International Women's Day

I'm sort of at the top of the pyramid when it comes to being a woman.
I mean, I guess I could always be a heiress or a movie star or an astronaut.
But generally speaking, I'm in the luckiest 1%
I'm unmarried, un-babyfied, employed, living alone and paying my bills and my evenings are free to write, or drink, or sleep with whoever I want, and no one says shit to me. In fact, I publicize all this stuff online, and people read it for fun. I'm (relatively) healthy. When something really bad happens to me, I have about ten million people I can call.

Today I woke up, worked from home, painted my nails, went to the gym, drove my own car back to my own apartment. I didn't have to drive through any military checkpoints. My bra strap was showing, and nobody yelled at me for it.

Nobody but me cares if my apartment is clean. Nobody but me cares what I do tonight.

So, you know, it's all sort of fucking sweet. Look, I just swore online. No one is going to beat me for that later.

My life is goddamn miracle.

And so maybe we make all kinds of witty quips about International Women's Day, like it's funny to us, we'll make a bunch of jokes about it falling on the same day as International Pancakes Day, ect. Because it seems so irrelevant to those of us in our miracles lives, with our miracle strides and prides.

But don't forget, there are people out there who want to take away your birth control. They want to take away the life I have, they think it's sinful and wrong for a woman my age, any age, to have freedom and choice and independence. They keep other women, the ones they have control over, down like chattel. They rape them like inconsequential meat. They mutilate their bodies. They fill their minds with self hatred. They keep them from learning to read or write. They think of women not as people but as possessions. They are everywhere, in this country and all over the world. And it's not just men. It's a way of thinking that has dominated human society for thousands of years, because childbirth is a resource and a way to control and have power.

The thing to not forget today is that there are still Villains. And our miraculous existences, us the first creatures to ever be on this planet in this incarnation, we cannot allow ourselves to believe they don't want to wipe us out, to shame us and enslave us and purge us out of time. We are wrapped up safe here, but it's only through luck of location and class, a fucking genetic dice roll that put our minds in these particular bodies. Which is why we must always fight for Choice. And remember how rare we are.