Last time, in announcing that I had found a D to fulfil my submissive needs, I introduced the concept of femaleness vis-à-vis womanhood. In this post, I will attempt to outline and characterise the difference that, in my mind, exists between both. Please note that these are my personal ideas and feelings about my own sexuality and identity and as such should not be taken as a base for what I feel or believe about everybody else.
In primitive human groupings, societal roles are binarily defined according to the individuals’ sex. To make a blatant example, males hunt, whilst females gather. This difference between active and passive is important — and it is pervasive throughout the natural world. In many species, sexual dimorphism — meaning, markedly different traits between male and female — is quite evident. Males have brilliant colours, long antlers, vivid feathers, large manes, long tusks — features that advertise their suitability as a mate to the female; while females are usually dull-coloured, lacking in features that make them eye-catching, and yes, even smaller in size.
Humans are different in that aspect than other mammals, in that sexual dimorphism is both evident and subtle.
The evident dimorphism is plainly noticeable. Males are taller, more muscular, and have a different body shape than females — males have a V-shaped body, whilst females have an X-shaped one; females have less muscle definition, are smaller, rounder on the hips and, uniquely, have prominent, forward-facing teats.
Subtle dimorphism is invisible, but very present as well. Among those subtle, invisible signs of dimorphism, males have a less accurate colour perception, but a greater spatial awareness than females, and the shape of the female’s hips is different than a male’s, to allow room for the gestating young. I digress, however. Suffice it to say that the crucial difference is that at the animalistic level the male is active, and the female passive, out of necessity: Only the female has the sexual organs that allow carrying and birthing a newborn. Gestating new life and feeding it for the first months of its live after birth is a significant cost for the female in physical terms, because, biologically, it is an investment in the next generation, one that needs to be protected and nourished until it can fend off for itself.
Over the many millennia of human evolution as a species, and as human societies grew more sophisticated and complex, a division started to form between sex and gender. sex — male, female — became private; whilst gender — man, woman — became more public. At first, gender roles closely aligned with sex roles — men were the active face of the human grouping, while women were its private face. At the centre, however, the role of the female as life producer and caregiver remained, essentially, unchanged.
In modern times, with the advent of industrialisation, sex and gender have become further separated — indeed, it is very possible for a female to have an active role in contemporary society, and, vice versa, for a male to have a passive one. Furthermore, gender identities once considered deviant or abhorrent — homosexuality, bisexuality, transgender, etc. — have become increasingly accepted as valid gender identities regardless of the physical, sexual identity — so much so that it is now possible today to physically change a person’s birth sex to reflect their perceived gender.
To make an already long argument short, in today’s society, people have two separate and equally important identities: the public one — gender — and the private one — sex. Gender is qualifiable; sex is not. Gender is mental; sex is physical. From this separation it’s possible to infer that what satisfies the social aspect of one’s identity (manhood, womanhood) may not be the same as what satisfies the physical aspect of it (maleness, femaleness).
I apologise in advance for this ramble; I felt it necessary to put it out there, and clarify my position and meaning when I speak of womanhood and femaleness. I hope my meaning is now clear.
As always, I remain open to opinions and observations about this or anything else in this blog.