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where you are is not who you are

The term “erkek öldürmek” (Kurdish “kuştina zilam”, meaning “killing the man”, in the sense of “killing dominant masculinity”) was coined by Abdullah Öcalan in 1996 in a conversation with Mahir Sayın, a journalist from the Turkish left. Dominant masculinity is not a biological fact, but a historical social construction that must be analyzed down to the depths of individual and social experience and history and overcome in the sense of a free shared life. The problem is not “masculinity” per se, but the dominant masculinity of patriarchy. On this basis, Öcalan formulates the sentence: “Killing the man is the basic principle of socialism. It is about killing power, one-sided domination and inequality, about killing intolerance. It is even about killing fascism, dictatorship and despotism. This concept can be defined so broadly.” Simone de Beauvoir wrote the famous sentence in the mid-twentieth century: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Öcalan, for his part, emphasizes the patriarchal construction of masculinity, as well as the hope for change: “You are born a man of hegemonic civilization, but you can become a free man.” [...] According to Öcalan, however, it is of great importance not to leave gender identities to patriarchal definitions, but to emphasize the necessity and possibility of setting out to become free women and men. This re-definition of gender is not only discussed theoretically in the freedom movement, but is also developed and lived in practice in life together. The basis for this is research into the historical, social and biological reality of the sexes. Being a woman and being a man is to be liberated from its patriarchal aspects and redefined in its true diversity.