ON THE 12TH FEMINIST MARCH ON MARCH 8…
Thousands of us women marched enthusiastically at this year’s 12th Feminist March. As every year, we expressed our anger/opposition to patriarchy, capitalism, homophobia and heterosexism. Yet at such a magnificent women’s action on İstiklal Avenue and in Taksim, which had been off-limits for months, the barricade formed before us by groups including men made us experience once again an example of intolerance toward women’s will even on March 8. As the Women’s Labor Collective, a socialist feminist organization that is a component/participant of this march, we find unacceptable and condemn the violence inflicted on feminists/women/LGBTI individuals at the Feminist March on the night of March 8 and this male “power” approach, which accords with no ethics and recognizes no will other than its own.
IFK stated this in its announcement, but we want to emphasize it once more. The announcement that this year’s night march would again take place at its customary location, and the call to all feminist women wishing to organize the march to participate, were issued weeks in advance. With those who responded, preparations began in accordance with principles established over the years, and the march was publicized as widely as possible until the final evening. Indeed, thousands of women marched with great enthusiasm behind one banner and with purple flags, as every year. For the mixed groups waiting in front of the police barricade (Kaldıraç, Mücadele Birliği, Partizan, EKA) to knowingly begin their action upon the feminists’ arrival and cause tension by refusing to clear the way for women sends, in our view, a message whose meaning is very clear.
What they actually want to intervene in or bring under control here is feminist will, a subject of the women’s movement. This is what they cannot tolerate. The texts published one after another by Kaldıraç and Mücadele Birliği after the night of the action, far from offering self-criticism, have reached the presumptuous point of calling on feminists to apologize. We accept Partizan’s subsequently written self-critical text as an apology. We hope this self-criticism will also find expression in practice.
Yes, after the night of March 8 we understood once again that the struggle with socialist men who have shed nothing of patriarchy continues, and will continue. But there is an underlying truth: the feminist movement’s growing strength and its opening of spaces in which it constitutes itself have disturbed patriarchal socialist men as much as the ordinary men produced by patriarchal capitalism. How good!
Now our final word to those calling on IFK and those who shared IFK’s text to offer self-criticism and apologize is this: Whatever you do, the Feminist Movement will continue to grow and create spaces in which it constitutes itself! March 8 belongs to women and will remain so. Our struggle will continue until a free world is established without the shadow of men, socialist or otherwise!
LONG LIVE MARCH 8, INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
LONG LIVE OUR FEMINIST STRUGGLE!
WOMEN’S LABOR COLLECTIVE