International Women’s Day 2013:
Fight for the Liberation of Women
All Around the World
March 10, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
How often do you hear it... when a woman is raped... when a woman is humiliated and disrespected, when a woman is battered or murdered...
“She should have known better.”
Bullshit!
Protest against the oppressive working conditions at Tazreen Fashions garment factory in Bangladesh where 121 garment workers died and at least 200 were injured in a fire, November 2011. Photo: AP
Should have known better than what? Known better than to be born female in a world where rape is epidemic on every continent? Known better than to live in South Africa, where four in every 10 women will be the victims of rape? Or in India, where a 23-year-old student was dragged off a public bus, raped, brutally tortured, and left for dead? Or in the USA, where every 15 seconds a woman is beaten, where every day three to four women are killed by their partners, where one out of four female college students will be raped or sexually assaulted while in college?
Should a young girl “know better” than to live in “the democratic West” where she will be bombarded with images that tell her that her goal in life is to be “sexy” for a man—even before she knows what intimate relationships are all about? Should a high school student in Ohio “know better” than to go to a party where she is drugged and raped and then have that posted on YouTube—like in the old days when the KKK would lynch a Black man and brag about it in the newspapers?
Or, if she’s born in a part of the world controlled by reactionary religious fundamentalists, should she “know better” than to be a young woman driven out of Pakistan for playing sports? Or a girl in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan who wants to learn to read, but can’t go to school because reactionary Islamist forces allied with the U.S. occupiers, or the Taliban, won’t let her leave her house for fear of having acid thrown in her face?
Should a woman have to “know better” than to live in one of the states where a safe, legal abortion is practically unavailable, and women are coerced or forced to bear children against their will?
What kind of fucking world is this where to be a woman is to be insulted, degraded, and physically threatened at every turn? And then to be told all that it is her own fault?
“Know better?!?” Here’s what every woman, and every person, should know and needs to know: This world does not have to be this way! The family and “traditional family values” have been and still are forms through which women are oppressed. Women’s oppression has been essential to the operation of every system of exploitation of the many by the few. But today, there is a basis for humanity to fight its way out of this horrific nightmare and create a world where human beings can rise to their full potential and truly flourish—because of the work and leadership of Bob Avakian.
If you’re not willing to accept this world as it is, you need to be there for the premiere of the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! This film is a “daring, substantive, scientific summoning to revolution.6+ hours that can change how you see the world and what you do with the rest of your life,” as one of the filmmakers put it.
On March 16 in NYC, LA, and Chicago and March 17 in San Francisco: clear the day. Bring along your closest friends, the ones you talk about serious things with—to come together with hundreds of others in theaters across the country to be a part of this. (See information and tickets.)
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New York City garment workers protest the deaths of 146 women in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, March 1911. Photo: AP
International Women’s Day (IWD), March 8, is a revolutionary holiday that came out of the struggle of women—in particular, the struggles of immigrant garment workers in New York City in the early 1900s. In November 1909, tens of thousands of workers, overwhelmingly women, stormed out of the sweatshops and into the streets. In 1910, March 8 was declared International Women’s Day by an international conference of socialists and communists. Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, was among those who voted at this conference to establish this tradition. Since then IWD has been celebrated worldwide by all those fighting for the liberation of women and the emancipation of all humanity.
Red Guard young women hold up Red Books on their way to a rally in Peking, China, 1967. Photo: AP
In the Soviet Union from 1917 to the mid-1950s, and in China from 1949 to 1976, the “wretched of the earth” as they were called rose up in communist revolutions and seized political power. For several precious decades, there were real socialist countries on this planet where women were not sex objects but were taking great steps towards equality and liberation.
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