It’s International Women’s Day, but if you’ve got an Apple or Google calendar, you wouldn’t know it. Since the U.S. got her new/old president, there’s been vast speculation on social media that the holiday’s erasure came as some sort of political whipsaw – which may be the case for Google. Their calendar did list the holiday in years gone by.
Apple, not so much. It appears Apple hadn’t considered International Women’s Day worth the mention – ever. So, no need to remove it.
Real quick, here’s what you need to know about this holiday.
On the last day of February in 1909, a couple of suffragettes, labor activists and a few socialists harkening back to the women of the garment workers strike in March of 1857, decided it might be time to stress and fight for the political and economic needs of women.
They planned a march and 15,000 women took to New York City’s streets looking for better working conditions, shorter hours and increased pay. In addition to this labor action, the movement concentrated on the needs of women who didn’t work, too.
Along with economic and social justice, organizers hoped they might usher in a woman’s right to vote. (That didn’t happen in the U.S., until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920).
Before I continue, I want to apologize to my international sisters, as I focus on the deteriorating situation for women in the United States. If you’re interested in learning about how this holiday is celebrated around the world, the Journiest has a nice write-up.
Now, where was I? Oh yes, I’d like to dedicate my thoughts to my trans-sisters.
If you’re trans, I hope you’ve been celebrating Women’s Day for years now – but considering the renewed venom hurled your way – there’s no time like the present to take note of your existence and validate it on this very important day.
For all you cis-gals, you need trans women more than ever.
In 21st Century America we failed to notice that our sisters have been our canary in the coal mine. (Another nod to the working-class, coal miners who would bring a canary to work. If the air quality deteriorated to the point that the bird suffered and/or died, the workers knew that they too, were in trouble.)
INTERVIEW: Sylvia Pankhurst – Suffragette Socialist and Scourge of Empire, with Dr. Kate Connelly
Cis women, welcome to the coal mine. Too many of us have either ignored arguments over bathroom usage or girls sports. And way too many of us have come down on the wrong side of these issues.
The false claim that ciswomen and girls are somehow injured by sharing space with our trans counterparts masks the insidious indicators that cis women too, are in trouble. Trans women die at an alarming rate, including the increased likelihood of their murder.
The pervasive prejudice that leads to our sisters injury and death is the only conversation we should be having about trans women.
Sadly, we’ve ignored it – and at our own peril.
Over the last few years, we’ve seen local governments across the nation – not only allow – but cause the deaths of pregnant people. These state sanctioned murders are so numerous – that a quick web search will display pages of horrifying results.
You know, some of us are old enough to remember life before Roe V. Wade. Those same ones of us remember life before Title IX. We remember when Title IX forced schools to invest in girls sports. Why? So that girls would stop trying to play on the boys teams.
When I was a kid, we didn’t want to play on separate hockey or basketball teams – we wanted to play on THE hockey or basketball team. Varsity, junior varsity, whichever team we could make. (Think Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs in tennis. Equality, opportunity – that is what we wanted – not to mention justice).
But the manipulation and weaponization of the trans-sports, trans-bathroom issues is a way to misdirect and misinform our thinking. It’s not about our equality over all, it’s about denying equality to someone with even fewer protections than we have.
Women, we don’t have time to take our eye off the prize.
Arguments about gender assigned at birth are spurious, meant to divide us. There’s nothing important on the Y-chromosome. It’s a genetic mutation that half of humans have, resulting in a tiny genetic partner to the X chromosome – something that no human can exist without.
Before this Y mutation, gender was decided by external stimuli; environmental factors. This was the origin of species. Or if you prefer it in religious terms – how the gods intended it.
By the way, it was a woman – Nettie Stevens – who, just four years before the first Women’s Day, discovered the whole X,Y chromosome thing. She’d actually been studying mealworms. Turns out, when it comes to that whole “gender at birth” thing, there isn’t any difference between humans and mealworms.What say we rise above the mealworm – this once. It’s long past time to embrace the fact that International Women’s Day means all women.
