Womanhood According to Men: Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC)

       Aristotle explained that the difference between the sexes was the ability or inability to produce semen.  Women were “deformed” versions of men, weaker mentally and physically, and menstrual blood was a sickly, “passive” form of semen that needed “active” semen from a man to create life.  A woman’s purpose began and ended with her ability to menstruate, carry, then deliver the life created solely by man.

Chaz Bono is famous.  By which I mean he has famous parents, Cher and Sonny Bono, that nudged him in the general direction of stardom—reality tv as a toddler, a low key music career out of high school, then (quite publicly), a substance abuse problem followed by a hysterectomy and a two year female to male gender transition process, which is followed in detail with “Becoming Chaz,” the documentary that brought Chaz an Emmy nomination and perhaps a more authentic form of fame.  He’s an LGBT activist, a transgender role model, and has the best quotes about shaving that will ever be featured on brainyquote.  Not to mention a Dancing with the Stars hall of famer.
       Quite the résumé.  As I said: Chaz Bono is famous.  He is much more interesting than you or me or Aristotle.  And one of those reasons (though much lesser known) is that Chaz Bono has endometriosis.
Endo’s not a rare disease, but it’s also not popular.  People don’t talk about it, probably because the main symptom is severe menstrual cramping, and it also isn’t something we associate Chaz Bono with because, well, he’s a guy.  But it was endometriosis pain that led to his addiction to pain meds (same fate as many endometriosis patients), his substance abuse, and eventual hysterectomy.  It’s his endometriosis that has allowed him to be an inspiration for not only the LGBT community, but for people like  me that also have endo.
When I discovered Chaz Bono had endometriosis, I had been on a search for strong women.  I was recently diagnosed—young, scared, hardly able to pronounce this disease that was going to bring debilitating pain like clockwork for the rest of my menstruating life.  I googled "famous people with endometriosis" and found just what I thought I needed; Marilyn Monroe, Dolly Parton, Whoopi Goldberg, Jillian Michaels, Susan Sarandon, all glorious, glamorous creatures, diseased just like me but more defiant, more fabulous in their endometriosisness.
      But then there was Chaz.  Chaz, with his unique situation.  Chaz, who had felt the same pain I’ve felt, maybe worse, definitely more heartbreaking because his body and his brain were pulling in a stalemate tug of war, Chaz in the middle, and the midst of it all he had endometriosis to deal with.  About being transgender, Chaz once stated, “There's a gender in your brain and a gender in your body. For 99 percent of people, those things are in alignment. For transgender people, they're mismatched. That’s all it is.  It’s not complicated.”
       Not complicated, but revolutionary just the same, especially to individuals crutched on Aristotle's philosophy of the genders: women are weak, men are strong, and the evidence is in menstruation.  But Chaz Bono argues (seems to prove, in fact) that being a woman or being a man is about more than just semen vs menstrual blood, about having periods or not having periods.  Our bodies are only a fraction of our identities, with the majority of who we are--of what it means to be a man or a woman--found beyond the tangible.  As Chaz said, in the brain.  Allow me stretch this and suggest in the soul.  This means Chaz and I aren't labeled or limited by our endometriosis, that being a human means more than being biologically male or female, and that a woman's purpose goes far past her ability to menstruate.