Epress.am News from Armenia
A group of feminists in Yerevan marked the International Women’s Day Tuesday evening with a protest at Dalma Garden Mall, a local shopping center, calling for action over discrimination, violence, and other social injustices faced by women across the country.
The protest, however, did not last long as Dalma’s security personnel fought the demonstrators and forced them out of the building.
At the start of the action, the protesters stood peacefully in the center of the mall and held posters that read, “Revolution, Come Out of the Closet,” “March 8 Is a Fight Day,” “Prostitution Is Not a Choice, but a Result of Poverty and Culture of Violence”, “Personal Is Political.”
One of the security guards urged female protesters to “leave Dalma and don't spoil the holiday” before turning to a male activist and saying; “She’s a girl so she doesn’t understand, but you’re a guy!”
When the demonstrators refused to leave, the security staff forcibly removed them from the premises and ripped some of their posters to pieces. They also suggested that the group hold demonstrations either in front of the presidential residence or the government building.
The following is the text of the leaflets that several activists rained down from the upper floor of the shopping mall throughout the protest;
“The revolution of women struggling for their economic, political and social rights was driven out of the streets right from the beginning, bottled in jars with liquids full of flowers, candies and perfume. It was put in a cupboard, squeezed between tableware, household chores and working hours, paid less than those of men. 8 March in Armenia is a feast of the consumer society: luxury boutiques, beauty and flower shops, cosmetics companies. It is a celebration of patriarchal social system, in which women, especially those lacking economic and social preveleges, that don’t represent Armenian ethnicity and heteronormative identity, women that are not ‘buttresses’ and servants of family, the rights of those women are left out of all state and social agendas.
“We are against yet another merchandising of femininity that puts a flowery straitjacket on us during the one-day or one-month long spectacle of the consumer society; even during that period we earn less than men, we bear the entire burden of household chores, we are oppressed due to our social status or identity that doesn’t fit in general conventional norms, when we are discriminated for our decisions, lifestyles and desires, when we pay the triple price for our freedom, accused of inciting violence against ourselves.
“Keep the flowers to yourself, Messrs! We need a Revolution!”
