Today is International Women's Day. It's filled all my social media outlets with women celebrating each other, although I must admit this isn't much different from their usual state. Call it an echo chamber if you will, but what a time to be alive, to have so much of what I choose to consume surround the celebration and support of women in all their forms. Who knew we would get here? It fills me with a lot of hope.
I've spent today telling all the women in my life how wonderful they are and celebrating our strength, and our potential, and everything we can achieve if we continue to support one another. I've also spent some of it wondering how many times someone will have to say the words 'International Men's Day' before I lose my eyes in the back of my head, having rolled them so many times. It feels less than last year though, so that is something.
I also read 'We Should All Be Feminists' for the millionth time, to warm my heart and remind me why we keep fighting like we do.
On Saturday I spoke at a conference in London, at Queen Mary's University. At least I'm told I did. I was only 12 hours off the plane from Sydney and absolutely exhausted, but for the love of my subject alone I battled through. A quick thank you should go here for the organisers, everyone's work sounds fascinating and I'm sorry I couldn't be more present to take all I could from the day.
Speaking at the conference meant re-immersing myself in the bit of my life in which I'm a historian. Thinking about my research and what it means and why I do it.
Too often I've heard people say that I do what I do because I want to celebrate women. The history of the women I research is not a happy one, it is not one of undeniably wonderful acts (whose research ever is?) One person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter after all. It is not for me to judge the legitimacy of anyone's actions. Other historians will do that, other people with an interest in these things. I'm not interested in moral judgements; I'm interested in women in our many arenas.
Whenever I develop my research I also talk about emancipation. I make careful to state that I am not here to judge anyone's emancipation. The idea is to go and speak to women whom no one has asked, to tell their stories, because they haven't been told before. It's not our job when we study history to decide how worthy someone was of their fate or how 'good' or not they were. My aim isn't to say all women are wonderful all of the time.
The point is that women deserve their place. They deserve the complexity we instantly afford to men without even thinking about it. We deserve to be acknowledged for the things we did, the wonderful and the more controversial aspects of history alike. We let men commit atrocities and lead the world simultaneously without ever wondering what that says about their gender. I want women to be afforded the same right. I want to examine what being a woman meant for them in the specific context in which they acted. To overturn the idea that women all inherently act for reasons that are as diverse as they are, but also acknowledge that being a woman has a very unique impact on their experiences.
I don't need us to be wonderful and 'good' all the time. To be right all the time. I need us to be there, to be present. We deserve to be present in every single arena you can think of, and to be allowed to tell our stories of every kind of experience. Too often women are silenced, and too often no one knows we were there.
I want us to make noise, I want us to be there.
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