International Women's Conference to kick off in Berlin at the weekend

Songül Karabulut, Preparatory Committee Member of the 2nd International Women's Conference, said that they would not just deal with a system analysis, but also discuss ways and means to get rid of the current predicament.

MUHAMMED KAYA
BERLIN
Friday, 4 Nov 2022

The ‘Women Are Shaping the Future Network’ will hold the 2nd International Women's Conference under the motto "Our Revolution: Liberating Life" at Berlin Technical University on November 5-6. Almost 800 women from 41 countries are expected to attend the conference.

Preparatory Committee Member Songül Karabulut spoke to ANF about the conference and pointed out that the women's revolution would pave the way for a more free, fair, ecological, and democratic life against the capitalist modernity system.

How are the preparations going on?

Our preparations are already completed. We are starting the registration process as of Friday (Nov. 4). The establishment of language cabins at the university will also be completed today because there will be simultaneous translation in 8 languages. Technical equipment will be installed. From 06:00 on Saturday, we will be present at the university. We'll start the conference at 09:00.

Why was the motto “Our Revolution: Liberating Life” chosen?

We are manifesting our philosophical approach. Women's liberation or women's revolution is to liberate life in general. When we were thinking about it, there were no mass protests or women-led uprising in Iran. The iconic motto 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadi' (Woman, Life, Freedom) of the protests in Iran has made the motto of our conference visible to the world once again. We think that the women's revolution will pave the way for a more free, fair, ecological and democratic life against the capitalist modernity system. We argue that the women's revolution will offer solutions to all the problems of capitalist modernity. We have consciously chosen this motto because women's liberation will naturally lead to liberation of life against the existing system of exploitation.

As you know, as the Kurdish Women's Movement, we declared the 21st century as the century of women in line with our leader's vision. Apart from theoretical-philosophical insights, the recent developments also confirm that our motto is relevant and in line with the Zeitgeist.

Compared to 2018, when the first conference was held, how do you evaluate the current situation?

In 2018, there were very serious women-led uprisings around the world. They were mainly about greater women's rights. For example, in Latin America, millions of women took to the streets against anti-abortion. Violence against women was a serious topic. In the Middle East, the Rojava Women's Revolution, led by the Kurdish Women's Movement, and women's self-defence exerted a serious influence across the world. Later, the global epidemic emerged, and women's struggles were also negatively affected by it. The Third World War has recently reached the borders of Europe. Following the Russia-Ukraine war, the contradictions are getting deeper and deeper. Governments are cracking down on citizens. That is, the pressures of capitalist modernity and nation-states towards the people are much more intense.

Afghanistan is very important to us. Afghanistan was handed over to the Taliban by the United States. The first thing they did was to oppress women again, to push them out of all areas of life, to suppress them. Afghan women continue to resist despite all the pressures. Afghan women announced that they were inspired by the Kurdish Women's Movement.

Now, there is a similar situation in Iran. Under the leadership of women, the motto 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadi' has emerged very clearly again. The struggle of women is gradually turning into a social struggle. Now, various segments of society, religious and ethnic groups, sexual differences are all chanting this slogan to express that they see their own freedom within the freedom of women. In this sense, the women's revolution has become more evident in 2022 than in 2018. Therefore, we will not just deal with system analysis during the conference, we will also discuss ways to get rid of the current predicament. We will pose questions like how we can fulfil our responsibility better and how we can generate the needed organization and struggle tools. We will discuss how to reach a common mentality and a common point of view. The conference aims to provide a response to the current situation.

How can those who cannot attend the conference follow it?

TV channels Jin TV and Stêrk TV will broadcast our conference live. Apart from that, we will also broadcast it live via the Internet. We want everyone to follow this conference. We live in the age of the Internet; distances don't matter anymore.

International Women's Conference in Berlin: “It is time to take responsibility for the future"

The ‘Women Are Shaping the Future Network’ holds the 2nd International Women's Conference under the motto "Our Revolution: Liberating Life" at Berlin Technical University on November 5-6.

ANF
BERLIN
Saturday, 5 Nov 2022

The 2nd International World Conference on Women began in Berlin today. Around 700 women and other oppressed genders from all over the world have travelled to Berlin to participate in this powerful and revolutionary coming together.

In terms of content, the conference started with a deep examination of the Third World War as well as the resistance against it. Specifically, it was about the struggle against the highly armed capitalist patriarchy. Meghan Bodette of the Kurdish Peace Institute moderated and posed the following questions to the first session: What can the revolutionary liberation struggle of women and other oppressed genders do in this age of pandemics, wars, violent land grabs and ecological crises? The oppressive capitalist patriarchy continues its war against women and all other oppressed genders, developing ever new methods and strategies to break women's resistance and trying to hide all the contradictions of the system. How are women and other oppressed genders around the world currently resisting this capitalist patriarchy and what does it take for this movement to gain strength?

In the first part of the panel discussion, Nilüfer Koç, member of the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), and Mariam Rawi from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) spoke about state violence against society as well as women and the means of oppression - dominant masculinity.

"Now is the right time to shape the future"

Koç stressed that now is exactly the right time to talk about how we as women should shape the future. “After all, what is happening around us right now is nothing less than World War III - even the US, NATO, etc. agree on this. But as women, we should not make the mistake of thinking of war only in military terms. There is a war that is not named as such: since the beginning of patriarchy, feminicide has been a war and an inherent part of capitalism. Military wars are only masks to disguise the relations and origins of the problems. That is why it is so necessary to find alternatives in this century. We as women need our own ideology - that of women's liberation,” said Koç and called for engagement with women's movements that are actively fighting for peace. She said that equal principles are needed to work together and create a global connection between women.

Koç went on to discuss the current crises, the hegemonic claims of the states and the resulting wars and competition. She mentioned collaboration at this point to destroy alternatives, such as in the fight against the Kurdish freedom movement and the attacks on Kurdistan. “At this moment, the oppressed have the chance to contradict and resist. In Iran, this is currently visible again. Behind the slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" (Woman, Life, Freedom) is a decades-long struggle that shows: if we are organised, we can win battles. In Kurdistan, we show that this is possible. It is time that we as sisters take responsibility for the future. Woman, Life, Freedom! That's how we will win."

"Women are proving that they are writing the history of the revolution”

Mariam Rawi then spoke of Afghanistan as a place where the most brutal religious fascists are currently ruling. She impressively described the tragedy that is taking place under this Islamist fundamentalist mentality. This is a force directed against women. Atrocities and women's suffering are the order of the day under this regime. Women are not recognised as human beings, but are reduced to child-bearing machines, she said.

However, Rawi also stressed that the Taliban were not alone, but linked to the institutions of capitalist states, such as the CIA. She gave a brief outline of the history of this cooperation. For example, she said, "women's rights" were used to legitimise the intervention after 2001, but even if today there is talk of its failure, in fact everything went according to the imperialist plan. Today, the country is on the verge of collapse, yet Western governments maintain relations with the Taliban: strategic interests are far more important than the fate of Afghan women and men, she noted.

But, she continued, people have also learned: values can only be fought for by the oppressed themselves - and then they will no longer be taken away. She went into detail about the work of RAWA: for more than 40 years they have been raising awareness of injustices and clandestinely organising women. For their work, the organisation was recently awarded the Sakine Cansiz Prize. "We were very happy about that."

Rawi concluded by saying, "We hope that the network of solidarity will become stronger and stronger. We swear by the blood of the struggling women to continue their journey. Women are proving that they are writing the history of the revolution."

Ecocide: overcoming domination, dispossession, oppression

The second part of the morning was dedicated to the destruction of nature and was entitled "Ecocide: overcoming domination, dispossession, oppression: the subordination and colonisation of nature and the ruthless appropriation and exploitation of resources". Here, Lolita Chavez from Feministas Abya Yala from Guatemala and Ariel Salleh, a sociologist and ecofeminist from Australia spoke.

From Abya Yala to Kurdistan

Chavez started her speech by lighting a fire and spoke words of gratitude for the earth, the cosmos: "This is our fire, our feminist fire, from Abya Yala to Kurdistan." She positioned herself against the war in Kurdistan and the use of chemical weapons, saying they were defenders of life.

