Errejón caused enormous political damage, not because he killed in one fell swoop the parties in which he was active, but because he brought feminism back to defensive positions and in the exclusive hands of women .
“It is not enough to say “I am a feminist”, it is not enough to be against sexist violence, it is not enough to be in favor of parity or feminist laws. You have to be ready to do everything you can. And it’s neither easy nor quick. But that’s what it’s about.”. (Beatriz Gimeno)
Ever since I can remember politically, in the early 80s, I have considered myself a feminist. I have always been left-wing and, therefore, I have always recognized myself as a feminist, because if I was left-wing, I had to be a socialist, a feminist, an environmentalist, a pacifist and wear all the approved -ist labels on my chest. speak standardprogressive.
You are left-wing, and therefore you understand and rationally accept feminism. You think about feminism. But one day, not so long ago, but a few years, you realized that you are not living in feminism, because, although you rationally accept the ideas of feminism, you see in your daily life that you do not I’m not as feminist as you. I think you are. And you start to feel a little ashamed of proclaiming yourself a feminist, and you stop doing it, and it strikes you that so many men around you, in your progressive parties, proclaim it so lightly, because you see them and you understand them. , and you know that intellectually, they are feminists, like you, but they are not in real life. And as Beatriz Gimeno says: “It is not enough to agree with the changes, you must embody them“.
And this contradiction is normal. You are of an age, you were raised in the 70s, in a fairly traditional family, and you have lots of vices and clichés in your head that you have never bothered to eradicate, because they don’t didn’t catch your eye, because they were a part of you, like your fingers and your eyelids. Until you realized all this, sharing feminism intellectually was enough, but it’s starting to not be enough.
This is not the case, in reality, because, as one of the classic proclamations of feminism says, “the personal is political”, and if in your daily life you do not struggle to identify and eliminate these clichés, some important, others purely symbolic or less important Well, you are not a feminist, but above all you do not contribute to creating a fairer and more egalitarian world, because one of the most important contributions of feminism is that revolution is firstly internal. There is no change on the outside if there is no change on the inside. No matter what the law says, no matter whether it guarantees equality on paper, if the people who must comply with it and apply it do not really believe in it, even if we think we believe in it, it is the problem of men. Left-wing feminists, who give, who take for granted things that aren’t so clear that they’re real. And you get there. It’s a fight against myself that I’ve been fighting for years. And I think I’ve purged myself quite a bit, but every now and then I discover new lint to sweep up, stains to clean, piles of trash to send to the landfill…
At some point, you start to realize that you can’t talk about it with your male friends, feminist or not, left-wing or not, unless they follow a path very parallel to yours. Most of them, if you tell them everything you think, they start looking at you like you’re a Martian and either laugh at you or react by saying that they are already feminists, but they are not going to blame themselves or take care to apologize to anyone because they are a man. In fact, the me of 4 or 5 years ago would see me today as a “bastard” and would probably have reacted the same way.
Little by little, you reach a second stage. Feminism liberates women, but you realize that it also liberates men from the roles of the past in which many of us no longer identify. I don’t want the privileges that my grandfather had. I don’t want them, because if they were privileges for him, for me they are mortgages. I don’t want this life, I don’t want this way of living with women. Feminism has taken a new step in my mind. This no longer liberates only women, but liberates us all; At least it frees me.
And when I realize this, I begin to be able to dare to repeat that I am a feminist. And I don’t like it when my feminist friends tell me that I’m an ally, because I’m not an ally, I’m a feminist in my own right and I’m also an object of liberation through feminism, obviously not like them , but for me, feminism It is also a liberation.
And I was in this idea until a few days ago when we learned the true face of Íñigo Errejón and I suddenly returned to the past, to the time when I was ashamed to declare myself a feminist, because that everything I’ve said so far, all these thoughts, all that jihad-THE jihad It is nothing more than a fight against oneself – it all becomes a hoax, a speech that no one should believe since yesterday, because Errejón is supposed to represent everything I described. And if Errejón is not trustworthy, why should I be, looking like a slimy bishop that I have.
I have much less confidence in myself today than a few days ago: am I credible? Am I sincere with myself and with others? Was Errejón sincere when he talked about feminism, did he believe in what he said, and was it somehow? Mr. Hyde, the one who pushed women into bed and attacked them, the one who harassed them until he destroyed them as people, while his feminist self wrote speeches in the congressional office, or maybe was his speech compatible in his conscience with his actions?
I don’t know, but this question moves me politically – Errejón caused enormous political damage, not because he killed the parties in which he was active in one fell swoop, but because he brought feminism back to defensive positions and exclusively in the hands of women -, but above all it bothers me personally, because once again, it is very easy to say that one is a feminist, or even to believe it, when one contribution to an egalitarian world is to make the bed in the morning (because your wife has two hours of work when you get up), to cook (because otherwise you won’t eat) and to make speeches like, probably, the one I doing right now…
