March is Women’s History Month. I recently learned it began locally in Sonoma County in 1978 as Women’s History Week, timed to coincide with International Women’s Day on March 8, which dates back to 1911. It wasn’t until 1987 that Congress officially designated the entire month.
I was curious about what finally tipped Congress over the edge? And then I looked at the timeline. It was a few years after Cyndi Lauper told us girls just want to have fun, and the same year Madonna dropped "Open Your Heart", which, if you remember, was less “open your heart” and more “open your trench coat.”
Maybe some key Congress people finally felt compelled to do a little damage control on pop culture messaging for women! Our maybe it was about something deeper. Definitely the latter.
In fact, it’s taken me a little longer to appreciate that the life I’ve lived, the freedom to do whatever I wanted, was built on the backs of women who had to fight for everything. Voting. Working. Having a bank account without a husband co-signing like it’s a Costco membership.
I have a boy’s name. It’s not short for anything, it’s just Dani. My sister’s name is Toni. Also not short for anything. When I was little, one day I asked my dad, “Are you sorry you didn’t have boys?”
And he said, “What do I need boys for? I have you. You do everything a boy would do.”
It was the ‘70’s, feminism was in the air. Not for him, but still, he made it clear, I could do anything a boy could do. I ran with that.
I went to a mostly male college and became a stand up comedian. I never gave much thought to being a woman. I was just aware that guys are cute and I’m not one. Also, and forgive the tone shift here, I was molested when I was a girl. Only relevant because my radar has been on since. Nothing like that happened again. Like, nothing. Ever. My #metoo trauma happened when I was eight. And it wasn’t rape, so despite the wreckage, in the last ten years there have been times I thought, “at least I never saw Harvey Weinstein in an open robe.” Not that I didn’t have my near misses. There was the time Cleavon Little invited me to his hotel room. Now, he was hilarious, charming, very handsome, and I still responded with, “Why?”
Not “I’m busy.” Not “I have a boyfriend.” Just… “Why?”
To his credit, he had no follow-up. Just silence. We hung up. Very respectful!
Then I was invited to a party early in my time in LA in the Hollywood Hills. It felt like every hot girl was there, and every Arab sheikh. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, and was making me nervous, which meant I had to do a running commentary on all of it. Until one of the men looked me dead in the eye and said, “You talk a lot.”
It suddenly hit me that I was being evaluated for future use, all of us there like cattle at a state fair. I ran down the driveway in stupid heels feeling very…stupid. It wasn’t until years later, reading Heidi Fleiss’s book, that I realized where I’d been.
Even after this, I still didn’t spend much time thinking about what it meant to be a “woman.” I never had a corporate job, so I didn’t have to “lean in,” claim my seat at the table, or smile through meetings about upcoming meetings.
It wasn’t until I started working at the Feminist Majority Foundation that the coin finally dropped for me about the protections we need, freedom of choice, pay parity, the list is long. And incomprehensibly growing.
I don’t usually comment about politics. Mine is more of a “Laughter For All” mission. But desperate times call for desperate acts. There’s no way that in 1911 Claire Zetkin, the German woman who kicked off the movement to fight for equality, voting rights, parity in the workforce and all the other ways that demand and protect women’s rights could have anticipated our current administration. But bless her for her efforts.
And to paraphrase that famous line from “Jaws,” we’re gonna need more than a month.
