In Istanbul, Turkey, the riot police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters celebrating International Working Women’s Day. Even in the face of mass destruction from recent earthquakes, these women in Turkey remind us as antisexist, antiracist fighters worldwide, that working women are essential for a better world.

The Turkish government took a drastic turn to use religious fundamentalism to justify sexism and squelch the potential for women to live beyond the constraints of a society that supports harmful marriages and patronizing relationships between men and women. Turkish women are refusing to be silenced and are demanding an end to President Erdogon’s regime amidst complete negligence after the catastrophic earthquakes.

However, this reform obscures the Turkish bosses’ role in a rapidly declining liberal world order. Once a U.S. junior partner Turkey, desperate to compete and enjoy the imperialist spoils Russia,  is now a willing pawn of the ascendant Chinese bosses.Fascist bosses use identity puppet politicians to further capitalist terror as feminist misleaders. The Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu is spreading false promises that under his misleadership, a strong democracy will follow. He is riding on the mishandling of the recent earthquakes under the current regime, the dwindling democracy, and overall mistrust from the workers.

However, we know that no capitalist boss will end sexism and that no elected president can ever grant workers freedom. The women-led protests in Istanbul show workers we need fierce fighters to end this sexist system.

At the same time, we must confront the dangers of feminism. The capitalist women’s movement both divides the working class by gender and promotes a false unity with the liberal wing of the U.S. ruling class, basically the Democratic Party.

Like all identity politics, the women’s movement is a dead—and deadly—end for workers. It obscures the fact that capitalist society is driven by a fundamental conflict between the class that owns the means of production and the class that creates everything of value—between bosses and workers.

Feminism misleads women workers, in particular, by recruiting sell-out stooges like Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and the late (and unlamented!) Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Women's liberation doesn’t come from voting, or electing women politicians to oppress us, or expanding the ranks of women CEOs to exploit us.