Today is International Women’s Day. It is a day to celebrate Women: the woman of your life who loves and respects you; the woman at work who makes integral decisions that move the cogs of industry forward; the woman in labor bringing life into this world. We celebrate the single mother in her kitchen pulling together the evening meal stretching her resources to keep her family going and the woman naked before a camera, selling her image for a scrap of bread so she can make it through to next day and feed her family.

We celebrate the women who broke new ground; Vera Rubin who discovered dark matter and forever changed how we see the Universe; Rosa Parks and Viola Desmond who respectively sat in a bus and in a theater on seats designated “whites only” and who trail blazed towards civil liberty; young Malala Yousafzai, shot for wanting to go to school and who champions the rights for girls all over the world to have a better education; the five Canadian women (Nellie McClung, Henrietta Muir, Emily Murphy, Louise McKinney, and Irene Parlby) who stood in court defending the principle that a woman is not loose baggage bought but a human being to be respected and treated fairly and equally in the courts of law and in the games of politics. We celebrate LBGT women who struggle each day to be accepted and respected as human beings rather than seen as sinful dangerous things that should not be heard. We celebrate women who speak out against sexual assault and who struggle to make the workplace, any place for that matter, safe.

We celebrate the women of yesteryear, those “angels of the hearth” so spoken of in 19th century newsprint. We celebrate those women of art history who broke ground in places they were not supposed to have tread: Artemisa Gentileschi who painted a brutal portrayal of Judith Slaying Holofernes or Amy Beach breaking new ground with her “Gaelic” Symphony. Yes we celebrate the women of oral tradition; the Tikar woman grinding grain and singing a plaintive blues filled song, or the Somba girls singing complex polyphonic musical lines, brimming with harmony.

Now As I write this piece I am sure some will have reservations. Why should we have a women’s day? What grants such an honor? There are many who still think of a woman as property, as a thing. There are still some who think that women should slip back into the kitchen “where they belong”. There are so many who fear lesbian women and are terrified of LBGT women who are breaking through the closet and changing what we identify as gender. There are some who fear the competition that women bring to the workplace, while others just fear women in general. Of course there are also those who belittle women, see them as sexual toys and sluts, and for whom intimacy and boundaries do not exist.

Let me start by saying this. I am a man. I would dearly love to say I am a feminist but can a man really be a feminist? I have read those many articles from yesteryear that trumpeted a woman’s place in the hive. But I have no experience that comes close to that other than the holocaust that took the lives of many of my family. Being a caucasian male, I haven’t had any kind of experience where I was placed in a role and told that is all I could dream of. I haven’t experienced the kinds of trials that women and men of color experience. There has never been a Blacks only sign telling me exactly where to sit in the theater or on a bus. If I had been homosexual or struggled with my very gender, my parents would have been capable of accepting me for who I was regardless. If anything, my youth has a tint of persecution to it, but it was based on my keen intelligence and my personal nerdy tastes for dinosaurs, science fiction, astronauts and history not something related to skin, sexual orientation or gender.

Even my family relationships do not vault me to a place where I can say I understand what some of my female friends have struggled with. My mom was the essence of “hearth angel” but she was never treated as baggage. She was never restricted by dad. They were partners in love and they worked together to make our family flourish. Mom was never restricted from exploring herself: she sang in the Northerinaires, a mixed choir in Atikokan, learned to type in high school, learned to play accordion and later piano. She was the family bookkeeper and in this regard, if she had chosen to explore her skill for figures might have been a brilliant accountant. But then had dad chosen to explore his skills of design he might have been a brilliant contractor, engineer or interior designer.

However, I always had a belief that a woman was a human being to be respected and that she deserved equality in all things. In my relationships with women who chose to be my partner, they were treated with respect and free to be themselves. I do not recollect ever discouraging evenings out with friends. My relationships were not prison galleys floating on the sea. In all my experiences with my partners, “no” meant no. I am far from an angel and I am not placing myself on any pedestals here, but I never had the “Sleep with anyone” adventure. I never had the affair. I do not have a long list of women that I have had casual intimacy with. Five women have made my life a pleasure and broken my heart strings when that time came.

What has allowed me a glimpse of the limits placed on woman’s life is the story of her past. Herstory is full of women who struggled against taboo set by a paternalistic world view. Step back into a copy of the Port Arthur Daily News in Thunder Bay from 1906 and you are struck by the swarm of articles around the benefits of being an “angel of the hearth”. Being the master of the home and kitchen is sung in praises over and over again. I am not suggesting that a woman who chooses to be just a housewife is a something negative, but back in 1906 when women do push beyond those limits, they are mocked or seen as novelties and single women who do find a professional career outside of paternalistic boundaries are expected to give up their position once they marry. There are numerous instances of the female professional teacher, as an example, who organizes music events outside of school time and receives many accolades in the media for her productive community support; but the moment she marries the man of her dreams she literally disappears having left her job to tend house and have babies. For women (this was after all the suffragette era) to push for the vote, there are farcical articles featuring parliaments of women intended to mock the idea that a woman has nothing more in her head than her man and absolutely no experience in political affairs outside of the kitchen.

In exposing oneself to this Daily News world, and one comes to the conclusion that feminism has been such a productive element of our present history. Women have made it a better place now more than ever because there are more choices available to them and they can participate in it’s direction and fate. Our world in 2018 has lucked out because we have moved so far forward, past ancient boundaries and have accepted the notion of a woman’s rightful equal place.

When a Canadian Prime Minister pulls a 50/50 cabinet of men and women out of his hat, all is really right with the world. When an LBGT woman is out with friends enjoying spirits and accepted for being herself, something right is with the world. When a woman climbs Mount Everest and places a flag at its summit, the world has become a better place. When a female scientist hypothesizes that dark energy may be a chamelon particle that we can’t detect and spends her life working to prove her idea, then we are all better for it. When a woman becomes the Doctor on a TV show that has always been headed by a male lead we are coming to a place of true normalcy. When Wonder Woman breaks box office records on it’s own terms, it is exciting. When women gain parity with men in pay that says we are coming to grips with reality. When women finally feel that how they dress or look is not responsible for sexual assault; when they feel safe to walk the streets alone we will all be the better for it. When women of all colors, creeds and sexual preferences finally feel good inside, feel comfortable with their own skins, feel strong and proud of who they are and the choices they make then we live in a better place. So please celebrate today. It is a day women deserve pride in. Celebrate and let go of past nonsense. Let us find a better world for our children to grow up in.