Happy Women's Day!

So first off, Happy Women’s Day! Today is for celebrating what women are, have done, and will continue to do until the end of time. Women are wives, mothers, sisters, workers, producers, consumers, lovers, friends and so on and so forth. And so today, it’s a day to keep women in focus for everything they’ve done and everything they continue to do.

As wikipedia defines (holy crap, I just used wikipedia as a reference) Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. In addition, feminism seeks to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist is a “person whose beliefs and behavior are based on feminism.”

I am a feminist. I believe women should be afforded the same rights as men in all avenues. And sure, there are certain avenues which prevent women from being the same as men (strength, for one) and there are some things that prove women to be better than men (relax, relax, nothing controversial, I just mean like pregnancy. Can a dude get pregnant?) but I believe that whatever opportunities there are, men and women should have the same right to it and they can either gain or lose depending on merit.

But someone important to me pointed out a very good thing which I want to remember on this day. He pointed out that the very fact of having a Women’s Day is a sign of inequality between men and women. If it were really equal, then there wouldn’t be a women’s day… or there would be a men’s day to balance the other out. He wasn’t saying that we didn’t deserve it, of course. But he made a valid point that singling one over the other showed that the genders were not equal and having a day celebrating women sort of tips the scale in favor of them, in this regard.

We could argue that this day makes up for the years of inequalities and belated voting rights and glass ceilings that women have had to endure for thousands of years. And yes, more often than not, patriarchy and chauvinism and many other negatively termed words related to men have contributed to it.

But although I’ll celebrate this day and acknowledge it, I don’t envision this day as being celebrated 500 years from now. I would prefer to get to the point that we not celebrate it at all because that would mean that everyone has the same rights, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, preference, race, religion, and every other difference humanity can possibly think of. It would mean that everyone finally got to the point that we are all on the same level.

Every day, I believe we get closer to what people used to think was a pipe dream. And we just push on a little bit closer until we finally, finally get to that equal playing field.

Here's to not celebrating Women's Day in the future!