Earlier this week, we celebrated International Women's Day. By "we," I don't mean me.
I have a few lingering questions about this.
Are we still allowed to celebrate women today? Or do we have to wait until March 8, 2022 to post a commemorative photo of a woman we admire?
When is International Men’s Day? I know a lot of men who are worth celebrating simply because they are men. That's what we did on Monday, right? We celebrated women strictly because they are women, despite the fact that there are plenty of women who are not worth celebrating.
What about those who don’t identify as a man or a woman? When do they get to celebrate?
What about women who identify as men? Or men who identify as women? Did they get to celebrate on Monday with those privileged biological, cisgendered women? Or were they expected to settle for simply celebrating the entire month of June for Pride Month instead?
Seriously. International Women’s Day is absurd. Women aren’t trophies to commemorate over social media once a year. We aren’t fragile. We aren't underprivileged beings in need of a day to celebrate our gender. An entire, global celebratory day to commemorate a set of genitalia is crazy. This is soft identity politics worked subtly and innocently into everyday life.
One’s anatomy is not worth celebrating, and one’s gender does not make anyone special.
A popular phrase I see and read a lot on the college campus on the daily is “the future is female.” That’s cute and kitschy until you realize that males are also required for procreation to provide said future. Sure, the future is female until we start letting biological males be female.
Women aren’t special just because we’re women. This is true now especially, considering that we as a society are openly embracing the lunacy that gender is fluid and has nothing to do with your anatomy or biological sex.
Either women are worth celebrating once a year strictly because their anatomical differences from men are an accomplishment... OR, anyone can be a woman because gender is fluid, rendering women neither special nor worth celebrating.
We can’t have it both ways. To me, both are absurd.
Celebrate your work, your character, your contributions, your achievements, your resilience, and your strengths any time you want. You don’t need a certain set of sex organs, identity politics, or a designated day of the year to be proud of your awesome self and your accomplishments.