Woman.

It’s imbued in our bodies, in the most evident things about us. In the curve of our voices and hips, in the way we hold life and the way we bleed, in the way we embody comfort for the open and discomfort for the closed. We are women, but some of us assimilate so well into a man’s world, you would not know.

I don’t remember ever consciously choosing to rid myself of femininity and become male. I don’t remember choosing to be hard or consciously removing feminine attributes the way we constantly edit our wardrobes. Shoving undesirable garments to the back of the closet or burying them in the bottom drawer.

I don’t know when I lost all tolerance for lightness, softness color, or fun—elements that only served to draw attention to my femaleness or suggested the possibility of play. I don’t know when all my feminine biology was exchanged with the components of industry, success, and survival. I don’t know when my cellular turnover was complete.

The answer, of course, is that the cellular turnover from female to male never happened—it was always happening. From the very beginning, it was happening.

As a child, then a young adult, and then a professional, I was always paying attention. I watched how the world treated women, how the media treated women, how men treated women, how bosses treated women, how women treated women, and how women treated themselves. I observed how attributes of femininity—characteristics like intuition, emotion, softness, compassion, empathy, ancient wisdom, hormones, care, and female connection—were deemed distracting and detrimental to any woman serious about her career.

I also observed how the world treated men. I saw that men enjoyed significantly greater professional privilege than women did. In general, men were more likely to speak and be listened to; men were taken seriously far more than women, and the work product produced by men was automatically assumed to be of quality. Men were given the benefit of the doubt, invited to meetings, and naturally promoted to positions of authority.

Finally, I saw how women who downplayed their femininity and embodied characteristics of maleness—decisiveness, extroversion, ambition, assertiveness, strength, logic, and pragmatism—were treated. I saw that the more masculine they became, the more likely they were to be taken seriously, promoted, and respected.

As I saw this inequitable pattern play out, I did not see any hope of effecting meaningful change beyond simply doing my absolute best at all times. But that would never be enough. So, instead of changing the pattern, I changed myself. Since the world’s definition of “successful lawyer” was “successful male lawyer,” I adopted that standard and made it my own. I took the burden of proving my maleness very seriously because I wanted to be taken seriously. And it worked.

As a sharp-witted (fe)male lawyer in a fitted, angular, black suit, wearing heels that could cause bodily harm, I was taken very seriously. And I did well. In fact, during the eighteen-year prosecution of my femininity in the workplace, I was successful. I was celebrated, promoted, and praised. It’s true, I still woke every day to the never-ending burden of ridding myself of the weakness and offense of my femininity, but almost two decades of success counts for something, right?

Wrong.

The day I brought my feminine to work might as well have been my last.

I saw how women who downplayed their femininity and embodied characteristics of maleness—decisiveness, extroversion, ambition, assertiveness, strength, logic, and pragmatism—were treated. I saw that the more masculine they became, the more likely they were to be taken seriously, promoted, and respected.

Let me set the stage. It was late 2022, and I was a partner in a large, well-ranked, national law firm. I had become certified to teach Turn Up Dance Fitness and made the scary decision to post short dance video clips to promote my classes.

From the moment I made my love of Turn Up public, I felt it. Colleagues from other offices, with whom I had been in regular contact, stopped contacting me.

“Everyone is so busy,” I said, brushing it off. But in the months that followed, emails went unanswered, opportunities previously discussed with excitement faded away, and the professional air around me and my practice seemed to thin. It was something I had never experienced.

During a partner meeting months later, the floor opened for ideas on business development, and I chimed in about a great opportunity that had presented itself earlier that week. I told the partners that, after one of my Turn Up classes, a student approached me about teaching a Turn Up class at her place of business. She was one of the company’s executives, and they were always looking for opportunities to amplify their health and fitness offerings.

“She was thinking to do it once every quarter or something like that,” I explained. “And it would be a great opportunity to get our foot in the door.”

I was met with total, stone-faced silence.

I continued, “Any of you would be welcome to come, of course.” I paused for some laughter, but when none came, I knew: not only was this never going to be a firm-sanctioned business opportunity, I had made myself vulnerable to accusations of having broken the brain-body barrier. The degree of femininity and freedom displayed through dance was simply incompatible with a culture dedicated to masculinity and control.

