From Babies to Boars (What Makes a Woman a Real Woman?)

There is a lot of discussion these days on what makes a woman a “real woman.” Much of it centered on outward appearance, not inherent qualities.

As a sidebar, I’ll refer you to Isaiah 31.10 and note that certain versions of this passage read “A Good Woman Who Can Find?” But the passage makes clear, regardless of interpretation, a woman carries within her qualities that could be considered both male and female attributes.

And the best of women leverage all these positive attributes to the benefit of their husbands, their children, their servants and their entire community.

The passage makes it very clear that one should “let her works be praised in the gates.” It sets no limit on what a woman is capable of and in fact encourages commerce, self-determination, hard work, selflessness and charity to the poor and the needy.

Isaiah falls short of Annie Oakley’s “Anything you can do I can do better” but it triumphs the unique nature of women to be nearly all things to all people and definitively hold their own.

It just so happens, I have a niece that would easily fit Isaiah’s definition. She is married. She has children. She supervises and manages people. She takes care of the sick and the elderly. She provides for her family. She shows faithful grace to her husband. She cleans up real good and is quite pretty. She’s incredibly practical and she likes to have fun. She is not frivolous or vacuous and certainly not a push over. She is a woman that men should “praise at the gates.”

She constantly amazes me and frankly, that’s not easy to do when it comes to my relationships with other women. I hate to sound sexist, but I just don’t care for most other women, they are not up to the Isaiah standard.

The above picture is of her downing a Wild Boar. I took special delight in it and had to ask her about it.

She told me they went out with their bows to get Deer and after a while didn’t find any, so they went back to the truck and she pulled out her rifle and downed a Wild Boar.

If you are opposed to hunting, you need to know that Wild Boar are a pestilence in Texas. They kill livestock, they ruin crops, they can destroy foliage meant for other wild animals and they breed like pigs. Having litters is a constant for them. One female boar can produce as many as 9 to 12 baby boars per year, as they breed twice per year. Do the math. Wild Boars are the bane of a rancher’s or farmer’s existence. They need to be taken out as often as possible.

I don’t know what Boar meat tastes like, I barely like venison but I was sure when I saw that picture of her over that Boar that if I went to live with her, I’d never go hungry. The thought does cross my mind that should I need to bug out, I might make a 20 hour drive to do so. I mean, I don’t know how to hunt or what to do after if I actually did get something…my niece is truly a highly educated, delicate yet strong, Pioneer Woman. A woman who genuinely knows how to “bring home the bacon.”

And that’s what is missing in the exhausting conversation about “What is a Woman?”

There are those who believe that inhumane medical operations, hormone injections, wigs, make up, dresses and heels can make a woman. Some even carry it so far, they demand maxi-pads and tampons be available in traditionally male public school restrooms. They are that delusional.

And the rebuttal to that, is my niece. I don’t think she considers herself anything exceptional, she just lives her life and the way she lives it is exceptional. There’s a lot of “there” there.

All this reminds me of being in my mother’s kitchen at eighteen years old and having a middle aged drag queen say to me that he was more of a woman than I was. The only thing I said to him was “Yes, but Jesse, at least I was born a woman, you weren’t.”

That pretty much says it all.