From a reader:

Women Are NOT Bitches, Ho's, Sex Toys, or Punching Bags... Women Are Half of Humanity

March 24, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On March 7 and 8 we took International Women's Day boldly and defiantly into the hood, aiming to unleash the anger beneath the surface at women's oppression and to take on the controversy over abortion. We put up the bright orange "Abortion on Demand and Without Apology" signs; a big banner showing that "A Fetus is NOT a Baby" and a collage of signs of the "Did You Know" facts from the IWD issue of Revolution newspaper. An agitator spoke sharply to the horrors of what it means to be a female on this planet, and brought out women's fundamental right to abortion, because "Forced motherhood is female enslavement."

This elicited broad and deep anger and concern over women's oppression, from men and women, old and young. People don't normally see women's oppression as a global and social problem; they don't know that one billion women worldwide are raped, that clinics are closed or that abortion doctors have been murdered. The reality shocked and angered them. At the same time the degradation and suffering women experience every day in every neighborhood, the personal experience of rape, abuse, or of having an abortion, is kept personal—discussed in private, behind closed doors, or in whispers, if at all. We brought it all right out on front street, abortion as a right to be fought for, not "murder" or something to be ashamed of, and fought for people to understand the scientific basis for this. We called on people to take a stand against the enslavement and degradation of women—as part of the fight for the liberation of women all over the world, and for the emancipation of humanity. It was like opening a door for people to express their anger, their experience of oppression, their disgust at the vilification of women, and to feel joy in opposing it.

Signs made by the Revolution Club of the "Did You Know..." facts of women's global oppression from the IWD issue of Revolution were an important element. One "Did You Know" sign said, "One in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime—that is one billion women. A girl born in South Africa is more likely to be raped during her lifetime than to learn how to read." The club made signs for most of the "Did You Know" facts cited in the paper and added one more: "Women Are Not Bitches, Ho's or Sex Toys. Women Are Half of Humanity!" The next day we added "or punching bags" after getting feedback from another person in the Revolution Club. Another sign was "When women are held down, all of humanity is held back," and speaking to this was part of all the agitation done during the weekend.

The "Women Are Not Bitches, Ho's, Sex Toys or Punching Bags" sign drew a particularly strong response in the hood. A middle-aged Black woman who came up to see what was happening while we were making this sign immediately approved. She clearly was very angry at this and had experienced a lot of it, but she told us she responds to it with "ju-jitsu," saying, "How nice.  Who taught you to say that—your mom?" The next day, two of us were walking down a street in the neighborhood carrying this same sign. A woman walking ahead of us read it, loudly and joyfully agreed, and ran up to give us a $10 donation.

At a local high school, we posted up the signs, Revolution newspapers, stickers, and palm cards of the BAsics 3:22 quote.¹ On hearing the agitation, many students reached out to grab the palm cards. Students responded right away to the "Women Are Not Bitches, Ho's..." sign and many others stopped to read the "Did You Know" signs. They didn't know that the average age when females enter into prostitution or pornography in the U.S. is 12. They didn't know that one in three women on the planet will be raped in her lifetime. We heard "Damn!" "That's fucked up!" as students saw the reality. As one of our crew held a sign and stopped people to read it, another held a pile of stickers and we explained to students that wearing these stickers is a way to be able to do something about all this right now, because it takes a stand and shows that to other people. Stickers went on backpacks, T-shirts, and into people's hands as a way to take a stand against this. Two young men put a sticker on a skateboard, "Create a world without rape." "You guys are right," one of them told us. "Everybody knows what goes on at this school but nobody says anything about it." He said that one of the teachers had asked a class if men and women are equal and most of the students, women and men, had said no. When we said that youth get this from the putrid culture, they agreed, and asked if we'd heard "THOT," a new degrading term for women. They took more stickers to put up as way to oppose this.

Later someone else hipped us to THOT, an acronym for "that ho over there," which is used in extremely misogynist lyrics and Internet posts. In different ways people sickened by a culture that causes and justifies women's oppression welcomed the opportunity to call out and oppose it. An older man, seeing our signs, voiced his disgust: "These days women are treated worse than animals!"

At a busy intersection near the school, we set up displays of banners and signs and chalked on the sidewalk, "I'm standing up to stop the war on women because..." People could chalk in their reason why. A teenager told a Revolution Club member that she had been raped. After encouraging her to chalk something, she wrote, "Due to rape I am standing strong 4 others." Another woman wrote, "No More." Two women in their 20s stopped to read the chalking and asked how old the youth was who had been raped. The answer—15 years old—made them furious; their faces and their whole demeanor changed. "I'm gonna be there with you guys," one said. This intersection is a crossroads for the Black community; many bus riders and car drivers, women and men, bought the IWD issue. The "Women Are Not Bitches or Ho's..." sign drew a lot of attention; one woman took a picture and many Black women nodded emphatically—that's right!

On IWD itself we set up at a major intersection in the Black community where we have a regular presence. The agitation and the collage of signs and posters tapped into anger that's normally suppressed. Things opened up. The faces of women waiting for the bus, usually worn down by the daily grind, started to light up, and both women and men stopped to engage, get Revolution newspaper, and take stickers and fliers, including the RCP Statement for International Women's Day. A bus driver hearing the agitation put his fist in the air and took stickers when one of the revolutionaries ran onto the bus to get them to him.

