Her HRC Highlights Women's Support for Equality

I’ve never been a girly girl. I try to never wear high heels and I long ago eschewed skirts and dresses for slacks and jeans. I’ve also never really clicked with other young women. I am, as Cosmo Kramer might say, “a man’s woman. You hate other women, and they hate you.” (Although I will watch Bridget Jones's Diary and the five-hour version of Pride and Prejudice over and over and over...).

Cosmo may be overstating things a bit in my case. It isn’t that I have no female friends. I do; fun, wonderful, caring friends. But, for the most part, my closest friends are men. And this can sometimes pose a problem. No matter how empathetic they may be, it can be hard to explain how different my life is because I am a woman.

The LGBT rights movement is no exception to this. After all, it exists in a world where people exploit gender differences, real or imagined. Being a lesbian is still considered “hot,” therefore many are at risk of being objectified in new and exciting ways. With gay men, straight guys are concerned with having to stare at another guy’s wang, or worse, being converted. No one problem is worse than another, but it’s worth keeping in mind that, sometimes, gay men and lesbians have different problems.

This is why I quite like Her HRC, which, according to their Facebook page, is “a national night of celebration for women.” Basically, it just a big, multi-city party for equality. This is an event for women to celebrate women. No other agenda.

At the risk of getting all sister-power up in this blog, I love this. Why shouldn’t women get together to recognize a common experience and have each other’s back? It is a fabulous opportunity for women to get together and tell the world and each other that the fight for equality must include everyone.

I believe that men and women have more in common than differences. And gay men and lesbians face many of the same battles: fights to have families recognized, to work without discrimination and generally live peacefully in the world. But everyone’s flower has different petals. Everyone is subject to different social assumptions that feed into the way each individual sees the world. The gay community is comprised of individual people; it is no more a monolith than the black community, business community or the subterranean community of Mole-men. It’s worth taking some time every now and then to remember that.

Photo credit: Her HRC