RETHINKING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

International Working Women’s Day was the precursor of the current International Women’s Day, celebrated on March 8 in many parts of the world. It all started in earnest during the Second International in Copenhagen (1910). One hundred women delegates from 17 countries agreed to commemorate international women’s day ‘as a strategy to promote equal rights, including, suffrage for women.’ Don’t forget women, by and large, didn’t have voting rights then. Yes, women have come a long way but there still remain plenty of unresolved issues from days of old. Moreover, there are also new twists of the same old problems, which are directly associated with the archaic but still persistent system of patriarchy. What is important and timely is; what can the fair sex do to alleviate the major impending catastrophes humanity inevitably faces as we enter the final stages of the collapsing modern world system?The prevailing world system, which has been around for about half a millennium, has been leveraging, amongst other things, sexism & racism (colonialism, slavery, apartheid, etc.) to facilitate its accumulation fix. Nonetheless, in its still continuing tenure, the system had to concede certain rights to the downtrodden in order to secure relative peace, which is critical to the accumulation process. Universal suffrage, anti-colonialism, anti-apartheid, civil rights, etc. are amongst the concessions. Even here, there still remain subtle residuals that render those formal achievements substantively ineffective. Obviously some of the beastly behavior of society (wars, rape, etc.,) has been in operation longer than the modern world system. Patriarchy as a dominant feature of collective social existence has always been a formidable obstacle to the realization of women’s own needs and desires. Through various excuses; religion, custom and other values, not deeply shared by women, patriarchy has managed to shove all kinds of nonsense down their (women’s) throats for eons! Also by leveraging all sorts of modern contraptions, technical or otherwise, patriarchy still operates at the back, in front, left, right and center of human societies.If truth be told, the prevailing system has now gone completely senile. It has lost all of its critical senses. Not willing to recognize the limitations set by Mother Nature and other concrete social realities, it adamantly pushes dangerous unsustainability in all spheres of existence. Resource shortages, pollution (of all kinds), climate change, degradation of life support systems, etc. are now amongst the major challenges confronting human survival. But the world system doesn’t seem to care. In fact, it is now covertly contemplating the systemic culling (reduction) of humanity itself! Destruction-prone patriarchy is/will be there and ready to lend its supporting hands! Without the interjection of the fair sex, the prevailing lunacy might not be stopped. This preferred project must be dictated, necessarily by women’s own natural selves. The whole effort must rely on women’s inborn innate instincts, more than anything else. Moreover, the project shouldn’t be allowed to fall for the usual gimmicks of patriarchy! What the stupid system has been doing and will still keep on doing is; give the fair sex access to all and sundry, so long as these exercises lead to more accumulation at whatever cost (commodification of women, labour, nature, etc.) According to the sick system, virtues such as equality are interpreted and utilized only to persuade women to become accomplices to the evil set up of patriarchy, like when women join the ‘killing industry’/the military, etc., etc. Many women have been duped and have joined the various criminal projects of the world system. What good is it if the finger that pushes the button to trigger Armageddon (the detonation of nuclear bombs) is of a WASP’s (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) or that of a Blackman or that of a Chinaman? Or will it make an iota of a difference if the delicate and slender finger that ultimately presses the button belongs to a cute Blondie of the fair sex? Craving to become a Neanderthal man (a modern psychopath) should not be considered progress or an achievement by the female genre, rather it must be deemed as a complete sell out! Don’t forget for each female psychopath, there are about ten male bona fide psychos. Clinical psychopaths number only about five percent of the general population. Thankfully, the numbers favor sanity! We believe the global women movement must seriously look into the important project of delinking, i.e., systemically and institutionally disengaging from this lunatic system that has now become avowedly anti life! For example only the refusal of sex will not do, (Ukrainian women are planning it and Kenyan women have done it before), the project must go further. When the international women’s day started, it was women workers taking up the fights against the oppressive entrenched interests of the system. Today this movement has been effectively mainstreamed (for example, the UN picked it up around 1995, after it lost its revolutionary potency.) Instead of articulating serious women’s issues (which automatically encapsulate many of life’s concerns; unlike that of men’s preoccupation, which tend to revolve mostly around toys, dangerous or otherwise) the international women’s day has become increasingly and unfortunately, a less romantic version of ‘Valentine’s Day’! Realizing that it is all life that is at stake, women must take a clear stand against patriarchy’s suicidal mission. Listen to the groaning and chest beating of the Neanderthals over Ukraine, to say nothing about other devastations (Afghanistan, Nigeria, Libya, Central African Republic, Syria, Somalia, Iraq, etc., etc.) The successes/achievements of women, which global dominant interest pontificates ad nauseum are only those that promise to further the accumulation process. Almost all congratulatory nonsense that is usually bestowed on women by patriarchy is only skin dip and women should be aware of it. As we say in our watering hole: “To try to make sense out of nonsense is even a bigger nonsense.” Good Day!