Dear contextual community:
I am writing this letter to you because I need to share some reflections with you, which I consider important; so much so that they have colonized my brain until there is almost no room for anything else. But today I am not speaking to you as deputy director of CTXT; On this occasion I do not represent the environment in which I work. Today I am just Vanesa Jiménez, woman, journalist, full of doubts and contradictions, and worry and anger.
Sumar’s parliamentary spokesperson, Íñigo Errejón, resigned on Thursday, October 24, 48 hours after anonymous testimony of humiliating and sexist treatment – “a well-known politician”, a “psychopath”, a “monster” – was released in social networks. CTXT did not publish a line about the subject until Monday the 28th. Surely, we were the only Spanish media that four days later had not addressed the issue publicly. And not to show off our motto: “Proud to be late for the latest news.” The reason is that, despite the intense internal debates, which were constant in the first days, mainly in our editorial board, we all assumed that, without time to think and in the midst of the thunderous noise shouting in the same direction, it was very difficult to face the edges of such a complex issue. The draft with an editorial, already rewritten a thousand times, is still in the ‘To be edited’ folder.
I decided to save myself from the avalanche that was dragging everything down by looking at the corners of the fact, rather than at the fact itself, where the alleged certainties accumulated. Informatively, it seemed essential to me to analyze the context – what am I going to tell you – and also to think about the real state of feminism, and therefore of women – also, or especially, the less privileged – beyond supposed victories, always ephemera.
Regarding the latter, if you paid attention to the media or the networks, the conclusion was already in all the headlines, and it was clamorous and indisputable: the advance of feminism is unstoppable. He editorial of The Country of October 26 is, possibly, the best example of this generalized triumphalism: “Errejón resigns, feminism advances. “The upheaval over the sexual behavior of the Sumar spokesperson shows a transformation of society that has no turning back.” On the networks, things were going at the same rate and the ‘MeToo’ and ‘It’s Over’ labels flooded the publications again.
It was not easy to get out of that single lane in which we had to place ourselves if we wanted to be on the good/correct side of history.
It was not easy to get out of that single lane in which we had to place ourselves if we wanted to be on the good/correct side of history. The sentences had already been handed down. But straight paths do not allow for reflection and lynchings are extraordinarily violent, what a contradiction, and at the very least they lead to melancholy. Because that’s what happened, from the beginning. And we decided not to join.
The media, for the most part, adopted the carousel-football-game mode, which consists of accumulating the last few hours without judgment or restraint. On this occasion, instead of fouls, cards or goals, we received a testimony, another, another one; a statement, a tweet, more tweets, a video, a statement… All overflowing with morbidity, and also with the smell of a sacristy. The great paradox of this terrible news coverage is that the most furious attacks against Errejón have not come from right-wing media. It has been the newspapers, digital, radio and television stations that most supported the former founder of Podemos and Más Madrid that have brandished the sharpest sword. It will be because of guilt, and because in the fight to be the most feminist, reasoning is lost. The vice president of the Government, Yolanda Díaz, and the Minister of Health and leader of Más Madrid, Mónica García, must also be blamed. On the path to personal salvation – as if anyone could already be saved – they have lost everything, even shame and humanity.
Perceiving yourself as a victim of sexist violence does not allow for debate for me. You are a victim. That’s how I assumed the first anonymous story I read on Trump’s friend’s social network the day before everything exploded. And everyone who came after on an Instagram wall, an environment so sure which belongs to Mark Zuckerberg, who also owns WhatsApp and Facebook. The victims are victims and their stories are not questioned, they are believed. And they protect and accompany each other. But faced with the risk of trivializing gender violence, faced with the terrible axiom that maintains that patriarchy makes every man carry an abuser inside and that therefore we are all potential victims, we are forced to ask ourselves many questions. I asked myself them at the beginning and I continue to ask them now, because for many I don’t have an answer.
Faced with the terrible axiom that maintains that patriarchy makes every man carry an abuser inside, we are forced to ask ourselves many questions
Should we celebrate anonymous complaints as a victory when we would not accept them in any other matter? Are the stories we have read on IG complaints of sexist violence/crime? What type? Have we lost basic tools to combat machismo in its early phases? Are we really more empowered? Is there consent in the stories we have seen on the networks? What if we are immersed in a great contradiction, in which we put consent at the center but reality disempowers us to be able to consent? What if romantic sex has become an ideal? What if fucking without empathy is no longer valid? What if we have become passive subjects again…? And basically, and above all, what if this transformation of society that I was talking about The Country Does your editorial “which has no turning back” hide any regression? What if the feminism that is equated with the fight against sexist violence is small and not very emancipatory?