We put up the big "A Fetus Is NOT a Baby" banner right behind the bus stop where everybody would see it. An agitator spoke to Abortion on Demand and Without Apology, explaining that Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement. Discussion and controversy on abortion burgeoned on the corner. A young woman whispered to a revolutionary, "I've had two abortions." The revolutionary responded, "I've had two abortions, this is something we need to start saying out loud." She said we shouldn't apologize for abortion and brought the young woman over to the "A Fetus Is NOT a Baby" banner, explaining the science behind abortion, and that women are not incubators. "Nobody talks about this," the young woman said. "I'm really glad you guys are out here because more young women need to hear this."

Another woman told us she'd had 10 abortions. She supports women's right to choose, but also regrets having "used abortion as birth control" because she said it resulted in no longer being able to have kids. She explained how she already had a child with special needs and at the time she couldn't have handled another kid. We looked at the "A Fetus Is NOT a Baby" display. On one level, she knew the truth of this already. But she blamed herself for now not being able to have children. We told her this is nothing to blame herself for, and that were abortions, birth control, and women's sexuality not stigmatized, things would be much different. She then opened up about some of the medical complications that were part of the mix of why she can no longer have kids.

People engaged in conversation and controversy about abortion from different angles. We talked with many people who are pro-choice for various reasons—because it's a woman's decision, or because a woman shouldn't have a baby if she's not ready and able to take care of it—otherwise the kids just end up in poverty. A Black woman said, "Who are they to say you can have an abortion or not? Are they going to take care of the child?" We talked with people who think abortion should be available for women who are raped, but not 'on demand.'  People didn't have a deep understanding of the scientific basis for abortion but many, men and women, were open to discussing and debating the question—why a fetus is not a baby—for the first time. We brought out that fetuses aren't babies until they can breathe on their own, independent of the woman. While they're in the womb, they are a subordinate part of the woman's body. Of the people we talked with, Black women were about evenly divided on abortion, among Latinas, a majority were against.

A Chicana who was pregnant and had two toddlers felt very strongly that abortion was wrong, that it was murder, but after some back and forth using science, she wanted the Revolution newspaper to read more about a scientific approach to abortion.

A middle-aged man, very religious, bought the paper and said he opposes how badly women are treated, he opposes pornography, but doesn't support abortion—but he had to think about the effect of forced motherhood on women and why Christian anti-abortion groups also oppose birth control.

Here again there was broad and deep concern over the oppression of women and shock at the reality of the society-wide and global war on women. Two men bought the paper because they had no idea that 97 percent of rural counties in the U.S. have no abortion clinics. An older woman in a wheelchair said, "These young women don't dream any more." She rides the bus all the time and hears young women talking only about how to get their baby daddies; not about what they want to do with their lives. She said she tries to tell them to go back to school.

A Black man in his late 20s or early 30s stopped in response to "Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement." "I just saw 12 Years a Slave this morning," he said. "When you see the truth about one thing, it makes other things come together." He said making revolution will be hard, because people think a lot of wrong things; we talked about the strategy for making revolution, and the need to change people's thinking. He took stickers to put up as part of that and promised to go to revcom.us to read the interview with Carl Dix, and a little while later came back through with a few dollars to put in the donation jar on the table.

The Party's IWD statement got out to many, and we talked with people about where the oppression of women comes from and why and how we can uproot this through revolution. We discussed with people the changes for women in revolutionary Russia and China. A tattooed Latina cited example after example of women's oppression, from how she is treated at work to young women being sold into sex slavery—for each example posing why? Why do they do this? A revolutionary ran to get her the Party statement before she jumped on the bus. In other conversations we contrasted the condition of women in pre-revolutionary China, hobbled by bound feet and treated as domestic slaves, with the soaring images of women fighters in the revolutionary ballets, and the changed status of women overall during that time, in order to show that it doesn't have to be this way, women's situation has been transformed before, and can be again.

We encountered some misogyny and blaming women for their own oppression. A young Black man felt that women should be able to have abortions if they're raped but that otherwise women need to take responsibility not to need abortions—in other words, keep their legs closed, not drink that much, etc. When we asked him what the difference was between his putting the blame on women and how Black youth like Trayvon are blamed for their own oppression, he had to stop and think about it. Some guys near the lively scene on IWD asserted that "men get raped by women." When we said, maybe, but certainly not 1 in 3 men will be raped, they walked away.
We challenged people to take and put on stickers as a way to act against women's oppression, and many did. "If you can't imagine sex without porn, you're fucked!" made people laugh, but when they got what it meant, they were serious. "Abortion on Demand and Without Apology," "Imagine/Create a World Without Rape" went into people's hands and onto their T-shirts and backpacks. A group of three young women took palm cards of BAsics 3:22 and put all three stickers on their clothes right away, turning themselves into a walking celebration of International Women's Day.

It was striking how eager people were to engage, how much they had to say, from different angles, about women's oppression, how open they were to discussing "A Fetus Is NOT a Baby" even when they disagreed with it, and how much people wanted to understand where this comes from and what to do about it. A sense of joy at getting into these questions, affirming and taking a stand for the humanity and value of women, came alive together with the anger at how women are treated. All in all, IWD in the hood this year gave us a deeper appreciation of the need and potential for the liberation of women to be a motive force in the movement for revolution and the emancipation of humanity.

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.