Thinking about Women’s day

So it' is women’s day today. And it is an important day that I believe in and honour.

As a young person, I remember that I couldn’t exactly get its meaning. I kind of felt even insulted by it, women are not like animals near to extinction to have a day, to be a woman is not some kind of illness or a disability to try to call for awareness, we are not some kind of minority, not suffering from lack of freedom or rights, in any case, not something that needs a special day.

It took me long, really long, ridiculously long to get it. That in every aspect I was wrong.

So yes, women in a lot of places around the world are chased and disappearing like animals. Through the ages to be a woman, having monthly menstruation was treated like an illness, not like something physical, even now in the first world tampons and sanitary towels are not for free, while the church still considers it something filthy. Women are still not paid equally with men in most industries cause they are considered less able to do their job, so being a woman in working places is actually a disability, Meanwhile in sociological terms, a minority group refers to a category of people who experience relative disadvantage as compared to members of a dominant social group, so yes in patriarchal societies women are a minority. And as about the freedom and the rights, well, where do I start? Talk about the abortion ban that in one way or another is still on in many places and communities? About domestic violence? About maternity conditions? About trafficking? About harassment in the workplace (besides everywhere else)? And apart from the dominant exterior patriarchal condition, what about internalized patriarchy that prevents women from doing things they really want?

Those are very few and maybe not adequate thoughts, there are so many more to think about during women’s day and during every day.

In all these years that passed till I finally was fully aware of the importance of women’s day I “met” many and different important women of the arts, literature, theory etc. who helped me through their words, art, music and images to understand, feel and go deeper through all these issues.

And for International Women’s Day, I want to thank them.

So, thank you, Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, Emily Dickinson, Maggie Nelson, Elana Ferrante, Judith Butler, Siri Huqvest, bell hooks, Roxana Gey, Helen Cixous, Susan Sontag, Judy Chicago, Adrian Piper, Artemisia Gentileschi, Paty Smith, Rosi Braidotti, Donna Haraway, Luis Bourgois, Jenny Holzer, Ann Sexton, Cathy Acker, Gerda Lerner, Eileen Myles, Virginia Woolf, Rachel Cusk, Thank you, Gloria Steinem and Simon de Beauvoir, thank you, Mary Wollstonecraft, Angela Davis and Audre Lorde, thank you, Yoko Ono and Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, thank you, Guerilla Girls and Pussy Riot, Barbara Kruger and Frida Kahlo, Susan Hiller and Cara Walker, Carolee Schneemann, Miriam Shapiro and Valie Export, Martha Rosler and Ana Mendieta, Hannah Wilke and Mary Beth Edelson.

And the list is of course endless and I am sure that I forgot so many more —wishfully I will add whenever I remember.

Happy women’s day and may the fight against patriarchy continue and the force be with us.