#IWD

Women march in major cities across Pakistan against 'pandemic of patriarchy'

Dawn.com | Imtiaz Ali | Imran Gabol

Published March 8, 2021 - 

Activists of the Aurat March hold placards during a rally to mark International Women's Day in Islamabad on March 8, 2020. — AFP/File

A banner shows messages from participants at the Aurat March, Lahore. — Photo by Imran Gabol


Women, men and allies participated in Aurat Marches in all major Pakistani cities on Monday to mark International Women's Day and call for the protection of women's rights.

The first Aurat March was held in 2018 in Karachi. The next year, it was extended to more cities, including Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Larkana, and Hyderabad. This year too, the marches were held in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, and other cities.

Karachi

In Karachi, the march took place at Frere Hall. In view of the prevailing coronavirus situation, organisers had emphasised standard operating procedures (SOPs), including wearing masks and maintaining a distance of six feet.

Strict security arrangements were put in place at the venue, with walkthrough gates installed at the entrance, where attendants were checked before being allowed to enter. The march itself attracted a sizeable crowd, comprising people of all ages and from all walks of life.


Read | Why do women march? A look at the Aurat March 2021 manifestos

The Karachi march was also broadcast live.



Qurrat Mirza, one of the organisers of the march, took the stage and reminded the crowd why they were here.

“In 2018, we held the first march,” she said. “Four years later, we have the same demands, which is why we are going to do a symbolic sit-in.”

She added that the organisers had a 15-point manifesto for the government, which it must implement.

“If we don’t see action on our demands in the next one month, we will devise a course of action in the next three months,” she said, adding that they would do a sit-in every day if they had to.

“Because it is not acceptable to me that someone rapes my daughter and her body is found in a garbage dump.”

Lahore

In Lahore, the Aurat March started from the Lahore Press Club and reached its destination outside the Punjab Assembly building.

The Aurat March Lahore organisers also laid out a "#MeToo blanket" on which women shared their experiences of sexual violence and abuse.

Participants of the march also displayed women's clothes with words written on them — termed "stains of patriarchy" — that reflected their experiences with patriarchy and the abuse suffered by them. The clothes were hung on wires across streets and walls.

"These are real stories of violence, but also an act of resistance because we no longer carry the shame associated with these acts. The same is now society's," a tweet by Aurat March Lahore said.

Clothes are hung as part of an art display in Lahore. — Photo: Imran Gabol



Islamabad

The march in Islamabad started from the National Press Club and ended at D-Chowk around 5pm. The participants of the event raised slogans about reclaiming public spaces for women.

Manifestos

Each chapter of the Aurat March has its own manifesto with the Karachi chapter focusing on patriarchal violence; Lahore on addressing healthcare workers and women’s health; and the Islamabad march is dedicated to the crisis of care.

The Karachi chapter's demands include an "end to gender-based violence by patriarchal forces as well as state-backed violence targeting activists, religious groups and communities and effective and transparent investigation of gender-based crimes and fair and expeditious trials".

Residents participate in the Aurat March in Lahore. — Photo: Imran Gabol

Other demands include criminalisation of virginity tests for rape victims, establishment of gender-based violence reporting cells in police stations across Sindh and Pakistan, and an end to sexual harassment.



In line with its focus on healthcare workers and women's health, the Lahore chapter's demands include fulfillment of basic necessities by the state and a better infrastructure given to survivors of abuse who need access to mental as well as physical care within a rehabilitative framework in order to adequately manage the long-term effects of the violence visited upon them.

Concerns about other health issues are also raised in the document, including, educational programs and training aiming to stop stigmatization and shame associated with gendered bodies, breast cancer, reproductive health, the gender pain gap, more gender sensitized medico-legal practitioners, charging for forensic services (including from rape victims), HIV, access to free medicines, rights of PWDs, implementation of the Transgender Act 2018, access to clean water and toilets, especially to avoid contraction of Covid-19, healthcare for female prisoners, and drug addicts and users, an end to underage marriage, and several other issues associated with the health sector.

Last year, the situation at the Islamabad Aurat March turned precarious after male participants of a rival 'Haya March' by religious parties threw stones at participants of the Aurat March, injuring at least one person. The situation was brought under control by police.
Tributes

Meanwhile, tributes poured in with ministers and politicians recalling the role of women in their lives while simultaneously calling for them to be given equal rights.

Army chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa in his message said Pakistani women had "contributed immensely for the glory and honour of our nation". Women were also at the forefront of the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, he noted.

Talking about women in uniform, Gen Bajwa said they have "proved their mettle by contributing copiously in diverse fields serving the nation & humanity".

"They deserve our immense respect & gratitude," he added.

National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser said that the protection of women's rights was the "top priority" of the government because it was "imperative for the formation of a progressive society", according to a report by Radio Pakistan.

Minister for Information Shibli Faraz said March 8 "highlighted women's high status in society and their commendable services in different sectors".

He said that the Constitution was a guarantor of women's rights and they had played an important role in the building and progress of the country.

"Making women powerful and protected in society by ensuring equal rights and equal opportunities for progress for them is our determination," he stressed.




PML-N Vice President Maryam Nawaz also talked about women empowerment, saying she "dream[s] of a Pakistan where women excel in every field and play leading roles".




Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan paid tribute to the female health workers "who put themselves in harm's way to deliver care, on top of fulfilling their personal responsibilities and braving societal barriers that often inhibit their careers".




Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood paid tribute to all the women in his life, including his mother, wife, daughters, sisters and his colleagues at work and in politics.

"Thank you for making the world a better place," he wrote.




Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry used the occasion to encourage girls to opt for science subjects to change their and the country's destiny.




Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan (MQM-P) leader and newly-elected senator Faisal Subzwari reminded people that respecting women also meant "respecting their liberty of making choices".

He called on people to encourage the women in their families, adding "we as a society badly need educated, confident & courageous women".

In pictures: Women across the world make their voices heard on Int'l Women's Day - World - DAWN.COM

SEE

A patriarchy pandemic: The best of the Aurat March - Comment - Images (dawn.com)

FEMICIDE, MISOGYNY, PATRIARCHY

PAKISTAN

Women are angry. Men will witness
This was another case of a man thinking he needed to show a woman her place, and things got out of hand.

