International Women's Day

Friends, today is International Women's Day. I know more than a few of you forgot last year since I monitored all of your social media postings while waiting for you to call and wish me a happy International Women’s Day. I did not see nearly enough activity. Let us not be so remiss this time around. Around the world today, we celebrate and honor women’s economic, political, and social accomplishments. In Italy, women are given flowers, while in China, women get the day off work. In Cameroon, women dance in the streets. I’ve seen the U.S. do very little commemorating. I’ll take this moment to appeal to your friendly competitive patriotism and encourage even a small act of celebration and appreciation, cyber or otherwise. It will be like the Olympics of Caring About People in Other Countries.

A lot of us working/breathing/organizing in feminist/humanist/womanist communities were running from event to event last week during International Women's Day (IWD) week, and I thought I'd share some of the deconstructing thoughts I've been having aloud about what I witnessed and participated in.

Many of you already know all too well the tokenization that happens when we Indigenous and racialized women get invited to things our own communities are not putting together, the envelopes we sometimes have to push, the chastising we get from both white people and people in our own communities who don't like that we're calling ourselves feminists/womanists/humanists, so on and so forth.