WE DO NOT OBEY THE MALE-DOMINATED ORDER!
We do not obey because we refuse to be the “good woman/lady/honourable woman/virgin/wife” this order expects us to be.
Whether or not we work outside the home, we are tired of fulfilling the “duties” taught to all of us, women and men; of taking on all the housework, cooking, washing dishes, doing laundry, caring for children and older people; of carrying out our “sacred motherhood” duty; of keeping intact our “honour”, which belongs not to us but necessarily to our husbands or fathers; of the “unhappy duties” we are compelled to live with in accordance with the sexual roles expected of us. But our rebellion does not arise from being tired. Our rebellion arises from the lies/hypocrisy of this male-dominated order. Because this order’s compass is built on the appropriation of women’s labor, bodies and identities. That is why the “state”, through virginity checks at schools, and “tradition”, within the family, protect our honour with our blood (!). That is why our sexuality, beyond being suppressed and forbidden, is an object of amusement, pleasure, assault and humiliation for men. That is why women’s bodies are spoils of war throughout the world. That is why every kind of assault and violence against women in wars leaves less of a mark than even a bombed ammunition depot. That is why we are subjected to men’s sexual assaults, harassment and rape not only at home/in the family, but at workplaces, on the streets, in police custody, in war… in every sphere of life. That is why the scale, systematic nature and institutionalisation of violence against us are still denied, and our lives are still treated with the coldness of simple statistical data, numbers listed one below another. That is why we are the poorest in the world. That is why all the property we acquire together is registered in men’s names. That is why we are not sent to school and are excluded from all educational opportunities. The shortest education and the lowest wages fall to us women.
In other words, we women, we “incomplete” women, whose place at the table comes after the ox, even when we fulfil every role of womanhood assigned to us without fail, even though we are half of this world, are still the ones people do not want to see, still the ones interrupted when we speak. We are the ones expected to believe all the enormous lies we are told, just like the “freedom and democracy” America brings to the Middle East.
Yes, we are oppressed by men. Sometimes through beatings and violence, and sometimes through the “emotionality” attributed to us, the requirement to be “self-sacrificing”, and the endless refrains about the family’s sanctity and inviolability. Yet the violence that confronts us everywhere as a means of intimidating, silencing and disregarding us is not about the “official status” of numbers; it is one of the most important tools of this male-dominated order, which holds our lives hostage and denies them, sometimes through “honour”, sometimes through “spoils of war”, sometimes through “trafficking in women”. Not only violence, but law, the family, the state, religion… facilitate/reproduce women’s oppression. All social gender values are founded on our oppression as women, on treating this oppression as “fate”, and on women’s obedience to the male-dominated order/patriarchy. We cannot breathe amid the lies/institutions that force us to obey the oppression we live under.
WE DO NOT OBEY PATRIARCHY!
Today imperialism, under the name of globalisation and “structural adjustment”, imposes a policy of cheaply exploiting the labor of women and children. The worst paid jobs and most unpaid, unregistered work fall to us women. The devaluation of housework, and the low value assigned to care work and other domestic tasks when they become paid work, make us women the poorest of the poor in this world. (Invisible labor, raise your voice) We claim our invisible labor. Meanwhile, homosexuals continue to be treated as sexual objects, and young gay boys continue to be marketed in prostitution markets after women and transvestites! We will not remain silent about prostitution and trafficking in women, which have become an industry within the capitalist system.
WE DO NOT OBEY CAPITALISM!
This March 8, the US occupation of Iraq continues, as do its plans to occupy Iran and Syria. We have seen what the claim “we are doing this for women’s rights too”, included in the Greater Middle East Project presented as a veneer for US imperialist politics and attacks, means through the systematic harassment and rape during the occupation of Iraq. (Iraqi women are not alone) We do not want to witness/experience war, the enormous budgets allocated to the arms industry in a world where people die of hunger, or the helplessness of women and children, who are also the greatest victims of wars. We do not forget that those who remain silent are complicit in this massacre. Even if the whole world obeys, we
DO NOT OBEY THE US!
Militarism, as old as history on these lands, has become even more rampant through the years-long war right beside us. Each of us knows through our own life the damage militarism does to an entire society, the anger and hostility it causes. Militarism also feeds and increases every kind of violence, particularly violence against women. Together with our Kurdish sisters, the primary victims of this violence both during war and afterwards, we cry out.
WE DO NOT OBEY MILITARISM!
The male-dominated order also makes sexuality absolute on the basis that a man loves a woman and a woman loves a man. Heterosexism, opposite-sex sexuality, is considered normal/imposed as an obligation and the sole form of existence. Heterosexism, founded on men’s active-authoritarian character and women’s passive-emotional character, is reproduced again and again. Those outside opposite-sex sexuality are othered and treated as sick or perverted. Hatred, anxiety and fear directed at homosexuals, in other words homophobia, are spread. We reject the compulsory heterosexuality imposed on all of us. Compulsory heterosexuality is a crime against humanity.
WE DO NOT OBEY HETEROSEXISM!
Today is March 8… We see attempts to make people forget the meaning of March 8 and empty it of its content: a day that entered history centuries ago through working women’s struggle for better wages and more liveable conditions, through their rebellion against women being the poorest of the poor. Today the state, the media, capital and men treat March 8 not as a day of struggle, but as a “marketised” day, just like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day. In fact, our own words and gains are being used to suppress our oppression and our rebellion against the male-dominated order.
WE DO NOT OBEY THE MALE-DOMINATED ORDER!
We demand that March 8, the day we intensify our struggle against patriarchy, be a day of paid leave, and this March 8 we call on all women to rebel and struggle.
LONG LIVE MARCH 8, LONG LIVE OUR STRUGGLE!
