What are your plans for International Women's Day? Are you going to go to the park and ponder the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir while eating figs under a tree?
I could only hope...
Actually, I must admit that I had no idea such a day even existed (F.Y.I., the date of this day of celebration and reflection is March 8). To be perfectly frank, I was really quite surprised to learn about it.
Want to know what else I found out? This is a real shocker - March is actually Women's History Month!
Was I the only one not privy to this information? I'm glad that I managed to be awake for the beginning of this month. Either I totally slept through February, or no one other than elementary school teachers gives a damn about Black History Month.
Is it not odd that certain days, weeks, months, or even entire seasons are designated for various events or people?
There's Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There's National Holocaust Week. There's Black History Month (and, of course, National Women's Month!). There's also the "season to be jolly."
Luckily, that time is over because I am one angry person. Notice that I say "person" and not "female." That is, after all, what I am first and foremost.
I find it deplorable that some of these designated days, like International Women's Day, exist. They limit the importance of the issues to which they are supposedly appropriated to give importance.
First of all, it is insulting to allot one single day for people to contemplate the trials and tribulations of over half the world's population.
Second of all, having such a day diminishes the importance of women's roles in our everyday lives.
Are we only supposed to think about how great women are on this one day? Are we to think of the suffering of millions of women all around the world only on this lonely day?
We alone are able to give birth to the world's most powerful people. Some women go through labor for days; some die for the sake of their children. All the same, we still get only this one cheap, measly day.
Perhaps I am being too harsh. I mean, it really is a nice gesture. I wonder how women in the Middle East are going to celebrate. Now that is the million dollar question, my friends.
Just how are they going to celebrate being women?
Let's say, for the sake of argument, they are aware that such a day exists. What is there to celebrate? The fact that they are still allowed to show their faces?
Give me a break.
I'm not a major feminist or a male-basher. I am an honestly concerned person.
I would like to think that there is innate good in everyone, male and female alike. Perhaps that way women will be able to overcome their oppressors.
However, personal experience and world events such as those which pass unnoticed consistently make me doubt this faith in human goodness.
Like everything else in society which needs reparation, this calls for a collective effort. I cannot do it alone; women cannot do it alone.
It does not show weakness when one admits needing help.
I readily admit that now - and I am stronger.
Mahmoudi is a sophomore French and German major