Not my experience

[firecat]

http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/05/masculinity-a-delicate-flower/ (emphasis mine)

...manhood is a social status, something a guy earned historically, through brutal tests of physical endurance or other risky demonstrations of toughness that mark the transition from boyhood to manhood. But while that masculinity is hard-won, it can be easily lost.

Once earned, men have to continue proving their worth through manly action....

The phenomenon helps explain why men are so touchy about their masculinity. Women don't have the same problem, of course. Womanhood is largely seen as something innate, immutable: girls become women through puberty; once achieved, womanhood sticks.

This is not my experience. Is it yours?

Comments

[firecat]

I've had this problem all my life of not feeling woman enough, mainly because I've never been particularly sexually attractive

The question of perceived sexual attractiveness is also part of why womanhood feels like a social status to me, just the way manhood apparently does to the person writing the article I quoted from.