Reimagining masculinity: Abdullah Öcalan’s vision for ending violence against women

As part of our special coverage ahead of the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November, we take a look at one of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan’s core theories on how to free society from the patriarchal grasp and liberate women, as analysed in a pamphlet published by the Andrea Wolf Institute of Jineoloji.

Öcalan’s concept of ‘Killing the Man’ refers to the transformative process of relinquishing patriarchal power and reimagining what it means to be a man, while in turn encouraging women to self organise and break the chains of subjugation. The Andrea Wolf Institute analyses Öcalan’s philosphy, which aims to encourage men to take an active role in dismantling hegemonic masculinity and the structures enforcing it, and looks at his proposals for enacting this revolutionary mindset for a liberated and equal future.

Today’s special, published below, is an extract from the booklet ‘Killing and Transforming the Dominant Man’ by the Andrea Wolf Institute of the Jineoloji Academy. Jineoloji, a science of life by and for women, was proposed by Öcalan, leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK):

Over the course of his studies Abdullah Öcalan has analysed and researched mentality very deeply. He observed the development of the dominant man over the last 5000 years, asking, how did the state of domination come about? How was the patriarchal man born?

After long discussions with the woman comrades of the movement and reflections about his own relationships to women, in 1986 Öcalan wrote The Question of Women and Family in Kurdistan. In it, he analysed the power of domination exerted by the colonial state over men, who in turn exert the same over women. Thus, he described the family as a microcosm of the state.

He concluded that the ‘question of women’s liberation’ is actually a ‘question of men’. Male domination is the problem.

Abdullah Öcalan explains the concept of ‘Killing the Man’, as reported by writer and Turkish left militant Mahir Sayın, who interviewed Öcalan in Damascus in 1996:

“Actually, [Killing the Man] is the basic principle of socialism. It is about killing power, about killing one-sided domination and inequality, about killing intolerance. It is even about killing fascism, dictatorship, despotism. This concept can be expanded so much.” [Note 1]

The patriarchal hegemonic concept of masculinity reflects itself in individuals as well as in structures of state and society. In response, the concept of ‘Killing the Man’ aims to dismantle and overcome this system of power relations, and to propose a new understanding of what it means to be a man.

“A war against our own manhood and the steps we take in this war will constitute a criterion of how close we are to our longing for a ‘world without oppression’. But this is a field where prejudices are deeper than anywhere else. Every word said referring to this, hits a solid wall, men even feel like they have been raped. Among those who heard this topic being mentioned in our meetings with Abdullah Öcalan there were even persons who asked me: ‘Is it true, that you will give up being a man and become a woman?’” [Note 2]

In one special program on Kurdish TV Channel MED TV (26 February 1998), Abdullah Öcalan was asked what he had meant by “taking women from men’s grasp” and “killing the man”, and on which basis women and men could unite.

“I ask the following or I want to develop a solution for the following: To kill both men and women who have been used for centuries as the foundation of this system! Of course I don’t mean this in physical terms. To announce the moral, emotional, and relationship codes as illegitimate even if they are based on laws! In such a way it is not possible to be neither such a man nor such a woman. We want to develop a general divorce movement. Nobody should draw wrong conclusions from this.

No one should exploit this: I respect existing marriages. I am not saying destroy or disband such togetherness. But if marriage is like torture, everyone has the right to dissolve it. In other words, I do not have the approach of killing marriage. I’m talking about a general movement for divorce, in mentality. Even those who are married or engaged must first divorce themselves from classical understandings. If necessary, their official marriage can continue. But it is very appealing to me to make a change in the essence and to realise a general divorce movement in this sense. In order to gain more or less their share of the revolution, everyone must do this. This is the first.

Second, if this happens, it means killing classic femininity and masculinity as well. What does this mean? The man has to get rid of the imagination, moral standards and – I even won’t call it thought but – thoughtlessness on which he assumes himself as man and constructs himself especially in terms of sexuality and gender. This means killing the man. So to start a new life somewhere, it is necessary to kill some things.” [Note 3]

In a TV program on International Women’s Day 1998 Öcalan elaborated:

“I want to speak about the man I realised in myself, so as not to blame and implicate anyone else too much. In this sense, I say first I killed myself. This is a philosophy for me, an ideology. I can’t disavow living according to this.

“I hate being a man in the current system. I consider being such a man a great inferiority, a source of decay and great ugliness. Being with a woman in the name of such masculinity is worse for me than torture. It is not possible for me to enter such a life. I call this the big fall, big oppression and the gathering of all lies.

