On International Women's Day
This is my favorite holiday in Strana, and I think it perfectly fitting that I encountered it here. In the year and a half that I've lived overseas, I've learned more about being a woman than in the twenty-two years I lived in the US. There are a lot of things that they don't tell you in school or in the liberal oases where I grew up.
Firstly- being a woman is hard. I don't mean the physical state, because all that bearing and birthing stuff is overblown by men and women alike. I mean the obstacles, requirements and frustrations that society places before women. Depending on the community, a woman's actual achievements may be considered nothing more than trivia. Similarly, when a woman performs the same work as a man, it is often considered lesser, simply because of who does it. It isn't terrible, just tiring.
The second trouble is what the feminists don't tell you (and remember here that I am a feminist myself, just a young one). The feminists say that things need to change; everything I said above is morally wrong and out of balance. Therefore, we should change the system. This is logical. What they don't acknowledge is that while this may be possible, it is not easy. Change like this cannot happen overnight. It cannot even happen in forty years, not fully. It is difficult, possibly even detrimental, for me to operate as if these things are not true. Generations of women had tricks and maneuvers for dealing with this situation, and I have perhaps been foolish not to make use of them. It is useful to wear make-up- it's not a bridle, it's a tool. No other object can hide your emotions as well as cosmetics. It's OK to ask men to walk you home at night; another woman can do it too, but even tall, muscular women rarely have the discouraging effect on harassment that men do. And these are the old customs, and now I live by them too.
Women's Day is the only holiday that acknowledges the fact that life simply is harder for women, even if only in small measures. I would love it if we celebrated it in America, but I think it bears too strong a communist taint.
Firstly- being a woman is hard. I don't mean the physical state, because all that bearing and birthing stuff is overblown by men and women alike. I mean the obstacles, requirements and frustrations that society places before women. Depending on the community, a woman's actual achievements may be considered nothing more than trivia. Similarly, when a woman performs the same work as a man, it is often considered lesser, simply because of who does it. It isn't terrible, just tiring.
The second trouble is what the feminists don't tell you (and remember here that I am a feminist myself, just a young one). The feminists say that things need to change; everything I said above is morally wrong and out of balance. Therefore, we should change the system. This is logical. What they don't acknowledge is that while this may be possible, it is not easy. Change like this cannot happen overnight. It cannot even happen in forty years, not fully. It is difficult, possibly even detrimental, for me to operate as if these things are not true. Generations of women had tricks and maneuvers for dealing with this situation, and I have perhaps been foolish not to make use of them. It is useful to wear make-up- it's not a bridle, it's a tool. No other object can hide your emotions as well as cosmetics. It's OK to ask men to walk you home at night; another woman can do it too, but even tall, muscular women rarely have the discouraging effect on harassment that men do. And these are the old customs, and now I live by them too.
Women's Day is the only holiday that acknowledges the fact that life simply is harder for women, even if only in small measures. I would love it if we celebrated it in America, but I think it bears too strong a communist taint.
posted by Life Called | 9:03 AM
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