I’m a cis woman and I still don’t really know how to relate to those terms. For example, I enjoy weightlifting - both the feeling of strength and how my body looks when muscled. I don’t know whether to think of myself as a woman (who is generally quite feminine) who enjoys embodying certain masculine traits, or whether it might be low-key harmful to consider things like this “masculine”. I think the short of it is that womanhood doesn’t mean lots of femininity, nor the lack of masculinity. But then we’re back at your question, about what do those words even mean.

Something I do feel is important to say though is that my understanding of these traits and how I relate to them has been vastly enhanced by the perspectives of various trans people in my life. I’m especially appreciative of my transfeminine friends, because their joy has helped me to realise that cisgender people can experience gender euphoria.

Queer spaces in general have been essential for me in figuring out what I want out of my gender - shout out to everyone who bends gender in some way, because y’all have helped me see that man, woman, masculine, feminine — they’re not immutable categories, but terms that may or may not be useful in some situations.