2012: Letter from the Istanbul Feminist Collective
Last year, the placards “I fell in love with the trans kind of feminism” and “My cunt, I let it be touched; my vineyard, I have it dug” displayed at the March 8 Night March caused various tensions during the action, and unpleasant arguments took place among women. In the evaluation meetings we held after the march with participants from different feminist and LBT groups, we agreed that the way people intervened against the placards displayed during the march was wrong. Linking the reduction of such tensions to building relationships with one another, we also agreed on the importance of organizing together. We said we should write a text to express our disapproval of what had happened and the forms of intervention, to be able to organize the March 8 Night Marches together from then on, and to revisit communication among feminists during the action and the principles of a march with a ten-year history.
The text was not written after the two meetings, but we nevertheless considered these meetings a positive step. We emphasized that we valued bringing different feminisms together. Before March 8 this year, following a decision at Istanbul Feminist Collective meetings, we issued a call to maintain this communication and prevent a repetition of last year’s events, and held two meetings with participants from SFK, Mor Çatı, Amargi, Lambda, İllet, Voltrans and independent feminists. At these meetings, besides sharing what had happened last year, we discussed the content of the placards and different feminist politics. We decided to hold these meetings regularly to come together around specific issues. We proposed that the first be a workshop/panel on trans feminism. At the meeting, we also decided that feminist friends from LBT groups should have roles in the action, so that trans friends who expressed their anger at having been mistaken for men and removed from previous marches would not experience the same thing at this march.
Feminist artists, Amargi, Mor Çatı, Lambda and SFK took part in the Night March’s organizing meetings. Because only one person from Lambda attended, we could not realize our aim of jointly preparing the march, including choosing the action committee, determining the march’s main agenda and the issues we wanted to foreground, choosing the main banner’s wording and writing the statement. Intervention during the action, responsibilities and the march’s agreements were also discussed at these meetings; with only one person from the LBT groups, we could not manage to discuss these collectively either. The situation was no different in making the placards, banners, stencils and so on that we felt it was important to prepare together.
The Night March was very crowded and spirited. The absence of tensions like last year’s during the march showed that we had made progress together. The “Trans feminists are here” placard displayed this year left the impression of insistence on an unresolved issue, because of differences of opinion in the pre-march meetings (some of us considered it contrary to the march’s agreement because it introduced a distinction within feminism, while others said that trans feminism should receive affirmative support). Moreover, carrying the placard “My cunt, I let it be licked; my vineyard, I have it dug” at the March 8 Rally, with last year’s placard covered over, was found surprising after so many calls and meetings showing how much we valued coming together and doing politics together. Considering that the feminist movement’s politics, struggle, agendas and labor are reflected in these marches, we as the IFK wanted to express our sadness at these developments in this march, which we aim to organize collectively, encompassing different feminisms, after March 8, 2012.
March 12, 2012