Recording #2… check out Pinay Sa Seattle’s workshop “100 Years of Feminist Politics and Our Bodies” facilitated at Break the Silence’s 2010 Creative Resistance conference.
PART 1:
PART 2:
Check out photos from the workshop here (many thanks to the lovely Nicole Kandi for taking photos!)
Workshop description:
March 8, 2010 will mark the centennial of the working class women’s struggle for equity and emancipation from imperialism, feudalism and patriarchy. Since the early 1900’s women have been campaigning for change during a time of great expansion in the booming industrialized world. Millions of women have paved the way for the women’s liberation movement worldwide demanding for better working wages, shorter working hours and voting rights. Women have fought long and hard to protect their families and communities, but in times of economic hardship and wars of aggression, women are often the most impacted.
Post modern and western feminist ideals often neglect to connect the struggle of women to the overall working class people’s struggle against imperialism, the real enemy of women. Reducing the women’s liberation movement to gaining individual rights or to a trivialized gender war against the opposite sex only further advances US imperialism and hides the fact that its real definition of equality is no more than the right to be as exploited and oppressed as the next property-less person or being as mere sex objects of male chauvinism.
Women of the Philippines have had a long standing history of fighting for change not only amongst themselves but for the people of the Philippines. Gabriela Silang, Lorena Barros, Tandang Sora and many others have left behind a legacy militant women fighting for a Philippines free from foreign intervention and exploitation.
This workshop will pay homage to our Filipina heroines as well as the many other women around the world united to advance the revolutionary struggle for women’s liberation. We will dismantle the common notion that the liberation of women is only achieved among and within the ranks of women, but is in fact necessary to work in alliance with all other oppressed and marginalized sectors of society. After all, even women can uphold the very same system that oppresses all other working class people.
We will also examine how our bodies as Filipina women is used and abused throughout the course of history. We will discuss issues ranging from human trafficking, prostitution, rape, labor exploitation and even the idea that the Philippines is often implicated as a female entity to understand the use of the female body within the system of imperialism.
In honor of the centennial of International Women’s Day, we commemorate the historic ties between the women’s movement and the proletarian movement for celebrating women and women’s militant inter-nationalism originated from the working class movement.
Objectives:
** Understand the historical context of the working class women’s liberation movement
** Re-define feminism and feminist politics from an anti-imperialist and working class perspective
** Learn about significant Filipina heroines who have contributed to the advancement the women’s liberation movement in the Philippines
** Dissect the impacts that imperialism, feudalism and patriarchy has on Filipina women’s bodies
More info on Pinay Sa Seattle: http://pinaynews.wordpress.com/
Pinay* sa Seattle is a collective of Pinays celebrating our multifaceted identities, revolutionary history, and rich culture. We work to build a community in the Seattle area invested in educating, defending, and advocating for the human rights of Filipinas globally.
Posted by marianne 
