I’m taking a big deep breath and entering the gender debate. I’m not trying to do anything new or big or clever here, I’m just trying to lay it out as I see it through the lens of language, acknowledging my own biases (because there will be many) and approaching the conversation from a particular slant.

My angle is this. I’m fascinated with words that are applied only, or at the very least predominantly, to women that are bound by sexuality. I’m not interested in the use of ‘bossy’ or ‘bitchy’ or even ‘bubbly’ (a word I would delight in being applied to me for the record – who doesn’t want to be associated with effervescence?). I want to look beyond surface terms at words that touch the fibres.

I think one of the best to look at is ‘untamed’. There is a book on my shelf by Glennon Doyle with that title that I’m literally itching to read. I’m going to hazard a guess that to Doyle to be untamed is an absolutely bloody brilliant thing. But I’d like to consider for myself first the wider concept of taming and where a study of its word family gets us.

Looking at the definitions of ‘tame’ in the Collins English Dictionary there is a stark difference between the adjective as applied to animals ‘not afraid’ (good) versus humans ‘weak and uninteresting’ (bad). But where it gets really interesting is when it becomes a verb. And again there is a trajectory that starts gently with the noble beasts and culminates in an explosion at the human end.

So let’s start soft. If an animal is tamed, it is domesticated, trained, at worst broken in (for its own good it would seem). If a human receives this treatment it’s because they’re considered to be out of control. A threat. Volatile. Something to be subdued, supressed, brought under discipline, curtailed. Put in a behavioural enclosure if you will. Now stop and think how often you’ve heard the word tamed in a narrative describing a man.

To be ‘untamed’ is to draw comparisons with wildness, the savagery of the elements and habitats, but also to create the link that not being tamed implies being natural (good). How interesting. But there’s an implication of a temporary state. The untamed could be tamed. It’s necessary to go further, to ‘untameable’, to get to a place where the opportunity, the capacity, for any kind of taming is removed entirely.

And all this to describe a woman. I mean wow. Forget discrimination (and in the thankful absence of witch trials), this is the stuff of dreams. In forging an authentic life, an alternative path to the drudgery of domesticity, of societal yoking, and in embracing the sexual, the feminine gets to erupt with being. Watch out all ye who stand in her path. Jump in the tornado willingly or you’ll be swept up in it.  

I’m not sure there’s a word to equal untameable. There’s little incentive to reclaim ‘hysterical’ or ‘histrionic’. Perhaps ‘hormonal’ if only because it’s a fact of daily life (for both sexes) worth facing up to. There’s not much credit to be had from reframing ‘frumpy’ or ‘frigid’. But I’ll make a case for second place for ‘feisty’. If being ‘lively, resilient, and self-reliant’ comes with an element of criticism I’ll take it, and gladly.

These words for birds have a different impact for different people. I identify deeply with my biologically assigned gender. I was brought up by my father to not only believe I could do anything but to actively aspire to do it (quizzically alongside a dynamic of my mother giving up her own career in support of her family). I’m predisposed to own my space in society and take power from whatever sources present themselves.

My own relationship with taming is complex. I recently read that we have public, private and secret lives and I chose when or where or if at all to evoke an essence of wildness. But I certainly think it dwells within me. Perhaps I was a witch, or labelled as one, in a previous life. Perhaps I was an ocean current (or the deserted beach it beat against). I would like to think I’m untameable at the core, but really I just want to be free.