ON WOMEN'S DAY

I sat down and thought about it, and in the 365 and a-quarter days of every year, there are basically 3 types of days that we “observe.”

• There are those days that are supposed to be unequivocally happy—birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Id, Gurpurab, Diwali—and we celebrate those with gathering, gift giving and feasting.
• There are those days that are supposed to be unequivocally sad—9/11, death anniversaries, Muharram—and we mark them with speeches, prayers and memorabilia.
• And then there is a third category of what I call “Reminder Days”—AIDS day, Alzheimer’s Awareness Day, Armed Forces Day, Friendship Day, Grandparents Day, Valentines Day, Earth Day, Holocast Day, Women’s Day…

Why do we need these special “memorial” days?Is it because these are issues, emotions, people that we neglect on the other 364 days?

Or is it that these are issues, emotions and people that don’t really come first in our daily order of things?

Is it because these are issues, emotions and people we take for granted and need to remind ourselves to “notice” and “celebrate” one day of the year?

Or is it because these are issues, emotions and people we don’t consider important enough to dedicate the whole year to; because these are issues, emotions and people we think are dealt with and taken care of in that one day and for the rest of the year we can feel good that we gave them that one day and they are to be grateful that they have that one day.

Have you noticed that in all those reminder days about people—Mothers, Fathers, Grandparents, Friends, Women—there isn’t something called a Man’s Day? That, my more militant feminist friends would say, is because every day is Man’s Day.

Every Women’s Day I get a lot of text messages from all kinds of people.
Some of these messages are very sweet and feminine and appreciative, some are eager and sincere, some want to put us on pedestals and perpetuate the “woman as martyr” myth and talk about the sacrifices women make and those special qualities we have—as if we are all Mother Teresas whose calling in life is to neglect our own needs and “nurture” the “world” to help it become “better.” Then there are those sarcastic ones that make men our worst enemies and laugh at the expense of the other gender:

“God created women second because after he created man he stepped back and
thought, ‘I can do better than this.”

“Despite the old saying ‘don’t take your troubles to bed’ many women still sleep with their husbands….”

I really think those are unfair. I like men. Men are nice people. Some of my most favourite humans are men. I don’t think we need to disparage men to be appreciated as women. I don’t think men need to be reminded of our value on any special day.

I think by perpetuating myths and dividing genders we are perpetuating our own persecution as the “weaker” sex.
I really don’t think we need a blanket Women’s day per se. I do think we need several other reminder days to “notice” the injustice and torture being committed on certain sections of our society that happen to comprise primarily, but not exclusively, of women.

So while we don’t need a Women’s day, we do, perhaps, need a “Rape Victims Day” or a “Dowry Death Day” or a “Battered Wife Day” or a “Neglected Old Person Day.”