Holding the future between each breath

You know, Rudyard Kipling's "If" is one of my most favorite poems, and something that helps me feel better when I'm sad, and a very very good reason to buy Dr. Bronner's Lavender Liquid Soap so you can read it while taking a shower. But I wonder sometimes if its last line has given me any gender identity issues.

If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

According to Alice Walker, "A woman is not a potted plant, her roots bound to the confines of her house," but internet job searching certainly makes me feel like I might turn into one.

A woman is not a potted plant,
her roots bound to the confines of her house
A woman is not a potted plant,
her leaves trimmed to the contours of her sex
A woman is not a potted plant,
her branches espaliered against the fences of her race,
her country, her mother, her man, her trained blossom turning this way and that
to follow the sun of whoever feeds and waters her
A woman,
is wilderness
unbounded
holding the future between each breath
walking the earth only because she is free and not creepervine or tree
Nor even honeysuckle or bee.