She told of the occupation of indigenous territories, the exploitation and violence of criminal networks and terrorising structures. She stressed that these were also financed by Europe and its institutions: "We are here, telling you in your eyes: you are part of it." She spoke of the war that the extractivist companies were waging against them because they were holding their worlds against them, alternatives that were possible in their territories.

"Stop transnational corporations where they are born"

Chavez also denounced feminicide and called for justice. As feminists from Abya Yala, she said, they would work together, weaving autonomy and self-determination, but also sharing their wisdom. "We are not ashamed when they say we are witches. We stand by our spirituality. We are against ideologism because in our territories we decide."

Chavez ended her speech with two appeals. One, she said, was that there was now no time to delay the important project any longer: "Let's form these feminist networks and weave feminism from below!" Secondly, she called for, "Stop transnational corporations where they are born! Extractivist corporations are the wrong answer to global warming. And we will stop them!"

Overcoming dualist thinking

Ariel Salleh began her presentation by addressing the Rojava revolution, describing it as ecofeminist. She stressed that feminism and ecology denote a common struggle and are intertwined. She called for a struggle to be waged against the perpetuation of constructed dualisms and associated dissociative linkages. “The created dualistic thinking, for example between human beings and nature and linked to that of man and woman, not only limits our possibilities, but also leads to negative consequences, e.g. by portraying one side as inferior or opening the doors to colonialism. Humanity, reason, production are diametrically opposed to nature, chaos, reproduction and dominate them. This hierarchy is institutionalised in patriarchy. A lot of energy is needed to maintain male domination, which means alienation from life itself. Ecofeminists know about this connection with violence against women, and Abdullah Öcalan is also aware of this,” she said, and concluded by talking about successful ecofeminist struggles and emphasising her solidarity.

"Making Invisible Work Visible”

Concluding the first session, the third part focused on "Making Invisible Work Visible: The survival of the system is based on women's bad and unpaid work." This addressed the question: how can we base our class struggle on the principle of women's liberation to fight the foundations of capitalist exploitation? Women in class struggles have developed a view that the class hierarchy and the state are built on the exploitation of women's bodies and services. Under current capitalist conditions, women's labour is even more exploited and made even more invisible.

Abolish the system, not the human being

Genevieve Vaughan, an Italian American peace activist, feminist and philanthropist, made it clear in her lecture that the capitalist economy of the last centuries must be fundamentally abolished. “In order to push for a radical change of the economic system, we would have to understand unpaid labour as the standard of the system and paid labour as its deviation. Only then would we be able to see how women's bodies are exploited in capitalist patriarchy. Humans are the only species that cannot sustain themselves, but only stay alive by caring for each other. The maternal gift, she said, is invisible in the capitalist economy. This gift includes the creation of life and care, she noted.

Misogyny has historically kept women out of science and this has laid the groundwork for always developing models that would have voids in their analysis. We have to realise that we don't want the system to survive, we want our human species to survive. And our species consists of humans, who are neither Homo Economicus, i.e. profit-oriented, nor Homo Sapiens, i.e. knowledgeable, because we do not know who we are. The human being is a homo Donando, a giving human being.

Real security does not come from capitalist patriarchy

"Azadi means freedom in many languages" - with these words Kavita Krishnan, feminist activist of the All India Progressive Women's Association, began her contribution. She made it clear that in patriarchy the word security is used as a code for control and exploitation of women. To illustrate this situation in the system, Krishnan gave various examples from India and China to illustrate this shift in terms as a strategy to oppress women. In one example, she discussed the situation of young women who are recruited to work in factories of multinational companies. The managers promise the families that their daughters will work in safety, while their wages are only paid after three years. Even their mobile phones are partly taken away from them. Krishnan asked what kind of security is actually at stake. The security that should be at stake, she said, is one that should give protection from employers. The employer, however, becomes an ally of the family by de facto restricting women's freedom and preventing them from forming relationships with men outside their caste, from organising themselves, etc.

Krishnan stressed how important it is for feminist solidarity to be critical of supposedly anti-imperialist regimes. We must not close our eyes just because regimes claim to be anti-US. The same regimes, she said, understand LGBT struggles and feminism as Western values to be fought against.

The first session ended with an engaging Q&A session and many powerful expressions. There were repeated slogans and applause from the audience.

Women's Conference in Berlin: The desired life will not come through miracles but a revolution

The second day of the international women's conference in Berlin is dedicated to the political prisoners who are imprisoned because of their struggle for freedom and who cannot participate in the exciting debates.

ANF
BERLIN
Sunday, 6 Nov 2022, 18:51

At the Technical University in Berlin, the international women's conference "Our Revolution: Liberating Life" of the network "Women Weaving Future" continued on the second day. The first day of the conference concluded with a concert by the Kurdish musician Yalda Abbasi.

The second day of the conference was dedicated to political prisoners. "We want to remember all political prisoners. There are many women who cannot be with us today because they are imprisoned for their struggle for freedom. The price they pay is their own freedom," the welcome address said.

KJAR: The women will not leave the streets

At the beginning of the programme, a video of the Community of Free Women of Eastern Kurdistan (KJAR) was shown in which a KJAR representative expressed her conviction that the revolution in Rojhilat (Eastern Kurdistan) and Iran would be successful: "A dictatorial regime has been in power for 43 years, that is enough. The women in Iran and Rojhilat had to live like slaves in society." The fascist regime could only be overthrown by women's hands, she said. The KJAR representative pointed out that women had been deprived of their freedom and systematically disenfranchised, among other things, by being forced to wear headscarves. “There are hundreds of women who have been raped, imprisoned or attacked with acid, but they hold their heads high. The women went to the barricades and would not leave the streets. Especially the Kurdish population continue the uprising so that the Kurdish woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, who was murdered by the Iranian morality police, is not forgotten. The slogan "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" (Woman, Life, Freedom) is based on the legacy of decades of resistance in Kurdistan and destroys the ideology of the Iranian state. Men have also joined the protest and stood up together with women to fight against the state in which they see no hope,” said the KJAR representative who greeted the participants of the conference on behalf of the women of Rojhilat and wished them all success.

"From the balconies to the barricades"

The first session on the second day of the conference was moderated by Rahila Gupta, a freelance journalist and Southall Black Sisters activist from the UK. Rahila began by explaining that she had looked at Abdullah Öcalan's reading list, which included many feminist writers such as Judith Butler.

"How can the fragmentation of class, nationalism, religion caused by patriarchal mentality be overcome and how can we become independent of the thought structures of the male-dominated system?" the moderator asked, explaining that women's struggles would risk being reincorporated into the system unless a real alternative paradigm was developed - one based on intellectual and theoretical critique and capable of truly overcoming the limitations of the system.

The title of the session was "The life we dream of will not come through miracles, but through revolution" and was a quote from Abdullah Öcalan. The question of the session was "How do we get the women from the balconies to the barricades?" Part of the success of the Kurdish movement, she said, was based on the fact that activists went door to door to talk to everyone about what society should look like. The civil war in Syria created the right conditions for a "revolution within the revolution" in Rojava and it is important to reflect that the second wave of feminism was a significant foundation for Öcalan's work.

Women's revolution in Sudan

The first speaker was Shahida Abdulmunim from the Gender Centre for Research and Training in Sudan. The revolution in her country is also being made by women, said Shahida, explaining that for 80 years, since the beginning of the dictatorship in Sudan, women have been in the forefront of the resistance. In 1990-1999, almost only women were on the streets, fighting against the Bashir regime and celebrating great successes. During the 2018 uprising too, she said, women were prepared and led the struggles. They fought against toxic masculinity and patriarchy, the speaker explained. Abdulmunim noted that she herself was on the streets and was one of the participants in the revolution; 70 per cent of the people on the streets were women. These women came from 50 different groups and had to unite.

