International Women’s Day

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This morning I asked my girls as they were getting ready for school, “What do you think it means to be a woman?” It’s International Women’s Day, after all, and if they are going to make a holiday about it, I was curious to know what exactly the girls feel like we are celebrating.

“Girls are stupid,” Violet said. “They get mad about stupid things.”

“But we can hit boys,” Lucy chimed in.

Yeesh.

“I mean, what is great about being a girl? What do you want to celebrate today?”

They stared at me blankly. Then Lucy repeated, “the hitting thing.”

Aside from the internal cringing guilt that I have completely failed at teaching them anything important in life so far, I did realize that defining oneself as a woman is an incredibly complicated feat in this cultural place in time we are in. From my own stance, through the lens of the world I have been living with lately, any definition of self comes with its own liabilities these days. It’s almost nerve wracking to own anything – any “title” - for fear it will offend someone else – cross a political line of some kind – come across as arrogant or ignorant or insecure.

The world has meant well in its plight to uplift women, to pull them out of the depths of injustice and inequality. And it has, in so many ways, done an incredible job at change. The world women live in today is so different than decades, or even years, ago, and that is a testament to the courage and capacity of incredible women around the planet.

But I’ve found that in our extreme push to make sure minorities (including women) are seen and heard and given homages for their historical strife, we have made it a minefield to celebrate some things with legitimate pride and dignity.

“You can’t hit boys,” I said to Lucy. “You can’t hit anyone. Boys should not hit girls, and girls should not hit boys, and everyone should not hit dogs. Hitting is just not ok.”

“But boys get in more trouble for it because they can hurt us more.”

“Says who?”

“Come on, Mom,” Violet added. “It’s true. They do get in way more trouble.”

My mind rushes to #MeToo, to #BLM, to the infinite areas of gray in our society that we pigeonhole into black or white standards. How they hell are our kids supposed to sort it all out?

Politics are so intertangled into the ways in which we perceive and treat each other today that it’s like we have completely missed the plot.

Today isn’t about celebrating women because we need to make any political point. It isn’t a celebration because women do, or should get, special treatment for this or that – for historical hardships and political injustices.

Women are complex individuals that form a diverse network of human beings that enrich this planet. And today, in our world, those lines continue to be blurred, expanding out obscurely from the middle like a vignette.

Today I don’t celebrate what it is to be a woman, per se, because I know my definition is so very different than anyone else’s. Just like my definition of motherhood, of friendship, of love. This obsession with labels has created a false sense of requiring shared ideas of what it means to “identify” as this or that.

Today I just celebrate the women in my life and those out in the world doing the good work that they do, loving and giving and learning and sharing and connecting. I don’t know any two women that are the same, but I can hold them all in my attention and heart today and honour them all for their uniqueness and contributions. I will spend today acknowledging how special each and every one of them are, and how incredibly fortunate I am to have had so many spectacular women come and go in my life that have given me a greater understanding of what it means to live in this world – this shifting landscape of meaning.

I am honoured to be one, not because I fit a mold, not because I’ve “persevered” or represent some moral agenda. I am honoured to be a woman because it has meant I have been able to play a wide array of roles and experience a broad spectrum of things that have given me a chance to give back. As a mother. As a wife. As a daughter and friend. As a person.

And most importantly, for me, I am so deeply honoured to have given birth to two of the strongest women – people – I have ever known that will, in their own unique way, contribute mightily to this world. That is most definitely worth celebrating.