More than two years ago, I published a column in CTXT about the needling of women in bars and nightclubs titled “stop being a whore”. In it, he warned of the continuous attacks on our sexual freedom, which served and continue to serve so that our pleasure constantly struggles with the danger that enjoyment entails. Four years earlier, in 2018, I had to write them a letter like this –“Let’s talk about fucking”– in the face of the fierce criticism we had received after opening a debate on whether empathy was necessary in sex (no) and the risks of falling into puritanism (yes).
Today I feel that those debates have returned, or perhaps they were never overcome. Because in the midst of the madness for the last hour, and for not being left out of this multitudinous scrutiny in which If you don’t speak out it will be for a reasonprudery and questioning of some sexual practices have become intertwined, with the risk of settling in even more heads. In sex, good and bad, right and wrong, are not standards to measure anything. Missionary is no better than having you pinned against a gotelé wall five minutes after meeting you if all the parties, whoever they are, are free to choose it. Just as it is not reprehensible to be snorted up your ass if, again, all parties agree and your ass can handle it. Among the many atrocities that I have heard and read these days is the need for “feminist sex,” which I don’t really know what it is, although I sense it.
Another risk of regression is, I believe, in the equation of feminism with the fight against gender violence. Between the great purple tide that filled the streets in 2018 and the feminism that was installed in the most conventional media and on television sets there was a very short line. In the end, the debate focused on glass ceilings and sexist violence. And so it has been imposed over time. I can’t imagine Susanna Griso questioning capitalism in her morning gatherings, nor addressing sexual harassment, workplace violations, humiliation or the lack of institutional support that the day laborers of Huelva denounce, but I have seen her join the circus while a journalist He read live the details of the complaint for alleged sexual assault by a woman against Sumar’s former spokesperson. Feminism, as those who fight the most for this fundamental cause have taught me in these years, is an enormous tool of contestation and emancipation, of transformation. These days I have thought a lot about the women – defenders of the earth, refugees from wars, victims of dictatorships… representatives of the world’s poor – that I met at the feminist Congress that we organized in Zaragoza. “Assume that you are privileged,” they told us. What will they think today?
Faced with the cry of “impunity is over” and “fear has changed sides” I have felt very small, I confess. Because the first is not true, even though a sexist politician who should not be in politics has had to resign. And because the second is a trap; My aspiration is that men do not attack women because of their learning, their socialization, and not because of fear. We will talk another day about the ghost of the war of the sexes, about the “go for them.”
Until now I have not addressed the political derivative. I don’t know when the so-called new politics died, or even if its violence and structural machismo were already a death wound that they brought from the factory. Perhaps she was already dead when Podemos was presented at the Teatro del Barrio, in January 2014. Or she died in one of the many fratricidal wars. It doesn’t matter anymore, we can only confirm the total death.
These days, in the many conversations I have had with friends, they all conveyed to me a deep discomfort, even physical. These days too, while I was trying to understand, it fell into my hands again, or maybe I looked for it, The birth of tragedyby Nietzsche. It is a very complicated book, which I would need to read a hundred times. But among its darkness, there is a thesis that appears transparent. “The existence of the world can only be justified as an aesthetic phenomenon.” “There is nothing that is more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world than the Christian doctrine, which is and only “He wants to be moral.”
In his attempt to examine the origins of Greek tragedy, Nietzsche maintains that “the Greek knew and felt the shudders and horrors of existence” and that “in order to live he had to place before him the brilliant dream birth of the Olympians.” “How else could that people of such extreme sensitivity, so fiery in desire, so strangely gifted to suffer, have endured existence if this existence had not been presented with a superior aura in their own gods?”
Perhaps our unease is due to the fact that, once again, we have realized that we do not have gods to distract us from the horrors of existence.
In this sadness that I have felt for the victims, for all of us, there is a place for compassion. There is no way to excuse or defend Ínigo Errejón for his sexist and humiliating behavior, but the punishment of the news has gone so far that we have canceled its existence. I have been a journalist for 27 years and the only lynching that I can equate is that of Dolores Vázquez in the Wanninkhof case.
Thanks to CTXT I have been able to be the journalist I want to be, one who tries to reflect freely and review her certainties. I was accompanied by my colleague Nuria Alabao, coordinator of the magazine’s Feminisms area, and a very clever and complicit friend with whom I have spoken a lot. And also our editorial board, where I have found a safe, important and brave place to debate.
If I have been able to write you this letter it is because I believe that, although many and many of you may not agree with me, we will always meet in reflection and debate. It’s the only way to move forward. We have learned about feminism, and also about journalism.
Thank you for being such a demanding community.
Vanessa
#Errejón #tragedy