The patriarchal resistance and the state tried to weaken this movement, among other things, by appointing a woman to represent the movement. Three women became part of the government congress, but they were not representatives of the movement. Many laws were changed to the disadvantage of women. Shahida compared these laws to those of Iran. She said that 5000 women were in prison in Sudan for political reasons. “The regime even finances itself from the fines that women have to pay. The aim of the regime is to exclude half of the people in Sudan from political life. In my opinion, the hijab is not only a scarf, but prohibits women from participating and living in society.”

Shahida concluded: "What we wear, what we want, where we go, whether we wear a hijab or not, is not a religious issue, it is a political issue. We have to fight the regimes in our countries. We are fighting against neoliberalism and patriarchy, and we want to liberate our countries, to liberate ourselves!"

The Kurdish movement is one of the strongest democratic movements in Europe

The second speaker was Kurdish sociologist and author Dr Dilar Dirik, who began her speech by commemorating the journalist and Jineolojî researcher Nagihan Akarsel, who was murdered in Sulaymaniyah, Southern Kurdistan by the Turkish secret service MIT.

Dirik said that one has to talk about fragmentation on the global level. At the last conference, she said, there was talk about women's organising increasing, but at the same time there was also an increase in racist, fascist movements. “The Trumps, Erdoğans, Bolsonaros are the result of fascist movements, they represent the naked face of capitalist patriarchy. Liberalism is being imposed on the emerging women's struggles and "pinkwashing" is taking place in the face of NATO violence. Even their own movements are being appropriated by neoliberalism and made a product of capitalism. The capitalist system itself uses the image of women in struggle and tries to take over feminist movements.” Dirik asked, "What kind of resistance is allowed and which is criminalised? The Kurdish movement is a good example of this.”

“How, for example, did Daesh, the so-called "Islamic State", grow stronger and develop? This is an important question for the women's movement, so that something like this does not happen again.” With regards to the World Cup in Qatar, the speaker asked why no one was talking about the fact that the Islamist Al-Nusra Front was being co-financed by Qatar. Qatar, she said, is also at the forefront of supporting the Taliban.

Dilar Dirik went on to say that it is necessary to get out of the discourse that Turkey is a rogue state and should be excluded from NATO. “Rather, Turkey is an integral part of NATO. Knowledge production should not be left to the states. The German Foreign Minister, who adorns herself with the slogan "Jin Jiyan Azadî", actively supports those forces that attack women. The propaganda of the Western states is so powerful that many people do not even know how many crimes NATO commits, which wars it finances and which are waged in its name. Of course, it is always easier to criticise countries that are not in NATO and to declare them the enemy.”

Dirik explained that the Kurdish movement is also one of the strongest democratic movements in Europe. Despite massive criminalisation, it is able to organise protests across Europe in a very short time, she added. “It is not possible to understand the fragmentation of the protests if fascist movements are only analysed locally. Women's movements worldwide should not only deal with the cultural problems of their own nations. Rather, it is necessary to ask how the government of one's own country is involved in the creation, financing and building of Islamist, fascist organisations worldwide.”

The conference, she said, is a good example that women can organise without the state - freely and autonomously. In conclusion, Dirik demanded that the movement must radicalise itself and overcome liberalism. Likewise, it must fight to ensure that its own slogans are not stolen by the system.

Feminism as the rebellion of the oldest colony

The second part of the session was titled "Feminism - the rebellion of the oldest colony and what lies behind it". Rahila Gupta posed the question: "What has been the role and contribution of feminism to the struggle of women in the past and present? What are the causes of the obstacles that feminism faces? How can feminism adopt an anti-system stance?"

The situation of women in Yemen

Dr Anjila al-Maamari from the Centre for Strategic Studies in Support of Women and Children from Yemen explained that Yemen is located in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, on the border with Saudi Arabia, which makes Yemen a geostrategically important place. Anjila thanked all the women for coming together at the conference and explained how difficult it was to get in and out of Yemen. The women's revolution will always continue, she said. “Yemen has been at war for eight years, so the human rights situation is very difficult. 20 million people are threatened by the war. There are four million refugees, most of them children and women. The issue of sexism is very entrenched and it is difficult to be a woman in Yemen. Every fifth woman has psychological problems. Women have been fighting a long social battle to be able to participate in political and social life. It is clear that there are a lot of restrictions for them.”

“Half of Yemen's population of 25 million people are women, but there is only one woman in parliament. There are 30 male representatives in the ministries and only one female. The UN is not doing enough, although women are very involved. Women are also underrepresented at peace conferences like the one in Geneva. There is no political will in the system to bring women into the political arena. Among other things, women are not allowed to go out on the streets without male accompaniment. There were also no women present at the discussions on a political solution in Stockholm. However, women must be present when laws are developed to assist women. The current government was formed in April 2021. There is not a single woman in the government. It is completely male. To make this invisible, only a few women have been appointed to committees. In contrast to the 1962 revolution, in which most of the activists were men, women were in the front row in the 2011 revolution, which was a big change.”

Argentina: Ni Una Menos

Next to speak was author and activist Marta Dillon from the "Ni Una Menos" movement in Argentina. At the beginning of her talk, loud chants rang out in the hall to show solidarity with the movement: "Ni una menos - vivas nos queremos!". Marta Dillon prefaced her talk by saying that she had brought with her the love of various women fighters from Abya Yala who defend their land every day against neoliberal-capitalist extractivism while facing the terrorist violence of the state. In doing so, Marta made visible that from Abya Yala to Kurdistan, there is struggle everywhere and all revolutionary women's struggles against capitalist patriarchy are interconnected worldwide.

Ni Una Menos was formed in 2015 to take to the streets as an intersectional feminist movement against feminicide and to make visible patriarchal violence linked to capitalism and colonialism. Only in this way, said Marta Dillon, can patriarchal violence and its most definitive form, feminicide, be properly addressed. The "Ni Una Menos" movement places itself in the tradition of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and all the struggling women during the dictatorship in Argentina and thus sees itself as part of a feminist struggle that also opposes state terror, which is partly responsible for the exploitation and oppression of women. The movement is an amalgamation of different groups and identities that take to the streets for the life and memory of women and transpersons who have been victims of feminicide. They make visible that feminicides are never private, but always a political issue that affects everyone in society. After this movement grew bigger and bigger in Argentina, but also in many other countries that joined this impulse, a political strike was called by Ni Una Menos in 2016. The strike serves as a tool to make visible the exploitation of women and their work, bodies and care. The strike made clear that women are robbed of their life-time by capitalist patriarchy. Marta Dillon said that women were reclaiming this lifetime through autonomous feminist organising with each other. The international women's conference, she said, is an example of this. The strike was a means of further tightening the net between the struggles, which the Kurdish women's movement had invited at the conference. In conclusion, Marta Dillon summarised her demands in a trend-setting way: We need a feminism that distinguishes itself from conservative and liberal feminism. Only with an intersectional understanding of capitalist patriarchy can women liberate themselves. The patriarchal state owes women and colonised people the life in freedom to which they are entitled.

Sociology of Freedom and Jineolojî

The first speaker in the third part of the session entitled "Sociology of Freedom and Jineolojî" was Elif Kaya from the Jineolojî Centre Europe. She explained the role that Jineolojî will play in transforming the values, experiences and knowledge that emerge from the women's revolution and enter social culture. "An intellectual search based on an alternative paradigm can make the values of the women's resistance the basis of the revolution," Elif said, also remembering Nagihan Arkasel, who worked at the Jineolojî Centre in Sulaymaniyah until her assassination. Elif greeted the women from Abya Yala and the political prisoners and introduced the question: "What is the difference between Jineoloji and other feminisms? What paradigm guides us?"

“Scientific approaches cannot answer this question. The basis is the sociology of freedom. The revolution focuses on the change of the social. Every revolution is connected with freedom. After revolutions, more conservative paths could also emerge, as for example in Iran at the time. This revolution did not have freedom as its basis and therefore also led to the murder of Jina Amini. Sociology was founded in the 18th century to understand society after industrialisation, but it took a positivist direction. These sciences are not suitable for understanding the social. Metaphysical aspects have been left out. The sociology of freedom offers a way out and opens up a holistic horizon. Multiplurality is the basis for this. A connection between sociology and history is being re-established.”

