Today is International Women’s Day

One day, when hundreds of millions of women around the world will probably live like any other day. They will face the same injustice, ignorance, patriarchy and oppression. And, like any other day, they will use strength, intelligence, imagination, resilience, courage, solidarity and hope to face the many challenges they will meet.

But today, however, is also different. Because more and more, in every far corner of the world, the word has reached that this Day exists – that on this Day, millions of women and men stand up for the values of respect, equality, justice and human rights.

The same values that the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia will also make resonate on May 17th.

Because we share these fundamental values, International Women’s Day and so many other international days are moments for us to express our solidarity. But also our ownership. Because, yes, we feel part of International Women’s Day. And not only because thousands of lesbians, bisexual women and trans women will be taking part in both celebrations.

We feel International Women’s Day is also ours to celebrate because many of the underlying causes of the injustices and inequalities that women have to bear are the same ones that also create homophobia and transphobia.

Cultures which exalt power, aggressiveness, domination, possession and other such values have turned masculinity into an instrument of oppression of women, homosexuals and transgender people alike.

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day.

This Day should be one day when the voices of all victims of the culture of machismo unite.

But let us not forget that these voices are also those of all the men who have understood that these cultures have for centuries castrated their emotions, alienated them from a world of equity, peace, balance and harmony, and locked them up in their own inner prison of violence, competition and exclusion.

Increasingly, a global movement is forming, that unites men and women in a new vision of what constitutes humanbonds, away from stereotypical gender roles and socially predetermined behaviors and desires.

Because homosexuals and bisexuals, but most of all transgender people, have during their lifetime struggled with gender representations, and sometimes reinvented more nuanced gender roles, desires and behaviors, our stories meet the ones of the many straight women and men who, each day, reinvent different ways of coming together in real human bonds, away from patriarchy and machismo. And also, increasingly, from homophobia and transphobia.

Because International Women’s Day is a Day when to celebrate this new vision, we join in !