It’s lovely to meet a chick with balls. In this case, at least, I mean that in the figurative sense.
There have always been women with audacity, cheek, guts, boldness and nerve. The Jews have a word for it: Chutzpah.
Today, we find it easy to talk about that energy using masculine metaphors — a ballsy broad — but that doesn’t respect the special and different kind of energy that women bring to the room.
For men, that kind of energy is often reckless and detached. It becomes a surface obligation that is disconnected from feeling and nuance.
For women, that energy is more often a facet of who they are, one face of their experience, one layer of a woman claiming her own power in the world. Sure, it takes the same kind of determined ignorance of naysayers and tenacity in the face of challenge, but for women, there always has to be a layer of intelligence, wit and emotional connection underneath.
If feminism has taught us anything it is that women can do anything. They just do it in their own way, substituting co-operation and style for brute force. There is no need for them to shy away from anything that they really feel the need to tackle.
All this means is that if a chick has balls and wants to use them, more power to her.
I once asked a crossdresser “So, if I had been born female, do you think I would have been a mouthy broad?” He thought for a moment, first going through is model of ideal femininity and then moving onto real women he knew before getting my point: not all women are demure, helpless, fragile flowers. In fact, almost all women can turn on the power when they need to, like when they feel that their children are threatened.
For women born female when someone calls them a butch ball buster who is too brash for their own good, the only thing that is challenged is their attractiveness. They slide, maybe, more into the unfuckable category.
Transwomen, though, have a different challenge. When someone does that to us, they can threaten our entire gender. “See! He is really a man! Mock and silence him!” is something we have fought against our whole lives.
If we have come out later in life, after being forced to assume a man role, we know that we have a lot of that guy training inside. For many transwomen, the path to womanhood leads through the “Not Man” space. They reject anything that feels masculine, working to become sweet and small.
Those of us who don’t want to be seen as crossdressers, men in dresses doing drag or having a bit of a hobby learn to avoid the kind of ballsy displays of blokey entitlement that we see there. Wearing women’s clothes does not make one a woman, rather gender comes down to a deep & persistent identification as revealed in a wide range of choices.
Learning to assimilate is a very important part of development as a woman. You need to learn to be part of the group, showing respect and listening, learning the traditions and values.
Learning to lead is an important part of development as a woman. You need to learn to stand up for yourself, offering what you value to the group, encouraging new, bold, audacious and brilliant choices.
It’s always good to meet a chick with balls, a brazen gal who has cheek and nerve.
But it is better, I suspect, to be one.
Callan 