Elif explained that in 2017, scientific work began in Rojava to explain the ideological basis of the revolution. “This is how the Jineolojî works, for example through the publication of books. Positivist science hides women's knowledge, while Jineoloji places this knowledge at the centre and establishes the role of women and their visibility. Jineoloji rejects patriarchal knowledge production. The slogan "Jin Jiyan Azadî" establishes the connection between knowledge and women's lives. Knowing who we are and where we want to go means developing practice. Science must develop solutions to existing problems. Jineolojî is a young science that makes it possible to present women's perspectives, but also passion and hope. The concept of Xwebûn ("being oneself") means to stand against one's own alienation with the roots of knowledge.

Liberating people from the grip of patriarchy

The next speaker was feminist activist and philosophy professor Jules Falquet from France, who addressed the question: "What do we mean by liberating people from the grip of patriarchy? What does liberation from gendered forms of power relations and the definition of women and men by overcoming gender mean? What are the building blocks of a philosophy of life that will change and transform social relations?"

Jules recalled Bertha Cacerés, Rosa Luxemburg and all the other murdered revolutionaries, and said of her own life story that she was rather privileged, as a woman-born, white French woman, from a country that was the third largest exporter of arms in the world. “Politically, I try to fight against colonialism, sexism and capitalism. I see myself as a feminist and lesbian in the sense of Monique Vitti and try not to be a "woman" anymore, that is, to escape oppression. I lived in Abya Yala in Ecuador from 1992-94 with ex-guerrillas when the Zapatista movement was rising. I also lived with a Kurdish fighter and participated in the 1st Zapatista Congress, and co-founded a feminist lesbian network. I am an activist, but very interested in scientific methodology.”

The activist said it was interesting that young and enthusiastic women were present as well as experienced militants, including many racialised women. “This is different from the past and says a lot about the knowledge that is being generated. The power of the new demands also lies in this. The struggles under the slogan "Jin Jiyan Azadî" also include looking at the dimension of social reproduction. Women, and especially migrants from southern countries, are in key positions for this.”

The exclusion of women in Myanmar politics helped fuel the military coup

Gabrielle Bardall, Research Fellow, International Policy Studies, 

L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa 

and Elin Bjarnegård, Associate Professor in Political Science, 

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study

 5 days ago

On Feb. 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military seized power. While a dramatic event, the coup was a continuation of old power structures

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© (AP Photo) Anti-coup protesters flash the three-fingered salute during a rally in downtown Yangon, Myanmar on Feb. 19, 2021.

Myanmar’s decade-long period of political transition, peace-building and democratic elections fell short of freeing the country from military control. Despite its female leader, the exclusion of women throughout the failed transition to democracy is partly why Myanmar was unable to create deep institutional change.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s image as “mother of the nation” depicted her as a caring matriarch. This image stood in contrast with the harsh patriarchy of military rule. But politics in Myanmar defy stereotypes and simple classifications.

Suu Kyi may have been the face of the era of democratic reforms, but in reality, the transition was initiated and controlled by the military. Suu Kyi’s legacy as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate was permanently stained by her handling of the Rohingya genocide, and her projected femininity and democratic idealism should not be confused for feminism or inclusive democracy

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© (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) Aung San Suu Kyi addresses judges of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, in December 2019. She was defending Myanmar against allegations of genocide in its campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority.

Gender can still help us understand politics in Myanmar, however — just not along these lines. Instead, a different story emerges by looking at the exclusion of women in key stages of the transition process. It is a tale of the persistence of patriarchal power throughout the decade of democratization.
Constitution kept men in charge

The governing patriarchy is on full display in the 2008 constitution that spurred Myanmar’s decade of democracy. According to one provision of the constitution, certain positions are suitable for men only. Women are excluded from key ministerial positions, and a major government agency, the Union Civil Service Board, regularly uses this clause of the constitution to block applications from women for both mid- and junior-level positions. This caps decades of extreme repression of women.

The Myanmar army is infamous for its systematic targeting of ethnic minority women and girls for sexual violence, and the militarization of the country has contributed to widespread discriminatory practices.

Read more: Internet blackouts in Myanmar allow the military to retain control

The peace process (2011-15) between the Tatmadaw — Myanmar’s military — and ethnic armed groups that have long challenged its hold on the country was a deal involving men. Only four women served inconsistently on senior negotiation delegations (less than six per cent). Women were also largely excluded from ceasefire structures and monitoring teams.

Other important institutions also failed to modernize during the transition. Instead, they generally mirrored conservative and traditional attitudes. Women’s representation in parliament gained roughly five per cent in both the 2015 and 2020 elections, growing from less than five per cent in 2014 to just over 15 per cent in November’s contested election. Important as this progress was, equality was ultimately handcuffed by the embedded patriarchy of the military.

The military orchestrated the democratic transition according to rules designed to give them continued influence. In so doing, they hamstrung women’s political inclusion.

© (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo) Police stand guard behind barbed wire as they attempt to stop protesters outside Union Election Commission office in November 2020, in Naypyitaw, Myanmar after the military said it did not accept the election results.

The Tatmadaw also retained the right to appoint 25 per cent of legislative seats. A military background is required for certain ministerial positions. Since women were only recently allowed to serve in the military, the requirement effectively makes them ineligible to hold these offices.

There were only two women among the 166 military appointees following the 2015 elections. The military appointed only 10 per cent of women to national, state and regional legislative chambers in 2020. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) only elected one woman to both the 2015 and 2020 parliaments. The military quota makes reform unlikely because any constitutional amendment to address discrimination requires 75 per cent approval.

The patriarchy of the military is reflected in the non-military political parties, notwithstanding Suu Kyi’s leadership. The parties are gatekeepers to women’s representation. But they have generally not taken steps to improve women’s political participation.
No quick fix

We are not arguing more women in Myanmar politics would have prevented the coup. There is no such thing as a quick fix to eliminate the country’s history of militarization.

But we do suggest that women’s relative absence from positions of influence helped enable the military to maintain its grip on power.

© (AP Photo/Aung Ko San) Ethnic Entha women display placards during a protest against the military coup in Inle Lake, Taunggyi, Myanmar, on Feb. 11, 2021.

Understanding this connection is important for three reasons. First, giving women a seat at the table makes a difference. Research shows that equality and inclusion foster sustainable peace, meaning that the attitudes of the participating men are also required. Rather than just armed organizations, civil society groups and women’s organizations should be included in transitions from war to peace.

Second, the women’s movement in Myanmar offers new models for collaborative governance. Relegated to the shadows, women’s groups nonetheless organized to contribute to the peace process through informal channels, including back-channel negotiation. They have shown a path for bridging ethnic differences to work towards common goals.

Finally, by tracing the path of patriarchy in Myanmar, we can better understand what brought about the coup. As we grapple with why the military staged a coup at this particular moment in time, it should be seen in light of the country’s militarized recent history and the power dynamics of the transition. Women’s rights organizations are currently mobilizing and are putting it out there quite simply: a militarized Myanmar is a threat for women.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Gabrielle Bardall has consulted for The Carter Center Myanmar project in the past.

Elin Bjarnegård receives funding from the Swedish Research Council.

Iran protesters told they are ‘bringing down the patriarchy’

Thousands of protesters gathered at Marble Arch before marching through central London to Trafalgar Square for the Iran Solidarity Rally, which marked 115 days of protests.
Demonstrators march through Piccadilly Circus in London, to protest against the Islamic Republic in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini (Aaron Chown/PA)

SUN, 08 JAN, 2023 - 18:02
LUKE O'REILLY, PA

Comedian Omid Djalili told Iranian protesters that they are “bringing down the patriarchy” at a protest in London.

Thousands of protesters gathered at Marble Arch before marching through central London to Trafalgar Square for the Iran Solidarity Rally, which marked 115 days of protests.


Organisers, including human rights organisation Amnesty International, set up a stage beside Nelson’s Column, from which the British-Iranian comedian addressed the crowd.

Demonstrators in Trafalgar Square in London protest against the 

Islamic Republic in Iran (Aaron Chown/PA)

Mr Djalili told them that they are “changing the axis of the world”.

