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Why I Was a Woman Who Oppressed Women
Born assigned female, I had developed into an uncouth, boyish 12-year-old when I suddenly found myself required to wear only dresses and skirts and behave like a lady.
I recently found myself trying — and failing — to explain to someone how I reacted when my mother discovered that extreme traditionalist Catholicism was alive and well, that home-schooling families with more than a dozen children each were modeling it, and that we could join them. I didn’t fight to retain my natural nonbinary identity but instead doubled down on the false identity my mother’s belief system forced on me, and I couldn’t find the right words to help someone else understand why.
But here’s why if I had to be “a true woman” with the role of homemaker, bearer of offspring, and caregiver, I would give over every fiber of my being to it. Not only would I feel safer under the patriarchal power structure if I made it trust and honor me as a shining example of compliance, I saw even more to gain by positioning myself as one of its enforcers.
I wouldn’t have had these words when I was young, nor any way to understand that I was adopting a coping strategy. It worked, in a way. As I married a man I didn’t want, submitted to him, and served as his vessel, I felt less oppressed and more like a “chosen one” with a special purpose.
