‘If a woman kills another for the fact of being a woman, it should also be femicide’

The advances of feminism, inclusive language, abortion, femicides, toxic relationships… How has society changed in 15 years? For a woman who has spent all that time in jail it can be a shock.

That is the case of Inés Experey, before the last name Pereyra, who is released after serving a sentence for killing her ex-husband’s lover.

Inés is the protagonist of “Tuya”, the first novel by Argentine writer Claudia Piñeiro, who realized during the pandemic that Inés could already have been released from prison for good conduct.

However, what prompted her to resume her story in her latest novel, “The Time of the Flies”, was the idea of ​​facing a “very macho and conservative” woman with a totally new world in matters such as what it is to be a woman or the role of women in the family.

“That attracted me. Trying that brutal shock that I was going to experience with this different world,” the author of novels such as “The Widows of Thursdays”, “Elena Knows” or “Cathedrals” explains to BBC Mundo.

Supported by a chorus of Greek tragedy where women debate current issues as if it were an assembly within the feminist movement, the writer, playwright and television scriptwriter reflects on the role of women in society, on friendship and on new opportunities , among other issues related to women’s lives.

We spoke with her on the occasion of her participation in the Centroamérica Cuenta literary festival.

After 15 years in jail, the protagonist faces a new world and claims to have no idea what it means to be a woman now. How has the woman changed?

I believe that for all of us the change has been gradual, although there have been important transformations in recent years in some countries like Argentina and others in Latin America.

There are many things still to change, but there are many things that have changed. And although it has not been a process, even many women have found it difficult to adapt.

The novel works a lot on motherhood and the concept of motherhood is one that has changed a lot in recent years.

Me when I was a girl or not so little, in some places if a woman decided not to be a mother, it was something strange, it was frowned upon. It seemed to you that if someone was married and did not have children it was because they had some fault.

Here the novel takes a tour of conflictive maternity, maternity that does not turn out as one would like, maternity where perhaps the bond is broken and cannot be restored.

That also causes pain, as does feeling different because of it.

The book shows a strong friendship between Inés and her partner La Manca, whom she met in prison. How would you say friendly relations between women have changed?

I believe that friendships between women have always existed, but it may have been different in the past, because many women were closer to the home.

Today women are everywhere. We have friendships that develop in a different way. I think that the support of friendship between women has evolved in a very strong way in recent years.

Much of what we achieve is, I’m not saying friendship, but camaraderie, solidarity among women.

If something happens in El Salvador with a woman who is being sentenced to 48 years for having an abortion, all Latin American women come out to say something.

I think there are some support networks for women, beyond friendship.

I sometimes say that on the back cover of the novel the publisher put something like this novel could be Thelma and Louise from the Buenos Aires suburbs. And I think, how cute they were. I love that movie and it still seems relevant to me. However, I think that today its protagonists could perhaps have another ending.

Maybe before they got to what they got they would have found some hands to hold on to. Before we were quite alone in those circumstances but today we know where to turn. We know who to call, where to go.

In Argentina, abortion has been legal for a short time. Since 2020.

Before that, when I was a girl, if someone had to have an abortion, it was all a secret thing that you didn’t know who to ask.

But since 2018, when we started talking about it, if someone asked you, you knew which phone to give. There was no longer as much embarrassment or concern in asking this question. There were groups of women who accompanied in this circumstance.

It seems to me that all that changed a lot.

It is also noticeable in everyday things. If you go to a restaurant and see a man eating you will only think, oh he is working in a city that is not his. But until recently, if you saw a woman eating alone, it already caught your attention.

Luckily today, all those things are smoothing out and being alone is probably a decision, not a misfortune as it seemed before.

In the novel there is a choir in which current issues are debated. Do you believe, as the women in the chorus say, that who else, who less, has prostituted themselves in some relationship with men?

I hope it is no longer like this.

Let’s say that in my generation there were always many concessions, of all kinds, for example in labor relations, when working in a meeting where we were all equals, and coffee had to be served, the one who stood up to do it was the woman.

That also has to do with assuming a role that is not right for us to assume.

I hope that’s not the case anymore, but even when I worked corporately it was that way, it seemed like there were some things that were still assigned to women, no matter what rank category they held.