“When British women scream and shout for the women and girls in Iran, they are not just shouting for them, they are shouting for themselves,” he said.

“They are shouting to bring down the patriarchy. That’s what we are doing.

“We are changing the axis of the world. This is why the men are joining the women of Iran, because together we know that the patriarchy hurts people.

You do not mess with women, let alone Iranian women

He added that “woe betide” the men who do not listen to women.

“And right now we see with this regime… when women speak you listen, and if you don’t listen to women, woe betide the men.

“You do not mess with women, let alone Iranian women.”

Attendees carried the country’s flag with the slogan “Freedom for Iran” written on them.

Others held banners with the faces of protesters killed by the regime.

Demonstrators march towards Piccadilly Circus in London (Aaron Chown/PA)

The banners read: “What crime were we killed for?”

The protesters also chanted slogans made popular during the protests in Iran, including “woman life freedom” and “justice for Iran”.

Among the thousands of attendees at the protest was engineer Farshid Farmani.

He said that the UK Government should treat Iran like it treats Russia.

“The UK Government can expel the ambassadors,” he said. “What they have done to Russia they can do to Iran.

Omid Djalili addressed demonstrators in Trafalgar Square (Anthony Devlin/PA)

“A lot of the relatives (of the regime) live here, and they have lots of capital here.

“They can block that capital and put pressure on them and sanction them.”

He added that the protests in Iran were for freedom.

“It’s just for freedom, basic rights,” he said.

“We are all human and we have right to live freely.”

Protesters march through London to a rally in Trafalgar Square (Aaron Chown/PA)

Writer Elika Ansari, 32 also attended the protest.

“I think it’s really important for Iranian people and everyone who supports democracy to come together to support this cause,” she said

“It’s one of the biggest protests I have been to yet.”

She said the people in the UK can show their support by signing petitions and sharing the news.

Nina Paley's ‘Seder-Masochism’ Film Explores Patriarchy in the Book of Exodus Through Animated Ancient Idols

Screenshot from the song sequence “You Gotta Believe” by Nina Paley on Vimeo.

Global Voices interviewed American free culture activist and filmmaker Nina Paley about her new animated film “Seder-Masochism.” It is loosely based on the Book of Exodus from the Torah/Bible and exposes the veiled patriarchy in the religious text.
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Paley is the director of the 2008 full-length animated film “Sita Sings the Blues” which she released to the public domain in 2013. The film narrated the Indian epic poem Ramayana by using the 1920s jazz songs of Annette Hanshaw. It brought Paley worldwide fame because of its feminist interpretation of the epic and her long battle against the copyright claims tied to the songs of Annette Hanshaw used in the movie. Paley had to pay a negotiated amount of at least US$50,000 by loaning the sum. She eventually reclassified the film’s license from Creative Commons Attribution-Share-alike 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-SA 3.0) to Creative Commons CC0 (equivalent to public domain).

In an interview with Jewish podcast station Judaism Unbound, Paley said that “Seder-Masochism” is her take on the Exodus, which she first learned during Passover Seders. The Passover Seder is a Jewish ritual that involves the retelling of the liberation of Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. She added in the interview that “she identifies herself as a “born-again atheist” and explains the ways in which her recent study of the Book of Exodus has left her uncomfortable.

Several songs and scenes from the film “Seder-Masochism” have been uploaded by Paley to the Internet including the song sequence “You Gotta Believe” which turns Minoan stone goddess idols into flash animation. It features Moses and “singing” ancient goddesses who find themselves about to be defeated by patriarchy.

Global Voices reached out to Paley to learn more about her second film.

Subhashish Panigrahi (SP): First of all, congratulations on your upcoming work. What are the roles you're playing in the entire production? What is the movie about?

Nina Paley (NP): Once again I'm producing, directing, writing, animating, everything-ing…I'm hoping the sound designer for “Sita Sings the Blues“, Greg Sextro, is able to do more sound design for Seder-Masochism. The music is all “found” and used without permission [at the moment]. Much or all of my use is Fair use, but ultimately that can only be determined in court.

Seder-Masochism is about the Book of Exodus from the Torah/Bible, and indirectly the Quran (Moses is a prophet of Islam). My interpretation of Exodus is that it's the establishment of complete patriarchy, the elimination of any remaining goddess-worship from older times.

Some of clips from the feature-in-progress are here.

SP: What inspired you to start this project?

NP: Sita Sings the Blues was denounced by fundamentalists who called my collaborators “self-hating Hindus.” As a Jew, that rhetoric was familiar to me – Jews *invented* that “self-hating” nonsense. Since I'm not a Zionist, I've been called a “self-hating Jew” too. Also, the Hindutvadis called me a “white Christian woman who hates Hindus”, and sent hate emails saying “how would you like it if someone made a film about YOUR religion?!” Of course I love it when someone makes a good film about Abrahamism - Monty Python's Life of Brian is the best I can think of. I was (am) also frequently accused of “cultural appropriation“, implying that only those of Hindu/Asian descent are qualified to work with Hindu/Asian stories. So it seemed that everyone, right and left, wanted me to make a film about “my” religion, Judaism! I figured if they're offended by Sita Sings the Blues, they'll be REALLY offended by that. I printed up a Jew Card so I could “play” it for this project.

Ancient goddess LILITH gif by Nina Paley. 

Source: Nina Paley/Wikimedia Commons

SP: The song is hilarious! How did you bring the thousand-year-old stone idols to life?


NP: There are already goddesses in the Flash sections of Seder-Masochism I animated a couple of years ago. I needed to put more “goddess” into the film, and was tediously redrawing the Flash goddesses in Moho, the software I'm using now. It occurred to me that instead of redrawing them I could use the source images they're based on, I spent a few days finding the highest resolution images I could, and a few more days manually removing the backgrounds in GIMP. Moho can do things Flash can't, such as this type of animation with raster images. Anyway, they looked cool so I'm using them in the remaining Seder-Masochism scenes.

The goddesses in flash animation can be downloaded on Wikimedia Commons.

As Paley is producing the film on her own, she is also working with other free culture activists like the United States-based nonprofit QuestionCopyright.org to raise funds, apart from launching a Kickstarter campaign. She is uploading segments of the film publicly on the Internet as the film is being developed.

A previous version of this article incorrectly identified the origin of the goddesses. They are Minoan, not Egyptian.

Posted 4 February 2018 

Written by Subhashish Panigrahi

Written by Qurratulain (Annie) Zaman

KURDISH 

Women Fighting Patriarchy and Oppression in Northern Iraq

A photo essay
By Paul Trowbridge

October 15, 2023

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




In Sinjar, a small town in Northern Iraq, the consequences of genocide and war linger heavy. Nearly a decade ago, in August of 2014, the Islamic State group (ISIS) carried out genocide against the Yazidi religious minority based in, and around, Sinjar. To this day, the town lies in rubble and its people scattered in camps for the displaced. Those who have returned face numerous challenges and obstacles as they struggle with the legacy of genocide. ISIS targeted Yazidis, Christains and Shia Muslims during their campaign of violence, but no other group was targeted as brutally as the Yazidis. During the genocide, ISIS fighters killed approximately 10,000 Yazidi people and enslaved and sex trafficked approximately 10,000 women and girls. More than 3,000 of the enslaved women and girls remain missing. Nearly 10 years on, 350,000 Yazidi people remain displaced living in camps for internally displaced persons (IDP).

Yazidis are a religious minority from northern Iraq, and Sinjar and its surroundings are their ancestral homeland. Yazidism, the religion of the Yazidis, is an ancient syncretic faith that combines elements of Zoroastrianism, Islam and Christianity. Yazidis have faced persecution and discrimination throughout their history because they believe in their own religion. Yazidis count 74 genocides perpetrated against them. However, none of the previous genocides are comparable to the brutality of the atrocities perpetrated against the Yazidis by the Islamic State group.

