I’ve taken you to the doctor. It wasn’t so much confirmation I wanted as some advice. His answer was to shake his head and tell me I’m impatient, he still can’t say, and I should come back in two weeks prepared to discover that you’re a product of my imagination. I’ll go back just to show him he’s an ignoramus. All his science is not worth my intuition; how can a man understand a woman who is expecting a child. He can’t get pregnant…Is that an advantage or a limitation? Up until yesterday it seemed to me an advantage, even a privilege. Today it seems to me a limitation, even an impoverishment. There’s something glorious about enclosing another life in your own body, in knowing yourself to be two instead of one. At moments you’re even invaded by a sense of triumph, and in the serenity accompanying that triumph nothing bothers you: neither the physical pain you’ll have to face, nor the work you’ll have to sacrifice, nor the freedom you’ll have to give up. Will you be a man or a woman? I’d like you to be a woman. I’d like for you one day to go through what I’m going through. I don’t at all agree with my mother, who thinks it’s a misfortune to be born a woman. My mother, when she’s very unhappy, sighs: “Oh, if only I’d been born a man!” I know ours is a world made by men for men, their dictatorship is so ancient it even extends to language. Man means man and woman; mankind means all people; one says homicide whether it’s the murder of a man or a woman. In the legends that males have invented to explain life, the first human creature is a man named Adam. Eve arrives later, to give him pleasure and cause trouble. In the paintings that adorn churches, God is an old man with a beard, never an old woman with white hair. And all heroes are males: from Prometheus who discovered fire to Icarus who tried to fly, on down to Jesus whom they call the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, almost as though the woman giving birth to him were an incubator or a wet-nurse. And yet, or just for this reason, it’s so fascinating to be a woman. It’s an adventure that takes such courage, a challenge that’s never boring. You’ll have so many things to engage you if you’re born a woman. To begin with, you’ll have to struggle to maintain that if God exists he might even be an old woman with white hair or a beautiful girl. Then you’ll have to struggle to explain that it wasn’t sin that was born on the day when Eve picked an apple: what was born that day was splendid virtue called disobedience. Finally, you’ll have to struggle to demonstrate that inside your smooth shapely body there’s an intelligence crying out to be heard. To be a mother is not a trade. It’s not even a duty. It’s only one right among many. What an effort it will be for you to convince others of this fact. You’ll rarely be able to. And often, almost always, you’ll lose. But you mustn’t get discouraged. To fight is much better than to win, to travel much more beautiful than to arrive: once you’ve won or arrived, all you feel is a great emptiness. And to overcome that emptiness you have to set out on your travels again, create new goals. Yes, I hope you’re a woman. And I hope you’ll never say what my mother says. I’ve never said it.
