From Black Rose Anarchist Federation

This document was produced by the Brazilian Anarchist Coordinator [Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira] (CAB), a group of anarchist organizations working collaboratively across Brazil. It is translated and reprinted here with the permission of our sister organizations participating in CAB.

Translation by Enrique Guerrero-López

Our Conception of Feminism from the Perspective of Organized Anarchism

The women that are part of the organizations that make up the Brazilian Anarchist Coordinator (CAB) see ourselves as part of a long tradition of anarchist women that have denounced and struggled radically against gender oppression; therefore, the exploitation of labor also acquires a particular form for us. We are part of the many, many anarchist women that, although they have been erased by the history of those from above, have confronted the violence we face as women head on; women who have guided new ways of loving and have problematized the bourgeois family model that is the basis of the system; women who reacted to macho violence, often coming from their own comrades; self-taught women, who promoted literacy and imagined a liberating education, who acted in the press by creating and writing in libertarian newspapers; women who took up arms! These fearless and unsubmissive women fought against an oppressive system for a dignified and free life and sowed seeds of liberation all over the world. There are many anonymous women fighters erased in the history of men. There are many who have gone before us, many who are not with us. We carry their legacy within us.

This story did not begin with us, and it will not end tomorrow. There is a lot of violence and a lot to do.

As anarchists, we believe that feminism and the anti-patriarchal struggle, as well as the anti-racist and anti-colonial struggle, are fundamental strategies to destroy this system. We understand that power relations are structured in specific ways, and it is necessary to understand them if we want to destroy the system of oppression as a whole. We believe in the development of militants that have an active participation in popular organizations; that develop action through direct action and direct democracy. In this sense, we advocate a class struggle oriented and grassroots feminism. Our feminism is a social and collective struggle. We do not believe in a specialization of feminist struggle, instead we believe that feminism must pass through all our organizations; that feminist formulations and methodologies can aim not at individual freedom, but at the conquest of the freedom of each territory and of each oppressed body.

This is our conception.

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