Yet, it seems that I have so much as to open my eyes of a morning before I am blinded by media making sure we know without a sliver of a doubt that whoever we're reading about is a woman first and foremost.
Her endeavours are always made secondary to and are made extraordinary by her being a woman.
Recently, an Otago Daily Times reader gifted me a copy of Germaine Greer's The Obstacle Race for my 21st birthday (for which I am incredibly grateful).
This book discusses why there are so few women recognised by artistic canon.
Although I haven't quite made it to the end, I might be right in guessing that it has something to do with patriarchy, erasure, and good old ingrained misogyny.
Until my adolescence I had never considered myself to be a ''female'' anything.
Naturally, I laboured under the belief that anything I pursued or achieved was neutral and was not altered or defined by gender.
Canadian producer Grimes tweeted recently that she had never considered herself to be a ''female'' artist until she was referred to as such by those in the media and the music industry.
Although my experience in other artistic fields is limited, I can certainly confirm the music industry is pretty heavy handed when it comes to reminding women of their place in the industry.
I first learned to read music when I was 5-years old.
I've been playing live music for the past seven years and sound guys still ask me if I need help plugging in my guitar.
I don't really need any encouragement when it comes to considering why it is women are treated so badly in basically all areas of our lives; feeling mad about inequality is something that seems to flow through me in abundance. But Prof Greer's book has been a relief in that it has given me some perspective.
Obviously, a man's perspective is considered to be the default. Women, having been barred from engaging in public life for centuries, are generally relegated to the private sphere.
So, society tells us that a woman's perspective cannot be universal.
Therefore, anything a woman creates might be considered to be unique, if we are being overly positive, or, it might be considered not representative and thus an anomaly that should be labelled as such.
Hence ''female'', the implication being ''not the default''.
If something is canon then it is considered to be universal, and if a woman's perspective is thought to be different from that of a man and is shunted off to the side to its own special, confined space then it can't be canon.
Evidently, we've come a little way in recent years and women are generally not cut off from public life.
Our horizons have widened but all this means is that media strives to push us back into the private by reminding consumers that anything created by a woman is inherently ''other''.
As a musician I have worked with a huge number of wonderful, supportive individuals, but I have also been fetishised, belittled and policed by people with whom I have worked closely.
At times it has seemed almost impossible to convince label guys and music writers to consider me as anything other than a woman who, quite shockingly, happens to play music.
It might seem pedantic, but it might be a nice idea for people to stop and think before prefacing any profession with ''female''.
Germaine Greer's book was published in 1979, women have been creating and contributing for as long as men, and yet we still think it necessary to point out whether or not a band is all women, as though it matters.
• Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
