Well. It’s all gone to shit. The discussion about whether sex work does, sex work did not, climbed enough and the consequences of the debate being viralized in this way are uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for all the femininities that inhabit this world and that also have social networks. Not for the rest of us. He probably didn’t even know.
And that’s exactly what I want to talk about. Of the feminisms who laburate outside, in the street, in the neighborhoods, of feminists who save women from violent relationships by accompanying them to the police station, of feminists who work in homes, offices, support spaces.
This movement, which is so large and so heterogeneous, is blurred in the media with almost parodic discussions between Instagram stories and tweets of women who militute a necessary and key feminism inside the web.
Photo: Facebook.
Networks, instagramers, femininities with voice and repercussions within the world that circulates notes and sets the agenda for abortion, prostitution, sex work and human trafficking, have a direct link with many sectors of power where what is the priority is what sells. And it became very clear that the issue of gender goes not only through the lives of millions of people and individuals, but also the business of a capitalist society that makes everything functional to the system.
But just as capital takes advantage, feminisms advance. And while all this happens and social media references are thrown away with everything because the postures are different and because egos sometimes cloud the view, other feminists put on their boots to sink into the mud.
The Front of Genres of La Poderosa, for example, which is a space in which, through Las Casas de Las Mujeres and the Dissentances, the cooperatives of work, the spaces of accompaniment and feminist communication, build a feminism from the most precarious neighborhoods of Buenos Aires and several provinces of the country.
Or the Meeting House, where psychologists, social workers, lawyers and social psychologists attend to and accompany females in problems who live situations of violence for free.
Or the workers on line 144 who, precarious and all, day by day talk on the phone with more than five thousand victims in order to contain them.
Or members of the Health Professionals Network for the right to decide on the legal termination of pregnancy that miliates daily and face old conscientious objectors.
Or the ESI Command team, which labura in schools for proper enforcement of the Comprehensive Sex Education act.
Or The Norma Nassif Women’s House in San Miguel de Tucuman who has been a member and labura for decades for the femininities that come there with concerns, pains or allegations to be made.
Or the feminist movements of Cordoba, Chacho, Tierra del Fuego, Salta.
Or the psychologists, lawyers, pediatricians, gynecologists, journalists, screenwriters, social workers, singers, actresses who one day realized that the union makes the force and were specified in laburar by and to combat gender-based violence.
Feminist spaces where the whole can more than the parties and where it becomes clear that the decades-long laburo bears tangible fruits that have little to do with the likes received in a publication.
But let’s slow down.
By all this I don’t mean that social media militancy isn’t helpful. In fact, I think it’s a powerful tool (think about how the movement was born #NiUnaMenos), but it’s not the only one.
And while discussions within the movement came to light after singer Jimena Baron positions herself in favor of sex work with a strong and controversial street fisthe, this debate has been splitting waters for decades. It’s nothing new. What is new is that through networks violent discourses are viral with widespread readings about everything that is and is not feminism.
Photo: Instagram.
The idea of this note is not to feed the dires and dires’ monster but, perhaps, to focus on something that I think is fundamental: it is impossible to say what feminism is because there is not a single feminism and, besides, it is not verticalist. In fact, one of the most beautiful things it has, is this last feature. It is customary for the power to be of a few males, the feminism slams to tell us that there are other forms of organization that move away from the accumulation of power per capita.
The difficulties in accommodating all that feminism give us in this old paradigm that disarms as we pass it are so many. Everyone is confused, no one knows what to do, no one is clear about anything and that, far from being tragic, is good. Why? Because concepts are built on the fly, in the active practice of values with a fundamental gender perspective.
Among all that trouble, these confusions happen. Feminists harassed in networks that are tired and want to stop the ball because virtual harassment is exhausting. Just as it must be exhausting to want to help a teenage girl who was abused by her dad and can’t even talk about it or be a whore and be pointed out, judged or discriminated against for being one.
And while we could say that being a feminist (in this horrible world) is overwhelming, it has no going back. Thinking about social interactions and the world with a feminist perspective does not depend on a decision. When you see that inequality, you can’t help noticing it. Luckily for many and not so many, there is not our name written in the giant book of feminism and neither do the egos of everyone who is a movement that happens with the pull of coughs.
That push is key and individualities, important when it comes to analysis and seeking empathy, exist and survive within a whole that is, first horizontal and second revolutionary. And we already know well that the revolution will be collective or not.