“What I am trying to embody mainly for the Kurds is a new theory of love. While developing a war for the Kurds, you will ask, what has love got to do with this? The Kurdish people represent a people who have been deprived of love. Love is completely dried out and killed off. Intellectuals try to interpret the human heart by dealing with art and literature. As far as the Kurds are concerned, unfortunately they have never recognised them. Where and when was the Kurd’s heart broken off? Whose heart is the heart in the existing Kurd? Whose feeling is s/he feeling? If s/he has a soul, it is the soul of which foreigner, of which henchman? What kind of unscrupulousness, what despair is this?

“(…) Women should also know themselves and have their identity. For example, men, including me, should not have a bad temper; women should be able to clearly say what kind of man they want. This is both the right and the duty of a woman.

“The man is a remnant of the system, a remnant of the landowner or lord. I can’t overcome this on my own. Women should organise themselves. If you want a life based on equality and freedom, then you have to pay the price for it. It should not be to go immediately and die, trying to prove yourself with a gun in your hand. This is an incomplete approach.

“If you organise your emotions, you will build up the power of imagining your freedom. You will develop your own ideas on what kind of man or what kind of life you want with a man. But if you pay attention, this male-dominated society has even cut the tongue of women.

“What is one going to do with a bullying, unequal, very disrespectful man? I say don’t accept this guy. Today, therefore, it is a good approach for me to ask this from women and we should be able to insist on this. It is absolutely impossible to empower women in any other way.” [Note 4]

Always beginning with the effort to break with the patriarchal mentality in his own personality, Abdullah Öcalan developed ideological and practical criteria for male revolutionaries. Men as well as women comrades were asked to analyse and overcome the impact of internalised patriarchy on their mentality and behaviour. Femininity and masculinity were analysed deeply, as ideologies and social constructions, connected with the question of how to move forward to build a new revolutionary personality. Comradeship was defined ‘not only as an ideological unity, but as a unity of truth created by the ideological capacity’.

Analysing how deeply patriarchal mentality and dominance has been entrenched in the understandings of marriage, couple relationships and sexuality, Abdullah Öcalan concluded: “A meaningful dialectic of love in the reality of the Kurdish society has to be and to be lived substantially platonic. And this love is precious. Platonic love is a love based on ideas and actions.” On this basis he reminds male comrades to carefully review their approaches towards women: “We can make women valuable friends and comrades to the extent we overcome perceiving them as an object of sexual attraction. The friendship and comradeship with a woman that transcends sexism is the most difficult relationship.” [Note 5]

Gender relations were radically redefined and reorganised with revolutionary commitment, as part of ongoing holistic struggle and collective life. Women embraced the struggle to liberate themselves from mental, physical and organisational dependencies on men and enthusiastically self-organised by building up a Women’s Army and a militant Women’s Party. Meanwhile men often hesitated to engage more actively in the personal and political struggle for gender liberation.

Abdullah Öcalan challenged men to take practical steps towards gender liberation. “Perhaps men more than women need to be liberated. A man’s level of emancipation is perhaps more difficult than that of a woman. We are now seeing the importance of this more profoundly. While women are overcoming the slavery situation, men are persistently maintaining the slavery and enslavement and behave very conservatively.

While the solution occurs easily in women, their longing for freedom, their desires are strong; the man insists on not giving up this dominance, always insisting on conservatism and an imposition of his own. So how should this be overcome? You will have to begin one or two small points on this subject by yourselves. There are no ready-made revolutionaries, men or women, they are created by the revolution.” [Note 6]

Source: https://medyanews.net/reimagining-masculinity-abdullah-ocalans-vision-for-ending-violence-against-women/

Notes
1 Mahir Sayın: Abdullah Öcalan ne diyor? Erkeği Öldürmek, Toprak Publications, 1997
2 Mahir Sayın: Abdullah Öcalan ne diyor? Erkeği Öldürmek, Toprak Publications, 1997
3 Abdullah Öcalan ‘Sosyal Devrim ve Yeni Yaşam’ [Social Revolution and New Life]; Med TV programme, February 26, 1998
4 Abdullah Öcalan: Sosyal Devrim ve Yeni Yaşam [Social Revolution and New Life]; Med TV programme, 8 March 1998
5 Abdullah Öcalan: Kürt sorunu ve Demokratik Ulus Çözümü [The Kurdish Question and the Solution of Democratic Nation],
2010
6 Quote from telephone call between Abdullah Öcalan and YAJK headquarters, 11 April 1998