friends and I saw Erykah Badu live once at a music festival. During the show she told the audience with most assuredness, that she has always known she harnessed everything she needed inside of her to live a full life. Erykah has children of her own, and is a doula to other women during birth. She didn’t say she came to that realization after she had children, she reconciled that within herself before they existed. I carry that counsel with me.

Women are born whole, widely human. The world would have us think our existence is a crime, have us cover up our brilliance and our intuition and substitute it for constant delay and mercy at the lands of societal norms.The liturgy on which the world would have women feed gives us famine and calls it a feast.

Women with children are whole. Women without children are whole. The issue is not with us and our reproductive system or our choices. It is with your antiquated convictions regarding women as objects. We are not here for your use nor for your consumption. Aren’t you ashamed to be so small?

Stop asking us about our vaginas. They’re fine.

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