Women continue their actions in the footsteps of a fighter of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), whose braid was cut off and displayed as “spoils of war” by a mercenary of the so-called Syrian transitional government during the genocidal onslaught on the Kurdish neighborhoods of Aleppo last month. Thousands of women all around the world braided their hair as a symbol and expressed their solidarity with the women fighting in Rojava and their revolution against reactionary forces.
“In Kurdish culture, hair is not a symbol of beauty, but a marker of a woman’s honor and dignity, deeply rooted in songs, poetry, proverbs, and folklore. The forcible cutting of a woman’s hair is a violent assault on her body and an attempt to erase her identity. For this reason, during times of war and chaos, brutal forces deliberately target women’s hair—because such acts fundamentally target women themselves and the society they represent,” said the YPJ Press Center, which also published a video titled “A woman’s dignity, identity and resistance: the braid”.