Happy International Women's Day, folks! 🌷✊🏽
While we're celebrating women, here is a list of 15 important things to remember:
• There are many different ways to be a woman, and the concept of womanhood should be broad and freeing, not narrow and restrictive. We are diverse in our appearances, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours - none of these things cancel out our identity as women.
• Women were NOT "created to do the things that men can't do” (which is basically nothing other than menstruating and giving birth). We are capable of doing anything, and we have every right to do so.
• Scientific research does not support the idea that men and women are fundamentally different in their dispositions, inclinations, attitudes and skills. It's time to stop using this idea to generalise, judge and restrict women.
• "Real women have curves" is not body positivity - it enforces gender stereotypes and excludes more women than it empowers. All women are real women, regardless of their shapes or sizes.
• Declaring that you "only have guy friends" because "girls are drama" is your internalised misogyny at play. It generalises all women and perpetuates negative stereotypes about them that are ultimately untrue. Female friendships are important and powerful, and are in no way inferior to male ones.
• Saying "I'm not like other girls" is also internalised misogyny. It implies that you think that all girls are essentially the same, that the negative stereotypes about them are true, and that they are all inferior to you.
• Women don't need to feel threatened by the successes of other women. It isn't a competition. Support your sisters - there is plenty of room for all of us.
• Things that are related to women (from products to event posters) do not always have to be pink.
• Women are constantly held to higher standards than men regarding their behaviour, emotions, morality and conduct. This is not cool, and glorifying this is not empowering.
• Women should not be expected to limit their own freedoms in order to avoid being targeted by men, and women are not responsible for what men do to them without their consent - ever.
• Being attractive to men (with regard to physical appearance, personality traits, behaviours, or anything else) is not the ultimate goal of a woman. If something she's doing is unattractive to you, don’t expect her to care.
• If you only respect women who meet your personal standards of what a woman should be like, you don't actually respect women.
• Women are not your honour. The concept that "girls are the izzat of the family" places an unfair burden on women, is a tool for restricting their freedoms and controlling their behaviours, and has enabled familial violence against women for far too long.
• You don't need to shout "BUT WHAT ABOUT MEN???" whenever we're talking about women. We haven't forgotten about you.
• If conversations about feminism/ women's rights/ gender equality make you feel uncomfortable or threatened, it's because you have become so accustomed to inequality that anything different feels dangerous to you. It's up to you to fix this, and to unlearn the problematic ideas that you have been socialised with.
Is there anything else you would add to this list?
