Sos Mujer?

She asks with her head tilted, eyes squinting, examining me.  She is not the first child to ask and she won't be the last, I'm sure.

"Sos mujer?"

Are you a woman?

I answer with a smile, because I have been taught that she has the right to ask. 

"Si, soy mujer." 

Yes, I'm a woman. 

She frowns slightly and walks down the subway car.  My answer did not help her confusion.  It made things worse. 

There are the unspoken questions, the subset, that linger:

If you are a woman, why do you dress this way? Why is your hair short? Where is your makeup? Your earrings? Your jewelry? If you are a woman, why can't I tell? 

She's a child, maybe seven, and her question is as innocent as this question will ever be.  It doesn't sting the same way that it would from the man sitting across from me or from the subway attendant, who ask with a more accusatory tone, one that is just developing in her still small voice, in the squint of her eyes. 

Sos mujer? 

She might not know why, but she feels compelled to ask.  She knows, already, that she should be able to place me in a box, and when she can't, she needs to try to fix it.  She, too, is being taught that she has the right to question me. 

Si, soy mujer. 

 

I am a woman, convincing her and myself that it's true, that no matter how many children or how many of the adults that teach them ask me, my womanhood does not depend on their question but on my answer. 

Right? 

I am a woman? 

But we all know that's not true.  I do not decide; they decide, and I feel it in the way that I make myself smaller on the subway seat, cross my legs, sit straighter so that my chest is more obvious. 

A child in pink tights can unravel me, read me, fail me. 

If so many people ask, call me sir, stare and stare and stare, then my womanhood must be a question, not an answer. 

Am I a woman? 

I am, I am, I am. 

I tell myself and seek comfort in theory, a flurry of words and analysis running through my head: social construction, heterosexual matrix, performativity, gender policing. 

There. 

An interrogation.  I am being policed. 

Sos mujer? 

And it is meant to break me down, to force both an answer and another question, a more insidious question, of myself. 

Why do I make them ask? 

I have broken the rules and brought the questions, demanded the questions.  They need to know but they should not need to ask.  I should be better.  I should do better.  There, the reason for the question; the response that they want. 

Am I a woman? 

I can critique the question, but I still want the answer to be yes.  I want the category, the comfort, the stable and solid identity.  I want the same things they do, even as I fail to meet the standard for acceptance. 

It's a trap for all of us: for the little girl who is learning that she and I must both fit within boxes, for the adults who listen to her question with tacit approval conveyed through their silence,  for me who has a minor existential crisis at a two word question that I try to convince myself doesn't matter and shouldn't matter to anyone. 

What is a woman? 

I have no idea but I feel the weight of the word as I claim it and as others deny me that claim, and I know I am not alone in this.  The little girl feels it, as does the man sitting across from me.  It is real for all of us as we ask the same question, albeit in different ways. 

Am I a woman?