Why International Women's Day?

I saw a couple of posts on my Facebook timeline asking why there is International Women's Day, and not "international equality day".

Firstly, there is the specific history of International Women's Day, which is about upholding women's rights to exist without fear of violence (rape and domestic violence inflicted on women is still higher than that inflicted on men) and to be paid equal wages for equal work (although there is equal pay legislation, women's work is still undervalued), and to have autonomy over our own bodies. The statistics are absolutely shocking.

Secondly, there is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, there's Transgender Day of Remembrance, LGBT History Month, Black History Month, and International Women's Day. Why? Because these are the groups that get marginalised, persecuted, and generally disregarded and written out of the histories — so we focus on them to redress the balance.

Thirdly, you can't lump all equalities issues into one mega-issue, because the origins and history and conditions of oppression are different. Obviously, yes, all these different forms of oppression intersect, but you still need to analyse them separately, and the people affected by them sometimes need to come together as a community to experience solidarity, celebrate our triumphs, and mourn our losses.

The people about whom all the histories are written don't need a special day, because they get all the attention on the other 364 days of the year.

Her name was Reeva Steenkamp

The other day, I attended a talk on feminism, and one of the women on the panel described how South Africa was gearing up for a major campaign on rape and violence against women, when (and I quote) "a fluffy two-dimensional model got murdered and it was all over the news" (thus knocking the campaign out of the headlines).

Her name was Reeva Steenkamp. She was a lawyer as well as a model. She was a feminist. She had tweeted support for the anti-rape and anti-violence campaign. It was not her fault that she was killed. It's not her fault that the media were more interested in her good looks and her modelling career than in the fact that she was a lawyer and a feminist.

As feminists, we should look behind the headlines and the media hype to see what is really going on, and not mistake the sexist and patriarchal nonsense peddled by the tabloids for anything resembling reality. And we should not refer to other women with the sort of insults that patriarchy dishes out.

I would have challenged the woman on the panel who said this, were it not for the fact that a woman in the audience had said something even more outrageous, which I also felt the need to challenge.

What about teh menz?

"But what about racism against white people?" is a tactic used by racists to minimize and deny racism against people of colour.

"But what about violence against men?" is a tactic used by misogynists to minimize and deny violence against women. In 2009, 9000 men and 69000 women were raped - and that's just the reported rapes. Often the rape of a man by another man is designed to 'relegate' him to female status.

And "but what about the whole cause of the Left?" and "it's mean to call me cisgender" are tactics used to minimize and deny transphobia.

We need to examine the specific causes and instances of oppression in order to dismantle the systematic abuses of the kyriarchy.

Oppression and prejudice are perpetrated by people with privilege and power against people without them, because they want to hold on to their power and privilege and think that it is a finite resource. Power structures are maintained in such a way as to exclude the marginalised from power. If you don't think, dress, and act like a neurotypical white heterosexual man, you are more in danger of being killed, raped, beaten up, underpaid, unemployed, and disenfranchised. Look at this post outlining how people of colour are erased from violent crime statistics towards other marginalised groups. It shows that the more minority groups you belong to, the more in danger you are (especially if you are a person of colour).

Your privilege is showing

So apparently some of those upper-class gels over at the posh school think that the rest of us are not clever enough to understand the word intersectionality, and they are upset that what they thought was their exclusive little club is being overrun by All the Wrong Sort.

Well, here at Bluestocking central, we pride ourselves on being the Wrong Sort, and we don't think it's very hard to explain intersectionality – all one has to say is that women can also be working class, people of colour, LGBTQ, older people, a different religion, disabled, etc and that these groups’ concerns intersect with feminist concerns. I figured this out well before anybody coined the word intersectionality to describe it, and I am sure lots of other bluestockings did too. I knew that my privileged existence was only one tiny corner of the giant tapestry of feminism. I also knew that my concerns about how I might be marginalised for my gender intersected with my concerns about how I might be marginalised for other reasons.

Isn't intersectionality exactly what third-wave feminism concerns itself with? Or perhaps the posh gels over at Vagenda Towers haven't heard of third-wave feminism?

Black feminists have been there from the beginning, but apparently some hoity-toity types haven't noticed. Ladies, your privilege is showing. Perhaps you should tuck it back in. It's not very lady-like.