Double celebration

Today is International Women's Day. It is also six months to the day since I met Patrice. How's that for a double celebration? Today, I will honour all women and my special Second Life woman. I think I will wear my sari today, because while International Women's Day is important all over the world, it's especially important in places where women have not yet achieved full human rights (not to single out India in particular, but the sari is what I happen to have at this point).

(Indeed, I am wearing my sari in this picture, from anti-Oscar night at the Velvet, in honour of Deepa Mehta, director of the superb Oscar-nominated film Water. Patrice, looking fabulously chic in her bobbed hair and slinky gown, won the contest that night.)

Unlike First Life, women seem to dominate Second Life. While many SL men are playing a game, many SL women are running things: real estate concerns, fashion houses, clubs, stores, a great many of the things that make money in SL. Patrice has become fairly prominent in terraforming (land shaping), and the other terraformers she knows are women. I know I tend to run in somewhat testosterone-challenged circles, but I do see this trend everywhere I go in world. A little has been written about this distinctly SL phenomenon, but maybe it deserves to be looked into further.

How many of the SL women running things are biologically female is left to the imagination of the reader, but you know they aren't all men. And on the day to celebrate the achievements of women and to remember the continuing struggle for equality, it's important to keep in mind that not all women are feminists, and not all feminists are women.