Happy International Women’s Day! Women are over

International Women’s Day went mainstream in 1977, the heyday of the women’s rights movement, and has been celebrated on March 8th ever since. In those days, women’s rights were about women. But that is boring and passe, except for the outfits. Today, we still like Gloria Steinem’s glasses, but have no idea if she has a vagina or not, and honestly, who cares! She’s got parts, right?

The future is here and it’s not female. A female is a relic of the olden days, before they had penises and stubble. Don’t be sad — we had a good run! Like, centuries. But now it’s time to wrap it up.

Today, President Biden offered Alba Rueda, a man with long blonde hair, an International Women of Courage award. Rueda is Argentina’s Special Envoy for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and the country’s first male politician with long blonde hair. It is very brave of him to accept an award for brave women on a day for women. Most others would be ashamed. A bold move!

In Canada, a country so progressive they’ve progressed all the way up to a size Z bra, Hershey’s celebrated Fae Johnstone, a man who has made destroying women’s rights into a career, as part of their International Women’s Day campaign, “She For Her.” Johnstone protested my testimony against Bill C-16 back in 2017, on account of his desire to access women’s washrooms, which he did at Parliament that day, thereby proving his dick was a girl one. In response to Fae’s view of the future, where everyone is able live as their authentic selves, adam’s apples and all, a #BoycottHersheys campaign was launched by women who still believe International Women’s Day is for women.

Canadian media was not having it, alas. At ChekNews, Laura Brougham criticized the #BoycottHersheys campaign, writing, “This is the latest high-profile example of trans women facing backlash just for being who they are.”

It’s funny to defend men who want to be women in this way, as clearly the “trans” prefix attached to “women” demonstrates a desire to be someone one is not. If “transwomen” were already women, there would be no need to “trans.” You would just be a woman. And if you were indeed going to “just be who you are,” you would just be a man. You wouldn’t need to change a thing — body or pronoun.

But what are meanings of words to trans activists or Canadian media? Surely nothing more than a suggestion.

Broughton acknowledges that “trans rights” are not in fact under attack in Canada, as they have full government and institutional support, but quotes KJ Reed, a faculty member in Women and Gender Studies at Vancouver Island University (VIU), who offers a long list of ways people who call themselves trans still suffer. Reed tells Broughton:

“People who experience discrimination don’t always have the resources or the time to seek redress under the law. So it means taking time off work, it means talking to lawyers, it means accessing a system that requires both time and monetary resources.”

This is an interesting point, because the only people I know who have had to hire lawyers or “take time off of work” (on account of being fired, to be fair, but who doesn’t need a break sometimes!) within the gender identity debate are women who say men are not women. In any case, if the only discrimination being faced by men claiming to be women in Canada is that sometimes they have to take time off of work, I think they’re doing ok.

Reed is not only a faculty member at VIU, but apparently is also a PhD candidate in the department I graduated from at Simon Fraser University (SFU): Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Things seem to have changed quite a bit!

Back when I began studying at VIU, then at SFU, Women’s Studies was still Women’s Studies. There were courses about women and work, women in the media, women and sexuality, Indigenous women, African women, women in film, and more! In around 2010, everything changed. Pretty much across North America, Women’s Studies departments became Gender Studies departments, and the course material became focused not on women, but on gender theory. I was lucky enough to still be able to get away with focusing my work on actual women back when I was completing my graduate degree, and even produced a radio project featuring radical feminist lesbian, Sheila Jeffreys, who had been critical of transgenderism for many years at that point. My supervisor was not a fan, and said so in her feedback on my grad project, but I managed to graduate with a 4.0 despite my insistence on including cancelled radical feminists who were anti-porn and anti-transgenderism in my work.

No doubt I would have been burned at the stake had I been attempting this even half a  decade later, which I surely would have, had I continued on to do a PhD as planned. Instead, I went into journalism, yet another unfeasible place for me, considering my insistence on sharing inconvenient views and platforming the cancelled. I remember dreaming of working at the CBC. Ha! Carol only-one-side-to-this-discussion-and-it’s-mine Off would not have liked that much. Speaking out loud about women’s rights is the same as being a Holocaust denier at the CBC.

In an effort to continue saying “women” instead of “gender,” and hateful things like “men are male,” I went fully independent, via this very website!

I had no idea how bad things would get.

Ten years after I launched Feminist Current as a place for women to discuss and write about woman things, without compromising to third wave postmodernist NewThink, women are done.

International Women’s Day is for men, which means it is no longer.

The Women’s March tweeted:

“#InternationalWomensDay is for working women, for disabled women, for trans women, for women of color, for moms, for women of any faith or none at all. International Womens Day is for YOU.”

Oxfam, a charity fighting poverty, wrote (for some reason):

“This #InternationalWomensDay, it’s time to amplify the power of all women. Especially women of colour, queer and trans women, disabled women, and refugees and migrants. On #IWD, we call for every woman to be seen, heard and valued.”

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the leader of Canada’s NPD, Jameet Singh, reasserted his commitment to men who think they’re special:

David Eby, Premier of British Columbia and leader of the BC NDP took the opportunity to shout out his beautiful bros:

And of course, Canada’s Top Feminist, Justin Trudeau, announced:

“When women and girls are empowered, entire families, communities, and societies succeed. So today, as we mark #IWD2023 and celebrate the incredible women and girls in our lives, let’s keep working to build a more equal and equitable future.”

He made sure to add:

“And with a disturbing rise in anti-transgender hate here in Canada and around the world recently, I want to be very clear about one more thing: Trans women are women. We will always stand up to this hate — whenever and wherever it occurs.“

And there you have it. Men are women, and International Women’s Day is about them.

We are done. We are over. Time to move on. I mean, we’ve been women this whole time! Let someone else have a shot.

Let’s be the bigger uterus-havers and wish Justin Trudeau all the best in his efforts to make babies out of two penises.

Meghan Murphy

Founder & Editor

Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist from Vancouver, BC. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including The Spectator, UnHerd, Quillette, the CBC, New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and is now exiled in Mexico with her very photogenic dog.