A-Infos (en) France, OCL leaflet for March 8 - No social revolution without women's liberation - No women's liberation without social revolution! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Having obtained the inclusion of the "freedom" of abortion in the French 
constitution should not make us forget that this year has been a 
difficult year from the point of view of women's rights at the global 
level. Abortion has been called into question in several countries. In 
France, the least we can say is that #metoo has not aroused disapproval 
neither in the established cinema sector, nor from the government (ah! 
The French exception!). These same French authorities who succeeded in 
partially emptying a European law on rape of its meaning. This gives us 
the opportunity to remember that our society is indeed a patriarchal 
society (established domination of men over women). It is the 
reproductive work provided largely by women that produces and trains 
workers (health, education). It is free domestic work that allows 
workers to return to work. It is the lower remuneration of women which 
allows additional profits to be generated. Women workers will never be 
workers like others as long as the sexual division of labor makes 
women's bodies and domestic work available to employers at the same time 
as everyone else's work.

Patriarchy affects all women, all can be exploited, discredited, 
violated, exchanged between families, prostitutes. But a woman can also 
very well hire the arms of another and pay for her services: 
housekeeper, servant, governess, cook. Female bosses do not give gifts 
to their employees of either gender. They even come together in a lobby 
to defend their interests as rich women and break a glass ceiling which 
is far too high for it to concern us, like in the boards of directors of 
large companies. Once a woman has capital, she seeks to make it grow, 
even if it means exploiting other women. Female bosses are bosses like 
any other, even if they are dominated as women, and we are not in the 
same camp.

To bring down this shitty world, and put an end to exploitation in all 
its forms, we must therefore think about patriarchy from a social 
position, the position of those who, with or without work, are 
exploited. ·s, and not get lost in alliances with the bourgeoisie, or 
limit our horizon to the fact that a few of them succeed by standing out 
from the crowd. Any feminist position which does not combat capitalist 
exploitation therefore amounts to maintaining in place a system which 
exploits women and men, which benefits from the free or underpaid work 
of women, and therefore only to negotiate places in the sun for the few 
women wealthy.

Too often, under the cover of intersectionality (interweaving of 
different dominations), struggles against different dominations are 
fragmented into separate groups, all put on an equal footing, and linked 
to identities that must be defended, whether gender, "race", disability, 
sexual orientation, transidentity, religion... The words of the group 
perceived as dominated would have more value than those of others, seen 
at best as allies, at worst as enemies. (potential) enemies because of 
their skin color ("whites"), the supposed adequacy between sex and 
gender ("cis") or their validity. The only implied perspective of 
emancipation then rests on the shoulders of each individual, who should 
deconstruct their supposed privileges and use the "right" vocabulary so 
as not to offend a category. The prospect of a common struggle of all 
the exploited sharing a common interest (putting an end to this shitty 
world) is being erased in favor of the demand for recognition and 
integration of particular groups.

It is not a question of denying the discrimination existing within the 
working classes, nor of postponing the struggle against them 
indefinitely. On the contrary, these questions must be asked and 
debated, everyone together, on an equal basis, because building a new 
society implies building in the struggle the egalitarian relationships 
that we wish to see happen. The supposed "race" or religion endorses, 
like boundaries, domination, exclusion, authority both within and 
between these groups. At a time when the powerful seek to divert social 
anger towards scapegoats, it is on the contrary the equality of all and 
the solidarity between all that we must affirm, and certainly not the 
identities which we separate from each other.

A lively debate within feminism concerns whether or not it is possible 
to identify individually with one gender or the other, as is now the 
case in the United Kingdom or Spain. However, the fact of being able to 
choose which gender one belongs amounts to denying an inequality which 
is measured and constructed from a biological fact (being born a woman 
or a man). Feminist struggles have, on the contrary, always affirmed 
that the construction of gender (previously called social sex) was based 
on social relationships maintained by the State, by the economy, by 
material power structures (family, school, business, medicine, social 
services, law) and ideological (maternity, inferiorization), which 
cannot be destroyed by an individual change of identity. Abolishing 
social differences between men and women, and therefore abolishing 
sexual violence, material inequalities, etc. can only be done by 
identifying these structures and fighting against them.

Men all benefit materially from patriarchy (access to women's bodies, 
freed up time, etc.), but it would be wrong to only present them as a 
homogeneous class of enemies. The nuisance power of a bourgeois is 
multiplied by his resources, his influence, his impunity. Moreover, the 
other side of the coin, virility, is a scourge that men have every 
interest in getting rid of. What man has not suffered from the 
imperative of being strong, insensitive, efficient (in all areas), of 
having to impose himself in order to exist? Education of girls AND boys, 
for free and human relations between women and men!
Class struggle feminism is not an abstraction
Women's liberation is not some great distant principle. It is being 
built today. All at the same time by supporting the workers in struggle, 
omnipresent in the "care" professions (and elsewhere: cleaning, health, 
education), by participating in the struggles (local hospitals, 
sexuality education, free and free abortion, groups of material and 
moral mutual aid...) which allow women to control their bodies and their 
sexuality - and by fighting for better income for all.

Patriarchy is shit.
Capitalism is all the same.
Two birds with one stone: revolution!

OCL Île-de-France Group

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4096
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