International Women’s Day is an insult to women

Following Zero Discrimination Day and World Seagrass Day earlier this month, I still think International Women’s Day (IWD) is up there with the most inane of the global ‘awareness days’. First marked well over a century ago by a group of socialist women in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, who declared it a ‘day of glory’ for women around the world, it has since devolved into a nauseating 24-hour corporate virtue-signal-athon.

Yesterday, on its 115th birthday, IWD claimed to be as committed as ever to raising awareness about ‘gender discrimination’, forging ‘gender parity’ and celebrating ‘women’s achievements’. Yet I have yet to meet a woman who has ever felt ‘celebrated’, ‘glorified’ or even mildly appreciated by the existence of this annual celebration. In fact, in recent years, International Women’s Day seems no longer to have much to do with women or women’s rights at all.

This point was rammed home when Let Women Speak founder Kellie-Jay Keen was removed from an IWD event at the Albert Hall in Nottingham yesterday. Keen had been interviewing staff members from Nottingham Women’s Centre, asking them if they offered single-sex spaces in accordance with the law. After being informed by police that these conversations had caused ‘alarm and distress’, she was frog-marched from the premises.

Indeed, how can we celebrate an international day for women or defend women’s rights when we cannot agree on what a woman actually is. If anyone who feels compelled to wear a dress can be considered a woman, regardless of biological reality, the event becomes redundant. We might as well hold a day for Anyone Who Feels a Bit Girly Lately – which happens to be the approach many organisations have taken. The Women of the World Foundation hosted a handful of events under the mission statement of seeking an ‘inclusive future for women, girls and nonbinary people’. Meanwhile, the Daily Gazette, a local paper in Essex, marked the occasion with a perfect ‘How can I make this about me?’ meme, publishing a stunning and brave first-person account of a local councillor’s transition from male to ‘female’.

The frustrating reality here is that men didn’t force their way into IWD as much as they were handed the keys. The biggest proponents of trans ideology remain young women. And until gender-critical women are given the right to state their case without retribution or ostracism, that isn’t likely to change. Far more concerning, however, is IWD’s apparent disdain for genuinely vulnerable women.

On Saturday in London, protesters demanding an end to violence against women and girls marched side by side with a ‘Feminists for Palestine’ rally. As they arrived in Trafalgar Square, they came face to face with a group of anti-ayatollah protesters, who were flying Israeli, British and the old Iranian lion-and-sun flags. Apparently, this lot had missed the memo that modern feminists are supposed to support Hamas and the Islamic Republic. It would be terribly un-progressive to speak out against, say, the rape and mutilation of young women at music festivals or theocratic regimes in which women are beaten in the streets for daring to reveal their hair.

All of this speaks to the distinctly Western, upper-middle-class nature of those who claim to be ‘for women’. They see no issue with inviting men into women’s spaces, because they are not the ones in need of private spaces, whether that be changing rooms in a workplace or a rape-crisis centre. They feel no remorse for their selective sisterhood. And they are entirely content to stick their fingers in their ears and sing ‘la-la-la’ while they sacrifice countless women and girls in pursuit of their SJW fantasies.

International Women’s Day may once have been about women’s liberation, but today it has become a celebration of men who think they’re women and men who want to oppress women. The feminists of old must be spinning in their graves.

Georgina Mumford is a content producer at spiked.