40 remains open to the psychology of womanhood due to her unique perspective in being a woman , a perspective forged by the functional concepts inherent to her body as a whole . Overall , women see childbearing as a personal act not defined by fleeting emotions , but by the totality of who a woman is . 143 Thus , the psychology of womanhood suggests that being a woman is an identity in a truly profound sense .
It could then be said that manhood and womanhood are identities , but they are not identities defined by whim . Identity has become , in popular thinking , the basis for personhood . Furthermore , identity politics – driven by the popular understanding of gender – teach people that their gender depends more on feelings than the facticity of their body . Identity politics can be summarized with the simple formula , “ I am X ; this is my deepest identity .” 144 The real problem here is that identity politics reduces the person to X . Whoever said that X had to be the depth of personal identity ? People are much more than an emotion , a feeling , or an urge – even the pains they endure – no matter how strongly felt or suffered .
Personhood includes the dimensions of mind and body as a unity . When compared to each other , males and females live distinctly from each other as men and women . Since a woman has a female body , her mind will think through that body ; therefore , a kind of personal conditioning is had . A woman carries a womb within her body and a man does not . This womb is not trivial . It conditions a woman ’ s life by the experiences native to her bodily state of being a woman . But what of women with non-functioning wombs ? The simple answer is that they are uniquely suffering women , because the presence of the womb outweighs the perfection of its functioning .
The interesting point about suffering is that it implies something good was taken away that ought not to have been taken away . For this reason , a broken , malformed , or non-functioning womb remains a real womb . Keep this point in mind as I provide below a blunt example of the intuition of being a given gender by way of the sexed body .
For women , menstruation ( having a period ) is a personal affair before it is a hygienic affair . It is certainly possible that a given individual woman may suffer the unnatural lack of a period ( as opposed to a period naturally lacking during pregnancy ) due to a peculiar suffering in her reproductive organs . Yet , women still welcome her as a woman , because something good within her , essential to who she was as a person , was taken from her , whether taken by agent or a defect . In a way she is permitted to share in what she lacks through solidarity with other women , in a sort of vicarious experience . A man listening in on a personal conversation about periods ( menstruation ), unlike the woman in this case , will absolutely remain alone from the conversation , because his body remains utterly different and distinct from that of woman . His body is fundamentally different and distinct from the suffering woman , because his body
143 I refer specifically to inclinations . Of course , not all women carry a psychological structure suitable to being a
mother . But , a generalization can be true for all of a given type , even when not true for every individual of a given type . In regards to the distinction as it pertains to women , for an example , see , John Paul II , “ The Mystery of Woman is Revealed in Motherhood ” ( General Audience : March 12 , 1980 ). 144 Charles Pope , “ God Designed Our Bodies to Reveal Things about Himself and His Creation ,” National Catholic
Register , April 15 , 2016 , under Blogs : http :// www . ncregister . com / blog / msgr-pope / god-designed-our-bodies-toreveal-things-about-himself-and-his-creation ( accessed July 15 , 2016 ).