Aisha S

Published 3 days ago


It was a day of anger. Women were angry. And men were to bear witness.

This was a day different from all the other days. Usually, men are angry, women stand down. But on that day, when we staged a sit-in at the #JusticeForNoor protest in Islamabad; a Sunday — a day when most people in the capital stay home with their families, now there is a dark shadow cast on the word family itself. Yet, this seemed like a new family; these women who had come together for a cause.

I stood in an enclosure roped in by volunteers who wouldn’t let anyone in except women and trans people. A speaker at the protest said: This is our space and while we applaud the men who have shown up in solidarity, today we ask them to stand back and stay quiet.

We were also told that the district officer had not permitted us to march beyond the sit-in at the press club, but we insisted we must march to the point closest to our parliament. We were taxpayers and we had demands — it was a simple case of wanting representation and being heard.

A participant speaking at the protest calling for justice for Noor Mukadam in Islamabad. — Photo by writer

We walked from the press club to the famous D-Chowk, one foot after another. In front, a woman wearing two-inch platform heels walked too, finding it harder than the rest of us in traditional khussas, but walking nonetheless in the same formation, her short hair clumped together from the sweat. It was a scorching afternoon and the sun beat down on us at about half boiling point. Inside us all, there was a slight thaw from the numbness we all felt over the last few days when we received news of 27-year-old Noor’s beheading — a violent murder, but an intent all too common. A man thought he needed to show a woman her place, and things got out of hand.

These streets belong to all of us, they are not men’s property — a young woman yelled into a crackling microphone. She stood atop a pickup with a banner honouring the three recently slain women at the hands of the men. Her voice was shrill, from screaming azadi slogans, and from just being a woman. We need a base voice in the rally, I said to my friend who was also a speaker. She smiled back from behind her Covid mask. At that time, humour felt like resistance.

Behind me, young girls raised a poster over their heads that read — raise better men. Almost all of us had deep sunset orange henna on our hands, intricately applied. The day Noor was murdered was the day we were all supposed to celebrate Eidul Azha and be merry. We were supposed to make offerings; not be an offering.

Protesters calling for justice for Noor Mukadam. — Photo by writer

I was marching somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Some women had dyed their hair blue, pink, and silver — it’s in vogue. Girls were wearing sleeveless, there were women in niqabs and there were women who were dupatta-clad, some women were demure, others boisterous, all focused on one single motive — mourning.

We walked, we chanted shame-shame-shame, and we walked some more.

When we turned onto the eight-lane Jinnah Avenue, we grew wide like a river that meets an ocean, in front of us was Constitution Avenue. The symbolism was unmistakable. Our founding father and his sister side-by-side in politics gave Pakistan a visual blueprint of how to behave, and our constitution, guaranteeing our protection and our equality. Our founding father died a year after the nation’s birth, his sister suspiciously dead not long after.

In Pakistan, women’s Constitutional rights are guaranteed, but are generally out-claused by other matters that are more important to the country than 51% of its population. Still we walked, onwards. To our right was commercial area and on our left were the banks that help roll out loans to enable the commercialism — all of this is mostly for men. We marched between the two, daring to ask, daring to name our murderers, daring to be soft, daring to be hard and to be shell-shocked; one more loudspeaker chant: give patriarchy one last push to its final end!

An attendee speaking at the protest in Islamabad. — Photo by writer

I chanted dry-mouthed, voice grainy. Maybe for us women, pushing patriarchy down may require much more than a nudge. I was parched and asked a friend to buy me some from water from a street hawker. The water was like hot soup. I thought of blood; blood is drawn out of women, much like hot soup. I’ve become morbid. Dark thoughts are a consequence of knowing too much. It is also a consequence of choosing not to cope by ignoring the problems our society coughs up again and again — violence against women, domestic violence, victim-blaming, and the well-funded war on women.

Call the gender wars what you may, but the blood must remain within our skins — no need to bleed us out because of minor discomfort to a moral code like honour. Feel dishonour, but please do not kill for it. Someone recognised their friend and rushed to them for a hug; they trembled and held each other tight while we marched on around their little friendship island. I am so glad you had the courage to show up, she told her friend.

We were promised that Noor’s friend was to speak, but she couldn’t. She was overcome by the protest and by the trauma it unleashed. I would be too. We had heard witness testimony earlier of a sister of a slain woman. She spoke about her nieces witnessing the crime. She spoke of delayed justice. She spoke of evidence tampering. She spoke of death. Her voice didn’t rattle, she had recounted it over and over again, but the rest of us shuddered and cried over the relatability of it — the familiar feeling of not being believed. Of getting silenced. Every story began with silencing, and every story was un-silenced because of social media’s ability to garner support for the underdog.

We finally sat down on the road to the parliament — the road blazing hot. This was it. This is where we say goodbye to Noor, but not to our need to bring her up every day of our lives; in memory, in words, and in a very cautious life for our daughters.

Why do we wait for a hashtag to get justice? The last speaker asked us. We nodded. The question assumes that #JusticeForNoor will get Noor Mukadam justice.

When we slowly walked back home from D-Chowk, banners in toe, the birdsongs from the trees along the well-heeled parts of Islamabad were louder than usual. I gathered some wildflowers along the roads leading back to my home. They now sit blooming in an earthen vase near a poster from the protest. They are also loud.

Aisha is a freelance writer and the Co-Founder of Women’s Advancement Hub.

Azzi: The patriarchy's worst fear – women who think and compete

Robert Azzi,
Portsmouth Herald
Sun, June 5, 2022, 

“In the nineteenth century," Adrienne Rich wrote in The Theft of Childbirth, "the educated woman was seen as a threat to the survival of the species…. Patriarchal society would seem to require not only that women shall assume the major burden of pain and self-denial for the continuation of the species, but that a majority of that species—women—shall remain essentially uninformed and unquestioning.”

