International Women’s Day (and Women’s History Month) have produced some truly wild tributes meant to ‘honor’ women. Do they all succeed? Absolutely not! Here’s some of our top picks for some of the strangest takes to come out of the day.
Fandom fails
Star Wars fans can be all types of toxic. Thankfully, there’s always a group of rebels in the fandom who are willing, able, and happy to call out the rest.
The somewhat infamous Star Wars YouTuber Star Wars Theory tweeted yesterday about how Rey hadn’t “earned” the Skywalker name. His arguments were rebutted by @reysbeskar, who expertly broke down all of the ridiculous parts of his argument, capped off by pointing out that it was in poor taste to start this fight on International Women’s Day of all days.
Shmi, Padme, and Leia would have all welcomed Rey to their family with open arms and I don’t trust anyone who claims otherwise.
Pitting women against each other
Outside of actual competitions like women’s sports or political races, pitting women against each other is never cool, and going so far as to do it on International Women’s Day leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Journalist Robert Carter decided to spend International Women’s Day doing just that, saying “The only women who truly deserve a shout out this International Women’s Day. Brave niqabis who, through love of their faith, endure relentless persecution in the west. Feminism solidarity doesn’t exist for these women.”
It’s absolutely true that Muslim women can often get left behind in conversations about feminism and women’s rights. Still, Carter doesn’t seem to recognize the irony in pitting Niqabi women against all other women. Also, maybe a man shouldn’t take it upon himself to declare which women are the “only” ones who “deserve” respect on any day of the year.
Similarly, Austrian songwriting duo Teya & Salena has faced backlash for their entry to Eurovision, a feminist anthem jokingly attributing their songwriting power to Edgar Allen Poe. Some fans have thankfully called out the backlash as not understanding the point of the song, which is literally pointing out the double standards for female musicians in the industry.
Politics
Unfortunately, there were multiple instances of police brutality against women marching on International Women’s Day:
Marjorie Taylor Green was appointed Speaker Pro-Tempore yesterday by Kevin McCarthy, reportedly as a nod to International Women’s Day, though it was likely also meant as an appeasement to the radical Republicans that held his nomination hostage back in January.
There’s also been a truly unfortunate amount of transphobia directed at Alba Rueda, a trans activist and politician who has been working to end violence against LGBTQ+ people in Argentina, who was awarded an International Women of Courage Award by First Lady Jill Biden. And a lot of anti-trans bigoted conservatives have been melting down over it.
Capitalist Nonsense
As always, there’s also a lot of capitalist nonsense with companies trying to pretend to care about women … while showing how little they actually do.
Fruity Pebbles decided to go the M&M’s route and put only the female Flintstones characters on the limited edition Berry Pebbles cereal boxes, in the name of “celebrating women who rock.” Reminder, these are characters from the same show that had Fred and Barney judge a beauty pageant despite their wives’ protests.
My personal favorite was this Twitter bot that quote-tweeted many companies’ International Women’s Day posts with statistics about the companies’ pay gap between men and women employees. Some of the original tweets have noticeably been deleted since posting.
Warner Bros Music propped up singer Anitta in an Instagram story, only for the singer to put them on blast and reveal that 1) the CEO was refusing to let her out of her contract with Warner Bros Music and 2) that she has been offered very little support in the creation and marketing of her music, including being forced to pick up sponsors to fund her AMAs performance with Missy Elliot.
But the one that really took the cake yesterday was Australian VC firm OneVentures. After posting on Facebook about “gender camaraderie” and “#womeninfinance”, the firm used a picture that featured 100% men. When asked about this, the firm clarified that it wasn’t a mistake and stated “as we’re profiling women for the rest of the week, we wanted to create some balance and recognise the men on our team too.” Hell of a thing to pull on International Women’s Day. They have since deleted the post and apologized.
What’s the weirdest/worst tribute to “International Women’s Day” you saw yesterday? Comment below!
(featured image: Kellog’s/Post Consumer brands via ExoticPop.com)
