International “The Women” ‘s day means a great deal to a great many people. Most of them women.
Some people out there moan and complain about women’s day. “It’s too much, they already have mothers’ day” some say. “Why don’t we have a men’s day”? say others.
All valid points, I will grant you. But perhaps you only think this way because of IGNORANCE.
Allow me to share a teaching moment with you.
Many years ago, women were not lauded and respected as they are now. This tradition spreads back to the age of the dinosaurs when women were only allowed to hunt plant-eating dinosaurs, lest cavemen feel emasculated (this is detailed quite clearly in their cave-paintings, which you can still see for yourself in certain high arid areas. The pictogram for “emasculate” is quite imaginative).
Things only got worse during the Roman and then Greek empires, as women were associated with prophecy and wolves that gave birth to cities but hardly ever got any decent juicy roles, especially after their twenties.
Fast forward to the middle ages. Queen Elizabeth is on the throne. And yet still women are not allowed to portray themselves on stage, forcing Shakespeare to write all his best female soliloquays for a hirsuit pigger named Chuck Burbage.
Fast forward to now! Phew, that was a roller-coaster ride through history!
Looking around, today, it’s easy to say that women have it all! All of the past inequalities have been neatly pushed into a drawer called the past, which we’ve managed to largely close with gaffer tape. Today, a woman can have a child *and* a career. Within sensible bounds of course.
But it’s worth having a day like “The International Woman’s Day” for many reasons. For one, there are many women out there who don’t realise, because they are BLINKERED BY IDEOLOGY, just how lucky they have it, and who still request more and more equality. International public holidays like today serve as an important safety valve, to allow their raging hysteria to seep harmlessly into a plastic bag of polite celebration, to be neatly knotted and placed into the wheelie bin of forgetting-until-next-year.
And perhaps more importantly, it allows men like myself to gesture vaguely in the general direction of a broadly-defined, generally ignored festivity, free of any frightening real-world actions or outcomes, and feel as though we’ve done our bit. Gentlemen, can’t you feel that nasty white middle class guilt lessening as we speak? Ahhhhh, there it goes. Goooood kitty.
So happy National Wome’ns Day, everybody! Whether male or female, let’s all just chill out until next year, and hope that half-arsed observance of occasional non-impacting events can preserve the status quo for a little longer yet.
Salut!
Refracted Ambiguity with Polar Bear 