Today, in the twenty-first century, 50 years after the passage of both Title IX and Roe v. Wade, it appears that patriarchal interests continue to assault - from the womb to the football pitch - women's bodies and interests.

Much has been written recently, after the leak of Justice Alito's hateful attack, about Roe v. Wade and what overturning it would mean to women.

Less has been reported about attacks on Title IX, which was passed to prohibit sex discrimination - including on issues of pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity - in any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.

Over time it created new opportunities for women - opportunities denied them for generations by the misogynistic manipulations of cisgendered, patriarchal white men.

Before 1972 there were fewer than 300,000 girls playing sports in only about 15,000 American high schools, compared with over 3,600,000 million boys in virtually every school.

Today, because of Title IX, there are over 3,400,000 girls (in over 312,000 schools) competing across a sports spectrum - including at what Americans call soccer - with many hopeful for college scholarships unavailable before 1972.

Last month, 50 years after Title IX was passed; 50 years after women were given sports platforms upon which to compete and showcase their athletic abilities, an historic agreement was struck that guarantees that all national team soccer players - regardless of gender - will receive equal pay when representing America.

Finally, the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) agreed to pay athletes equally for doing exactly the same job: A job, I might add, where men, since 1934, have never finished above 8th place while America's women have won four World Cups since 1991!

“When my coach said I ran like a girl," Mia Hamm recounted, "I said that if he could run a little faster he could too.”

A job where previously women soccer players couldn't earn more than $260,000 while male losers could earn more than $1,000,000.

According to the NY Times, “U.S. Soccer will distribute millions of extra dollars to its best players through a complicated calculus of increased match bonuses, pooled prize money and new revenue-sharing agreements that will give each team a slice of the tens of millions of dollars in commercial revenues that U.S. Soccer receives each year ...”

This isn't about equity - it's about equal pay for equal work!

Right-wing activists have for some time been attempting to conflate "equality" and "equity," in the minds of suggestible followers, intimating that somehow Democrats and progressives are trying to assure equal societal outcomes.

Nothing's further from the truth: Equity and Equality may sound similar but they're not.

Equality means all individuals or groups should be given the same resources or opportunities while equity recognizes that because some individuals or groups have different (often limited) circumstances they may need different resources and opportunities in order to equally compete.

For example, students with broadband at home are advantaged over students who have to sit on the curb in front of McDonalds to access the internet.

Teams with fully-equipped weight rooms are advantaged over teams that don't.

To suggest that women athletes should not be equally compensated with men because they've been competing for fewer years is to suggest, perhaps, that Black American votes should count less since they've been voting for fewer years than privileged whites.

Perhaps, as women have only been voting for 102 years, their votes should be devalued by 50%; perhaps Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's opinions should've mattered less because she occupied a seat believed reserved for white men.

Some critics whine that sports “equity” means that some male sports programs may have been eliminated by making room for women, reasoning that ignores that for generations only men decided who got to play what.

Today, an overwhelming number of high-ranking women executives at Fortune 500 companies say their opportunity to compete in sports contributed to their success in fields previously dominated by white men.

Perhaps that is really patriarchy's fear.

"When I was a little boy," Will Smith recounts in King Richard, "my mom used to say, 'Son, the most powerful, the most dangerous creature on this whole earth is a woman who knows how to think.'"

Women who think: May their presence persist.

Robert Azzi, a photographer and writer who lives in Exeter, can be reached at theother.azzi@gmail.com. His columns are archived at theotherazzi.wordpress.com

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: The patriarchy's worst fear – women who think and compete

'The Amazon is the entry door of the world': why Brazil's biodiversity crisis affects us all
Indigenous leader Célia Xakriabá and Vagina Monologues author V discuss the destruction of Brazil’s forests and why this is the century of the indigenous woman

V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Mon 10 Aug 2020

Play Video
2:41 'The Brazilian government is committing genocide', says indigenous leader Célia Xakriabá – video


Célia Xakriabá is the voice of a new generation of female indigenous leaders who are leading the fight against the destruction of Brazil’s forests both in the Amazon and the lesser known Cerrado, a savannah that covers a fifth of the country. V, formerly Eve Ensler, is the award-winning author of the Vagina Monologues, an activist and founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against all women and girls and the Earth. The two recently held a conversation in which V asked Xakriabá about what is happening to Brazil’s biodiversity and indigenous peoples, and why women are the key to change.

V: Many people, especially in the west, don’t really understand what’s happening to the Cerrado in Brazil. Can you tell us what’s happening to the forests?
C: It’s very tough at this moment. Every minute one person dies of Covid-19, but also every minute one tree is cut. And whenever a tree is cut, a part of us is cut, a part of us also dies, because the territory dies and with no territory there is no air, no good air for everyone in the world. People can’t breathe. So all this Covid contamination, it gets to the territory through the miners, the gold miners, the loggers and the rangers. And now that we are getting to August, we get even more worried about the fires, all the fires that burned the Amazon last year. It’s going to come back.Q&A
What is Brazil's Cerrado and why is it in crisis?Show

And what happens to all the animals, and to the birds and to every living thing in the forest? What happens to them?

When the forest is burned, the birds and the animals, they are either burned or they go away. And this doesn’t affect only the animals, but it also affects us. We rely on them to eat. So with no animals, we have to rely on food from the outside, and this ends up making our children and our women sick, here with the Xakriabá people. I can hear the song of the birds now, but it’s also a song of misery, of sadness, because most of them, they are alone. They have lost their partners. The birds, they usually sing as a couple. And many of them are now singing alone. And we, the indigenous are becoming more alone, because they’re taking people from us
.
The Brazilian tribe leader Célia Xakriabá, November 2019.
 Photograph: Thomas Samson/AFP via Getty Images

When I first met you, we laughed because we were talking about vaginas and you told me that the Amazon was the vagina of the world. So can you talk a little bit about that?
The Amazon’s like the vagina of the world because it’s where people come from. It’s like the entry door of the world. When this opening is sick, the future generations, they will be sick also. People lost this connection to the Earth because they don’t see Earth and land as a relative. For me, the Earth is like a grandmother, because it’s Earth who gave birth to all of the mothers of the world. Earth is like the first independent woman that created humanity and Earth needed rivers and water to create humanity. But now people just see Earth as a thing. They can design big cities, but they can’t see this connection to Earth. They go to the supermarket, to the grocery store, and they don’t know where that food comes from.


