I’m probably not alone in defining my womanhood, at least to a certain degree, by a set of organs carefully hidden inside my body. Masterfully tucked inside of me, there is a womb. A potential home for a baby. I carry a uterus and other stuff that make me, undoubtedly, a woman.

But what if those things weren’t there? Would I still be a woman? I’m watching, with interest, the case of Caster Semenya, who is (possibly) just learning that she’s missing a valuable piece of the puzzle that is womanhood – her womb. And while there are other issues surrounding this, what I immediately thought of was how that must feel. While it’s one thing for that area of your anatomy to lay dormant, it’s entirely another to consider it a vacancy. Where there should be something, there is nothing. I imagine it an emptiness far beyond the mere absence of children. What must it be like to know that even if you tried really hard, with in vitro and pills and whatever else they’ve dreamed up, you’ll never birth a child because you have no where for that child form. I’m not even sure my internal equipment is actually working, but I do know it’s there. I take it for granted, this sacred space that’s been created inside of me. Most women who choose not to have children or are unable to for some medical reason still have a place inside them where life, theoretically, could grow. What if it didn’t even exist?

I’d still be a woman, even if that defining attribute was absent. I know how I feel and I think that’s all that matters. Would a man consider me a woman knowing that our interiors were eerily similar? I’m not sure. How we define what a woman is might be one of the most interesting questions I’ve pondered in a while. Is a woman the opposite of a man? Well, what if she’s just opposite on the outside? What if she’s opposite, but doesn’t look like a woman. Not she dresses like a man or presents herself as a man, what if she genuinely looks like a man? Are you a woman if no one will treat you as one? Are you a woman if no one believes you are?

I’d never given any of this a thought until lately, but apparently it’s an issue for a lot of women. Some statistics say 1 in 5000 women are born without a womb, a condition called MRKH. There are a lot of sad conditions in the world, but this struck me as particularly sad, because even though I’ve never actually seen my womb, it’s very much a part of me. I suppose I assumed it was a part of every woman’s identity. But there are many components to building an identity. I’m convinced that what you know as your truth is more important than anything else. There are no mistakes when it comes to our Divine creation, all the mistakes come in our perceptions. A woman can be a woman, even if she’s technically not a “wombman”.