Against this backdrop of genocide and violence, the Sinjar Resistance Units (abbreviated YBS, and the all-women division abbreviated YJS) organized to fight ISIS and protect the Yazidi community. The YBS-YJS is a Yazidi armed group, based in Sinjar. Initially, the YBS-YJS was trained and armed by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) so that Yazidi people could protect themselves and fight against the Islamic State group. The PKK is a left-wing insurgent group, rooted in the ideology of revolutionary Marxism and decolonial independence struggle. The YBS-YJS also received support and training from the People’s Protections Units/Women’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ). The YPG/YPJ are armed Kurdish-led opposition groups based in northeast Syria that also share the ideology of the PKK. The YBS-YJS, too, shares the Marxist-based ideology of the leftist Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The YBS-YJS played a central role in the liberation of Sinjar from ISIS occupation. YBS-YJS fighters then continued into Rojava and finally to Raqqa, where they also played a central role in the liberation of Raqqa. Raqqa, a town in northeast Syria, was the epicenter of ISIS slave markets and sex-trafficking operations. The YBS-YJS does not exclusively work for the Yazidi community. The YBS-YJS provided assistance and humanitarian aid to Arab villages and fought for Arab villagers throughout the Sinjar Region. During the war against ISIS, the YBS-YJS fought side-by-side with Arab tribes to liberate the region from ISIS control.

For YBS-YJS members, the defining characteristic of their organization, and their struggle, is their ideology. During my interviews with women leaders and members of the group, they all told me that the organization’s position on women’s liberation and the role of women in fighting patriarchy and oppression was the key factor for their participation in the group. Women participants told me in interviews that through their participation in the group, they “found their strength.” They told me that through organizing and taking up arms against ISIS, “women [were] protecting women.” They saw that by Yazidi women taking up arms against ISIS, it was also revolution against patriarchy and oppression. They carry these convictions today while they continue their participation in the YBS-YJS. They told me their participation in the YBS-YJS is deeply rooted in them because of the Ideology of the group. While there are other armed groups in the Sinjar region, the pro-minority and pro-woman position of the leftist Kurdish groups drew Yazidis, while at the same time they eschewed other groups because they felt the other group’s ideologies and political positions did not resonate with their lived experience. The women leaders and members I interviewed said they continue to participate in the YBS-YJS because the Yazidi community is constantly under threat of recurrent violence, and the problems facing the Yazidi community in Sinjar continue, and so they continue to struggle. One of the principal conclusions from my interviews with the YBS-YJS was the confluence of their experience with gender-based violence and genocide coincided with an ideology of anti-patriarchy and anti-oppression that was the key factor in organizing and mobilizing Yazidi community and remains the most salient factor in their continued participation in the group.

Whose Family Values?

Women and the Social Reproduction of Capitalism

"proletarii, propertyless citizens whose service to the State was to raise children (proles).”
Classical Antiquity; Rome, Perry Anderson, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Verso Press 1974

The issue facing women working at home or in capitalist society is the matter of unwaged servitude versus wage-slavery. The social reproduction of capitalist society is found both in the workplace and the home.

"It is not a question of wages or prices; these are but the reflections of the social relations of capitalism." K. Marx

As Marx states it is not an issue of wages but of the relationship we have to the means of production, wages reflect the minimal share of profit from the social reproduction of value. To that end all relationships are matters of capitalist relations of production.

So the stay at home mother is reproducing the capitalist relationship in the home, and reproducing the proletariat.

"That the abolition of individual economy is inseparable from the abolition of the family is self-evident. " Karl Marx, The German Ideology

The capitalist relationship of the home was structured in the 19th century with the development of the nuclear family. The rise of the ‘modern woman’, and the middle class values of the family were created in this era (which saw the emergence of homemaker magazines dedicated to women’s morality) as the extended family was replaced with the nuclear family. What is often overlooked in this era is that those advocates of the stay at home mother were well off and had servants, nannies or governesses to raise children, the whole age of ‘Upstairs Downstairs’.

The 'woman' in the household was allowed leisure time to persue reforming society because servants, usually Irish immigrant women, did her work. This also applied to the skilled tradesman and his family. They too employed servants to work in the home. This was true right up until the 1920's in North America and the UK. The creation of modern etiquette manuals and homemaker ideology was crafted by these middle class women, who of course were speaking to their own class of women, not to the servants in the household.

The early wave of 19th century feminism that fought for women’s rights, the abolition of slavery also coincided with the movement for temperance and for moral virtue. They blamed drink for working class men’s violence, and fallen women- prostitutes-- who for the most part were unemployed Irish serving girls---for the degradation of the moral virtues of womanhood. The reformers and their feminist agenda were the well off wives of the labour aristocracy and the small business owners.

This class conflict can be seen in the controversy raised when the black former slave Sojourner Truth made her famous speech; And Ain't I A Woman, to the 1851 Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Sojourner raised herself to her full height.

"Look at me! Look at my arm." She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. "I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman? I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?"

The impact of this black woman on the predominately white middle class convention shocked much of the audience. Just as Yoko Ono would be in the 1970's when she wrote the equally controversial song; Woman is the Nigger of the world. And of course in today’s hip-hop and rap vernacular we still hear women devalued as 'ho' and 'bitch'.

Woman and her work is devalued because it is not seen as producing surplus value, but rather seen as the reproduction of the world we live in. In other words she produces and reproduces 'use value' in Marxist terms. She is the proletarii producing the proles of capitalism.

Women’s work outside the home socially reproduces her work in the home. Teacher, nurse, nun, seamstress, waitress, cook, daycare worker, laundress, janitor, chauffeur, home-care worker, model, prostitute, stripper, etc. are reflections of work in the home in capitalist society. Women workers are subjected to the division of labour of the home in the work they do in capitalist society.

Even the medical challenges of biological reproduction, cloning, artificial insemination and fertility drugs, birth control reflect this division of labour of women’s work of actual biological reproduction from one of sexuality into capitalist commodification. Capitalism cannot function without the social reproduction of women’s work, waged or unwaged.

The Living Wage campaign dovetails with the need to argue for Wages for Housework, an issue whose time has come. We need a social wage that constitutes both the living wage and wages for housework. This wage includes full benefits including pensions, medical, dental, etc. for all proletarians waged or unwaged.

Wages were once upon a time tied to the ability of a skilled craftsman to support the basics of life for his family. Today all the proletarians in the family work, father, mother, even children. The capitalist system of wage slavery has once again been reproduced not in the ‘satanic mills’ of the first wave of industrialization, but in the very society we live in. It is not uncommon for us to work for minimum wages in two or three jobs. And these jobs are also where we socialize, the mall, or consume, i.e. Macdonald’s.

Like the middle-class women of the 19th century, who had time to raise her family thanks to nannies and servants, today that same professional class returns to the bosom of the nuclear family, as stay at home moms. Only because they and their husbands are professionals earning incomes that can support both of them. and of course can afford the indentured servitude of a live in nanny.

It is they who promote the ideal of the family values of the stay at home mom, and call for tax credits for this voluntary bourgeois vocation. Of course these same stay at home moms of the professional classes also have maids, and nannies (indentured servants from the Philippines instead of Ireland). They see little need for socialized daycare, or for a living wage for the proletarian family whether it be a single mother family, a heterosexual or lesbian family. And like their moralist predecessors they couch their version of the bourgeois nuclear family in terms of Christian family values.

The World’s Largest Workplace: Social Reproduction and Wages for Housework by PJ Lilley & Jeff Shantz, discusses this movement which began in the 1970's and was a source of much controversy. Many feminists of the time decried the idea of recognizing woman’s work in the home as waged labour, instead advocating for the abolition of housework. All housework should be shared, women and men should work outside the home and the work of the home should be shared. Unfortunately the ideal did not match reality. Women still to this day do the housework while men do not. Even now that woman are liberated to find work in society, no longer relegated to being the little woman at home, when she returns from her job, the job at home is still waiting.

"Women's full-time participation in the labor market drops off dramatically with the second child," says Rebecca L. Upton, an anthropologist at the U-M Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life.
"While most paid professional women return to the work force full-time after the birth of their first child, over 50 percent change to part-time work or take a leave of absence after the birth of the second.
"A second child also profoundly affects a couple's relationship to each other, with even the most equalitarian men and women assuming more traditional gender roles," says Upton, who is presenting a paper titled "The Next One Changes Everything: Having a Second Child in the American Middle-Class Family."

