Looking back today, March 8, 2018 seems much further away than it was seven years ago. At that time, we thought that the great wave that was beginning to rise would be the unstoppable wave, the definitive one. It was the great wave. The streets were filled with collective indignation and revolution. The wave rose imposingly. The entire world was bathed in a movement that came from afar, waves that broke down walls to make way for the women who came behind. But those of us who came came up against more walls, the old ones that had not yet fallen. And, like our predecessors, we stumbled against the foundations, against the pillars of the patriarchy rooted in the planet, as if there were no other possibility of life than violence and systematic discrimination against women; against this social organization that still prevails, the one that men decided how it would be, not only without asking the opinion of women but prohibiting women from having an opinion. And then they called them naive. On this disastrous pillar a new world order is now growing, one that is older than walking. With women leading the extreme right so that we can hear: "Women, when they are bad, are much worse than men." In pain, it is clear that we are well valued. It is curious. But as a curiosity, I will say that feminism defends equality. And we already feel bad that women have to be equalized by the extreme right and not by the left, but feminism does not make women good or bad. Nor does it make women better than men. The people who think that when we are bad, we are worse, are the same ones who believe that feminists are a pain. They are the same people who maintain that one in two women has suffered sexist violence in Spain because they provoke it, that feminicides are perpetuated because jealousy kills and that the wage gap increases because women do not want positions of responsibility. And we all live in that world.
Seven years have passed and we see how the social surface has changed slightly, but our rights and freedoms are still on the ground floor. And on the surface, basically, there is a lot of posturing. As often happens, we have to look at the small things. I invite you to do an exercise in this same newspaper. Read articles and interviews and see what references the columnists and interviewees have. In the case of women, it is easy for them to quote or talk about a man. In the case of men, it is very rare for them to talk about or quote a woman. And that, which may seem secondary, is the fertilizer that continues to feed machismo with that whisper that makes it deceitful and unbearable. Because one way to perpetuate it is to continue to underestimate what women have done, said, written or created. Because the canons and, therefore, what is really valuable, have been made, handed, written and created by men.
Seven years later, it is not the demonstrations that should take the pulse of feminism. Nor a strike. The first one in 2018 had very little support. However, with repercussions for seven activists sentenced in Catalonia. Feminism must be demonstrated at home, at work, on the street, in the media, in institutions. Feminism is not a banner. That is precisely why people have always tried to stone it. This destructive desire can only be understood from an anachronistic fear. Because feminism remains the only movement capable of transforming a society swallowed up by a system that wants to die by killing. All waves end up breaking. But new ones always come. And until there is real equality, the sea will not be calm.
