The history of the women’s movement as we know it stretches back over a century. Where there is oppression, there has always been resistance – and though their names often fall outside the confines of history women too have always resisted, laid claim to their own lives. Today, as thousands of women right here and millions of women all over the world, we stop, stand, and take note. What we see all around are the desperate thrashes of misogyny, racism and fascism. We are face to face with a system that is seeking out ways of exploiting our labour, sexuality and bodies by placing the burden of all the care work in the world upon our shoulders, trying to control our fertility, forcing us to live under conditions of inequality both materially and immaterially, acting as if there’s but one sexual orientation and two gender identities in existence, subjecting us to violence so as to “bring us into line”, sexually harassing and abusing children, handing our lives over to patriarchal and religious institutions, first drawing borders/boundaries then deciding when violations of these are to be considered legitimate, and resorting to weapons whenever unable to establish its dominance. The system in question is a patriarchal system which excludes women from decision-making mechanisms and imposes upon us a life that is not of our own choice.
Saying we’ve had enough is beyond redundant. It’s been ‘enough’ for quite a long time now. In fact, it’s been enough since the very beginning. We have not gathered here today to call upon this system, but rather because we are proposing a path against it. Through feminism, we are resisting, struggling and rising up against this order, which has been trying to tame us using fear, violence, war, sweet words, the ‘family myth’, and much else. We started out by dreaming of another world; and we know that building this world is only possible together, with solidarity. So we say: Long live feminism, long live our feminist struggle!