It’s so powerful to see how many indigenous women are leading the struggle to defend the forests and the land. Why do you think this is important?
I’ve been saying that this 21st century, it’s the century of the indigenous woman, because you can’t cure with the same evil that first caused the sickness. You have to overcome this colonising power that is mainly male. I like to say about the matrix of destruction that it’s not matrix, it’s the patrix because it’s based on patriarchy, not matriarchy. And the women, they are the ones who are in this century regaining power over the land, because they know how to cure the Earth. Women have this knowledge and that’s why we are on the frontline right now. I am fighting to not only strengthen the role of women in the territory and in the fight, but also in politics, with indigenous women running for positions in parliament, in the Brazilian Congress. Who can take better care of humanity, if not women?


People just see Earth as a thing. They can design big cities, but they can’t see this connection to Earth

Can you talk a little bit about how patriarchy has disconnected us from the land and the connection of patriarchy and capitalism?
When Pedro Álvares Cabral first invaded Brazil in the 1500s, the first thing that got his attention was the wood from the pau-brasil, which is where the name Brazil comes from. In 1511, this guy named Fernando de Noronha exported 5,000 pau-brasil to Europe. So that’s when it all began. Since then, they don’t respect the relation of the indigenous peoples with time. That’s why capitalism sees indigenous peoples as a threat. You have to take everything you can in as little time as possible, but that’s not how indigenous people relate to time and to labour. Yeah, the indigenous people weren’t keeping up with the “progress” of humanity but it’s not that we are late, it’s because they’re killing us. In the last year there was more than a million hectares of destruction in all the six biomes of Brazil. Since the 1500s, until now, no Earth, no land, no mother, no woman can support this kind of destruction

A fire in the Cerrado, October 2018. The area is one of the world’s oldest and most diverse tropical ecosystems. Photograph: David Bebber/WWF-UK/PA

Can you tell me what is the lived experience of the struggle for life and the struggle of the indigenous peoples in this phase of the onslaught of the extractive industries, and now with Covid exacerbating the situation? What is happening?
During this pandemic we are making this effort to remain in our territories, in our houses, in our homes, but also at the same time, we have to challenge, to fight, because very far away in Brazil, in the Congress, they are negotiating our territories, our homes and our houses. During the pandemic, hundreds of indigenous people have died. But we have to think about how many people would die if we don’t fight. You have to think about the pandemic that is killing us, about the racism that is killing us, about the macro politics, about the colonisation, the absence of the state. It’s hard to tell which weapon is more dangerous, because we are getting killed by many different weapons.

'Like a bomb going off': why Brazil's largest reserve is facing destruction


It appears very clear that President Jair Bolsonaro has weaponised Covid against indigenous peoples. Can you talk a little bit about this?

Indigenous peoples in Brazil, they are 1% of the general population, but they’re almost 9% of the victims of Covid-19. When people say that Covid-19 doesn’t choose class or race or gender, it’s kind of a lie, because the state, they choose who will die. The government, it can justify all of this, saying that it’s just a disease, it’s a fatality. When an elder, when an important leader of indigenous peoples dies, a part of us also dies with them. It’s like the ancestors and the elders, they’re the hands that hold the rattles when you’re singing. It doesn’t matter if I stay alive, a part of me, or some parts of me have died in this pandemic.
Brazilian indigenous women march in Brasilia on 13 August 2019, to denounce the ‘genocidal’ policies of President Jair Bolsonaro. Photograph: Evaristo Sa/AFP/Getty Images

I love the campaign #CuraDaTerra [Cure of the Earth], because it expresses this idea of indigenous peoples as the cure, the antidote, the growth space past capitalism through living in symbiosis with nature, indigenous stewardship of land, traditional indigenous environmental knowledge. How is this being received in Brazil?
One thing that is very important is we pay attention to these things like reconnection, retaking, re-enchantment, because that’s one thing that indigenous people do to hope for a better world. It’s not the chemicals or the active principles generated in laboratories around the world that are going to cure the Earth. What is going to cure the Earth is our capacity, our ability to reactivate our connection to the Earth, to reactivate our culture and to reactivate the power of our ancestors. We have this culture deep inside us, and you can’t change that. We can’t cure evil without curing the Earth, because the Earth is bleeding. It’s full of scars because of its children. And if you don’t listen to the Earth, we will all die. Some people may not die directly in territory conflicts, but they will die, because they won’t have anything left to breathe. All they will have left is poison.


Like in the US, Brazil is going through a kind of dark night of the soul with Bolsonaro in power.
Bolsonaro likes to say that indigenous peoples are becoming more human, but the indigenous peoples don’t like the kind of humanity that doesn’t respect the Earth, doesn’t respect the animals, because you can only know how to be a human if you know how to be a plant, how to be a seed, how to be food. And so actually this project, it’s an anti-humanitarian project of the government. It represents a sick lung, a sick organ of the body of the Earth.

An indigenous woman looks at dead fish near the Paraopeba river in the Cerrado. Photograph: Adriano Machado/Reuters

And why do you think at this moment that we have so many leaders in the world like Trump or Duterte or Modi or Putin or Bolsonaro?
All of this is because we are living in a moment of disputes, disputes of values. They are not part of this project of regaining and retaking the values of life. They are like boils on your skin, and they emerge with all the fury, these boils, like a cancer to these values of life. They emerge with this fury because they appear to have the desire to extinguish all diversity – the diversity of life, the diversity of culture, the diversity of seeds, the diversity of territory.


[Leaders like Bolsonaro] emerge with this fury because they appear to have the desire to extinguish all ... the diversity of life

What is the mood and the feeling in Brazil right now?
Some people who thought we were invisible, they didn’t look, didn’t pay attention to the indigenous populations, now they’re starting to pay attention to us. And the indigenous people, they have within themselves the sense of solidarity and of connection that other peoples don’t have. And that’s something that can help heal the Earth and heal our world because humanity, without love, it’s a dead humanity.