Wages for Housework was a Marxist-Feminist analysis, written by written by Selma James and Maria Rosa Dellacosta, of this division of labour applied to women as unwaged work. It declared women were proletarians, and that their struggles were key elements in the class struggle, especially in the working class communities where we live and reproduce the social relationships of capitalism and patriarchy.

DellaCosta was part of the workers and womens autonomist movement in Italy, which called for the social strike the refusal to pay rent or utilities, during the economic crisis in Italy in 1971.

As she says now;

"The work I produced from the early 1970s and part of the 1980s is probably fairly well-known and readily available in print. The material emerged from a collective debate with other women focussing on the analysis of reproductive labour and the question of the struggle for wage/income, starting with wages for housework. These days, given the pervasiveness and destructiveness of this most recent phase of accumulation, I feel that a commitment revolving exclusively round the wage/income and the reduction of labour time is inadequate unless it is pursued in step with a series of other issues which I will try to highlight.
In fact, I think that, from various viewpoints, the problem of human reproduction is indissolubly linked to issues - above all, land - raised by the indigenous movements. Women continue to be primarily responsible for human reproduction in all regions of the planet, and the problem of their condition cannot ignore the horizons that these issues outline, whether in families of the advanced areas or the village communities of the 'developing' countries." The Native In Us, the Earth We Belong To

Selma James was the wife of CLR James the Trinadian born Marxist. And like Raya Dunesevkeya (CLR James former political collaborator) Selma contributed to recognizing that proletarian struggle is the struggle not only of the industrialized working class but also of women and of those exploited by race (recognizing their proletarian relationship under capitalism as slaves or indentured servants). See her seminal work on this: Sex, Race and Class. And like Della Costa, Selma James is still active with Wages For Housework campaigns internationally see her Global Women’s Strike web site which also advocates for migrant women and open migration against the migration of global capital.

Babies and Bosses: OECD Recommendations to Help Families Balance Work and Family Life states: the recent OECD report exposed English Canada's failure to develop a cohesive program of childcare, unlike Quebec, that is not just babysitting services. In comparison with other OECD countries, capitalism in Canada fails to pay for the social reproduction of itself, relying on increasing its profitability not only off the surplus value of its workers, but the expense of the family being a further economic burden on these workers.

“Declining fertility rates are a concern in most countries, particularly in Japan, where birth rates are dropping as more people put jobs before childbearing. In Switzerland, as many as 40% of women at age 40 with university degrees are childless. Strong economies and manageable pensions systems depend on both higher fertility rates and higher employment rates. Many governments are investing in family-friendly policies which have societal benefits for the next generation. Support for working mothers will reduce the poverty which impacts negatively on child development and support for pre-school care outside the home can better prepare children for formal schooling. Pay gaps still affect the relative earnings of men and women. Even in families where both parents work, men typically earn 33-66% more than women, so it is usually mothers who take time off to look after children. In most countries, fathers work more than men without children while mothers spend less time in paid employment than other women. “

The National Child Poverty 2004 report from Campaign 2000, shows an increase in child poverty amongst working families, reveals the need for a comprehensive social wage campaign.

The child poverty rate in Canada is up for the first time since 1996. After five consecutive years of decline, the child poverty rate increased to 15.6% in 2002, which means 1,065,000 children, or nearly 1 in 6 children in Canada, live in low-income families. Fifteen years after Parliament's unanimous all-party declaration to end child poverty, Campaign 2000's 2004 Report Card on Child and Family Poverty in Canada reveals that governments are failing to take sufficient action to reduce child poverty and low-wage labour markets are letting parents down.

Pay equity continues to be ordered by the courts in Canada and continues to be challenged by the state at all levels,forcing unions to fight again and again to see it implemented in the workplace. Even the capitalist state enjoys the fruit of the feminization of poverty, which it supposedly opposes in policy. The wage differential between women workers and men, will continue as long as women’s work is seen as an extension of their housework.

Campaign 2000 calls for a federal provincial commission on a Living Wage that wage would be a minimum of $10 per hour. Something the IWW Edmonton Branch has been one of the most outspoken advocates for, in the Alberta or Canadian labour movement.


What is really needed a social wage; Wages for Housework and a Living Wage, of at least $10 per hour including benefits and transferable pensions for waged and unwaged workers. We need business to carry this expense, and to provide on the job daycare facilities as well as paying for the daycare costs of their workers who may use public daycare facilities.

The failure in Alberta, and across English Canada, to provide a comprehensive day care and early childhood program, unlike Quebec, reveals the failure of state-sanctioned tax credits.

These tax credits have not created a social day care program, but have been pocketed by the well off professional class and used to promote family values; that is mothers should stay at home as if having to work was a choice. The cost of childcare the creation of and support of ‘proles’ is a cost being born by working families not by the capitalist system which needs its wage slaves.

"The tax system is now being drawn into the emerging debate in Canada over how to address women's tightening double bind of paid and unpaid work, generating a rash of recent proposals, discussed infra, to give tax relief for caregiving work provided within families. I argue that these proposals are not well designed to improve women's economic equality. While a higher visibility for women's unpaid labour is welcome, the tax reforms being suggested do little more than legitimate the reprivatization of social welfare costs onto families." TAXING THE MARKET CITIZEN: FISCAL POLICY AND INEQUALITY IN AN AGE OF PRIVATIZATION

The need for such a social wage highlights the failure of the capitalist state in Canada to deal with the real costs of social reproduction of the proletariat and its value in creating capitalism. Instead at the behest of business the state issues tax credits to taxpayers, giving back in effect personal taxes, while business pockets their profits and gives their CEO’s record bonuses and wage increases. The capitalists and not taxpayers or the state must pay the social wage with benefits.

A social wage reveals the contradictions of the capitalist value that women’s work is social reproduction for use value rather than a reproduction for surplus value. As such it is seen as a cost of doing business that cuts into the rate of profit.

The proletariat reproduces themselves for the benefit of wage slavery under capitalism and creates the surplus value that is the very source of capitalism. A social wage is a direct assault on the rate of profit capitalists enjoy, and they will fight hard to oppose it, as they have done over minimum wages and reductions in the hours of work.

Women have always controlled their own bodies, regardless of the patriarchy, abortion and birth control, are some of the most ancient of women’s mysteries and social practices. Patriarchy recoils at the thought of women controlling their own sexuality and the reproduction of the human race. It devalues their work of social reproduction, in order to cover up it’s irrational religious fears about women’s and natures domination of “man’s” (God’s) world.

Capitalism on the other hand values this social reproduction but as a commodity, one which is now being removed from the destiny of biology and being transformed by the development of industrialized biotechnology. In her work the Dialectics of Sex, Shulamith Firestone, discusses the attempts by capitalist patriarchy to control women’s reproduction with the introduction of the technology of reproduction; that is cloning, fertility drugs, etc. The ideal, of capitalist patriarchy would be reproduction without women, Firestone asserts. Again her work is from the 1970's, and was well ahead of its time, and while it is somewhat dated it rings the clarion bell over the issues of biotechnology, nanotechnology, and the efforts to commodify women’s sexuality outside of the womb.

A woman’s right to choose, her right to control sexual reproduction, the ultimate source of social reproduction, remains the key issue in the struggle for women’s liberation. It was when Emma Goldman fought for birth control information to be freely available last century and tragically remains so today. It continues to be challenged by religious patriarch’s as a moral issue. And now it is being challenged by industrialized medicine with its attempts to create life outside of the womb through cloning, and by its attempts to create life in the womb with fertility medicine. The latter uses women as wombs for multiple births. While the moralists deny a woman’s right to abortion and birth control, the medical patriarchs view her as a ‘subject’ for their experimentations.

Whilhem Reich’s work the Sexual Revolution is a critique of the psychic plague that capitalist patriarchy creates in all of us. His assertion is that the very nature of authoritarianism and domination is reproduced under capitalism by the nuclear family under the domination of the father.

