There isn’t the same reaction to Saint Patrick’s Day on March 17th, except the usual Irish soda bread in commercial bakery outlets. Few are speaking about Irish women, immigrants, who made up a large percentage of women in mental hospitals in t he past. Their husbands looking for a job may also have been confronted with “no Irish need apply.”

Then, followed the organizing of the 20th century where March is also designated as “Women’s History Month.” There was no connection between this and the patriarchal attitudes embedded in traditional Irish culture.

I BELIEVED MY IRISH HUSBAND WAS A “RENAISSANCE MAN”

I believed my “husband” on the 3rd try was a “Renaissance man.” I found out differently later that this labeling resulted from my projection not his…not that he didn’t contribute to the impression.

I’d been advocating that August 26th be designated as a federal holiday for years. No progress was made on this front. So, this may be another year where we hold our own celebrations on this date, that is, until the goal is accomplished. A federal holiday.

This is opposed widely by one brother in my family unit. He hates women, for example, and he isn’t shy about expressing it. We speak on the phone,  however. He’s my brother, and we don’t speak about gender politics. But this is just as racist and unreasonable as it probably was 100 years ago.

Women like me have opinions, for example, and many of us don’t want traditional marriages. A part of us may be okay with giving up power to others who are also content with defining the family unit. Boys are more important than girls in this top-down social and economic system.

THE REMNANTS OF PATRIARCHY GO DEEP INTO AMERICAN CULTURE

And they still are fewer men who graduate from college. And men are rare indeed in many writing groups and classes. I am only remarking…when I started on this journey of telling stories about my. grandparents Edna and Wilmer, I was in charge of also teaching family members about the inequality and how a “suffrage family” wasn’t all that unusual.

Boys who were. raised in mixed marriages, for example, ended up more confused with the passage of years.

So, celebrate August 26th with a small intimate gathering this year. We’re coming from a different dimension now. This gets easier every year. Some day US citizens won’t be satisfied with “reform” within a top-down social and economic system.

The end result is that it’s another year of racism, discrimination, and prejudice in a social system that underdelivers and requires constant reminders. It’s a job many females are refusing to apply for. But at what point is a top-down social and economic system unacceptable any more?

Suffrage Wagon News Channel, or SuffrageWagon.org, has been publishing since 2009.