I am in a bit of a quandary. Wither do I dither, you may ask? You see, it is International Women’s Day, many women are on strike for A Day Without Women, and there are too many things I want to blog about on this topic.
On the one hand, I could blog about Jane Austen and the fact she is one of the few human beings without junk that hangs down to actually have written literary canon. Most of the time, only male work is taken seriously. If female writing is taken seriously, it usually has to be the birth of a genre or so serious the air above the book dries out when you open it. Jane Austen writes humorous love stories, yet is credited as one of the greatest wordsmiths of the English language. How good IS that? Granted, they keep calling her books things like a “comedy of manners” and/or brilliant works of “social satire” rather than what they are — which romance novels – but still, her talent is nigh indisputable.
Plus, I could plug my book, Mansfield Parsonage, if I blogged about Jane.
Or I could stick to the Tudor era and blog about Anne Boleyn has been unjustly slut shamed for centuries, along with many other strong-willed women who dared to defy men. That way I could discuss The Jezebel Effect and how thousands of women around the world are STILL dying – at the hands of others or by suicide when the emotional strain of bullying becomes too much to survive – because they are “sluts” in someone’s imagination. That’s an important feminist topic, and I could plug my book … which I really want a lot of people to read so they will all go, “Golly, but this slut shaming malarkey is a big old bag of bullshit, ain’t it?” That would be nice.
Or do I talk about socioeconomic inequality for women? The need for a living wage, because minimum wage workers are disproportionally women? The feminization of poverty? The danger to women’s health and well-being due to domestic abuse? The need for decent childcare? Unpaid ‘women’s’ work that keeps society afloat? Female genital mutilation? Trump’s ungodly gag rule that will actually CAUSE MORE ABORTIONS as well as KILLING WOMEN?
Holy crapfest, Batman. It’s almost as if there is systemic disenfranchising of women across the globe! If only there was a sociopolitical movement dedicated to the “theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” which also “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests”. I’d join that in a hurry and be proud to identify myself as such!