DicleArya/JINHA

BEHDINAN –AytenDersim, member of the coordinating body of the Communities of Women of Kurdistan (KomalênJinên Kurdistan or KJK), says that women must continue the struggle for freedom on March 8, International Working Women's Day, and beyond.

At the turn of the 19^th century, American women workers in the garment industry launched their struggle against abysmal working conditions—including 16-hour working days and the neglect that would later lead to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 129 women were burned alive. The workerswent on strike on March 8, 1857 for improved working conditions and women's equality, although police brutally repressed the strike. In 1910, women led by German socialist Clara Zetkindeclared March 8 International Working Women's Day in honor of this struggle.

In an interview in Behdinan, AytenDersim said that as we approach this International Women's Day,we see state terror, rape and harassment of women everywhere—for example, in the fascism of Daesh, which is targeted especially at women. Ayten stressed that this terror against women is not a coincidence and is not spontaneous; it comes at a time of a peak in the struggle of women and especially Kurdish women against patriarchy and the state.

Ayten said that no jail sentence or execution of rapists and murders would change the femicidal mindset of rape culture. She criticized discussions that posed rape and femicide as exceptional. On the contrary, she said, increases in these crimes were related to the fundamental character of the state. The state attempts to take control of women by intentionally leaving them undefended and condemning them to violence.

"The state's very existence is denial, assimilation, destruction and elimination—and it is especially pitiless and cruel towards women," said Ayten. "Against the dominant male mindset, what we as women must see as singular and indispensable is organization and struggle. And our must fundamental struggle must be for self-defense, because those who are left most undefended in society are always women and children."

But no creature in the world is totally defenseless, she said. Even the rose defends itself. Theunwritten history of struggle against the patriarchal state stretches back for hundreds of years, the KJK member explained. It is a history with thousands of heroes, even if the state attempts to suppress and deny their struggle for existence. This history stretched from Clara Zetkin to Sara (code name of assassinated Kurdish militant and activist SakineCansız) to the YPJ fighters at the front of the struggle today.

"On the eve of March 8, we have to bring to the present day more organization, more freedom and a consciousness of struggle. What we can contribute to our willpower and our consciousness is the pride and honor of being a women, the consciousness of our history, and a correct understanding of our origins," said Ayten. "Wherever we are in the world, let's organize as women locked tight together in our shared struggle."

Ayten explained that women were struggling to build a democratic communal society that could overcome the hegemonic state mindset. "More democracy, less state power" was the formula for this struggle of self-organization, she said.

"As women, we must struggle under the principle of 'know thyself' until we have secured our freedom," she said. "In the Middle East and the world, women's movements, individuals and institutions need to form a system of democratic confederacy; an unsystematic struggle is like beating your head against a wall. This is why we need to turn every day into March 8 to guarantee our freedom. Our social existence, our womanhood, our struggle—this will be our freedom.

"Our rallying cry must be 'either freedom… or freedom,'" she concluded.

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