A Tribunal Only in Name: Anarchic Sensibilities at the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, 1976

Abstract

In March 1976, around 2000 women from forty countries arrived at the Palais des Congrès in Brussels to participate in the first International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women. Explicitly positioning themselves against the United Nations‐led ‘International Year of the Woman’, the organizers and participants of the tribunal proclaimed a global sisterhood – to be achieved through the sharing of personal experience and by testifying against the litany of patriarchal crimes committed against women. In this article, I analyse the proceedings of the Brussels Tribunal to recover a fractious episode of the transnational feminist movement of the 1970s. I argue that by examining how the participants navigated their deep‐seated feminist disagreements, the Brussels Tribunal complicates our understanding of the politics of sisterhood and identity politics in the international women's movement. I also explore the controversies surrounding the event and the revolt against the organizers to understand how the anarchic sensibilities and praxis of the participants were productive for generating an alternative feminist vision.