International Women's Day? (!)

International Women's Day. Woooooooo! This one's a weird one, am I right? Seems like less a celebration than it is a call to action. This day, this particular year, I have decided that as a woman and mother of girls I have been too complacent, too quiet. Too nice. Is that dramatic? Am I looking for a fight? Check back in with me when women earn the same wage as their male counterparts, when my daughter's leggings are not labeled a potential distraction in school dress codes, when my toddler girl doesn't get told that a little jerk who pushed her off a pretend boat did so because "he likes her," when there are not 21 million "notionally" unwanted girls in India, or when, how about when, the leader of the Free World didn't sit on an Access Hollywood bus and brag about grabbing women by the pussy. Or hey, how 'bout when said free world leader didn't pay for a porn star's silence on the eve of the US election.

Then there's my silence. I'm a 41-year-old woman with a graduate degree and a portfolio of published works, but I've spent two decades as an adult trying to shapeshift to make myself smaller, folded up like an origami swan and apologizing for other peoples' meanness. Two decades getting out of the way. #metoo and yada yada yada. This isn't about men. I know and love beautiful, thoughtful men. My father. My boyfriend My cousins. My uncles. President Obama. Mr. Rogers. Pete Seeger. Bruce Springsteen. This isn't about men. This is about the world and girls and not letting a wound fester. And yes, ok, about men and

So this is my International Women's Day pledge to myself and to my girls, and to everybody's girls that I'm not going to be toxic nice anymore. This is my battle cry. The Celts called it a "faugh a ballagh". I looked it up, and do you know what that means? Clear the way. There's not an end or any catharsis to this blog. Just some thoughts on this day. I like lists, so here's a partial list of women who cleared the way. I want to know. Who's on your list? Comment and I'll add 'em on. Let's keep it growing.


My mom

Boudicca

Elizabeth I

Aphra Behn 

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Sojourner Truth

Ida B. Wells-Barnett

Virginia Woolf

Alice Walker

Shirley Chisholm

Pearl S. Buck

Joan Jett

Dorothy Allison

Maxine Waters

My friend, Freedom Rider Joan Browning