An apology to women

I am a decently sympathetic soul.

I can appreciate the ideas behind what it means to be deeply religious or spiritual (i have been and am still a little of both, after all). Intellectually i can even appreciate the comfort behind bigotry and fear based cultural relations. I have experienced the tumult of teenager-dom in America, so i don't completely discount the rancorous outcry from toady's youth over...everything. I am capable, i think, of appreciating the origin and reasoning behind almost any perspective or attitude, even if i vehemently disagree with the conclusions drawn from that attitude.

That said, i am terrified to try to write from the perspective of a woman. You people terrify me.

I understand that a woman's perspective is not entirely defined by the fact that she is female. We are no more exclusively defined by our gender identity than we are our political view, or religious practice, or ethnic origin; i get that. what i experience the most discomfort with is that there are, quite simply put, marked differences between the perspective offered the two sexes due in no small part to do with things entirely owing to genetics and biology and not personality.

this is a truism that i have never been entirely comfortable admitting outloud. i think that is to do with my fear of castration and effigy mutilation. not because i fear that i actually AM sexist, simply that i will be percieved as such. this, ladies and gentlemen, is the curse of socially indoctrinated guilt.

it's certainly not that i think that women are the only creatures subject to cycles of hormonal highs and lows; the ebb and flow of our natural similarity to the lunar cycle. i've come to recognize that i have a monthly cycle that takes quite a prominent place in how i deal with the situations set before me. i have good days, bad days, and days somewhere in between, and i'm coming to recognize the schedule in which they operate.

but how the hell do i write for a synthetic organizm who identifies as female, was designed as a fascimile of a ten year old girl, is now over twenty years old and wants to rebuild herself in the image of the woman she feels she has become? how do you adress that kind of distinct shift from girlhood to womanhood without making more about the person (for this A.I. is a person, no doubt) making the augmentation than the...augmentations themselves?

help me, friends. women, women everywhere, and i'unno how they think.