And how do you stay grounded in the midst of all these changes happening in the Cerrado and then the planet at large?
The fight is what feeds me. So every time I think about taking a step away from the fight, I can’t. And as an indigenous person, you fight to survive. You don’t really have another choice. I think about the fight as the children that I haven’t generated yet, the children that I and the indigenous peoples will give birth to in the future. I remember that some time ago in another genocidal process that was going on, the leaders and the indigenous peoples weren’t allowed to paint themselves. So the women would keep these painting pots in their houses. It was a way of not forgetting the paintings and the patterns. And now when I think about that, I think about my body as a pot. I like to paint myself because it’s a way of getting all this memory eternalised, and not forgetting, because more than fighting, painting myself is a way of continuing what my ancestors were doing. Some feel pretty when they put on their best dress. I feel pretty when I paint myself. And it’s not only that. When I paint myself, I feed my spirit and I keep my mind strong. And my headdress gives power to my thoughts and to my fight. So, when I paint myself, when I put my headdress on, I’m not only doing that to show others, I’m doing that to keep myself, my mind and my spirit strong and fed, to keep singing.

A Kayapo indigenous woman paints her daughter with a traditional drawing. Photograph: Amanda Perobelli/Reuters

What can allies in the global north do to be in solidarity with you, your community, and the affected communities of Brazil?
People can fight along with the Indigenous peoples as if they were fighting for their own children. Because when you fight together with indigenous peoples, it’s not just a matter of solidarity. It’s like you’re fighting for your own family, your own children, your own grandchildren, because the indigenous populations, they protect around 82% of the world’s biodiversity.


What’s your vision of the future?
My hope for the future is being alive. And by that I don’t mean just my body being alive. But our voice has to be alive. Our memory, our chants, our singing, and our womb, because you can’t be alive in your body if the womb of the Earth is sick, because when the Earth is sick, we can’t get food. And what’s the point of keeping your body alive if all around you is dead?

And lastly: please describe your vision of what the “re-enchantment” means.
Re-enchantment is within us. People are very worried about this Covid emergency, about being able to touch other people and to feel an effect, a love of affection for other people. But what really is this re-enchantment? It’s the love that we feel for the rivers, for the forest, for food. We have to think that the real borders of the world, it’s not the borders between Brazil and the United States, or between the Amazon and the Cerrado. The real borders of the world are the borders between racism and biodiversity. We can’t drop this fight. We have to keep fighting for the biodiversity, for this cure of the Earth, and for our territories, because one who has territory has a place to return, and one who has a place to return has refuge, has warmth. And that’s why we need to keep fighting.

Find more age of extinction coverage here, and follow biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston and Patrick Greenfield on Twitter for all the latest news and features

#IWD

Health inequalities

As women march on International Working Women’s Day today, the theme for this year is the crisis of healthcare and care. They will demand universal healthcare, freedom from the ‘pandemic of patriarchy’, and a chance to live in a society that values our lives and bodies.

Shmyla Khan Published March 8, 2021 -DAWN, PAKISTAN

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The writer a researcher in gender and digital rights.

ACCESS to healthcare is part of our basic right to a life of dignity. Despite its universality, healthcare and its denial are felt along lines of class, gender, sexuality, religion, race/ethnicity, (dis)ability — and often an intersection of all these. The healthcare system itself reproduces inequalities and systems of oppression that undergird society through inaccessibility and skewed priorities.

Throughout history, the centre of medical research and the reference point for medicine was men’s bodies. In clinical research, women are overwhelmingly underrepresented in trials for medicines and treatments. For instance, while women make up over half of the 35 million people living with HIV worldwide, most trials for treatments focus on men despite the fact that women respond differently to the infection as well as the drugs administered for treatment. This fundamental exclusion on the basis of sex at the starting point of healthcare, according to medical research, shows the rampant gender bias permeating the entire system. The specific needs of women are invisibilised not simply due to a lack of awareness but more as part of the dehumanisation and neglect that erases women from systems and institutions.

Despite society’s obsession with regulating women’s bodies, not enough attention is paid to the pain those bodies feel. Dianne Hoffman and Anita Tarzian point out in The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias against Women in the Treatment of Pain, women are more likely to be undertreated or inappropriately diagnosed for pain. Termed as the ‘gender pain gap’, women’s discomfort is being systematically undervalued by the medical profession. In countries like ours where patriarchal controls severely hamper women’s mobility, women are much less likely to visit a medical facility than men. This is underscored by the high cost of quality healthcare, with families prioritising limited resources for men’s treatment as opposed to women’s.

Women’s health is impacted deeply by their place within the patriarchal family system which translates into the lack of decision-making regarding their health. Women have little say in the question of having children and are often reduced to a child-bearing role within the family, exposing an inability to imagine their role beyond that of a mother. The maternal mortality rate, though improved from 276 deaths per 100,000 live births (Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey, 2006-7) to 186 (Pakistan Maternal Mortality Survey), is still too high. Women get insufficient nutrition because of the discrimination inside Pakistani households and are often the last to eat.

Gender bias permeates healthcare.

That is why healthcare must be imagined as a feminist issue, one that the feminist movement in Pakistan must address as it is the site where patriarchal oppression, violence and exclusions play out in the most visceral sense — denial or provision of inadequate healthcare on the basis of gender means the difference between life and death.

Gender-based violence, a central concern of the feminist movement, is also a healthcare issue as survivors of violence and abuse need access to gender-sensitive physical and mental health services. We carry the trauma of violence and patriarchy in our bodies, the manifestations of which are complex and debilitating. The pay gap of Lady Health Workers is an issue of gender discrimination as it is a direct result of the undervaluing of their work because of their gender and the gender of the communities they serve.

A feminist approach to healthcare will force us to centre the needs of marginalised bodies within the healthcare system, ranging from basic things like designing medical centres to be accessible to differently abled persons. It would also mean the government fulfilling its promise to “review medical curriculum and improve research for doctors and nursing staff to address specific health issues of transgender persons” under Section 12 of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018. A feminist approach would ensure that these measures are not adopted as add-ons to the healthcare system, but are central to its very design.

