Women discuss 'self-defense' and 'jineology'
MARDÎN (DİHA) – Women's studies and women's work were on the agenda in Nusaybin during the afternoon panels of the World March of Women (WMW) yesterday.
Activists and professors held two simultaneous panels on self-defense, science, feminism and jineolojî (women's studies in the Kurdish movement) and women's labor and violence against women in Nusaybin, where the WMW has kicked off its fourth international action to honor the Rojava women's revolution. In a panel on women's labor in connection to violence against women, Congress of Free Women (KJA) activist Gülistan Balkaş moderated a panel of fellow KJA member Mukaddes Alataş, WMW Brazil Organization member Mariana Paes, WMW Portugal Organization member Vania Martins and Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK) Women's Secretary Gülistan Atasoy.
Mukadess Alataş explained the struggle of the KJA over the years to form women's information centers, which existed consistently only in Kurdistan, thanks to the push there for local grassroots administration. She explained that the KJA is now a main resource for women looking for support in the case of violence against women. In Turkey, laws focusing on violence against women exist, but are not enforced.
Mariana Paes discussed the defenseless position of women in Brazil, where men are perceived as the money-earners. There was a disconnect between social life and perceptions of it, she said. "Women work both in the home and outside of it. Thus they have issues with education. In Brazil, violence against women takes place mostly in the home, including rape." She said that more than half of the poor in Brazil were women.
Vania Martins said that 3% of people in Europe still see violence against women as legitimate. She said that women's shelters were extremely insufficient in Europe. "Now services for women affected by domestic violence are being privatized. This means that the circle of money is going to get worse and migrant women exposed to violence will have to pay 830 liras to be protected, or otherwise be deported." She said that women in Portugal were working to fight against this situation.
Gülistan Atasoy said that patriarchy predated capitalism. Capitalism had commodified women and used them as a cheap source of labor, said Gülistan. Capitalist modernity had founded itself on conservatism, invisibilizing women and a sexist divison of labor, she said. "We're not visible in economic life, but what we need to do is think about a communal economy," she said. She explained a project the KJA has been working on in Nusaybin. "Women seasonal workers in Nusaybin will be placing white roses on the border fence, instead of mines. Their slogan will be 'we won't grow death, but peace.'"
The panel on self-defense, science and jineolojî brought together biologist Necla Köroğlu, Yeter Barba (an activist from the Young Women's Assembly) and Democratic Regions Party (DBP) Local Administration Committee member Çimen Işık for a discussion moderate by Figen Aras, an activist working on the jineolojî project. Figen explained the foundation of the study of jineolojî. She explained the etymological link between the terms for "woman" (jin) and "life" (jiyan) in Kurdish, but said that rape culture and the imprisonment of women in the home had disrupted the primeval link between women and their natural state thriving in nature.
"Thousands lost their lives to prove that Kurds exist. Now it's proven," she said, referring to the long Kurdish freedom struggle. Now it was time for women to recognize their own culture. Yeter Barba said the politics of massacring women and portraying them as evil and corrupting in the Middle East had emerged to repress women's power of self-defense, a concept key to jineolojî. But women in Turkey, seeing that in their country femicide continued (as in the case of Özgecan Aslan, raped and burned alive) while in Rojava the YPJ defended themselves against Daesh, had begun to rebel against their lack of right to life. She mentioned the Arîn Mîrxan women's self-defense teams formed in Amed to fight back against rapists, harassers and murderers.
Biologist Necla Köroğlu described the two years of her attendance in jineolojî workshops, grassroots all-women educational initiatives. She said that science itself was a tool of the reigning powers, used for profit. Against this, women were pushing back by forming grassroots educational initiatives, she said. Çimen Işık tied the speakers together by explaining that the concept of jineolojî was based on ignoring feminism, a concept that emerged from the existing state mindset. Now, she said, through the work of the speakers and many others involved in grassroots debate, jineolojî was emerging as its own branch of knowledge.
(cm/nt)
