Happy International Feminine Day!

Today is International Women’s Day. What does that even mean?  In today’s world, what it means to be a woman is fraught, weird and often times super confusing.  But what I want on this day that is supposed to internationally honor women, is to claim a great deal of progress for our gender.

Never in the history of the world have we had so many choices.  Never!  We are earning the most we have ever earned.  We don’t need men, which has led to many of us not even wanting them.  We own our own homes, bodies, lives and get  to decide what kind of life we want for ourselves.  It has been a hard fucking road.  Very hard, that has been paved by our foremothers who sacrificed a lot.  They fought the patriarchy and the unfairness and the demoralization and got us to this point today where we have come so very far.  The battle for equality and for men to see us as more than objects for their enjoyment rages on.  But today, I don’t want to focus on that.   I want to focus on how far we have come.

These are the rights we had to fight for:

Contraception (married women)   1965

Contraception (single women)    1972

Title IX education equality 1972

Credit independence 1974

Housing equality    1974

Women on juries nationwide  1975

Pregnancy discrimination banned 1978

Violence Against Women Act 1994

Let me just underscore and highlight that men, especially white men, never had to earn the above rights...they were always granted fully agency and control over their bodies and lives.

It makes my blood boil when I think of all we have had to endure and endure still.  Because we are female, and there is another thing that irks me to no end.  Our gender’s most common reference has men within it, Women and Female.  I am all done with that.  I am going to refer to us as Feminines from now on.  So Happy International Feminine Day!  Fuck the Women’s Day thing.  I am tired of men defining who we are, how we are and what we can do, even down to how we are referred to by a group.  

I often wonder, if we had had the power all along and had subjugated men to the degree they did us, would we have made them fight so hard to get out from under?  And my unequivocal answer is that we would have likely never treated them the same way to begin with...

Today I celebrate this day with a growing appreciation for all that it means to be feminine in this world today.  For all I get to do and all I get to enjoy.  I sit this morning in a home that I own by myself with two cars in the driveway that I purchased by myself.  I live a life today that is my choosing.  I can go where I want, when I want and be how I want.  No one owns my time, body or mind.  I am as free as one can be with a mortgage and kids still at home, and eleven cats and a dog!

We have come a long way, my fellow matriarchs!  We have created a life that is worth living, savoring and enjoying.  And more and more of us are making the decision to go it alone, as the benefits to our lives, our financial wherewithal and peace seems to dictate a life without men.  I know so many bright, beautiful, wonderful women who are single by choice because the men they meet are just not worth the effort.  That is not to say I feel that way about all men, there are some  wonderful men out there.  But I think that, for perhaps, the first time ever, we are free to define ourselves and our lives, not in relation to men, but without them completely.  I know many feminines that do not even consider men in their daily lives.  They go about their living not in some sort of juxtaposition to men, but without comparison at all.  Men are just not even part of their equation...

There is a movement a foot about decentering men as being a central theme in our lives.  And I think we have made wonderful progress.  The feminines I know today, if they have men in their lives, have them there because they want them there, not because they need them, are afraid to live without them or cannot provide for themselves without a man.  They chose to be with the men they selected because those particular men add value to their lives.  And it isn’t completely dependent on the value they add to the men’s lives.

Today we have choices, more than we have ever had, like ever.  And I am one feminine that is enjoying the fuck out of my life that isn’t defined by, controlled by, influenced by or dependent upon a man, or men.  Which leaves me free to make better choices about the men I let into my life, the men I choose to date, the men I have as friends and confidants.  There are good men in the world, but that has never been what this has been all about for any of us.  It is about being able to define our lives for ourselves, not in comparison, that constant and unrelenting comparison.  We exist independently.  We are not some subcategory of maleness.  We are our own entity that exists independently from men. And we always have been, we just have never had the power to live that reality.

Today I thank all the brave feminines that came before me.  I thank my grandmother and mother for the lives they lived, endured and sacrificed for so that I could sit here in my lovely home, safe, secure and content being me, a feminine.  Which requires only my own self definition that is flexible and audacious and requires no male input or approval whatsoever!

Finally, fuck, finally!  Today we celebrate for tomorrow there is always more work to be done!

Again, still...dammit!