What would International Men’s Day look like?

This International Women’s Day, poet and artist Frieda Hughes dreams of a time when we no longer need to mark the separation of the sexes – a halcyon future when equality is achieved and differences forgotten...

‘On International Men’s Day would a man stand taller / Broader, stronger and more confident because twenty-four hours / Were dedicated solely to his kind?’ (Frieda Hughes)

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY

There is much to be celebrated and recognised every day

That is done by women; women with children, heads in their hands

Praying for deliverance from their feelings of inadequacy;

Women lambing, with farmer husbands in leg braces from cow-kicks,

Or women in board rooms, facing down the opposition and their penises.

On International Men’s Day would a man stand taller,

Broader, stronger and more confident because twenty-four hours

Were dedicated solely to his kind? Or would there be an outcry

And accusations of misogyny for applauding testosterone

When we, as women, have almost none?

Women of achievement are remembered, but why them?

Why not bring to mind the sufferers of FGM?

And the women hidden beneath tented layers of fabric,

Forbidden to work, drive, or exchange glances, invisible,

As if their emancipation would mean a man’s emasculation.

If we were equal – not in body as our imbalances persist –

But in mind and what matters, while embracing

The differences that make our procreation possible,

Then International Women’s Day would only be a way

Of promoting the separation of the sexes, now extinct.