And yet, we cannot escape our biology, and indeed, to be female is to be of the form needed to do the overwhelming share of the process required for the production of new life and thereby to enable humans to continue existing.

Womanhood includes the cultural acknowledgement of this most critical of roles.

What do you think the shape of woman is? Lipstick and skirts? Pigtails and cup size? The life process has no way forward save for via those like me is about as vivid and intense of a shape as there can be.

Of course, we have societies. Our reproductive capacity comfortably exceeds what is needed for survival (and in case anyone hasn't noticed, we're just a liiiiittle bit overpopulated globally right now), and our well-being depends on a great deal of coordination and mutual aid.

So there is nothing at all wrong if women who do not wish to have children do not have children. (If they do not wish to have children because we have created an society that is unsupportively indifferent to children or actively disparaging of them, well, that is something wrong. But if the opportunity is there and the conditions reasonable, and a woman who otherwise could doesn't wish to take it--that's quite alright.)

And there is no societal tragedy--even if there is a personal one and society should help to the extent possible--if someone biologically female is unable to conceive children.

We're a big, complicated, robust society, and that society works when we're cooperating, pulling in a mutually supportive manner, which includes allowing all the variety and diversity we have save for that which is actively harmful. There's plenty to do as a woman, or as a man, or as someone nonbinary, whether cis or trans or intersex, without producing new humans. If one wishes, one can play a direct role by raising new humans. We take a lot of work. Or one can stay as far away as possible, and simply by participating help create a good society.

But it does not follow that the potential of females (who are the overwhelming majority of "women" no matter how you define the term) to be mothers is merely a "pale shape of woman".

It is the only way to the future, and with the potential comes a variety of largely-unavoidable and sizable burdens physiologically, and a variety of associated not-yet-adequately-solved cultural burdens. To respect this involuntary sacrifice in order for there to be a future seems, to me, not too much to ask.

There are plenty of ways to argue for dignity and safety and tolerance that don't involve denigrating the most fundamental aspect of why "woman" is even a thing.