Feminisms, the real opposition of the neo-right?

This week a survey was released that states that there is a significant percentage of women who, in the case of having to choose between Massa and Milei, choose the former. Very different is the decision of the men that in case of turning, they do it to the right. At the same time, in Chile, women organized one of the most mobilizing and heartfelt marches against the last Pinochet dictatorship. Thousands of them marched in silence, in black and with candles to the government house demanding that rights be respected and that the democratic system never be questioned again. In our country, this September 28, feminist movements call for a march to demand the same: Human Rights and a respected democracy. In this note an analysis about it with two specialists: the professor and doctor in Letters Natalí Incaminato and the CONICET researcher of authoritarian social systems, Lucía Wegelin.LA FACISTA GAP These data were announced as one of the last options that conventional center-left parties have to be able to beat the right in the next October elections. While the polls are only inaccurate approximations and difficult to trust, the numbers they reflect speak to a reality worthy of analysis: is the neo-right young, anti-feminist and male? “It’s a relatively new, global phenomenon that started to be seen earlier in the U.S. and Europe. It seems to me that it is also key to think about the age issue, there is a part of the issue that has to do with antifeminism, but it is a minority part within the large number of voters. For example of Milei, because at least in all the surveys I see the people who demonstrate against ‘gender ideology’ is 9% or 10%. Which is important but it is also not a number that explains the reason for all masculinization. In other words, anti-feminism is there, but I don’t think it’s the only reason,” Incaminato replies.
For his part, Wegelin reinforces: “In a qualitative study that we have been doing for some time in the laboratory where I work, it is very clear in the focus groups that the women who were willing to vote for Milei were the ones who most quickly entered into doubts and could not sustain that adhesion when concrete proposals appeared that had to do with destruction. for example, public health, public education, but also the sale of organs or the possible trade in child adoptions.” The candidate for La Libertad Avanza has some peculiarities that make him today a controversial but votable public figure. Aggressive and untimely, Milei is postulated as something new (with old ideas) outside the canons of the conventional politician. But why are males more likely to like characters like Milei?” It seems to me that we have to think in slightly more complex terms. It has to do with which candidates are more within reach in certain circuits in the modes of politicization of the extreme right and this is also something that happened in the United States with Trump. The extreme right began to circulate on the Internet, in very masculinized spaces, in spaces of discussion about the economy that is unfortunately a very masculinized space, in the games of gamers, in some forums, in Twitter that is also a very masculinized network, with which it seems to me that those ways in which these ideas began to circulate on the Internet are very important and are almost a male monopoly. ” reflects La Inca. Symbols are also a true reflection of the gender issue. “The modes of interpellation of libertarianism are also very masculine. Whether it’s the lions or the rebellion or certain proposals that go and point to very specific psychological emotional issues of men and mainly young men, “adds the analyst. But not everything is anti-feminism in Milei’s new right, there is also the weariness and the sexist impositions that press. “You might think that there are certain tiredness with the system because Milei, beyond being ultra-right, is an anti-system candidate and it seems to me that that feeling of the anti-systemic may be more present in ‘the masculine’. Because although women have a worse time because of the feminization of poverty, there is a feeling that they owe something. There is a greater social weight for men to have money. That pressure to be socially powerful defines your value as a person and as a man. Unfortunately they are social models and standards that continue to be repeated with which it can also be a more affective sociological explanation of why it is”The type of approach is more seductive for men,” says Incaminato.
CARE, A TRAP?
The Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the women who resist in Chile, the movements that achieve legal abortion in Mexico, all these phenomena are crossed by the same slogan: care. This characteristic is, in turn, a kind of stigma for feminist movements since it is socially the place that touches femininities and from which they have been trying to escape for decades. “It seems to me that it is like a trick of the weak. I believe that operates the ‘mines are not challenging’. The interesting thing about Mothers and Grandmothers is that they turned that concept on its head. Hebe de Bonafini was not a weak figure, she was an extremely combative and courageous woman. These are issues that are not outside patriarchy, but work inside. We are a country with a large percentage of Italian immigrants and that must not be forgotten. There is respect in Argentina for the grandmother, or the mother or a tendency to visualize women as less challenging and it seems to me that part of the strategy was to make that supposed non-dangerousness precisely a tool and a weapon in favor of them, “says Incaminato. Yes. It is contradictory. Women want to detach themselves from household chores and care but at the same time they are the ones who defend and raise flags linked to empathy and love. “It is a constitutive paradox, on the one hand you have to value those things that by their social position have made them, constitute some very piola things, but on the other you can not fall in love with your identity because if you are not always going to be trapped in the place of the domestic and the problem of that, among many things, It is that when there is a woman who is not loving, a woman who may have a slightly more individualistic logic to seek power, which is also something positive at one point, we fall with a mass. For me the plus of feminism is knowing that there is a paradox and knowing that we can value the question of the community, the question of care and the question of not understanding life as a jungle, because basically that raises the extreme right, every man for himself, “adds Incaminato. The possibilities and arguments of feminist movements are based on human rights and there is no organization today that represents them so well. “The recognition of vulnerability that feminist movements have is an asset, that is, the recognition of vulnerability and the dimension of care represents and works. The recognition of the need for a bond, for the construction of ties, for solidarity, gives battle to all that liberalism comes to destroy. And above all the need for a State that comes to care, that role of the State as caretaker of those vulnerable subjects is what feminist movements present,” says Wegelin.
SEPTEMBER 28, RESISTANCE The call made by feminist movements seems to be a clear response to the advance of fascism and the danger of losing everything achieved in terms of rights. Just as these movements carried out the first international women’s strike during the government of Mauricio Macri, they are again the ones who march and seek to respond to what was said in the last PASO. “This march can give it a tinge perhaps more similar to that of this type of dispute in other countries. Let it be clear that the women’s movement is going to polarize with this type of movement and that therefore perhaps the women who vote for Milei will ask themselves some questions. Milei so far positions himself as someone who will solve a series of economic problems, the question of how they plan to go against certain acquired rights they want to leave in the background. It seems to me that the march is going to put that dimension on the table and is going to make perhaps many women who do not know this issue, know it and also many men. There are many men who vote for Milei who are not against abortion or public health, for example,” reflects Incaminato. Will femininities be the real opposition? “After a series of achievements, today feminisms occupy a key role. The movements found an axis of struggle against these neoliberal projects. And although all that is endangered is not necessarily with respect to gender, but are also rights that have to do with job insecurity or education, it is femininities that occupy a central role in this struggle of resistance, “concludes Wegelin.

Original source in Spanish