Covid-19 has laid bare the stark structural inequalities of society and exposed the fragility of health systems worldwide. Pakistan’s health budget has been hovering around the one per cent mark, an indictment of the state’s priorities. A feminist vision of healthcare posits it as a matter of social justice and reframes it from an individual concern to a collective one. It is the responsibility of the state to provide universal healthcare, moving away from the privatisation model adopted by the incumbent government.

As women march on International Working Women’s Day today, the theme for this year is the crisis of healthcare and care. They will demand universal healthcare, freedom from the ‘pandemic of patriarchy’, and a chance to live in a society that values our lives and bodies.

The writer a researcher in gender and digital rights.

Twitter: @shmyla

Published in Dawn, March 8th, 2021

A Marxist  LENINIST-TROTSKYIST Take on the Attack on Trans Rights

Our sister site in France, Révolution Permanente, interviewed Left Voice member Enid Brain about the attack on trans rights in the United States. Enid covers how the crisis of neoliberalism drives the attacks, the role of the Democratic Party, the need for a class independent approach and organization to fight the attacks, and more.


Enid Brain June 30, 2023

Over the last few months, we’ve witnessed a growing number of major anti-trans pushes in the United States. What are they, and how are they linked to the crisis opened up by the Trump presidency?

This is a really key discussion, I think. There’s often this idea that reactionary notions just kind of arise at random or purely as the result of social phenomena. You see this logic put forward a lot by the liberal sectors of the anti-trans movement, that this anti-trans backlash is happening because there are more trans people now or that we are more prominent and visible. And, of course, social phenomena are a factor — and the growth and visibility of trans identity has certainly been a factor on why there is more public interest among the masses in trans identity — but there is a really key political component here.

The U.S. is in crisis — a crisis of hegemony internationally, a developing economic crisis, a crisis of social reproduction, and a political crisis where institutions of the regime are at all-time low approval ratings among the masses. This crisis opened in 2008 and was deepened by Trump’s ascendency. The attacks on trans rights and other democratic rights have to be understood in this context of crisis.

On the one hand, we can understand these attacks on trans rights as part of a project of building political unity post-Trump. Trump sent the Republican Party and the whole political establishment into crisis, running and winning as an opponent of the establishment, some elements of the regime, and certain elements of neoliberalism. These factors, in addition to Trump’s quite distinct foreign policy as compared to other presidents, really put the Republican Party in a difficult situation after 2020. Trump is the most dominant figure of the Republican Party, and he is very much the leader of the base. Trump united many disparate sectors of the conservative movement into “Trumpism,” and keeping these sectors within the Republican Party is key for the Republicans to retake power in the next election. The contradiction of this, however, is that the establishment of the Republican Party, sectors of capital, and much of the regime are deeply opposed to Trump and elements of Trumpism. So what emerged to resolve that contradiction (or at least to try to) is what we have called “Trumpism without Trump,” where the idea is to pick up certain elements of Trumpism and merge them with more mainstream Republican politics in order to move the party past Trump.

A key element of “Trumpism without Trump” is a reliance on social issues — what we’ve called “the New Culture Wars” — which allow the Republicans to run against “the establishment” (broadly defined) and elements of what Nancy Fraser calls “progressive neoliberalism” — the process where neoliberalism brought sectors of the oppressed into the mainstream and gave some limited concessions. Rather than have to argue about the deep internal political differences around the economy and international politics, the Republicans can unite their entire base and keep the Trumpist base in the party by running primarily on a question of social issues, which they can use as a mirage to pretend to speak to wider discontent about neoliberalism.

Florida governor (and Republican presidential hopeful) Ron DeSantis is a useful example here, as he has made his entire political profile almost exclusively based around social issues, with trans rights taking a huge prominence. DeSantis has coined the phrase “the war on woke” to describe his political project, and he presents himself as a figure who can restore American “values” in the wake of progressive neoliberalism and has unleashed some of the country’s worst attacks on trans people, immigrants, workers, and many others. This social-issue politics serves to hide the huge gaps in the rest of DeSantis’s program. As two examples: after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, DeSantis’s response was to say that the bank failed because it was too focused on “wokeness,” completely obscuring both the economic reasons the bank failed and the potential consequences of the bank failing. By leaning on social issues, DeSantis was able to speak to wider discontent about banks and corporations without actually putting forward anything that would address the economic crisis. As another example, after he announced his presidential campaign, DeSantis was asked by a reporter for his stance on the war in Ukraine — an issue the Republican Party is deeply divided on. DeSantis answered that the first task was to get “gender ideology” out of the military. Once again, we can see how the “war on woke” politics serves to hide the lack of (even incomplete and insufficient) solutions from this sector of the Republican Party.

The effectiveness of this strategy is an open question. Poll after poll shows that these attacks are unpopular and that the majority of the country doesn’t feel like these are the central concerns. But these attacks are still advancing because they can mobilize a base that, in the hyperpolarized world of American politics, is what is needed to win elections. There is an open question about how effective nationalizing this politics will be. DeSantis currently tails Trump in polls pretty significantly, and he is struggling to make his “war on woke” as effective as Trumpism. But the impact of the rise of this politics is that it has pushed the overall political situation to the right. Trump is taking up a more hardline stance on social issues to attempt to flank his opponents from the Right, and Biden and the Democrats are walking away from support for the trans community in hopes of dialoguing with a sector of the center who are being moved by this politics.

The question of the center is also incredibly important. There is a sector of voters — white middle-class women mainly located in the suburbs — who are among the only group that is “up for grabs” in any given election, given how polarized the overall voting population is. This center is being catered to by both the Republicans and Democrats by putting forward a specific politics around schools, children, families, and any number of other “kitchen table issues.” The specter of trans identity is used to tell these parents that they are losing control of their children, that the schools are “cultural Marxist indoctrination centers,” and that trans rights have “gone too far” and now present a danger to women and children. This is, of course, all based on lies, misinformation, and reactionary scare tactics. But the political logic is to take the discontent this sector feels due to their worsening living conditions, the crisis of social reproduction, and instability more generally and shift it away from an ideological break with neoliberalism and toward a belief that the issue is that sectors of the oppressed have won concessions.
Theses pushes started during the Trump era but are continuing and deepening with Biden. Can you elaborate on the Democrat’s role in the ongoing institutional wave of transphobia?

