Op-Ed: Womxn’s History Month reimagined

A call to action

Kate Burnite / Op-Ed Contributor / The USD Vista

This month, all around the country, people are talking about womxn. March is known in the United States as Womxn’s History Month and includes International Womxn’s Day on March 8. In the contemporary moment, when many believe womxn’s oppression to be the least important axis in liberation, and many others believe liberation has been achieved, Womxn’s History Month provides a unique opportunity for reflection. While the event is technically denoted “Women’s History Month,” I am choosing to use “womxn” to refer to all individuals who identify as women. This spelling is intended to create a more inclusive definition of womanhood; many transgender or gender fluid individuals preferred this spelling because it seeks to recognize the fluidity of gender and the disparate lived experiences of womxn as a collective.

Womxn’s History Month was predated by Womxn’s History Week, first declared as a presidential proclamation under President Ronald Reagan in 1982. In 1987, after lobbying by national historical groups, March was first designated as Womxn’s History Month as we experience it today. Each year since, the sitting president has made a presidential proclamation declaring March Womxn’s History Month. The express purpose of Reagan’s Womxn’s History Week, and the purpose of the Womxn’s History Months since, is to recognize the contributions of womxn to American history. In elementary and secondary education, this recognition often takes the form of biography– introducing students to individual womxn who have influenced different disciplines and policies in the U.S. The womxn profiled during this month are often “firsts;” the current president named the first female to earn a bachelor’s degree and the first female physician in this year’s proclamation.

The goal of highlighting impactful womxn is laudable–often, these figures were not recognized or credited sufficiently during their historical moments. Being the first to accomplish anything shows a trajectory for others to follow, and that can serve as a catalyst for more wide-ranging change. But this biographical method of teaching womxn’s history causes damage as well. The biographies of womxn of color, LGBTQ womxn, immigrant womxn, and proletariat womxn are frequently overlooked, denying their experiences respect or recognition. The post-colonial history of womxn is history around, about, and near womxn, but not “by” womxn– only recently has that ability been re-obtained. As Simone de Beauvoir wrote in “The Second Sex” (1953), “Women’s actions have never been more than symbolic agitation; they have only won what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received.” Womxn’s history month is a pleasant symbol, but half of the population has been gifted a twelfth of the time otherwise dominated by the other half of the population. This symbol deserves to be engaged with– thus, I advocate for a threefold engagement with Womxn’s History Month: recognize intentionally, question persistently, and demand constantly.

Recognize intentionally. As mentioned above, one of the most common critiques of a womxn-centric view of history is that it tends to become whitewashed. In recognizing womxn, in focusing on the biographies of impactful individuals in American history, there ought to be intent in selecting which womxn’s stories are to be uplifted. The current political moment gives white womxn plenty of space to speak during every other time of the year; we ought to utilize a time dedicated to a more holistic understanding of womxn’s history by highlight the stories that we rarely get to hear. Additionally, when we recognize womxn intentionally, we are not simply focused on individual womxn’s successes– we ought to know when womxn have failed. Only by studying the history of failure in conjunction with success are we able to identify the conditions that caused womxn to fail and succeed in the first place. If to look at history is to provide us a better way forward, the value of success is superseded by the value of failure.

Question persistently. As previously noted, womxn have only ever received that which men have been willing to concede to us. The material conditions of our oppression remain shrouded by an emphasis on stability, prudence, and consistency. These values, espoused in American political thought at the nation’s conception, teach us to be cautious in challenging the status quo. There is a naturally conservative bent in American politics, where we as a public are taught to find such a value in our own history that we are reluctant to question it too aggressively. We continue to work within structures, systems, and institutions without questioning their foundations and frameworks. To work within the system without fundamentally seeking to understand why it exists and how its existence affects our work within it, the best we can do is hope to mitigate the factors that contribute to our oppression. Questioning everything is the first step to creating the answers that we want.

Demand constantly. For too long, womxn have been conditioned in respectability and politeness, taught that our concern should lie not with ourselves but with others. The rise in political action in recent years demonstrates a surge in womxn’s willingness to engage in political disruption– we ought to demand more in our theoretically focused spaces as well. How impactful is it to dedicate a few weeks to the history of half the population, especially when the time is only what men have conceded to us? Do we receive this symbolic space as our due, sufficient to right a global history of being otherized by virtue of our existence? Or do we continue the reflective project once the time allocated for womxn’s history is over for the year? If womxn can use this month to intentionally engage in the histories of womxn, allow themselves to unequivocally challenge the structures in their lives, and use those as a framework to seize what we have been denied, Womxn’s History Month could take on a new meaning as a reclaimed catalyst to action.