2011 Press Statement
Dear friends, dear women
Today is March 8! Another March 8 when we cannot celebrate Women’s Day!
Yet March 8 is celebrated everywhere, by everyone. What an enormous effort to distance March 8 from being a day of struggle against the violence and exploitation of male rulers, what an enormous effort to distance March 8 from feminism…
Just as we do not forget that we inherited March 8 from women workers’ struggle to the death in the eighteen hundreds for shorter working hours and better working conditions, we repeat once again to friend and foe that we also inherited it from those who fought the Mustafas who said a woman’s back should never be without a beating.
Today, here, we shout our solidarity with those whose labor is appropriated, those condemned to slavery at home and low pay at work, those exploited in factories, brothels, homes, wherever they may be, those forced to endure beatings by fathers, husbands and men, those murdered in “honour” killings, those dying in clandestine abortions, those sold into the prostitution industry by international gangs, those subjected to harassment and rape on the streets, at work, in war and in custody…
LONG LIVE MARCH 8 / LONG LIVE MARCH 8
Rebellion Liberates! Women, INTO THE STRUGGLE for Our Liberation;
Our rebellion; is against men’s appropriation of women’s labor, bodies and identities; our rebellion is against the PATRIARCHAL ORDER
Our rebellion; is against beatings by husbands, against our fathers and older brothers who appoint themselves “guardians of our honour”. Our rebellion; is against our bodies not being left to us, but being surrendered to the male state and to men. Our rebellion; is against state violence, torture, harassment and rape by village guards, soldiers and police
Our rebellion; is against men’s appropriation of our labor at home… Against our labor being invisible while we do housework and care work, and also work as unpaid family workers.
Our rebellion; is against exploitation in the capitalist market, against additionally being cheap labor and secondary because we are women, against the sexist division of labor.
Our rebellion; is against bosses. Our rebellion is against male unions that fail to see capitalism’s assault on women workers as it joins arms with patriarchy, that do not share their leadership with women.
Our rebellion; is against being unable to live our sexuality freely, against patriarchy imposing heterosexism on us. Against lesbians being excluded and disregarded, against violence inflicted on transvestite and transsexual women, against hate killings.
Our rebellion; is against leaving unhealed the wounds of Kurdish women, the primary victims of the years-long war on these lands, whose identities are denied and whose language is banned. Our rebellion is against those who cannot say long live the siblinghood of peoples.
Our rebellion is against MALE VIOLENCE, our rebellion is against FEMICIDES…
This year too; we were killed for not wanting to make love, for not passing the salt, for wanting a divorce (…). This year too, our killers were husbands, former husbands, fathers, brothers and lovers. This year too, as men killed, the male state protected the male killer through all its institutions.
This year too; we were sent back home from police stations where we had fled our husbands’ beatings and asked for “protective laws” to be applied. Prosecutors’ offices where we often went to file criminal complaints with bruised eyes and split lips issued decisions not to prosecute without their hands trembling. The Institute of Forensic Medicine, which we waited for, both desperate and angry, to give us appointments in rape cases, continued to protect rapists through its decisions. Over the past year too, courts reduced killers’ sentences to next to nothing in femicide cases by granting unjust-provocation reductions, in other words “manhood discounts”.
This year too; we continued the struggle against sexual violence not only against those outside our circles, but also against those beside us. Although we knew that the men with whom we struggle in the same union, the same party, are not free of male domination, we were still shaken and saddened by what happened right beside us. Most recently, a woman employee at KESK stated that an executive had harassed her. What followed clearly showed how important it is as a principle to take the woman’s statement as the basis in cases of harassment and rape, and that a path pursued by disregarding this principle or saying “the woman’s statement is the basis, but…” means disregarding the woman subjected to sexual harassment and the gains of women’s organising.
This year too; in the World Economic Forum’s 2010 report Turkey fell from 121st to 126th among 134 countries in “equality between women and men”, but nothing changed in terms of state institutions. The prime minister continued to tell women “give birth to 3 children”.
Yet this March 8 we would have liked to say that women no longer suffer violence. We would have liked to say that shelters women can go to when they suffer violence have been opened in accordance with European Union standards, one for every 7,500 women and children. We would have liked to leave behind repeating that the number of shelters still does not even reach 100. We would have liked to announce that women are provided with economic security when they want to escape violence, that male violence is no longer legitimate, that reaching the courthouse doors is now a guarantee that women will not be killed.
Yet this year too, the state took no measures to erode the male-dominated mentality, prevent the exploitation of women’s bodies and labor, or slow physical, psychological and economic violence against women. We have nothing in our hands except news of a draft law hastily announced before March 8. We demand urgent measures, not laws likely to remain on paper.
We call out to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the government and judicial authorities: women are killed every day by the men close to them. What more are you waiting for to stop it?
Today is March 8! The history of March 8 is the history of women’s resistance. We salute March 8 as women’s day of rebellion. We are strong together; rebelling together, we will be stronger.
LONG LIVE MARCH 8, LONG LIVE OUR STRUGGLE
Istanbul Feminist Collective