Within debates on the struggle for women’s freedom, the perspective developed by Leader Apo is becoming increasingly central from the standpoint of feminist theory. Ecofeminist Prof. Laura Corradi noted that in both Abdullah Öcalan’s work before prison and in the texts he wrote under more than a quarter-century of isolation, he placed women’s freedom at the center of social analysis. Stating that through these texts Öcalan exposed the historical roots of women’s enslavement and developed an approach that places women’s freedom at the start of the revolutionary process, Laura Corradi emphasized that this stance removes women’s issue from being a deferrable topic and makes it the determining ground of all struggles for social freedom.
Linking the Kurdish women’s movement’s leading position today in the global women’s struggle to the transformation created by this paradigm, Laura Corradi said that the concepts of “self-defense,” “self-organization,” and “free life” offer a social framework beyond narrow military or defensive meanings, enabling women to rebuild trust among one another. Recalling that patriarchy and colonialism have historically set women against each other, Laura Corradi pointed out that the practices developed by the Kurdish women’s movement therefore provide extremely important guidance for feminist theory.
We spoke with Laura Corradi about women’s freedom, violence against women, and the women’s freedom paradigm developed by Öcalan.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25 was established following the assassination of the Mirabal Sisters. Since its inception, what changes have you observed in the women’s movement? How do you assess this process from an ecofeminist perspective?
Thank you for this question, Serkan. Well, since we are mobilizing for November 25th as Day of the Elimination of Violence Against Women, there is more consciousness about violence against women. However, the situation of violence against women has not changed, has not changed so much.
So we still have a lot of violence, domestic violence, sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence. So, and there is a lot, especially in my country, a lot of femicide, killing of women when they want to divorce or when after they have obtained, obtained divorce, or even if they are fiancé and they decide to finish, to terminate the relation with their boyfriend, many girls, also young girls, are killed by the former fiancé, by the former boyfriend. So nothing has really changed.
Actually, someone believes that we are having even more femicide than in the past. For sure, we know more about femicide than the past. In the past, they were, they were hidden so that they were saying, you know, the woman committed suicide or, you know, it was an accident or… So we have more consciousness now about this phenomenon, but someone believes that the phenomenon is actually increasing because women are more independent and men don’t respect this independence.
So men are in a strong, difficult moment and they react with violence, with using their physical force against women. And also women’s freedom is seen as women availability, sexual availability, which is not true. Women freedom is not about being available to men.
So, a lot of sexual violence against women happens because men don’t understand that they need consent. They need consent to start having intimate relationships with women. So I saw changes.
Politically, there is more attention in the movement, but still in every situation, political situation, social situation, on the workplace, in school, everywhere, women are under threat of violence. How do I assess the process from an eco-feminist perspective? Actually, as an eco-feminist, I see the environment also as a psycho-social environment. So we need to change the relationships, the gender relationships among men, women, and all those who don’t recognize themselves as men or women.
We need to change this binary opposition between men and women, and also we need to start changing the environment where women are seen as prey, where they’re seen as somebody that needs to be conquered, as the object of a triumph of masculinity. So as an eco-feminist, I think we need to change relationships, starting from the environment in which these relationships happen.
How are the increasing wars, militarism, and ecological destruction around the world deepening violence against women?”
Well, actually, when there is a war, the violence against women increases. All types of violence, but especially violence against women increase. And in a crisis, in a social crisis, where we are witnessing ecological disasters which are man-made, women are those who pay the highest price. During wars, women are raped.
There is a threshold of tolerance of violence, which becomes very low. So everybody can do more violence, because during a war, which is men killing men, women, and children, during a war, women also suffer more femicide, more physical, sexual, domestic violence. They have less resources, because more resources are put into the army, are put into militarism, are put into weapons.
And the environment is sacrificed. And there are so many illnesses that are related to bombs, chemical weapons, and all types of nuclear weapons, etc. So more militarism, more war, means also more ecological destruction, less food, less health, and more violence on women. These phenomena are all interrelated.
“What are the ‘new forms’ of violence women face today? How do you interpret concepts such as digital violence, economic violence, and ecological violence?”
In gender studies and intersectional methodology, we look at four types of violence. The first being sexual violence.
The second is physical violence, women’s battering. The third is psychological violence, which is always implied in the first two, physical and sexual. And the fourth type of violence is economic violence, because men keep the money for themselves, and they don’t want women to share the responsibility of budget, right? And very often women are deprived, even of menstrual tampons, and pads, and medicines, and other items that women need to use.
So there is also economic violence. And typically we study these four types. But in my research, I found another type of violence, which is symbolic violence. When I looked in my research into advertisements, I saw that women’s bodies are improperly used. Women’s bodies are used to getting attention. So, lips, eyes, breasts, the pubic area, legs, you know, all pieces of a female body are used to attract consumers for any type of commodity, perfumes, detergent, whatever it is, even cars, even tourist operators, tourism operators, whatever it is, they use female bodies to attract the attention.
And this is a form of symbolic violence. Symbolic violence, because also little girls’ bodies are used for publicity, and little girls are sexualized to become more attractive for the men’s gaze. And this is very dangerous for little girls and for women, because this use is enforced, and men get used to seeing women in pieces and specific parts of the female body, and to not take care of the minds and the souls of women.
So the women’s body is used in a way that perpetrates symbolic violence against women, and I could demonstrate it in my research.
In various statements, you have referred to Abdullah Öcalan’s analyses on women’s freedom. How do you assess his paradigm of women’s liberation, and what is its significance in the context of feminist theory?”
Well, the work, the writings of Abdullah Öcalan before prison, like Costina Zilano, for example, and during these 25 years and more of prison and isolation, he gave really an important contribution to analyze women’s slavery, where it comes from, why, you know, at a certain point of history, women have been enslaved. And his theory for the sociology of freedom includes women’s freedom as the first point.
While most revolutionaries have placed women’s freedom at the end of a revolutionary process, Abdullah Öcalan sees the freedom of women in the beginning of a revolutionary process. Many revolutions have said, first, we change class domination or race domination, and then we’ll deal with the gender issues. And Abdullah Öcalan made it very clear, looking at history, made very clear how this is the first problem that needs to be solved, while solving all the other problems.
And this is very much intersectional, so he is not looking only at class oppression or ethnicity and racial oppression, he’s not looking only at women’s oppression, he’s looking at all the oppression in an intersectional way. And it is really amazing that from prison, he could reach such a point of sophisticated analysis and political theory to achieve women’s freedom and everybody’s freedom, which cannot be achieved without women’s freedom. So, in the context of feminist theory, he gave a so many important contribution, and we need to thank him for this.
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