Collegiate Times

Headlines about “women’s month on campus” or “women’s history month on the national level” seem like inventions to tell us what we should care about.

The term “women’s month” invokes some kind of reaction, perhaps leading us to think about what obligation we have to honor it in some way — however small.

Maybe we resent such headlines; maybe we resent the issues they represent. But in either context, women’s month is not telling us what we should care about — it is raising the awareness of conditions that need to be cared about.

We’re in college; most of us live the lives of students who are told to care about whatever it is they’re doing. Get straight A’s, pass your classes, impress your professors or avoid your professors. Have fun, don’t have fun. Whatever.

Generally, we all know to take things (somewhat) seriously — “things” being your studies, your life and your future. Combined, we are all familiar with the result: Crushing pressures push us in all the directions except the ones we want.

That’s why starting Thursday nights we surge downtown, into our friends’ apartments and take our stifled wildness to the streets. Homework, you say? A three-page paper? No problem, I’ll do it in the three hours before it’s due. Frantically, we consult class syllabi to see if we can afford to skip, miss a homework assignment, fail a quiz, a test or an exam.

All the while, we question our priorities, what matters, conveniently denying what we care about as we compromise it away. This is the result of being told what we should care about.

But what do we really care about? Sure, completing college to secure our futures, but what’s beyond, within and outside that? Most of us don’t know and some of us don’t care. I am constantly struck how many people seem to not care about things as apathy sucks our lives away. This is why you get to read my rants every so often.

Women’s month is about power: giving power to ideas and the voices around the world of women we cannot and choose not to hear. You can ignore the ideas, claim the voices aren’t really there, but I challenge you to dig into sex trafficking, child exploitation, domestic violence, inequality, problems of body image, reproductive health and other women’s issues.

Read the stories of girls who survived being sex slaves, child soldiers, and the women who strain and often give up to be themselves in patriarchal societies. If you walked past the Clothesline Project on the Drillfield, let yourself feel the pain of the survivors of abuse who created each and every shirt.

Let yourself be humbled, and horrified, and reverent with the recognition of moments, the years of another’s suffering. You’ll realize that if there were a shirt for every survivor and victim on the clothesline, the world could never have enough shirts or lines or poles. That kind of suffering, and the kind of hope it can inspire, gives us light to lead our lives by so that we may live better and help others to live better. Such things need to be cared about.

Whether or not you care about women’s month is up to you. I’m not saying you should care about it (even though I obviously do think so) or women’s issues — only to consider them, and recognize the need for your concern.

Caring is power, but only if you find something that you care about, that your commitment is in touch with a fundamental humanity about yourself. That is what matters: Find your power.

A version of this article appeared in the Apr 2 issue of the Collegiate Times.