The Democrats are responding to the same crises that the Republicans are responding to and they’re trying to court many of the same voters. But the Democrats have to walk a more precarious line of always seeming like the lesser evil so that they can use that to push people to the polls and co-opt social movements. So they can’t court these swing voters by being explicitly anti-trans because that would cause fallout from sectors of their base. So, rather, they are basically — at the national level — not talking about the attacks on trans rights other than in the vaguest possible terms. For example, in his yearly State of the Union speech to Congress, Biden spent only nine seconds on trans rights — simply saying that trans children deserve “safety and dignity,” but not offering any programmatic promises or commitments to how to ensure that. The midterm elections in 2022 featured barely any mention of the spreading anti-trans politics from the Democrats, and they haven’t made it any sort of legislative priority in the current Congress.

Rather, at the national level, key figures, including Barack Obama, have been trying to distance the Democratic Party from “excess wokeness.” This is in keeping with the political conclusions of sectors of the Democratic Party establishment after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, which was an overfocus on “boutique” issues like trans rights. Now, the idea that Clinton was overly focused on trans issues and that’s why she lost — that is laughable, but that logic has become popular with the Democratic Party, and they are trying to move themselves away from social issues that are more controversial — most notably trans rights.

This is the exact same arc as we saw in the Democrats’ response to BLM. They began by offering a lot of “support” — even as they oversaw repression across the country — and then made themselves the party of BLM in order to win the election and then blamed every subsequent electoral setback on being overly focused on BLM and have now made themselves into the party that fights for more police funding. Once they co-opt and demobilize the movement, they abandon the performative support and drop the concessions they offered in exchange for support. Because the Democratic Party’s support for the specially oppressed is based on political gain and expediency rather than any actual commitment.

So, in this sense, the role of the Democrats is to allow these attacks and to help shift the situation to the right. By arguing against “excess wokeness” (whatever that means), they are giving space to the feelings that trans rights have “gone too far.” By not taking this up at the national level, they are effectively leading the acceptance of a country where trans rights vary greatly state by state. So the choice that is being offered to trans people is the choice between a country where trans rights are illegal federally (which the Republicans offer) or one where they are just illegal in half the country (what the Democrats offer). This is a common logic for the U.S. — after all, the country was founded on an agreement where rights varied state by state to the greatest level — and one that the Democrats hope to use to paint themselves as saviors of the trans community.
In the midst of anti-trans and anti-gay attacks, we’ve seen reproductive rights put into question and recede in a number of red states. How can this joint attack be explained in the current political landscape?

In addition to the political elements I described above, I think an important piece of context to understanding these attacks in the crisis of social reproduction. Neoliberalism has sent the U.S. into a major crisis of social reproduction as workers have to work more and for longer hours, social services have been privatized or eliminated, and increased stress on workers has caused a growth in social crises like drug addiction, suicide, and school shootings. This crisis is acute and can be seen in many areas. From the ongoing shortage of healthcare and education workers to the low marriage rate to the low birth rate to the previously mentioned social crises, this overall crisis of social reproduction has developed into a meaningful challenge for capitalism — especially in the U.S., where a key strategic discussion is about how to orient toward competition with China.

A key impact of this crisis is that it has placed a great deal of strain on the nuclear family — which is a vital institution of capitalist social reproduction. Through the ravages of neoliberalism, people are getting married less and later, having fewer children, and struggling to be present for those children as parents were able to be in an era when only one parent had to work or parents worked shorter hours. These attacks on both abortion and trans rights are, in my view, an attempt to address this problem — in addition to the political calculus I discussed in a previous question. The logic is that through more state intervention, the nuclear family can be recentered as the primary place of capitalist reproduction — including ideological reproduction. The family and the schools are historically where the ideology of capitalism is instilled in young people, but, due to the weakening of these institutions and the growth of the internet — giving young people unprecedented access to information — they have become less central in actually, for lack of a better word, indoctrinating young people into the ideology of this system. So we are seeing more and more young people discover their identities, radicalize (to both the left and right) around political questions, and put forward a greater questioning of capitalism. These are concerning trends for the regime and capitalism, as they show that the ideological hegemony of capitalism in general and neoliberalism specifically is weakening, particularly among the youth — who we’ve seen at the vanguard of both social movements and labor struggles. So the attempt is to recenter the nuclear family and give parents more control of their children and also to restructure school curriculum to more effectively serve the ideological needs of capitalism.

To connect this to abortion, we can see that the attacks on abortion are part of a generalized attack on bodily autonomy, an attack that recenters the state as a key actor in deciding what we can and cannot do with our bodies. This is a deeper intervention of the state into private life, which is necessary — from a capitalist perspective — to begin to resolve the ongoing crisis of social reproduction, given that the state and capital can give fewer concessions in the current moment due to the crisis of accumulation. Fully funding social programs, reducing working hours, and any number of other potential ways to address the crisis of social reproduction aren’t really on the table for capital at the current moment. So a greater intervention of the state in an authoritarian way is needed to reestablish and recentralize these vital capitalist relationships.
On a wider scale, we’re observing that a part of the Right is joining forces with more reactionary forces of the American Far Right, for instance with the gender critical protest where Nazi salutes were witnessed.

This is a really interesting question, one I am still trying to study. The strange unity between sectors of so-called radical feminism with the Far Right (including the explicitly fascist Far Right) is an international phenomena that demands a deeper analysis than I have right now. But I think this is the logical conclusion of the key theoretical problems that Marxists have been raising with radical feminism for years. Radical feminism obscures the state and ignores class to only focus on gender relations, which they understand in a hyperbinary way. They don’t recognize or acknowledge the role that the state and capitalism play in maintaining and enforcing patriarchy and instead see patriarchy as a social contagion that lives somewhat independently in the hearts and minds of individuals. Because of this, they can deeply misunderstand trans identity as being an accommodation to the patriarchy and, somehow, an attack on womanhood, which must be defended. This bizarre conclusion leads them to take up increasingly reactionary positions on the trans question.

