This March 8th it feels like most posts on my social media feed are subtly or not so subtly accusing others of not being good feminists. The feed, usually passive agressive, is now bristling with outward hostility. I gave up writing anything publicly and should give up reading, but part of me is addicted to the toxic air and wants to know what happens next.

Growing up, March 8th was a big deal. It replaced Mother’s day, St. Valentine’s and all Spring holidays altogether. Officially, it was Women’s Rights Day, unofficially, it was the Day of the Woman, the Day of Beauty and Spring, sometimes even the Day of Love. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

In kindergarden, March 8th was celebrated with a talent pageant where neatly dressed children were reciting badly written poems about how they love their mothers. Because there was no mothers’ day, March 8 served as a proxy. When I think about kindergarden days, I usually remember exceptionally bad food and lack of water (for some reason, we were not allowed to drink between meals). Today, however, I wondered about the amount of poetry I had to memorize as a child. I suspect that poetry was a soviet fetish. My own children, growing up in Canada, never learned a single poem. I knew tons. We had to learn poems in kindergarden and recite them in front of our parents, we learned poems throughout school, and even at home, I was constantly asked to recite poetry to friends and relatives whenever they gathered. Reciting poems in front of adults was an ultimate soviet childhood experience. I wonder if anyone wrote books about it, if anyone ever wondered why we were forced to learn so much poetry by heart.

In school, March 8th became more nuanced. There were still some remains of Mother’s Day that gradually were being replaced by the complex politics of reciprocity. See, the International Women’s Day had its male counterpart. Men and boys were celebrated on February 23 – the Day of the Soviet Army. Which was ironic for many reasons: first, celebration of the military as all things masculine; second, celebration of all men as warriors in the country, where about half of the menfolk were dodging military conscription and for a very good reason. Still, the rule remained: on February 23 the girls were giving presents to the boys to have the favour returned two weeks later. The popular joke went: how you spend your March 8 will depend on what you did on February 23.

When I got to the end of the high school and into the university, the Soviet Union was long gone and March 8th was gone with it, at least for a while. Some flower giving and cheesy postcards remained as a silly habit that one can’t quite shake off, but the rest was gone. I never missed it.