The endless testimonies that came to light in the following days to the Íñigo Errejón scandal They have brought back to the table different debates around sexist violence and the ways to deal with it. Although the atmosphere and the emotional upheaval caused by the flood of complaints on social networks against politicians, journalists, artists – and many other anonymous people – seem to have calmed down, Several complex questions remain open. within the feminist movement, as well as in society in general. Can you learn something from a collective experience so overwhelming, beyond the damage, the grief and the victimization?
In a context where the urgency to confront sexual violence, and anger and frustration are on the surface, one of the main challenges is, as pointed out María Amparo Calabuigspecialist in Gender Studies, “avoid individualize responsibility“. The researcher at the Miguel Hernández University points out in a conversation with Public that, while holding aggressors accountable is essential, reducing the problem to “individual cases” of aggression can lead us to ignore the structural dimension of violence and the systemic causes that sustain machismo. How to combine both conditions without falling into the essentialism of the “potential rapist” or the “male victim of patriarchy” – as Errejón defined himself in his resignation letter– is one of the challenges that are on the table.
Rethink how men relate to women
For Calabuig, this fact forces rethink the profiles of aggressors and to become aware that “the idea of the aggressor is very diverse” and that we all, without exception, “must review our behaviors and reactions in contexts of sexual abuse or violence.” The specialist emphasizes that it is vital to examine In what contexts do power asymmetries exist? and that these reviews are carried out not only in sexual-affective relationships, but in all areas, including within work, family or friendship spaces. In this sense, the Errejón case represents “a before and after” for many, as it has made them aware that even “a seemingly egalitarian man and committed to feminism” can have “completely normalized” misogynistic behaviors.
Fernando Herranz: “There are traces of Errejón, traces of machismo, in all men”
The need for a process self-criticism –especially among men and, specifically, with regard to their relationship with women– is, therefore, another of the issues that this third version of the #MeToo has brought to the fore. How to do it without falling into victimhood and self-complacency? It should be remembered that, just as Noelia Adánez noted in a column –head of Opinion of Public-Sumar’s former spokesperson did not express “a deep understanding of the scope of his responsibility and the damage that, from what we are seeing, he has caused many women (…) It is his contradictions that lead him to resign“, its supposed bifurcation “between the person and the character.”
For Fernando Herranzdoctor in Gender Studies and expert in masculinities, it is “fundamental” not to lose sight of –following Octavio Salazar– that “There are traces of Errejón, traces of machismo, in all men.” The feminist discourse “is feasible to carry out from a theoretical level, quite complicated to apply from the political level and difficult to put into practice on this material level”, but not impossible. The problem is, in his opinion, that the vast majority of the time when attempts are made to work on masculinity, “what is produced are aesthetic, image or superficial changeswith words that may be very well armed ideologically and conceptually, but that do not attack the roots of the problem,” he explains in statements to this medium.
María Amparo Calabuig: “In general terms, the conditions under which relationships between men and women take place favor asymmetry”
“From the pedagogical level we must see that patriarchy also attacks us men themselves, which effectively causes us a series of limitations, but We are not the victims. We must not forget that it is a system created from, for and by men. In the end, falling into the victimist discourse is very simple. That’s why we have to review ourselves and also conceptualize privileges, be aware that we are subjects of life from a position of prevalence, agents of our actions,” adds Herranz. Or, in the words of María Amparo Calabuig: we must “understand that, in general terms, the conditions under which relationships between men and women take place favor asymmetry and inequality; Whether this happens this way (or not) will depend on whether a critical perspective is introduced into each specific link.”
The system “has for a long time put everything in favor of them being victimizers and for us to be the victims, the hysterical ones, the intense ones… But we are only talking about a social construction, you can create other ways to connect“The question will be to find enough imagination to illuminate these new models.
How to create safe places to report?
But it is not just the lack of self-criticism or the impunity what has emerged with great clarity these weeks: the debate on where and how to report sexist violence has portrayed the limits and risks of the options available to womenparticularly when the judicial system and the internal protocols of companies or political parties do not offer sufficient guarantees.
The lack of trust that many victims feel in criminal justice haunts them. This is how he explains it to Public Josefina L. Martínezjournalist and activist of the group Bread and Roseswho has been very critical of the responses “punitive” as the main option. According to Martínez, focusing the complaint exclusively on the judicial side can end up reducing the problem to an individual issue, focusing on the punishment of an aggressor, but leaving the structural causes of violence intact, such as patriarchy and power inequalities in the workplace. .
Josefina L. Martínez’s reflection invites us to question feminism’s dependence on atomized complaint channels and to propose a collective strategy
In this aspect, the social networksalthough far from being safe spaces, they offer many women an alternative to express their complaint when other institutional channels fail. Spaces such as the Instagram account of journalist Cristina Fallarás have achieved precisely this, making anonymous and collective complaints visible, providing a legitimate symbolic avenue for those who fear reprisals or distrust a judicial system that re-victimizes them.
However, Josefina L. Martínez also warns about the risks of trusting exclusively in these media. Social networks, he warns, mediated by algorithms and managed by big magnates who promote hate speech, “tend to polarize debates and expose complaints to public scrutinymany times with intentions to manipulate or discredit the victims and feminism.” A double edge which reveals that, although these platforms allow women to find echo in their complaints, they do not always provide a safe environment for their reporting processes. repair.
The reflection of Martínez and the Pan y Rosas collective invites us to question feminism’s dependence on atomized means of complaint and to propose a collective strategyby creating organizational spaces. For the activist, it does not seem a coincidence that these channels that depend on the individual action of each woman have emerged at the same time that there has been a process of institutionalization of the feminist movement and disarticulation in the streets. That is why it seeks to recover the autonomy of women beyond the justice systems or digital scrutiny. In the face of distrust in the judicial system and manipulation in networks, the importance of building spaces for conversation, understanding and complaint that combine respect for each woman’s decision with a critical vision towards patriarchal structures.
“It is easy to fall into sexual conservatism”
Another element shared among many of the criticisms that have been expressed as a result of these testimonies is the type of sexual practices that were carried out. The debate about whether there are more or less feminist sexual acts, like almost all those that have now re-emerged, also goes back a long way. “What must be made clear at this point – warns Fernando Herranz – is If we are talking about a sexual practice or a sexual assault, and for that we must put consent at the center.”
Fernando Herranz: “What must be made clear is whether we are talking about a sexual practice or a sexual assault, and for that we must put consent at the center”
For the doctor in Gender Studies, the morality that is projected onto certain practices sows a soil in which it can be easy for sexual conservatism to grow, even from progressive positions. Herranz believes that the focus should be on the elements of desire and consent, not in a moral categorization of agreed relationships. For her part, activist Josefina Martínez emphasizes that imposing these categories can limit the autonomy and experimentation of women, and reminds again that mutual consent must be the only valid measure to legitimize intimate practices.
The risk of instrumentalizing victims
Meanwhile, while new paths are drawn and old debates are disputed, social organizations show their concern about the instrumentalization and interested use of the victims’ pain for political purposes. How can we avoid it if making it official on the agenda is the only thing that guarantees its visibility? For María Amparo Calabuig, the most important thing is to prevent “everything that precedes damage”, that is, end the culture of cover-up and review harassment protocols within each institution to prevent pain from becoming a tool of confrontation at any level.
Along the same lines, Josefina L. Martínez warns that “both the right, from an evident hypocrisy, and some sectors of the institutional left, can take advantage of cases of gender violence for their own agendas, diverting the focus. This type of appropriation “not only trivializes the suffering of the victims, but dilutes the urgency of real change within the parties themselves and the institutions themselves.”
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