These reactionary positions lead them into the arms of the Far Right and into the state. Rather than looking at patriarchy as empowered and protected by capitalism — as the oppression of women and other gender minorities is central and foundational to the capitalist system — and then institutionalized and enforced by the state, they view the fight against patriarchy as a struggle between men and women. So, given this framework, they view people transitioning from one gender (a fixed point within their framework) to another as either an attempt to infiltrate womanhood or an attempt to escape it. This is why these sectors frame feminine people as “predators” and trans masculine people as “victims.”

In this framework, given the conclusions about the supposed insidiousness of trans identity, it makes absolute sense that radical feminism would look to the state to protect women as they don’t see how the state is itself an instrument of women’s oppression. This turn toward the state to “protect” against trans identity puts them in total alliance with the Far Right, which seeks to use the state to repress minorities of all stripes and use state power to enforce a warped understanding of “morality.” These sectors, of course, don’t stand for the liberation of women at all, but these sectors of the so-called gender critical movement are being profoundly opportunist and attempting to build a broader alliance against trans people in order to implement their reactionary agenda. The fact that these sectors have the audacity to call themselves feminists — and some sectors of gender criticism, like Posie Parker, have begun to walk away from this self-characterization — shows the need for a socialist-feminist wing of feminism to emerge and really clash with these reactionary false feminisms and establish that trans people are not the enemy in the fight against gender oppression. Rather, trans people, like people of all genders in a capitalist society, are victims of institutionalized patriarchy that limits and represses our genders, sexualities, self-expression, and bodily autonomy in order to keep us within what is useful, profitable, and productive for capital.
Each Pride month, we are used to seeing capitalists adorning the Rainbow flag. This year, a few of them didn’t choose to pinkwash, and some even took back their products from their shelves, as Target did. What is your analysis on this?

This is an interesting question that, to me, reveals what those of us on the Left have been saying for years: that the shift toward rainbow capitalism was purely opportunistic and that they would abandon it as soon as it wasn’t profitable. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing. These corporations who drape themselves with rainbows when it can distract from their terrible labor practices and sell Pride merch when it’s profitable are beginning to cut and run when there’s even a little pushback from the Right. It shows us that these corporations are never our allies and are only interested in supporting the queer community when it’s profitable for them. Rather, our allies are the workers at these corporations. A perfect example for me was when Disney — a major capitalist agent in Florida — basically refused to take a stand against DeSantis until after their workers staged a walkout to force the corporation to take a stronger stance. These workers are the true allies of the queer movement, not the corporations that market to us in order to take our money and hide their mistreatment of their workers.
In recent years, we’ve seen the rise of a new political generation in the youth and in the working class, with the important strikes in Amazon warehouses, that led to the theorization of Gen U. From LV’s perspective, what place should this generation have in the struggle against state transphobia?

I’m so glad you asked this, because joining the new union movement with the trans rights movement is central. Gen U, as we’ve termed this new phenomena of young workers reinvigorating the union movement, shows that the age-old lie of the working class as just being straight white cis men in hardhats is a lie. The working class is diverse, multiracial, multigendered, and queer. And Gen U represents that, we’ve seen a lot of union drives (at Starbucks and elsewhere) being led by queer workers who are fighting, in part, for better conditions for queer and trans workers. This new generation is very conscious of the larger political climate and is beginning to realize that attacks on democratic rights and the struggle for better working conditions and wages aren’t disconnected. Rather, they are part of the same struggle against the system that both exploits and oppresses us. While these conclusions are still nascent, the role of the Left in the current moment is to fight for these new unionists to join the labor movement with the social movements in an organization of our own that can fight the entire capitalist system. These Gen U workers can demonstrate this to the rest of the union movement by using their unions to fight the attacks on trans rights through workplace actions, standing in solidarity, and even striking to break these laws.
LV and its feminist group, Bread and Roses, joined forces with NYC trans youth during the Trans Visibility March on March 31. Why did you think this alliance was important?

NYC Youth for Trans Rights was a new organization that sprang organically out of the murder of Brianna Ghey, and these young people got together online and with their friends and decided that they couldn’t let this murder stand. So they walked out of school and held a protest. And we — as LV and Bread and Roses — went to their first action, which was really small, and built a relationship with the organizers that we developed as we went to their future actions. As Trans Day of Visibility approached, both us and NYCY4TR felt it was very important to not let the day pass, in the current moment, without a mobilization. So we organized a pretty sizable march — the only one in NYC — to demonstrate that we can and must build a movement for trans rights independent of the Democrats and the NGOs.

It was important for us to join with the queer youth vanguard because they have really been at the forefront of defending against these attacks. They’ve been walking out of schools around the country, staging protests, and agitating around the defense of these attacks to a much greater degree than basically any other sector of the queer movement — which, in the current moment, is really dormant because it became so bound up in the NGOs and Democratic Party, which are actively working to disorganize resistance to these attacks in favor of just pushing everyone to the polls and political fundraising. These queer youth are showing the first signs of a way forward to defend against these attacks, and we wanted to really engage in that experience with them.

The logic of self-organization against these attacks is the same logic we used when we built a “labor and the left for trans rights” contingent for the NYC Queer Liberation March. We brought together a broad sector of the Left and many unions to stand together to show that we believe that we need self-organization and a united front to really defend against these right-wing attacks. As Left Voice, however, we are trying to go a step further in our argument for this queer vanguard. We think we need to build our own organization — a working-class party that fights for socialism — so that we can unite our struggles and organize not just defense but also offense against the system that allows these attacks to emerge. We are attending the NYC Queer Liberation March at the head of the left and labor contingent with banners that call for us to organize a party of our own, as that is the only way we can truly defend trans rights and go further and win queer liberation.