From the “Second Grade Strategy Manual”
Let’s now quote from Gustave:
“We have to focus our reflections on concrete needs we have because, if we don’t clearly name the needs, a specific organization risks becoming a depoliticizing, essentializing and time-consuming space. From the practices of autonomy in feminist movements, we can identify four axes: discursive, personal, organizational, programmatic. These four axes help to better define the needs that our practice will meet in terms of a specific organization.
The discursive axis is about the power of reappropriating language in order to redefine oneself with a non-sexist discourse.
The personal axis comes out of practices in self-awareness or discussion groups, in which participants share personal experiences of everyday sexism or violence in order to develop a common understanding of oppression and create support. The Italian separatist group Rivolta Femminile was in this direction and saw in this practice of sharing as an opportunity to awaken, in women, the self-consciousness necessary to become autonomous political subjects distinct from men. It was also a strategy of Mujeres Libres who used talking circles to “[normalize] women hearing the sound of their own voices in public” so they could gain confidence and participate more fully in political action.
The organizational axis implies organizing politically without cis men to use the absence of sexist behaviors and words to gain more freedom and efficiency in decision-making. The example of the Hyenas in Petticoats, which militated, among other things, against the sexism of the Liberal government’s austerity measures, was in line with this organizational axis: they had determined that feminist demonstrations were less likely to be usurped by a horde of cis men who believed themselves more capable of taking blows in front of the police. In the current context, a smaller group might decide to organize itself in a specific way without cis men, carving out space to acquire the necessary skill for speaking in public and debating with their peers, like in the context of a meeting for example. Back in the larger mixed space, this could weaken the stronghold that cis men usually occupy in political organizations, as well as the power they implicitly tend to hold in these kinds of spaces.
Finally, the programmatic axis is about developing plans for changes in social relations as well as the means to make these changes a reality. The various autonomous structures created by women in the Kurdish liberation movement are good examples of this programmatic axis: the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) were founded in 2013, composed exclusively of armed women fighting against the Syrian forces, Daesh and the fascist Turkish state. The aim of the YPJ is to work for the protection of women. For Kurdish women, there’s not only armed struggle, security patrols and women’s academies, but also a women’s village (Jinwar) and even a television channel. They organize themselves this way to avoid limiting themselves to only demanding equality or an improvement in the status of women, “asking a fundamental question: what would the world be like today if women had not been oppressed?” – hence their strong programmatic character. Women’s autonomy in the Kurdish liberation struggle is seen as a creative force for imagining a world where no one is oppressed. For them, organizing autonomously is an essential practice that allows them to build the confidence and solidarity necessary to destroy the patriarchal structures that are present not only among their enemies but also within their own mixed revolutionary political organizations, in which they are also very active. The women’s struggle is understood as inseparable from the broader struggle for the liberation of the Kurdish people and all oppressed peoples. In our context, from within a larger group, we could decide to organize ourselves specifically without cis men to discuss the dynamics we’re experiencing and find solutions to propose in a unified way to the rest of the mixed group.” [See: “Driving Tractors with your Gal Pals” Specific Organization: how why and to what ends by Gustave]
CES 