Rejecting masculine structuring

 

NEWS CENTRE - Regarding self-defence, which has an important place in women's struggle against all kinds of masculine mentality and approaches, the Kurdish Women's Movement said: ‘While rejecting the current masculine structure, it is important that the main dimension of the struggle is the development of an alternative social woman-centred understanding of morality and measures in social life. It would be incomplete to deal with self-defence solely on the basis of opposition. It is more accurate to consider self-defence as a power of change and restructuring’ points out how self-defence should be.

 

One of the most important milestones in women's struggle against the male-dominated system is 25 November, the Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Self-defence plays an essential role in the struggle against all forms of violence, massacres, harassment and rape against women. 

 

The discussions on self-defence and the evaluations, perspectives and debates on how it should be developed by the Kurdish Women's Movement are pioneering for all women in recent years.

 

In this part of our dossier on the Kurdish Women's Movement's discussions on self-defence, we will discuss the place of self-defence in the Social Contract of Women, morality, culture and reconstruction.

 

Extending the struggle to the vital and social sphere

 

The moral dimension of self-defence, which will gradually extend the line of struggle to vital and social areas, is an area where the most radical cultural and moral change will take place and where women will restructure themselves based on their own will. In this sense, it is important to organise the perspective of struggle into more vital areas and concrete planning based on detailed local problems.

 

With the democratic autonomy project, in which social relations in general, let alone within the family, will be structured on a more libertarian and egalitarian basis, morality is the area where women will assert their own honour and social quality and defend themselves.

 

Social Contract

 

The framework of the Women's Covenant with Society, in essence, reveals the totality of free moral rules.  The struggle against male-dominated approaches that treat women as property, that treat them as property, that find all kinds of rights in themselves, including the right to kill, is within this scope, let alone women's becoming a free decision-making power about their own vital issues, approaches that belittle women, that turn them into sexual objects, that see them as objects of all kinds of exchange, trade or barter. 

 

It is necessary to develop methods and tools such as education, change, persuasion and exposure based on democratisation. If necessary, methods such as isolation, exclusion, not accepting women in the neighbourhood, expelling them from the neighbourhood, including violence, are within the scope of self-defence against all kinds of women's approaches and dispositions that harm social conscience and morality. There is nothing that the state and its institutions can say, impose or demand in this regard. 

 

It is well known that there is nothing the state can say or decide on these issues, and that there is nothing the state can investigate or judge. Although there may be struggles, demands and protests within the framework of democratic law in this direction, they are essentially issues that women can use for their own self-defence.

 

Self-defence as a force for change and reconstruction

 

Women's honour and morality are vital issues and require self-defence. It is an area where women will be the most sensitive and the most organised. While rejecting the current masculine structure, it is important that the main dimension of the struggle is the development of an alternative social understanding of morality based on women in social life. It would be incomplete to deal with self-defence solely on the basis of opposition. It is more accurate to consider self-defence as a force for change and reconstruction.

 

Cultural dimension

 

As one of the main areas of self-defence in women-centred social structuring, it is necessary to address cultural dimensions. Considering the pioneering mission of women as the carrier and sustainer of culture in the preservation of the mother tongue and in the concretisation of the totality of material and spiritual values and in bringing them into a way of life, the importance of women's self-defence in this field is automatically understood. In this sense, the cultural organisation of women means self-defence against the existing policies of cultural genocide.

 

At this point, the struggle against all kinds of assimilation policies and auto-assimilation approaches is possible by insisting on protecting and developing one's mother tongue and one's own culture. It is among the fundamental tasks of social change at this stage that women, with an approach that corresponds to their pioneering mission in this regard, should take the necessary planning and concrete steps to ensure that the social fabric internalises democratic culture, from the education of children with their own identity, to the removal of men from the effects of patriarchal culture, and to the internalisation of democratic culture by being drawn back to a libertarian and egalitarian culture.

 

Making yourself the owner of a meaningful life

 

For this purpose, it is necessary to develop measures for the culturisation of life in a democratic communal quality and to develop self-defence based struggle on a more social basis against all kinds of humiliating, belittling attacks directed against Kurdish culture. Especially at the local level, it is within the scope of self-defence to give meaning to life, to reveal an honourable and self-confident woman's stance against all kinds of humiliation and devaluation, and to will herself as the owner of a life that is meaningful and not ashamed of herself. In particular, it is a fundamental goal for women to take the culture of the agricultural village as a return to the self against the overcrowding in the cities and to bring themselves to modern expression and organisation here.

 

Deepening culture through consciousness

 

In this sense, women have a pioneering role in deepening this culture by moulding it with consciousness and turning it into a widespread life preference. In this sense, the establishment of village women's assemblies is important for Kurdish culture to gain a strong expression and to reveal its self-sufficient life force. In this regard, women's self-defence has to equip itself strongly, from the Return to Village Projects to the raising of the necessary democratic struggle on the legal grounds for its safe implementation.

 

Tomorrow: Legal struggle in self-defence