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No newspapers, please
How I stopped worrying
and learned to love International Women's Day
Copyright 1995 by Lynna Landstreet. This column
originally appeared in Xtra
magazine. Published by Pink Triangle Press, 491 Church Street, 2nd Floor,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 2C6.
 'm
not sure exactly when it was that I gave up on International Women's
Day. It might have been the time I got stuck behind some group calling
itself the Bolshevik Tendency and carrying signs saying "Hail the
Red Army in Afghanistan." One member earnestly tried to explain
to a friend of mine that the only reason the USSR had launched the invasion
was to liberate women from Islamic rule.
Then again, it might have been just a part of my general disenchantment
with conventional politics -- something that's been building for the
last decade or so, and culminated in my vitriolic columns about spousal
rights last summer, and a general feeling that most demos (apart from
Take Back the Night, and anything organized by Earth First!) are a well-behaved
waste of time.
Or it might have just been the result of having to fight my way once
too often through the gauntlet of Lenin's Witnesses flogging newspapers
with names like Socialist Worker, Worker's Vanguard, and Worker-this-that-and-the-other-thing,
their eyes glazed over with missionary zeal or possibly just bad drugs.
When I was writing for the anarchist journal Kick It Over, we used to
joke about changing the name to either Work It Over or Kick The Workers
to fit in.
Whatever the case, I stopped going a number of years ago, feeling that
it had essentially turned into International Trotskyist Splinter Group
Day and lost whatever relevance it once had to women. So how was it
that this year I found myself down at Convocation Hall once again, debating
whether it was better to suffer through the undoubtedly boring speeches
indoors or to freeze my ass off outside amongst the paper-pushing Marxist
Moonies?
It all started with a friend of mine, artist Catherine Tammaro, telling
me about some events she was planning for this year's IWD: a Goddess
Contingent in the parade, an exhibition of pagan art called Between
the Worlds, and a women's ritual to top off the day. Good luck getting
that by the committee, I thought -- considering both the anti-spiritual
bent of most party-line leftists and the way that "ritual abuse"
hysteria seems to have taken the women's community by storm (kind of
like a cross between the '70s UFO abduction craze and Salem witch trials),
I expected anything involving spirituality to be greeted with stark
horror.
Surprisingly, I was wrong. The committee thought her ideas sounded great,
and before I knew what hit me, I'd agreed to design some flyers and
submit a couple of pieces for the show. As I looked over the copy for
the flyers, the events sounded better and better, and I began to suspect
that maybe, just maybe, I'd make it out to IWD this year after all.
At first glance, everything looked about the same -- people were still
drifting aimlessly back and forth between the speeches and the steps,
the Bolshevik Tendency folks were still there, looking more than ever
like some kind of mutant offspring of the Society for Creative Anachronism,
and the squadrons of glassy-eyed leftist evangelists flogging their
newspapers still looked confused when told to get a real paradigm.
But when I ventured inside, I found that, to my surprise, the speakers
weren't just the usual tired assortment I'd come to expect. A Latin
American Native woman spoke of the importance of honouring Mother Earth,
a local Native lesbian talked about living with AIDS, and a fundraiser
even injected some humour into the usual plea for money. When a speaker
led the audience in a raucous chant of "Cuts? No thanks! Tax the
fucking banks!", I began to suspect this year's parade might even
be fun.
Fun, as it turned out, was an understatement. It was a delight, especially
when hordes of women charged the Royal Bank building at Yonge and Bloor
to plaster it with stickers suggesting the rich be taxed, and the chant
changed to "They say cut back, we say fuck that!" As
the parade progressed down Yonge Street, passing BMW's, cop cars, and
even cops themselves were stickered with great abandon.
Ultimately, a good time was had by all, except perhaps the cops ("Please
don't put that on me," one pleaded. "I've had to peel off
five already!"). The Goddess Contingent ended up being tiny, but
the Between The Worlds show was well received, and overall, the day
left me feeling better than any large demo had in years. So I suppose
my longstanding boycott (girlcott?) of IWD is at an end, and you'll
likely see me there next year as well.
But I still don't want your damn newspapers!
All content copyright 1999-2006 by the
individual authors, where cited, or by
Lynna Landstreet
where not specifically credited.
Except where otherwise noted, this site is licensed under a
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This page last modified: January 29, 2006
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