On the Santa Barbara Mass Killings:

How Long Will Women Face Violence, Terror, Rape and Oppression?

Until We Make REVOLUTION, NOTHING LESS!

by Sunsara Taylor | May 28, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

The mass murder carried out on May 23 in Santa Barbara by a young man who professed profound hatred of women—and who released a manifesto which revealed years of cultivated resentment, score-keeping against women for living lives that did not reduce to sexually servicing him, “loving” him, and hanging on his arm in a way that elevated his “status” as a man—poses these questions:

How long must women live with the fear of violence at the hands of men who are trained by society to hate them, to feel entitled to their bodies, to view women not as human but as things who exist to sexually and emotionally service them or bear their children?

How long will young women in “the West” face the likelihood of rape while in college while girls in Nigeria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere face the terror of death, abduction, or acid-attacks simply for going to school?

How much longer will we tolerate a society where every 15 seconds a woman is beaten, where every day three to four women are killed by their male partners, and where—on top of all this—the jails and prisons are then filled with the women who have dared to defend themselves against this abuse?

How long will we tolerate a culture which mainstreams violent and vicious pornography that trains millions and millions of men to see women's degradation, torture, and humiliation as “sexy”?

How many more girls and very young women will be kidnapped or tricked, sold by starving families or drugged and beaten into sexual slavery in every part of the world including here, where the average age of entry into prostitution is 12?

How long will women's lives be foreclosed by forced motherhood because they are unable to access safe, affordable, and unstigmatized birth control and abortion—rights which are under vicious and escalating assault in every part of this country right now as you read?

And how long will we be fed the bullshit LIE that women have “achieved their equality,” that all that is left is for individual women to “empower themselves” within this landscape of abuse and degradation?

The answer is simple: UNTIL WE MAKE REVOLUTION!

All this violence and terror against women is NOT “human nature.” It is the system that rules over the people. Today, this system is capitalism-imperialism, and in every part of the world the workings of this system are intensifying the vicious and cruel oppression and exploitation of women.

It is possible to end all this terror and oppression, but not without ending that system. NOT WITHOUT REVOLUTION—GENUINE, ALL-THE-WAY COMMUNIST REVOLUTION.

Through revolution, we can end once and for all the millennia of women being terrorized, abused, degraded and oppressed. Through revolution, we can get rid of the deep divisions in society that give rise to and require the oppression of women by men. Through revolution, when the time is right—and as a key part of what revolution actually means—the people can and must defeat and dismantle the state which rules over us and enforces all this oppression, and whose military and police forces actually concentrate this hatred of women. With a new revolutionary state power, a new form of rule that puts the needs of the people and the fight to dig up all forms of oppression and exploitation first, we can fully unleash and give backing to the pent-up fury of women at thousands of years of tradition's chains as a mighty force in achieving the full emancipation of all humanity.

This revolution is possible. This revolution is urgent. And the leadership and understanding for this revolution exists in Bob Avakian (BA) and the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. As concentrated in a just-released compendium, Break ALL the Chains! Bob Avakian on the Emancipation of Women and the Communist Revolution, and in A Declaration: For Women's Liberation and the Emancipation of All Humanity, the vision and strategy for this revolution have been forged, and movement for this revolution IS being built. Get into this deeply and with urgency, and be part of spreading it.

At the same time, as part of hastening the development of such a revolution and preparing people to seize on it and take it all the way—OR even if you are not yet convinced of the need for such a revolution—join in the fight today to stand up against and shake off the ways this system puts on us. Refuse to stay silent or go along. Link up with the movement to End Pornography and Patriarchy: the Enslavement and Degradation of Women, becoming part of the fight right now to defeat this war on women and forging a spreading culture and community of revolt and liberation up against all the woman-hating that is so prevalent.

Answer the call of the future by stepping to the front lines of the fight to #BreakALLtheChains.

As BA has said over many years:

You cannot break all the chains, except one. You cannot say you want to be free of exploitation and oppression, except you want to keep the oppression of women by men. You can’t say you want to liberate humanity yet keep one half of the people enslaved to the other half. The oppression of women is completely bound up with the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited, and the ending of all such conditions is impossible without the complete liberation of women. All this is why women have a tremendous role to play not only in making revolution but in making sure there is all-the-way revolution. The fury of women can and must be fully unleashed as a mighty force for proletarian revolution.

BAsics 3:22

 

Volunteers Needed... for revcom.us and Revolution

Send us your comments.

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