International Whom?

A little like WMD, these three little letters seem to be causing more division than they are solidarity.

International Women’s Day.

If you tweet, you’ll have noticed a preponderance of twits based on this very subject. Here are some:

Men annoyed by #iwd are no different to white people opposing Black History Month. See that position in society? Yeah, you’re occupying it.

So, International women’s day falls on pancake day, and during british pie week … I sense a conspiracy

RT @annielennox women perform 66% of the world’s work, earn 10% of world’s income and own 1% of the world’s property <-anyone got stats?

What exactly is the definition of an “international woman” anyway? #lexicalambiguity

Int Women’s Day, huh? (so, Er, what are we supposed to be doing? Sighing with a Yank? Knitting with a Brazilian? Masturbating with a Pole?)

fuck off with blahday this blahday that, stop naming every fucking day after some stupid campaign or quest you utter cuntoids.

Please stop naming days after things, I get there are issues in the world but I don’t need a revamped calender to feel empathy. I guess hallmark will have cards and chocolates to follow shortly?

Nice. RT @thisiswhistles: 10% off at all Whistles stores today to celebrate Womens day.

I particularly like the last one – let’s support gender equality by … [what does Whistles sell?]. It’s like Women’s Hour … a long, intelligent discussion rounded up by ‘but we can’t resist a lovely psair of shoes *titter*’ … I despair.

It seems that we have something of a Bushitis happening – that is, the if you’re not with us, you’re against us.

It is possible, surely, to wonder at the use of such a day without necessarily criticising those for whom the day is directed? And this really is the crux of the biscuit, surely – by and large, women in the good old west have pretty easy life … because everyone has a pretty easy life. Even those who have crappy lives have it relatively easy compared to [insert third world country which is notoriously crappy to live in here].

It’s the same as time. Students often, when studying Shakespeare, or the Early Modern period in general, are hyper-quick to leap on the ‘women were downtrodden and had a crappy life’ bandwagon. Well, yes, they did. But then, pretty much everyone who wasn’t wealthy had a shitty time of it. Life was hard. Nasty, brutish and short.

Yes, gender makes a difference, and yes, it can lead to specific types of discrimination, and various levels of crap being hurled at you.

Yes, being female in many countries leads to a whole raft of specific unpleasantries, all of which would be better off dealt with, and which we would not put up with here.

But let’s get one thing reasonably straight. Over here it really ain’t that bad.

So – International Women’s Day. What is its purpose? It seems like no-one is quite sure. Personally, I find this obsession with named Days and design a candle for another disease (oh, and keep myself firmly in the public eye) and so on quite pointless. I simply don’t think they raise awareness so much as salve consciences. They are symptoms of western guilt.

And on that note, I’m off to teach special needs kids how to play cricket.

PS. this just appeared in my twitter feed. Sums it up, really:

RT @theQuietus: “Leona Lewis has been named by Metro readers as the most influential woman to live or work in London in the past century”

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