It may be cathartic to anonymously denounce a sexist pig who made you suffer, but what happens next if there are no real feminist spaces where women listen to each other, “where someone else’s words can shatter our myths and our preconceived ideas
Instagram closes the Fallarás account for a few hours where the testimony that caused Errejón’s resignation was published
I have borrowed the title of Virginie Despentes’ book to talk about Iñigo Errejón because sometimes fiction explains reality better than the most thoughtful analysis. If you have not read this novel published in 2023, it is about what happens after a young woman accuses, through her blog, an older writer (left-wing and addicted to certain substances) of sexual harassment, joining “the army.” from abused women who break their silence”, to those who have “broken the taboo” and believe that “shame must change sides”.
“The problem is my complaint joining thousands of other complaints, where there should be silence and oblivion. “My voice is a snowflake in the avalanche that crushes you.” This is how Despentes presents the protagonist, Zoé Katana, but if after this we expect an ode to the public reckonings of the era of MeToowe were wrong.
Despentes also gives voice to the “asshole”, Oscar, through his epistolary relationship with Rebecca, a 50-year-old actress, acidic, a little over the top, lover of sex and drugs, who both insults him and understands him. “This generation becomes distressed quickly. And she’s not ashamed to say it,” Rebecca says of young feminists as she responds to Oscar’s complaints: “Do you want to know what it’s like to be canceled? Talk to an actress my age.”
This book contains almost everything I think about this case. There are the men who “cite dead and buried feminists to say that it was better before. Because even feminism belongs to them.” There are young victims like Zoé, who under media pressure and current narratives run the risk of becoming caricatures or representations far from reality (“When you read what she publishes, she is a goddess of war and destruction. And when you see her In real life, she is an exhausted girl on the verge of falling apart.
There are the assholes, who are legion, for the most part more despicable and self-centered than aggressors, more imbeciles than criminals, to whom Despentes also gives the possibility of defending and redeeming themselves. There are the mature women, back from everything, who rejoice in the unexpected strength of the anger of young women but who know that all relationships are involved in power dynamics and that reality is always more complex than the meme. There are public forums for anonymous complaints as places, to say the least, imperfect to begin to recover from abuse or aggression.
It may be cathartic to anonymously denounce a sexist pig who made you suffer, but what happens next if there are no real feminist spaces where women listen to each other, “where someone else’s words can shatter our myths and our preconceived ideas. and in Dear cocoon There is also guilt, moralism, the lack of sexual education of young people, the relationship between desire and domination, opportunism, revenge and cruelty towards each other.
Reality, and people, have many layers, and it is not always easy to get to the heart of the matter, to what is truly important. Machismo is transversal, it does not understand class, sex and ideology, patriarchy prevents even male emancipation and, as Despentes points out, even women carry an imbecile man inside. Feminism helps make this imbecile visible, in a painful way, before others and before ourselves. The ultimate objective of this feminism is to help build a better, fairer, more livable world for them and also for them.
#Dear #cocoon
