In 2016, Argentine writer Pola Oloixarac began receiving messages from women asking for her help in punishing some men they accused of being aggressors. Carried away by the whirlwind of social networks, in the midst of the buzz of the motto “my sister, I believe you”, she met a few informants but also incriminated individuals. With all the material he collected during these meetings, he constructed his latest novel Bad man (Random House), a term invented by Donald Trump to designate Latin Americans who resided in the United States and whom the author compares to those singled out by feminists.
Oloixarac responds to elDiario.es at the headquarters of his publishing house in Barcelona, the city where he has resided since 2020, after having lived in Argentina and the United States. He has a considerable literary career after the novels Wild theories (2008), The dark constellations (2015) and Bow (2019) and knows that his new book could hardly have come at a better time. The conversation about the denunciations of sexist attackers on social networks and their consequences is in full swing and she has not only written about it, but she has done so on the side of the accused. A position that invites controversy that she does not avoid but rather enjoys.
In Bad man investigates cases of men who lost their status after being accused of assault or bad behavior by women with whom they were in a relationship. Because?
I was pushed to this point of view because I myself experienced an annulment that I talk about in the book, which was related to my not participating in another lynching. I felt like an accusation makes you a character in someone else’s novel and it’s not easy to escape from. It gave me the impression that something very literary was happening.
What interests me in the book is, rather than condemning the idea of annulment, to study it. I want to understand the phenomenon, the dynamics and whether it really helps women’s causes or not. If it’s something that sometimes helps other men more than women and if in reality the cause of our rights, our protection, is not being used to protect certain men.
How can these events help or protect other men?
If we create parallel courts, in reality, we make women have less confidence in the justice system, which is the place where they should go and where they can actually be punished. [a los agresores]. It is interesting to ask whether annulment is really a good instrument for us, whether we have used it or not. As feminists, we can investigate and begin to evaluate what worked and what didn’t.
Many women do not resort to justice precisely because they do not feel protected. If, in your opinion, reporting on social networks is also not valid, what should you do?
What is complicated is the idea of trivializing violence against women. If you are in a violent situation, you make a report and you also say it on social networks, it seems to me that there is no one who can come and tell you that you are trying to damage the reputation of this man, for example.
The complaint will not prevent the woman from being publicly judged or the attacker from being defended.
It’s like we have two zones. One is justice, which we must improve to be able to listen to these women and protect the violated rights. And then, of course, there is the way people react and talk about what is happening to them. For example, I see Cristina Fallarás’s Instagram and I find it super interesting, it’s like a kind of trauma workshop. Women need to speak, they need to say and they say it. But it seems to me that you have to separate what amounts to reporting a crime and, on the other hand, wanting to report things that you don’t like and that perhaps don’t necessarily fall into the category of crime. It seems to me that the liberation of speech is something that must continue and that has value.
We should distinguish between what amounts to reporting a crime and, on the other hand, wanting to report things that you don’t like and that perhaps don’t necessarily fall into the category of crime. It seems to me that the liberation of speech is something that must continue and that has value
Precisely, based on a testimony on Cristina Fallarás’s Instagram, the whole Errejón affair exploded, which they then denounced.
And he resigns immediately. And immediately Pablo Iglesias appears, who can hardly contain his happiness on television. I feel that in this fall, there is also a man who benefits from it. I also find it very strong that Irene Montero later comments that the worst mistake was that of Yolanda Díaz, who is the vice president.
One of the things I wonder is whether annulment is an instrument that, instead of honoring the cause of women, ends up being precisely a political instrument. For example, in the case of Argentina, it was like this. You had a president who said “I’m the president of women” or “I ended the patriarchy” and he was the one hitting his wife and having all kinds of macho attitudes everywhere.
I think that a little feminism and “I believe you, sister” serves as an alibi for the people who are in power and who rely on the left to be able to continue to commit these excesses and these abuses. I would like the feminist cause to stop being exploited by political power and to once again become a transversal instrument for all women, even for women on the right, for women elsewhere.
But if feminism is an instrument that manages to expel an aggressive politician, it benefits all women, whether they voted for him or not.
Instrumentalized in the sense that it seems to me that there is a political operation which seeks to get rid of men who do not serve them. Or to be able to make another woman vulnerable, in this case Yolanda Díaz, who is totally pilloried. If a man as important as Errejón disappears and you also have Yolanda Díaz in check, all this strengthens Podemos, which was in a bad situation. So, in terms of political operation, it seems to me that they are doing pretty well.
Would you have liked to speak to Errejón and include him in your book?
No, because if you just assert your political virtue and you don’t demonstrate it with facts, the normal thing is that you leave. It seems to me that there is a certain charm in the fact that Íñigo, who was the first ally of a cause which served as an alibi for his excesses, falls. It has a special beauty.
A paragraph from his book says: “In a scenario where it is not sex, but being a woman that is deregulated, in which any human being can choose to be a woman or to reproduce without passing by the feminine machine, perhaps recover the power of “destruction”. from the lives of others was a way of reviving pagan feminism. » What does that mean?
We know that we can destroy a man’s life for at least five or six years, which is a long time, and I find it more interesting to study ourselves from the power we have. In a more real way than staying where the theory tells us that we are victims and that men are potential rapists and that we must design elements to be able to contain this horrible desire that these men have to penetrate us, to lacerate us. , kill us. It seems to me that this is a partial vision, that it is more interesting to understand ourselves from the perspective of power, even the power of destruction because we have it, we are human.
I don’t know if lynchings are something particularly good for the cause of women because they generate negative reactions [regresión] very strong in men. It seems to me that this is a time to reflect within feminism on what works and what doesn’t.
But if the destructive power you speak of was such, wouldn’t patriarchy have ended?
Ending patriarchy is like starting a revolution. And the revolution is always like a messianic horizon that pushes you to improve. There are different levels of patriarchy on the planet and it seems to me that we are now discovering new weapons that we have at our disposal to terrorize and damage our reputation. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to completely end it because it’s still there in other parts of the planet and in an incredibly violent way. It is very difficult to think that there will be a total destruction of patriarchy.
The problem is when we exploit it. For example, I don’t know if lynchings are something particularly good for the cause of women because they generate backlash [regresión] very strong in men. It seems to me that the time has come to reflect, within feminism, on what works and what does not work. And it seems to me that this criticism is part of improving the movement, because if we don’t watch what we do we don’t learn and we don’t improve.
Mateo, one of the characters, tells him that “patriarchy fundamentally enslaves men, they are the real victims”. How did you respond to that?
He was doing his whole victim thing. Then he says that they are the rabbits now, the ones we hunt. I think this fantasy exists in many men and it’s fascinating. That’s why I think it’s good to write a novel and not an essay to be able to capture these grays of fantasies that are super authentic in them. I find it adorable.
