In 2016, Argentine writer Pola Oloixarac began receiving messages from women asking for her help to punish certain men whom they accused of being aggressors. Carried away by the maelstrom of social networks, in the full effervescence of the motto “sister, I do believe you,” she met with some informants but also with incriminated individuals. With all the material he collected in those meetings he built his latest novel Bad man (Random House), a term coined by Donald Trump to name Latin Americans who resided in the United States and that the author relates to those pointed 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 living in Argentina and the United States. It has a considerable journey in literature after novels The 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 aggressors 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 those incriminated. A position that invites a 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 had some type of relationship. Because?
I was pushed to that point of view because I myself suffered a cancellation that I tell about in the book, which had to do with the fact that I had not participated in another lynching. I experienced the feeling that an accusation turns you into a character in someone else’s novel and it is not easy to get out of it. It made me feel like there was something very literary going on.
What interests me in the book is, rather than condemning the idea of cancellation, studying it. I want to understand the phenomenon, the dynamics and whether it really helps the cause of women or not. If it is 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 make parallel courts, in reality, what we are doing is making women trust less in justice, which is the place where they have to go and where they can really be punished. [a los agresores]. It is interesting to think if cancellation is really a good instrument for us regardless of whether we have used it. 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 feel unprotected before it. If, according to you, reporting on social networks is not valid either, what can be done?
What is complicated is the idea of trivializing violence against women. If you are in a situation of violence, you make a report and you also tell it on social media, it seems to me that there is no one who can come and tell you that you are trying to damage this man’s reputation, for example.
The complaint will not prevent the woman from being publicly tried or the aggressor from being defended.
It’s like we have two areas. One is justice, which we have to improve to be able to listen to these women and protect those violated rights. And then, of course, you have the way people react and tell what happens to them. For example, I see Cristina Fallarás’ Instagram and I find it super interesting, it’s like a kind of trauma workshop. Women have a need to talk, they have a need to tell and they tell it. But it seems to me that we should separate what amounts to reporting a crime and, on the other hand, wanting to tell things that you did not like and that perhaps do not necessarily fall within the category of crime. It seems to me that the liberation of the word is something that has to continue and is valuable.
It would be necessary to separate what amounts to reporting a crime and, on the other hand, wanting to tell things that you did not like and that perhaps do not necessarily fall within the category of crime. It seems to me that the liberation of the word is something that has to continue and that is valuable
Precisely, based on a testimony on Cristina Fallarás’ Instagram, the entire Errejón case exploded, which they subsequently denounced.
And he resigns immediately. And immediately Pablo Iglesias appears, who can hardly contain his happiness on TV. I feel that in that fall there is also a man who benefits. I also find it very strong that Irene Montero later comments that the worst mistake is Yolanda Díaz, who is the vice president.
One of the things I wonder about is whether cancellation 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 am the president of women” or “I ended the patriarchy” and he himself was the one who was hitting his wife and having all kinds of macho attitudes everywhere.
I feel that a bit of feminism and “I believe you, sister” is used as an alibi for people who are in power and support themselves with the left to be able to continue committing those excesses and abuses. I would like the feminist cause to stop being instrumentalized by political power and to once again be a transversal instrument for all women, even for women who are on the right, for women who are elsewhere.
But if feminism is an instrument that manages to expel a politician who is an aggressor, it is benefiting all women, regardless of whether they voted for him or not.
Instrumentalized in the sense that it seems to me that there is a political operation that seeks to get rid of the men who do not serve them. Or to be able to vulnerable another woman, in this case Yolanda Díaz, who is totally pilloried. If a guy as relevant as Errejón disappears and you also have Yolanda Díaz in check, all that strengthens Podemos, which had been left in a bad place. So as a political operation it seems to me that they have been doing quite well.
Would you have liked to talk to Errejón and include him in your book?
No, because if you just make your political virtue and then do not demonstrate it with facts, the normal thing is that you leave. It seems to me that there is some charm in the fact that Íñigo, who was the first ally of a cause that served as an alibi to carry out his excesses, falls. It has a special beauty.
A paragraph from her book says: “In a scenario where, not sex, but being a woman is deregulated, in which any human can choose to be a woman or reproduce without going through the female machine, perhaps recover the power of “The destruction of other people’s lives was a way to revive pagan feminism.” What does it mean?
We know that we can destroy a man’s life or at least for five or six years, which is quite a lot, and I find it more interesting to study ourselves from the power we have. In a more real way than staying in the place where theory tells us that we are victims and that men are potential rapists and that we have to be designing elements to be able to contain that horrible desire that these men have to penetrate us, lacerate us, kill us. . It seems to me that it is a partial view, that it is more interesting to understand ourselves from power, even from the power of destruction because we have it, we are human.
I don’t know if lynchings are something especially good for the cause of women because they generate backlash [regresión] very strong in men. It seems to me to be a moment to think within feminism what things work and what things don’t.
But if the power of destruction that you mention was such, wouldn’t patriarchy have ended?
Ending patriarchy is like making revolution. And the revolution is always like a messianic horizon that makes you move to improve yourself. There are different levels of patriarchy operating on the planet and it seems to me that we are now learning about new weapons we have to terrorize and damage a reputation. But I don’t know if we’re going to be able to finish it completely 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 is going to be a total destruction of patriarchy.
The problem is when we are instrumentalizing. For example, I don’t know if lynchings are something especially good for the cause of women because they generate a backlash [regresión] very strong in men. It seems to me to be a time to think within feminism about what things work and what things don’t. And it seems to me that this criticism is part of the improvement of the movement, because if we do not look at what we do we do not learn and we do not improve.
Mateo, one of the characters, tells him that “patriarchy fundamentally enslaves men, they are the true victims.” What did you respond to that?
He was doing his whole victim thing. Then he says that they are the rabbits now, the ones being hunted. I think that fantasy exists in a lot of 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 those grays of fantasies that are super authentic in them. I find it adorable.
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