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| Students of Bình Minh School in Hà Nội present flowers to their teacher on Vietnamese Women’s Day. — VNA/VNS Photo Thanh Tùng |
AF Reeves – @afreeves23
It was incredibly kind of the gentleman in Hà Nội’s digital manosphere, aka ‘Hanoi Handsome’, to remind us organisationally challenged apes that Women’s Day is fast approaching, as soon as 20/10, believe it or not. Consider this article my attempt at paying it forward to the next loose-minded lad whose only other hope would be a budget for last-minute extravagance.
‘Whoa there, Women’s Day was back in March’, I feel you slam through your keyboard. That was International Women’s Day, silly. This is Vietnamese Women’s Day, the big one. Keep up. And despite this apparently being the more important of the two, I can tell you from experience that a good showing will not get you off the hook if you suffer a memory lapse come next March.
I have, to my great and undying shame, forgotten both Women’s Days at various points and failed miserably when protesting that I thought the other one was the truly significant day of feminal recognition. While you might be tempted to question the wisdom or need for two Women’s Days, especially with Valentine’s Day sandwiched in between, don’t. It just isn’t worth it.
I am just as sure there will be a few, how can I put this politely, dejected commentators or Tate disciples eager to lament the lack of even a singularly celebrated Men’s Day. Equally, there will be a witty comedian on hand to remind them that “every day is men’s day”. Haha. Good one, pal. Don’t quit the day job.
Yet, once again, I step back from the pre-programmed culture-war mindset of home and remind myself: this is Việt Nam. The local men, or certainly the ones I have spoken to, are not wasting their time or breath venting about the audacity of a second Women’s Day, and fortunately neither are the vast majority of the ‘expat’ population.
For anyone who has spent more than a hot minute in this country, it is easy to see why there would be multiple days to celebrate its women. They are, in a few words, warm, kind, funny, industrious, ambitious, hard-working and brave. Mothers, grandmothers, aunties and sisters pick up the slack for the boys in their lives with little more than rolled eyes and a wry smile.
From the chị (sisters) to the cô (aunties) who seem to hold together the fabric of the city, running shops, bánh mì carts and even pushing neighbourhood rubbish bins many times their size, I would not be the first foreigner to note how unlikely we would be to see that back home.
I could go further yet. A little history does no harm, and women’s contributions to the war effort are well documented. This is not to disparage the women of any other nation-state, nor to pretend women’s rights do not still need work, both here and abroad. But it would be nice if we could spend a day without the politics, without the cynical undertone, and simply show love to the Vietnamese women in our lives. — VNS
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