On The Centenary Of International Women’s Day,
We Are All Rebellious Women!
On this centenary of March 8th, we like to be beside you with a single voice, hand in hand, walking on the same path!
On this centenary, we want to shout the millennia old dream of equality and freedom together with you!
We want to raise our voice loud to say women’s struggle is a sign of unity and solidarity, and continuity of the struggle till abolition of all forms of women’s oppression.
We know well this is only the beginning. The patriarchal capitalist system needs more and more victims in order to protect its interests, reproduce itself and prevents its final downfall; and in the forefront of those victims are the lower class and gender victims.
We know well how they “value” women; the world market is full of commodities whose cheapest workers are the house slaves and its raw materials are produced by female workers and peasants who on top of that, the women are required to carry out routine painful housework and should not forget even for an instant their duty as wives and mothers.
We know well their sex market is so developed that the “sex industry” is the most profitable enterprise. They have turned our bodies into a commodity to be conquered; be it behind shop fronts of “red light” districts or under “Chador or Borqa”.
These and thousands of other oppressions are the cause of our anger and hatred of the prevailing patriarchal relations. Our desire to build a new world without any exploitation and oppression is the motive force for millions of women and men to struggle and the conditions for creating a world without state and domestic violence is ripe; a world based on the interests of the majority.
And it is so good that the breeze of hope, at this time, is blowing from the middle east. The brave struggle of the people of Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, Libya, and Bahrain…has given heart to the people from other parts of the world. The downtrodden of the world are once again full of hope and self-confidence. They talk of Middle East with pride and respect. The oppressors, on the other hand, are filled with fear and consulting and colluding with each other so to prevent the collapse of their cracked dam.
The presence of millions of angry and rebellious youth and women has been the undeniable centre of gravity of those struggles. With daring attitude, women stood in the forefront of the struggles and conquered the cameras and created hopes and perseverance. With their presence, they changed the face of the Middle East and the world and the balance of power.
The Middle Eastern women can’t be portrayed as docile, imprisoned under the shadow of reactionary men. They are seen as brave women on top of tanks with wind blowing in their hair. It is a portrait of girls singing and dancing in crowded meetings; a portrait of girls shouting “down with the dictator” while throwing stone with their faces covered, this time not from “strangers” but from the rulers….
Today the yardstick to measure the degree of progressiveness of struggles is the presence of demands of women’s rights. But unfortunately, what is common in all the present struggles in the middle-east is that women’s rights are being buried under the general demands of these movements.
We Iranian women have the experience of a historical set back forced upon us 32 years ago by the formation of the Islamic Republic whose one of main pillars has been the severe oppression of women. 32 years ago, women and the revolutionary movement in Iran failed to raise the demands of women as a major demand of the revolutionary people and that created an opportunity for the Islamic Republic to concentrate its first reactionary salvo on women and in this way cut the opposition to half its strength and thereby open the path to suppressing the whole movement. A bitter experience that neither we learned its lessons for the present movement in Iran, nor did the movement in Tunisia and Egypt. The question poses itself repeatedly that is it possible to talk about people’s democratic rights while ignoring the basic demands of half the population? Even while they have been an active part of people’s struggle?
Women should not limit themselves to the framework of what is possible. We can make it possible and today we are more and stronger than ever in Iran, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, India, China, USA, France, Belgium, Congo, Peru, ……
8th March Women’s Organisation (Iran - Afghanistan) stands shoulder to shoulder with all those women who carry their united struggle against gender oppression and the dominant patriarchal capitalist system. The struggle that the Iranian women have experienced especially in the past 32 years against one of the most reactionary regimes in the world, against misogynist laws of the Islamic Republic and the struggle against the compulsory veil that has become a wide spread daily struggle. A daily wide ranging struggle that as its first step demands the overthrow of the Islamic Republic and for the separation of the state and religion.
Join us to turn this centenary of the International women’s day into a great celebration of our struggles against the world system of patriarchy.
March 8th needs the presence of all women on this day!
Organise for this day!
Bring along friends and get in touch with women activists!
Lets gather in large numbers and make the reactionaries tremble!
8March Women’s Organisation (Iran-Afghanistan)
08/03/2011
www.8mars.com / zan_dem_iran@hotmail.com