CGT manifesto against sexist violence.
25 of November 2015: International Day against sexist violence

Statement from the Permanent Secretariat of the CGT Catalunya and Libertarian Women
CGT manifesto against sexist violence. 25 of November 2015: International Day against sexist violence

As every year, the day 25 November we remember that we are doing a macabre count: every month, o every week, a woman is murdered with the complicity of the macho state. Each 25 November we remember that it is not only about murders, that we do not lose our lives, that they kill us for being women, due to the fact that they are potential possessions, potential victims, potential beings to control and attack. Each 25 November we tried to highlight that it is not just about talking about the women who unfortunately died, It's about thinking that this is just the tip of the iceberg. Could we count the harassed women, insulted, humiliated, mistreated, attacked on a daily basis? We can, well, to measure to what extent we are forced to live, in our relationships, spaces and times, in constant individual and collective aggression?

Each 25 of November we have to remember and remind ourselves that sexist violence is not a casual and anecdotal issue, They are a systemic and political issue because we are talking about much more than abuses, We are talking about the systematic attempt to subject women to vertical relationships and power., submit to patriarchal authority, to patrilineal and obligatorily heterosexual and married life. The constant trickle of murdered women should not be normal, but unfortunately this situation is naturalized as if it were an almost inevitable evil. And this is a superficial way of treating the situation that empties it of all political content and that condemns us women to not give a good definition to what it is so necessary for us to say by name..

How each 25 of November, We have to highlight that the patriarchal gaze continues to flood public discourses in each and every one of the murders.. So, The media continues to talk about women who die at the hands of their partners or ex-partners, and in this way they tiptoe over reality. And we don't die, they kill us. Decaffeinating this fact is, even if it is by omission, hide that what is happening is that the patriarchy dominates and murders.

We continue explaining each 25 November that the administrations and the circuit and institutional resources aimed at the prevention and treatment of sexist violence are scarce and cut-outs, because surely they are not important. They are insufficient. And what is worse is that women are not informed of the rights they have at all points of the intervention circuit., It is not made from the point of view of an abused woman and, what's more, It is not designed to be empathetic and understand the psychological process that an abused or raped woman goes through.. It's not enough to say “you have to report”. So, the few patches that are made, they are done wrong, because violence begins before birth, why, as we said and we will not stop repeating, This is a political and systemic issue..

Only by establishing mutual support between women and creating circuits and protocols from a feminist point of view can we give ourselves the necessary empowerment to all of us who find ourselves in situations of aggression and violence.. It is precisely us women who have to act as necessary agents in the fight against gender violence., defining the parameters of prevention and the tools and responses that must be used and given.

In our hands we have a wide range. From the local improvement of prevention and intervention circuits in cases of gender violence, from the fight for the remunicipalization of services that are now in private hands, from accompaniment to harassed and abused women, from local and neighborhood groups of feminist promotion and awareness against gender violence, from all these tools, both formal and informal, to the tools of self-defense and the promotion of new ways of relating. Self-defense beyond the physical, focused on women as a group that can be empowered, but also that it can be organized to respond to attacks and to propose new ways of doing and dealing with cases of gender violence.. A self-defense based on reflection and explanation but also on action, this capacity for action that has been usurped from us and that is part of the political action of those who suffer situations of oppression.

It is 25 of November, we choose where we look, where do we put the focus, in the things that the patriarchy does not do for us, in the things that the patriarchy does to keep us in our politically correct place, or let's focus on ourselves and everything we can do, the tools we can use. We have all the possible tools in our hands, We have within our reach the ability to organize ourselves beyond the parameters that set us, and we have the ability to self-manage everything that has been taken from us. So that, It is 25 November we cannot do anything other than make very clear what our response is to sexist violence: organize ourselves, empower us, self-manage, explain and above all act. Because they don't kill us, they murder us: against patriarchy feminist direct action!

Barcelona, a 10 November 2015

Permanent Secretariat of the Confederal Committee of CGT Catalunya
Libertarian women of the CGT

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