Women's History Month (ugh)

It’s Women’s History Month.

I don’t like Women’s History Month.

Buckle in, here comes my rant.

I am not a fan of celebration months in general.

I find them insulting, condescending, and patronizing. (So, Phyllis, tell us how you really feel!)

Have you noticed there isn’t a Straight White Male Month? Hmmm…

Back to women. Of course, women have always been part of history.

What they haven’t been part of, until recently, is WRITING history.

As a history major in college, I focused on urban, social, and immigrant history. Guess what?

Women created communities. Women worked. Women taught. Women healed. Women invented. Women braved. Women ran businesses. Women took care of families.

Human history – the history of all of us - is far more complex and interesting than memorizing men’s names and dates of wars. This isn’t to diminish men. It’s about including the rest of us.

Studying history is learning about how people lived, how they got here, and how they survived. Those stories are rich with meaning and lessons.

My hope is that my eighteen-month-old granddaughter one day learns how silly and sexist it was that we devoted a mere one-twelfth of the year to celebrating the history of one-half of humanity.  

Rant over.

Happy Women’s History Month, I guess. 🙄