In the months that followed, I learned everything I needed to know about a women who break the rules. No one avoids the consequences or the cost. In this instance, it was the price I paid for allowing myself to be seen as both a body and a brain, a person who dances and lawyers, a woman with both femininity and masculinity.

Initially, I felt blindsided. In my mind, I had been maintaining the burden of proving my maleness so effectively and for so long, I thought I had earned the right to be slightly female, slightly real, and slightly multi-dimensional. It look the balance of a weekend for me to know, convincingly and comprehensively, that anything I had earned by proving my maleness at the firm had already evaporated months earlier—the moment I stopped playing by the rules by posting videos about my classes online.

In the end, the rotten center of the reductive, misogynistic, one-dimensional culture showed itself. When I left the firm in September 2023, the final parting message was this: Good luck with your dance career.

As if I was no longer an attorney. As if “dancer” was all I was and would ever be. As if I would throw away an eighteen-year career for something that paid me forty dollars per week. As if a woman cannot be both a lawyer and a dance-fitness instructor. As if a woman cannot be both a body and a brain. As if a woman cannot have feminine biology and have masculine qualities. As if women must always, always, always choose between being respected and being themselves.

And just like that, everything I was and everything I had done in the service of my employer was erased as worthless. I sealed my fate the moment I posted anything relating to dance, declaring myself free from the unwritten commandments of the workplace, declaring myself a woman owned and operated by no one but herself.

This confirmed my worst suspicions about a system to which I had dedicated thousands of hours of my life. It confirmed I did not exist as a human with any value outside of my value to the system and I had deceived myself into believing I could show up in that space as a whole, embodied woman without suffering serious professional consequences.

But freedom outside an oppressive system has a way of clarifying things you could never understand from within it. What I understand now is that a woman who sheds the burden of proving her maleness is free to own all of her femininity without having to abandon any God-given masculinity. That woman—the one possessing both her power and her strength, her feminine and her masculine, her body and her brain—is a threat.

Because a woman’s deepest knowing can never be conscripted, can never be borrowed or used by anyone other than herself, a woman’s innate feminine intuition is her greatest power. The woman who succeeds in proving her maleness loses her most powerful asset by abdicating her intuition. And with that final resignation comes the fatal blow. We believe our male strength will save us, but without our truth and our knowing, we can never be free.

Allowing myself to be seen as female ended up being my emancipation proclamation even before I had the capacity to understand the extent to which I was not yet free. Even before I could identify the reasons I continued, year over year, to behave as a woman owned. That knowledge came later. That came on the other side of the simple decision to leave an environment in which I could no longer breathe. But now I see.

In my eighteen years as an employee for law firms owned and operated by people who never knew me and would never try, I spent exactly zero days operating out of my truest, transcendent power. I devoted my body and my blood to a profession that would never love me back, when I was born to love the world. And because of that, not a drop of my true power and magic was spilled there.

But now I see, and it’s pure magic.

In the first few weeks after I left the firm, after I was dismissed as just a “dancer,” I was hurt and angry. But this is all a distant memory now. Yes, there are consequences for breaking the rules, for daring to show up as your whole, real self, but it is nothing compared to what I have now.

I want you to understand that when I first knew I had lost the respect of some colleagues, it was devastating. So much of my worth was still wrapped up in proving I am good, worthy, and valuable. And losing that respect was the price I had to pay for allowing myself to be seen as both a body and a brain, a person who dances and lawyers, a woman with both femininity and masculinity. And I would pay it again.

In fact, I laugh because I actually lost nothing. I never lost anyone’s respect because I never had it. It was never respect to begin with; it was control. I suppressed the most powerful parts of myself for what looked and felt like respect and admiration, but it was ownership. And the nanosecond they knew they no longer owned me, the value of my corporate stock plummeted.

But now I am free. Not because I started a law firm, did a bunch of cool things since leaving the corporate world, or even dare to be woman again.

I am free because I own all of me. That is all.