Happy Birthday to me & Happy (?) International Women’s Day!

ManHaters
Image: Sacha Moiseiwitsch

This is a tough one. I may not act my age but there’s no denying that I’m getting older, running out of time, moving inexorably toward the day of my departure. Human consciousness makes life bittersweet, living with our mortality. Living with death. Or despite it? For we live despite it all; every fear, challenge, setback. We exult in life. Joie de vivre. So I will celebrate having survived one more orbit round the sun. The boyfriend is hosting a party in Vancouver and I will get to see friends I don’t get to see enough. A la vida!

Not sure exactly how to celebrate International Women’s Day when “feminist” has become a dirty word and women are still so oppressed. The majority of the Like generation doesn’t appear to give a fuck. But it’s unfair to single them out. They aren’t the only people that don’t care.

Women’s rights are human rights. And as I said to a young man recently, I can understand your loathing of feminists. I don’t like zealots, but not all feminists are loud mouthed, obnoxious extremists. I love being a woman and I love men, but there will always be a gender gap. Our experiences on this earth cannot compare. Women are not the enemy. Seems obvious to me that the male and female of the species are designed to complement one another, work together. Be partners, therefore equal. A team. We are not the same. Vive le difference! Like the life force, women persist and humanity will prevail.

 

One thought on “Happy Birthday to me & Happy (?) International Women’s Day!

  1. Well Heather, you know how much I agree with you on feminism and difference that I won’t invent some more prose or blather. Great essay/poem and good for you for proclaiming it. I have no idea anymore what a “Like” on FB really means, don’t have time to explore it, care more for the message, and the who, than I do for those trees of birds tweeting. Yes “Like the life force, women persist and humanity will prevail” but I really can’t believe why it is taking so god-damned long for ‘humanity’ to get it.

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