Dear friends, please don’t write / wish me ‘Happy Women’s Day’

I strongly oppose ritualization of this day.

First of all historically speaking this International Proletarian Women’s Day had started its journey in 1910 as result of the socialist women’s struggle in the Second International to mobilize women for their rights especially the right to vote which signified equal right to representation and political activism.

This sustained struggle forced some of patriarchs of the Social Democratic Parties of Russia and Germany to change their mindset and accept that the struggle for socialism will not be successful without equal participation of women. The concept of class was gendered to some extent which was again reversed Stalinist counter-revolution. These women too form a part of classical Marxism.

So when we reject Marxism by saying that class subsumes gender we are also rejecting the struggle of Clara Zetkin, Emma Ihrer, Louise Zietz, Aleksandra Kollontai, Inessa Armand, Anna Elizarova among many women who have been kept out of the history of socialim

A day has come to remind us again and again that 8^th March has become a symbol of struggle for our [women, LGBTQ, and all forms of marginalized groups] rights everywhere:

• on the streets, at all forms of workplace, factory, fields, educational institutions, home;

• our right to life, work, unionize, safety, mobility in trains, buses , metro and all forms of transport systems;

• our right to protest against representation of women as wombs or an object of sexual gratification or as mothers, wives who do enjoy very little rights,

• our right to raise voices against patriarchy in the family, mass/political organizations;
• our right to combat fundamentalisms and above all the state which protects the dominant political and social forces.

• our right to be vocal against ideology of consumerism nurtured by neo-liberalism;

• our right to oppose hijacking of this day by agents of capital or by the political parties who do not even know the importance of this day.

Soma Marik