antwerpen, the (flemish) women’s day. a heart-warming way to make a very brief visit to vlaanderen, surrounded by a bunch of familiar faces, political companeras and friends. some friends said i look really different these days, some insisted it was the californian influence that made me look mexican… (okay, maybe the rose in my hair played a role in this; and of course women in mexico all wear roses in their hair. i had thought there might have been an opportunity to sing bread and roses during the day, but then i realized i didn’t know all the lyrics…)
and we had quite some work to do – our gebroken wit workshop which developed out of things we learned from the challenging white supremacy sessions with sharon and many other sources. haar antwerpen is screened and sold – pleasurable to feel a material product in hands that now is starting to spread and lead its own life. and i have to participate to the general debate, for nextgenderation of course. (oh god, as the facilitator was increasingly working on my nerves, and curtailing what i felt was an expression of political passion with a flat and annoying “but i thought women would do things differently, less violently”, it slipped out of my mouth: “well there has been no struggle for liberation without violence.” as nadia added afterwards: “it’s merely a sociological observation.”)
what i most enjoyed came after all the work. the beautiful meeting with rauda morcos from ASWAT, a palestinian gay women’s association based in haifa, and hanging out toghether with the Women in Black from leuven who had invited her (leuvense WiB insisting i connect with the bay area WiB; rauda insisting i connect with the bay area network of arab queer women – it seems that every time i leave europe to the US there’s a new set of facilitated contacts… and then we do the little plot to get Aswat T-shirts to friends and to Helem in Beirut). and plenty of laughter in good sweet company at the end of the day with the queer cafe and stand-up comedy, and singing our hearts out and dancing with hilde to beautiful french chansons…
(rauda morcos, photos by lieve snellings)
The two great 18th Century Revolutions which stand at the beginning of Modern Times and the “Rights of Men” (“les Droits de l’Homme”) were violent and connected with (leading to) genocides (American Revolution and the Indians and slavery, French Revolution and the Vendée, la Terreur, even the Napoleonic Wars…). The notion that you can have revolution, or change, or “progress” (whatever that means) in whatever field of human endeavour without violence in its many forms (symbolic, intellectual, but also physical, psychological) is entirely utopian, perhaps even un-human (“spiritual” in the anti-human sense, denying our bodies, our forceful emotions and “animal” drive).
Nearly all women Prime Ministers or women Presidents in recent times have waged wars, sometimes very bloody indeed, sometimes on flimsy grounds (or even unnecessary), sometimes totally justified. “Violence” in this case comes with the function and the level of (macro-)responsibility for a people, a state – not for individual human lives, not even for one’s own child. I believe gender has nothing to do with this occasional use of violence: that is determined by the situation (“doing what the situation requires”).
It has always struck me as somehow significant that the two greatest, most eloquent definitions and defenses of “(political) democracy” were given by capable, intelligent statesmen burying their war dead: Pericles’ eulogy (in the Second Book of Thucydides’ “Peloponnesian War”), and Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Were these people such fools, such monsters?
Sorry, Sarah – these are just some improvised (“random”) thoughts crossing my mind when reading your above comments on your “Antwerpse Vrouwendag” debate. I can vividly imagine you becoming very impatient indeed at such bland clichés…(mine as well as your debate facilitator).