Why does society repress sexuality? Freud's answer is that it is the sine qua
non of civilized life. Reich replies that sexual repression's chief social
function is to secure the existing class structure. The criticism which is
curtailed by such repression is criticism of today's society, just as the
rebellion which is inhibited is rebellion against the status quo.Closely
following Marx, Reich declares, "Every social order creates those character
forms which it needs for its preservation. In class society, the ruling cass
secures its position with the aid of education and the institution of the
family, by making its ideology the ruling ideology of all members of the
society." To this Reich adds the following "it is not merely a matter of
imposing ideologies, attitudes and concepts....Rather it is a matter of a
deep-reaching process in each new generation, of the formation of a psychic
structure which corresponds to the existing social order in all strata of the
population." Bertell Ollman, Social and Sexual Revolution: from Marx to Reich and Back

It is our socially constructed roles as men that determine our participation in the social reproduction of patriarchy and capitalism. The sex economy of capitalism is the social reproduction of familial slavery. The slave owner cannot conceive of the slave, the ‘other’ as being anything but a ‘slave’, and the slave who cannot conceive of any other relationship and sees the ‘master’ as natural, always present, all powerful, godlike-the benefactor, the giver of life and death, (Hegel).

Capitalism cannot conceive of any other relationship than the monogamous family, and even those patriarchal religions, sects and cults of which allow for polygamy, remain merely multiple monogamous family units, many wives one husband. It is the very nature of the family that is the source of women’s oppression. It is why the challenges to the family are a key element in revolutionary struggle, and why the reactionary ideologues of patriarchy are united to promote their “Family Values”. It is major battle in the class war to challenge the ruling classes and its family values. (See my; What’s Love Got To Do With It? )

And yet the left has failed to rise to this challenge. Steeped in social democratic ettiquette, the left has not challenged the right wing fundamentalists or the ideology of capitalism and its Family Values. We have a long history of alternatives to bourgoise family values, and yet the silence on the left is deafening. It is time that we recognize, as the right wing has, that the battle lines have been drawn in the class war and that war is not just about the shop floor but the family as well.

“The modern family contains in germ not only slavery (servitus), but also serfdom, since from the beginning it is related to agricultural services. It contains in miniature all the contradictions, which later extend throughout society and its state. Such a form of family shows the transition of the pairing family to monogamy. In order to make certain of the wife's fidelity and therefore of the paternity of the children, she is delivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband; if he kills her, he is only exercising his rights. “ Karl Marx

Capitalist patriarchy will not be defeated by men flagellating themselves for being 'bad'. DeSade and Masoch already tried that, but hey if you like that sort of thing.....go ahead punish yourself..(see Sacher Masoch an Interpretation by Gilles Deleuze, Faber 1971).

3.1 SACHER-MASOCH and DE SADE - Immanence vs Transcendence
In his 1967 monograph on the writer LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH, Masochism: An Interpretation of Coldness and Cruelty, DELEUZE works on the rehabilitation of the clinical phenomenon of 'masochism' and against its conceptional link to 'sadism' understood as equivalancy ever since KRAFFT-EBING'S and FREUD'S analysis. In order to do this DELEUZE compares the literary work of SACHER-MASOCH (especially Venus in Furs) and the work of the MARQUIS DE SADE.
DELEUZE shows here that the idea of a possible transformation of the sadistic drive into the masochistic drive is grounded in the Freudo-Lacanian assumption of gaining pleasure by lack, which can either be achieved by receiving pain - in the case of the masochist - or by giving pain - in the case of the sadist. Against this model DELEUZE exemplifies the originarity of the masochist, who obviates the need for transcendence by infinitely suspending the (sexual) climax.
The activities of the masochist are 'political acts'. Unlike the sadist of DE SADE, who wants the world to be regulated by universal institutionalization of punishment and prostitution, the masochist is in agreement with his domina, that the 'treatments' are not to be totalized. Thus, attaining of pleasure is not - as in the case of DE SADE - the application of an idea to the world, but, in contrast to this the prevention of the transgression of the material toward an idealistic principle. Hence the desire of the masochist is immanent to pleasure and not the consequence of a preceding transcendent lack.
Immanence and Deterritorialization: The Philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari by Stephan Günzel

“I’m a bad boy mommy” is a patriarchal response to women’s power of social reproduction and a lack of recognition of that power by inverting it to one of dependency. The result of this patriarchal dependency on women “knowing their place” creates in men fear, hatred and ultimately violence when “their” property, “doesn’t know it's place”. Ultimately this response is both sadistic and masochistic, it is the schizophrenic nature of capitalism that reduces women and children to chattel property; “she is delivered over unconditionally into the power of the husband.” These are the so called "Family Values" of patriarchy, that the bourgoise family and its religious proponents are advocating as immutable, eternal, and natural. It is the old axiom; There is No Aleternative (TINA), but as we all know there are alternatives.

"Deleuze and Guattari argue that capitalism is a schizophrenic system. Because it is interested only in the individual and his profit it must subvert or deterritorialize all territorial groupings such as the church, the family, the group, indeed any social arrangement. But at the same time, since capitalism requires social groupings in order to function, it must allow for reterritorializations, new social groupings, new forms of the state, the family, or the group. These events happen at the same time. The life of any culture is always both collapsing and being restructured" Deleuze and Guattari: An introduction

It’s not about being bad men it’s about valuing social reproduction as important. That means we value child raising and home/house work as important. And even if as men we share less in the housework, it is a matter of finally recognizing it as work and that it is a division of labour, which makes women proletarians!

Women’s struggles are the class struggle. Women’s struggles historically have always been the spark that has lit the fires of revolutionary social change.

Proletarians of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, is the banner and the watchword of the women’s movement for liberation. And their liberation is the liberation of all of us.

“The repression of sexuality has social and economic origins not biological ones. Sexual repressiveness appeared at the beginning of class society and the institution of private property and patriarchy….In modern times, such repression remains indispensable in order to safeguard the two essential institutions of society; monogamous marriage and the family. It constitutes one of the means of economic enslavement. The sexual revolution is only possible
through social revolution.” Daniel Guerin, Homage to Wilhelm Reich

A class-struggle program based on women’s liberation

Social Wage Campaign being a living wage for women working outside of the home, who are usually the worst paid, and wages for housework for those at home.

Daycare; public daycare centres open to all, not private home based babysitting services, daycare centres in the work place, both programs paid for directly from the profits of business, not their after tax profits.

Publicly Available Abortion Services: After the supreme court decision that women in Canada have the right to abortion, the campaign for a woman’s right to choose, packed up. Unfortunately as I have shown in my article: “A Woman’s Right to Choose? Choose What?”, that decision left the politicians federally and provincially off the hook. Dr. Morgentaler’s method of safe effective abortion has not been adopted in hospitals, nor does Medicare cover his services. In effect abortion services are a medical service that is privatized in Canada and still restricted to hospitals which voluntarily choose to provide these services. In some provinces these services are not covered at all. A public campaign to provide full access to the Morgentaler method paid for by Medicare is a very real campaign against the privatization of medical services as well as a campaign for a woman’s right to choose.

Campaign To End Slavery; “Indentured servitude” is just another term for slavery. In Canada Nannies and Farm-workers are covered by federal and provincial labour legislation that allows them to be exploited by their employers. While some progress has been made in Ontario in getting union recognition for exploited farm-workers, usually male, such has NOT been the case with Nannies. A campaign to change the law and to recognize Nannies as workers, including their right to freely organize into unions. This campaign also needs to address the rights of immigrant women and women refugees fleeing patriarchal relationships or regimes.

Lesbian Mothers Rights: Lesbian women have been discriminated against in adoption rights, and campaigns to defend these rights again challenge the monogamous bourgeois family.


Sex Workers Union: Whether strippers, prostitutes, escorts, porn actors, etc. women workers in thus unregulated industry face the dual oppression of being exploited by owners and customers, and their banishment by society at large. The exploitation of children and young adults as well as immigrant women is allowed to exist due to this free market. Laws against prostitution need to be abolished and the regulation of this industry be under workers control through a sex workers union.

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