In this sense, historically we have had a position of submission and to rebel against that submissionalthough even today sometimes it is very difficult for us to rebel.

I feel that there is an aggressiveness, at least in my country, against the feminist movement. We have achieved many things. There are many men who no longer have doubts about these things and it even seems as if it were a problem of the past.

However, the attack that all women in politics in Argentina receive and receive and receive, the women of feminism, those who have some manifestation regarding women’s rights, is atrocious.

That feminist fight is also reflected in the book where you talk about the need to “not let up in the fight” using the issue of abortion as an example. How can these setbacks be dealt with and what important battles lie ahead?

I believe that it is essential to be careful that the rights that you already obtained are not taken away, because there will always be someone who will want to come and review something.

It is something unusual, however it happens and you have to be attentive.

But beyond that there are still many things to transform.

One is precisely the great aggressiveness against the feminist movement that we were talking about.

Another is the care laws, the great contribution of free work that women make to the capitalist system, because it is the one I know of and that in Argentina accounts for approximately 20% of the gross domestic product.

That work that we have been told is love. You go to work, but also later at home you have to do a lot of other things for freebecause that love helps the system work.

And the other is the gender violence that continues in Latin America with very high figures.

In Argentina the value is more or less a woman every 24 hours dead in femicides, but I was recently in Mexico and there were 10 women a day. It seemed like a terrifying number.

So, obviously this is an issue that needs to be worked on urgently.

Speaking of femicides, what happens if, as the women in the chorus of your novel debate, a woman kills another woman out of hate? Being a hate crime is it also a femicide?

I believe that ultimately the concrete answer is given by the lawyers, because they are the ones that conform to the codes, but I believe that it is just as serious if a woman hates a woman for being a woman.

For me, if a woman kills a woman for the fact of being a woman, it should also be femicide, but I am not a legal expert, that is what I think.

I get the feeling that it’s like when, for example, some people tell me why the murderer in the novel is also a woman. Well, because it can also be. It seems to me that one of the first things that we also have to do from feminism is to look within.

Another issue that divides, especially within feminism, is the issue of trans, between trans-inclusive and trans-exclusive. Why do you think this happens?

In Spain it is like that and in many other countries as well, but in Latin America it hardly happens, in Argentina it certainly doesn’t. Here feminism is mostly trans-inclusive, which does not mean that there are no women who believe that the trans collective should not be part of feminism.

We have had a trans law for 10 years and there was no fight.

Of course, there was a debate in Congress, but there were no people on the streets like in Spain saying that if trans people are going to enter the bathroom, that if they are going to sign up for a sports competition, none of that existed.

All these things, if they happen, have to be solved in another way, not taking away the rights of trans people.

It would be necessary to ask those who consider themselves trans-exclusionary why they are so against it. You cannot deny a group their rights because you assume that maybe something can happen. It’s like I said: well, starting tomorrow no one drives, because look if someone drives drunk and crashes.

It is not the way. The way is to grant the rights and if any of these problems appear, solve them.

Finally, there is the issue of inclusive language. How do you think this change is experienced in society?

In Argentina it is one of the most furious attacks you receive on social networks.

There are politicians who, for these next elections, base part of their campaign on the fact that they are going to prohibit inclusive language and one thinks, one thinks, with all the important things that there are to do, what will these people be at stake with that.

I, for example, do not use inclusive language.

Usually it doesn’t bother me that someone else uses it, it doesn’t seem bad to me, but I am uncomfortable, very uncomfortable with the masculine universal. For example, I just said “one” and I had to say “one”, but I was formatted to say one, although I mean that I am a woman, because they taught us to put everything together from the masculine universal.

Every time I feel that the masculine universal names less what it has to name. That is also worked in the novel. The discomfort of language to name certain things.

But going back to inclusive language, the attacks are so furious that we should analyze what they hide, what is behind them.

People don’t need the Royal Academy to approve anything to use it, because people speak and use words and change the language. But there is someone, a number of people who are desperate for it to be banned.

That is why I say that there is something behind that psychologists will have to analyze, what is happening with inclusive language.

This interview was prepared for the digital version of Centroamérica Cuenta, a literary festival that takes place in the Dominican Republic, between May 16 and 21.

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