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Women, watch that nobody steals your feminism

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The struggle between political formations to monopolize feminism tarnishes the achievements of the struggle for equality
Voces Layetanas
José A. Ruiz 09/03/2020 1880

It has happened with refugees, with LGTBI rights, with social rights ... and feminism was not going to be less. The appropriation of concepts has found it and now, as important as saying "I'm a feminist" is to say "you are not".

Women, don't let yourselves be manipulated as easily as we men are. Show that sensitivity that we sometimes lack. Because feminist movement has been created by all of you, without exception. Let no one pretend to direct you or divide you. Don't get out of the control of "patriarchy" to fall into that of certain politicians for whom feminism and equality are only a means to get to power.
Let's review: We have Unidas Podemos. An undoubtedly feminist far left party in its postulates (the only party that bears the feminine gender in its name) although with a fairly patriarchal power structure (not to mention the fact that its leader has always had as second in command the woman with he has been sentimentally linked, a fact that in any other party had raised blisters). Podemos (for short) have attended the demonstrations on their own, wanting to appropriate your cause as they wanted to appropriate 15-M thanks to which some long-standing ideologues were able to found their "new" party, and now stand as your defender without wanting to share their pretended feminist leadership with their government partners.
Which brings us to the Partido Socialista. The degree of appropriation of this party is marked by Carmen Calvo. Nobody forgets her response to a journalist who asked if feminism was a conquest of all women: "No, pretty", was the expression with which the secretary of socialist equality denied that fact, "we have worked it in genealogy of progressive thinking, of socialist thinking". And so, with that carelessness, she denied the contribution to feminism of any woman who wasn't a socialist. Imagine a right-wing leader, for example Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, saying to a journalist: "No, pretty. Feminism is not every woman". They would describe her at least as "condescending", when not "fascist". And let's not say if she were a man ..
But the great professionals of the appropriation of social causes are the nationalist parties. Following a tradition inherited from fascism that says that all social conquests will come with the advent of the dream nation, nationalism has sold us a "cozy" (for immigration), "tolerant" (for LGTBI rights), "anti-fascist" republic, also "antiracist" and obviously a "feminist republic". That most of these struggles are based on equality when nationalism is based on difference and the supremacy of one collective over another doesn't seem to prevent them from bringing any ember to their pan.
Meanwhile, the entire spectrum of center and right becomes the great excluded, as if the women who belong to that sector were mere slaves without self-esteem, traitors to the cause. Ciudadanos are forced to flee protected by the police before the masses spurred by the extreme left. "They pacted with VOX!" A woman screams. ("How dare you!" Greta Thunberg would say). Meanwhile, the Popular Party smiles and thanks for somehow they are allowed to attend despite having carried out the same pacts. Who knows what dark interests consider a party less rival than another? And then there's VOX itself, which in one more among its many nonsenses denies the feminist cause to everyone's shame.
And so a sector of politics intends to "exclude millions of women from equality" because they think that feminism has to be leftist, combative, furious, unleavened, staged with the shape of the vagina and with a cry of rage "the rapist are you!"
And don't misunderstand me. Feminism has the right to express itself in anger. Women have endured and still endure obvious sexual and salary discrimination, but also a painful invisibility that causes their problems to be less addressed than those of the male gender. And the passivity, the painful passivity of so many men who believed (we believed) that full equality would come bi itself, gradually, as by inertia, perhaps in another couple of generations ... But the changes don't wait, and don't occur by itself. This is the moment and the world has to move. And to move it, that rage is justified.
But anger is easily manipulated. That's why it's important that there's an equally combative and inflexible feminism, but more critical, focused and thoughtful. A feminism that remains alert to the forces that seek to capitalize it on their own interests. A feminism that when it sees certain political forces pointing the finger at women from rival parties and shouting "Get out of here! You can't be a feminist!" Stands and say that feminist is who wants to be feminist, who defends gender equality, regarding the color of its vote.
Elena Maseras was the first Spanish woman to study a university degree. Clara Campoamor was one of the main drivers of universal suffrage in our country, Concepción Arenal fought for equality in all areas of her life and Rosalia de Castro changed the world for the better with her prose and poetry. The political inclination of each of them is totally indifferent to me, because each one made its own contribution to the cause of equality.
Don't allow, women, that any party tells you that, in order to achieve equality between the sexes, we have to build walls between the people, that for women to break the glass ceiling, a political party must be expelled from the streets when on the day of the women has chosen one of them as her leader by overwhelming majority. That the struggle of all is only the struggle of a few.
Don't listen to anyone. Don't listen to me. But, above all, don't let the rage induced by those who spur you prevent you from thinking for yourselves, because that sin is ours, of men.
And we expect much more from you.


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