Dedicating a whole month to commemorate a particular demographic is not rare, according to the U.S. calendar. In February, the spotlight is on black history and the significant role black leaders have played in our country’s past. November is National American Indian Heritage Month. Now, as we reach the midpoint of March, America is marking Women’s History Month, which encourages “the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women,” with a special focus on International Women’s Day on March 8.
During these designated months, social media platforms, news stations, radio hosts, podcasters, and others encourage people to participate, but it does prompt an important question: What led to these celebrations and who decides which demographics are recognized?
On Thursday, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, joined FRC President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” to share her reaction to the White House’s decision to honor a biological man who identifies as a woman with the International Woman of Courage Award.
“So honoring a man to celebrate women … what am I missing?” Perkins asked, referring to honoree Alba Rueda, a biological man. To this, Szoch replied that it wasn’t Perkins who was missing something but the Biden administration who was. She added, “In fact, what they’re missing is the knowledge of what is a woman.”
That point was driven home at a hearing in March of 2022 when Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, stated that she was unable to define a woman. According to Szoch, this seems to be a leftist trend.
“The Biden administration thinks that if you put on a dress or if you wear high heels or if you put on lipstick, that’s what makes someone a woman,” Szoch said. Yet, she argued. there is much more to a woman than that.
“What makes women different from men is written in our very DNA. Written in our very bodies — in our physical makeup — is a space for another that we are actually physically oriented towards,” she stated.,” she stated. “It is within a woman that another exists and her very body nourishes that other person. So that influences the way that women perceive the world, the way that they do everything, the way that we interact and the way that we view things.”
Perkins wasn’t surprised that the International Woman of Courage Award was given to a man, as it is “consistent with the origins of this day.” With the rise of the LGBTQ movement came more tolerance of people who identify as the opposite sex. According to Szoch, labeling a man as “courageous” for identifying as a woman on International Women’s Day can be traced to its “communist roots.”
As Szoch went on to note, Karl Marx, the father of communism, was known to have abused and cheated on his wife, Jenny Marx. She also observed that one of his other known goals along his pursuit of political power was to dismantle the family. In a 2022 article written by Joy Stockbauer, now a correspondent for The Washington Stand, she expressed the irony of International Women’s Day being founded on Marxist values. “The only aspect of womanhood that communists celebrate is its ability to be exploited,” she wrote. “Communists have repeatedly used female empowerment as a disguise for human rights violations against women.”
In March of 1857, New York City garment and textile workers went on strike over low wages and long workdays. In 1889, the editor of the German Social Democratic party’s women’s newspaper, Clara Zetkin, began laying “the groundwork to eventually establish International Woman’s Day as a Communist holiday.” The concept began to trickle into European and Asian regions and was established as a Communist holiday by Vladimir Lenin.
This newly-created holiday “was a day about women’s ‘equality,’” Szoch noted. “But of course, equality to them didn’t mean that men and women have equal dignity. It meant that men and women are the same and that we should treat them as if they’re interchangeable.”
As Szoch pointed out, the holiday was founded on the idea that there are no fundamental differences between men and women, discounting the unique roles of wife and mother. “We’ve seen time and time again,” she said, “that communist regimes don’t value women, that in fact women are abused by them, that their dignity is disregarded.”
Although our country has fallen prey to the Marxist origins of International Women’s Day and have started honoring biological men instead, Szoch underscored, many are still bravely standing for the dignity of what a true woman is. Former University of Kentucky swimmer-turned-women’s-sports-activist Riley Gaines would have been a great choice, Szoch insisted.
In the meantime, she said, “What I’ve seen from a lot of women [encountering this radical agenda] is a lot of eye rolls. … [E]very glass ceiling that was shattered, the Biden administration has worked to reinforce with cement.”
