The most general and universally valid definition of socialist society and the socialist individual is based upon having overcome alienation on the basis of class consciousness. It is pointed out that a socialist person must be selfless, modest, activist and revolutionary, as well as close to the people. Overcoming bourgeois characteristics by performing class suicide, destroying feudal molds and molds based on reactionary moral understanding, overcoming dogmatism but not being liberal, are the outstanding characteristics of socialist identity. Rêber Apo especially added to these definitions a new, quite simple and radical definition. In his 1997 evaluations, he deepened his thoughts on the basic principle of socialism being to kill the man. In these new evaluations, he expresses with these words a point that he insistently repeats about the socialist individual, but more specifically about the socialist man: “The basic principle of socialism is women’s freedom. The measure of whether a man is socialist is also knowing how to live correctly with women… My first test with socialism was knowing how to speak with a woman. Socialism begins from here. Whoever does not know how to speak with a woman cannot be socialist.”
What should we understand from the fact that the measure of socialism is based on the form of relationship with women? How can the position and identity of a woman worthy of respect be defined? What is the source of disrespect toward women? When did it begin? What are the tools and methods of disrespect? These are the topics we will discuss most in the upcoming period.
The pinnacle of respect toward women’s identity finds its expression in the goddess identity that we debate as a mythological figure. Here we are not talking about a transcendent power that is worshipped as belief and creative force. Respect toward women’s social position finds its expression in the goddess identity. That is, the reason for respect toward women is not that beliefs and mythologies are centered on the mother-goddess, rather it is the state of women influential in social life that was sanctified and elevated to the level of goddess. Joseph Campbell expresses this with these words: “The important point about the goddess is not whether women sat on the throne and were rulers in matriarchal society; what is important is whether the quality of being Woman, the meaning of Woman, is understood, known and respected.”
The fact that women are seen as sacred is not limited, as is believed, to the mystery of women’s bodily fertility and the characteristic of motherhood. Although it includes this, the meaning and scope of motherhood has been expanded in such a way that it also includes activity and leadership in many professions and work areas in which women specialized. That is, women have had a respectable, sacred and valuable social position for a long period of history not only for being able to give birth, but also for being able to organize, defend, and to make technical and scientific discoveries.
The transition from this respectable position to a situation where they are not even considered human, where they are murdered, beaten and insulted, is a topic that needs much debate. However, what is clear is that this did not develop naturally and evolutionarily, but in the form of counterrevolution. For this reason, in current conditions, for a woman to gain respect is exceptional and can be achieved at very great costs. I believe that every woman’s life experience is full of examples that show respect is more important than love. There are many situations where to be loved it is sufficient to have formal characteristics, i.e. behaviors that please and are accepted. Furthermore, love for women has often been the excuse for violence, insult, murder and slavery. Someone who loves you can violate all of your boundaries in return; can expect, want or impose that you respond to their expectations; that you make concessions of yourself. Not few are those who have destroyed their own existence while being loved by their father; by their mother; by their children; by friends.
When the topic is romantic relationships, a much more complex process comes into play that has various names in psychological literature. Behind topics treated in current and popular publications such as emotional manipulation and abuse, gaslighting, narcissistic partner or toxic relationship, lies this reality. But by treating it as an individual and psychological situation instead of taking it as a sociological problem, the rape culture behind this has been camouflaged. The Sati tradition of the modern era functions under different disguises. There is definitely parallelism between the reality of women where walking voluntarily toward fire after the husband’s death means being chaste, and women who are asked to keep their bodies constantly young, cared for and in shape for a man’s taste. There is also parallelism between women who according to the Sati tradition did not walk voluntarily toward death and were judged for lack of chastity and turned into living dead, and women judged for not being thin enough, young and beautiful enough, good enough mothers and wives. The lack of love or the need to confirm one’s own existence through another person’s attention are the emotions most susceptible to manipulation and abuse.
Being loved must always be treated together with the phenomenon of respect. Although this reality is important in relationships between women, it is an indispensable measure in terms of relationships with men. Respect creates distance. You cannot protect your existence without putting limits and distances between those who do not value; do not respect your vital spaces; your decisions; your feelings and thoughts. These are not limits based on moving away from sociality, developing a solitary and individualistic lifestyle. The reality called rape culture is essentially a violation of boundaries. Those boundaries are not thick walls from which we will withdraw from all social relationships, but the struggle to make ethical and aesthetic principles based on freedom prevail. Warning, educating, distancing those who do not realize that they have occupied the autonomous boundaries of your personality, your identity, is also a form of personal and collective self-defense. It means having attitude and stance not only individually toward yourself, but against every form of relationship where a woman is not respected.