I always liked to talk about feminismsthus in the plural, because it seems fundamental to me that the gender perspective also consider the intersectionality perspective. If we talk about women instead of women, we can make the mistake of ignoring, making invisible and even invalidating the experiences of all.
In recent months, the debate and discrepancies in social networks, academia and activism have intensified significantly: the various positions feminists they have not achieved conciliation and, it seems then, that what could have been a prosecuted movement, is now increasingly disjointed.
The March 8I marched again hand in hand with my lifelong friends, my collective colleagues and hundreds of women who stopped to take to the streets in protest in a country where the figures –and the reality– do not let us sleep: between 9 and 11 women are murdered every day and in 2021 alone the historical record of more than 1,000 alleged victims of murder was reached. femicideaccording to SESNSP records (Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System).
This is not counting the fact that 7 out of 10 women state that they have experienced some type of economic violence, emotional, physical or sexual at least once in their life and that in most cases these attacks are perpetrated by someone close to them.
So it seems important to me to emphasize that femicides are precisely the maximum expression of gender violence that is sustained by structures of oppression, inequality and discrimination. Some years ago, some gender-related aggressions were conceptualized as “micromachismos”, now we know they are not micro.
These structures are what allow the gender pay gap is still wide, that women are penalized for being mothers in their jobs, that they cannot climb to leadership positions or that they face bullying and harassment within their workplaces. That public transport and schools are also unsafe places. That they perform three times more housework without pay and that the full burden of caring for minors and adults falls on them. That their partners or close relatives exercise some type of violence against them. That they face legal proceedings for exercising their reproductive freedom and that with much more frequency than we think they are victims of obstetric violence. And that when they seek to denounce some type of this violence, they find systems with poorly trained and unaware personnel, operating in excess of capacity and lack of resources, and then a violation of their rights is added. Again.
There is still so much to do, we are so many and so diverse, that it is impossible to speak of a single movement and a single struggle. But seeing the streets full of girls, adolescents and women with their posters, their scarves, now with an additional accessory: the face mask, and their eyes full of hope and dignified rage simultaneously, gave me a little hope.
Before the pandemic arrived, taking to the streets, collectivizing the struggle, shouting, singing, dancing, holding hands, hugging each other, for me was one of the easiest ways to reconcile. And in recent months, seeing a digital movement so separate, so distant, so hostile had made me wonder if the march would really be what it was in other years.
During the march, a four-hour journey that passed as if it were barely 15 minutes, where the sun did not even bother us and where so many voices sound like one, I met my friends and women that my work as a journalist has given me the opportunity to have close Listening to them, hugging them, learning from them, fills me with energy. I like to think that feminisms do reconcile.
When I got home, I thought about how significant it was to be able to meet and embrace –finally, in person– Maria Elena Rios, whom I interviewed by phone for this publishing house and with whom I keep in touch through the networks because we live in different cities and who I was just hoping to find because in the call we had he told me that he would come. That same day he was among us Pauline Rodriguezwho shared his testimony and his story.
Just like them, many other adolescents and women had the strength to speak loudly and loudly, I remember the words of one of them, who asked me not to make her name public: “This is the first time I tell this, because I feel safe, and I don’t know if I’ll have the courage to report it to the authorities, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to tell it again. But I know I’m not the only one and I know I’m not alone and as of today, that doesn’t define me anymore”.
Sitting together with my friends, and the hundreds of women that I was already telling you about – perhaps there were thousands of us – I thought about what I was reading while reading Marta Lamas in her book Pain and Politics: Feeling, Thinking and Speaking from Feminism, this it is the dialogue, this is the moment, we must channel the dignified rage. Because if there is something that was clear at that moment, it is that yes, we are all very angry, but also, we are all screaming with the hope that it will not fall because we are already here to throw it away.
It is clear that privileges bias some perspectives, that we are not all equally vulnerable, that there are stories that are significantly different from others, that there are those who believe in punitivism and those who consider that this cannot be a solution, that if iconoclasm is or that iconoclasm does not. Feminisms are like that, plural, like us. I like to think that like the contingents in the march on March 8, 2022, the currents of struggle for women –all of them– can build from plurality and the recognition of intersectionality.
During the march we were also accompanied by women with their daughters and sons by the hand, approximately seven years old, one of them began to sing aloud the adaptation to one of the most famous children’s songs, all the others accompanied her to sing:
“Arroz con leche, I want to find a partner who wants to dream, who believes in herself and who goes out to fight in search of her dreams and more freedom, brave yes, submissive no, happy, cheerful and strong, I love you” .