Oh, To Be Just A Person

Contributor Lucille Fulcher yearns after the fantasy of what it would be like to be the default in society; the fantasy that is being perceived as a person before a woman.

Before I am a woman, before I am anything else,

I am a person.

However, the world doesn’t seem to view me the same way.

There was once a time when I thought I wanted to be a boy.

I remember trying to explain it once, but I wasn’t even sure what I meant. It wasn’t that I hated being a girl. I didn’t feel wrong in my body. I just couldn’t ignore what I was seeing.

Boys, in the stories I loved, got to be everything at once. They were funny, and handsome, and cool, and admired. They were reckless, and brave, and complicated, and flawed. And when they were flawed, it made them interesting.

Girls, on the other hand, always seemed to be presented with conditions.

If a girl was funny, she was funny for a girl. If she was confident, she was bossy. If she was admired, she was usually beautiful first. If she was powerful, there was always an explanation as to why. Either she had a father who raised her tough, a tragic backstory, or some reason she had earned her place among men.

Men in stories simply existed. Unlike women, they never had to justify their presence.

I didn’t want to be a boy.

I wanted to be the default.

The world quietly teaches you what this default is. “Unisex” clothing hangs loosely in cuts designed for men’s bodies. School sports uniforms assumed a certain shape, which was always uncomfortable and unflattering on my body. Language itself positions women as an alternative. Take the words hero and heroine. One is defined as a person admired for courage. The other is defined as a woman admired for courage.  

Masculinity is treated as neutral. It’s seen as a universal, representative of humanity. Femininity; however, is treated as a variation.

And when you grow up as the variation, you feel it everywhere.

I feel it when I walk home at night, keys between my fingers, hyperaware of footsteps behind me. I feel it when I watch my younger brother leave the house after dark without a second thought, wandering to the shops simply because he feels like it. His movements are not calculated and aware like mine have to be.

There’s a particular kind of envy that comes with watching someone exist without that awareness. The freedom to be reckless. The freedom to roam. The freedom to take up space without it feeling like an invitation or a risk.

Equality has come so far. I am proud and grateful to live in a world where I can write this without assuming a male pen name. A world where I can have a voice. A world where I can vote. A world where I can get an education. Have my own job. Have my own bank account. Have my own money. But the work isn’t finished, and I find there is still a difference everywhere I go.

Even in places where no one is trying to diminish you, this difference lingers.

In high school, I was one of two girls in a physics class full of boys. No one told us we didn’t belong. No one doubted our intelligence. But we were aware of being girls in physics, not just students. On an excursion with another school, the tour guide greeted us by saying, “It’s so great to see some girls here! We need more women in STEM!”

It was meant as encouragement. I know that. But in that moment, I felt separate from the group. 

Highlighted. Categorised. Not just someone who loved physics, but a woman who loved physics, and suddenly a representative for all girls who did too, for people I’ve never even met.

This lens follows you into your mistakes. If a man crashes his car, he’s a bad driver. If a woman crashes her car, it becomes commentary, evidence that “women can’t drive.” Additionally, whether a boy is successful or not in a maths class is seen as a reflection on himself. But how a girl performs in that class becomes evidence to further the “girlboss” or “girls are bad at maths” narrative.

There’s a strange pressure in knowing that your successes and your failures may not be allowed to be solely yours.

The older I get, the more I realise that what I once called “wanting to be a boy” was really something else. It was wanting to be my own person and wanting access to neutrality. To be funny without it being surprising. To be admired without it being conditional. To be confident without it being threatening.

I love being a girl. I don’t feel trapped by that identity or by my community of fellow women. What exhausts me is the constant prefix attached to everything I am. Female student. Female leader. Female driver. Female person. Why can’t I just be a student? A leader. A driver. A person.

There’s a reason women-only spaces can feel like relief, even when they’re complicated. In those spaces, you are not a deviation. You are not measuring yourself against a male baseline. You are not bracing for comparison or caution. You are simply one of many.

It’s ironic, really, that separation can sometimes feel like the closest thing to equality.

And that’s what I really want.

I don’t want to be a man.

I don’t want to not be a woman.

I just want to be a person first.

I want to walk into a room and not have my gender enter before I do. I want to make mistakes that belong only to me. I want to be funny without it being a novelty. I want to be brave without it being branded as female empowerment. I want to exist without explanation. 

I want to be the default human.

by Lucille Fulcher