Women Conscientious Objectors - An Anthology

"This anthology is much, much more than a mere round-up of experience of women in the movement for men's conscientious objection to obligatory military service. It is more, even, than an account of women's struggle against their own conscription. For what we see here is women, at different moments, in one country after another, creating for themselves the concept, analysis and practice of a distinctive feminist antimilitarism. Starting from a focus on soldiering, they soon notice that militarisation is not just the existence of armies. It penetrates and deforms daily life in myriad ways. All of us are militarised, all of us can be conscientious objectors. As Ferda Ülker of Turkey puts it in her declaration, 'As much as militarism is determined to affect my life, I am determined to continue my struggle. I reject!'"

Cynthia Cockburn, Women in Black London, author of From Where We Stand: War, Women's Activism and Feminist Analysis, Zed Books, 2007

"From Native-American Tina Garnanez who, after witnessing 'disfigured bodies, limbs blown off, soldiers who lost their sanity' in Iraq, decides to leave the military and 'not fight for anybody's oil agenda' to Idan Halili who applies to the Israeli military's Conscience Committee on the grounds of a 'feminist objection', defining it as 'an objection to any army, rather than a specific government policy', to Colombian, French, Korean, Paraguayan, and Turkish women redefining conscientious objection as refusing to partake in militarism at large, rather than conscription per se, this anthology offers a wide-array of imaginative, thought-provoking, transformative responses by women around the world to military service, war, and militarism. Their radical retheoretising of militarism with a feminist perspective reminds us of the centrality of women in processes of militarisation, as well as their power to turn militarisation processes on their head and contribute to radical reimaginings of a world where violence, war, patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of dominations are not taken for granted."

Ayse Gul Altinay, anthropologist, Sabanci University, author of The Myth of the Military Nation: Militarism, Gender and Education in Turkey. Basingstoke, 2006

Read it online here.