Lakshmi Roset Sala: "The extreme right took two minutes to see a young woman and demonstrate that they are the drooliest in the world"

BarcelonaThe CUP councilwoman in Moià, Lakshmi Roset Sala (Moià, 1995), took a stand last Friday when the video in which she criticized the expansion of the slaughterhouse accumulated hundreds of sexist messages about her physical appearance and her political affiliation.

Why did she decide to respond?

— Until now we had been told: "Ignore it". But this time the messages were numerous and very disgusting. We talked about it with our colleagues from the CUP and Endavant and I decided to make a message denouncing it, because it's no longer about me. I, in the end, am a militant of Endavant, of the CUP, and I have a background, political experience, and a discipline and conviction that will not make me back down, but I am perfectly aware that there are many women who will indeed be conditioned by these behaviors on social networks. I cannot remain silent. If we don't say anything, these types of conduct also end up being normalized.

After your message, does anything change?

— When I report what is happening, there are many other network users who start reporting it too. It is intolerable; comments against women cannot be allowed, neither on social networks nor anywhere else. The problem is that a woman sees this and may decide to leave the networks so as not to be harassed in this way. But the fact is that it is a space for political dispute right now. We women cannot abandon it. But the messages have continued. My colleagues have analyzed that they come from users of both the Catalan far-right and the Spanish far-right.

Do you still have the desire to dedicate yourself to politics?

— I feel powerless and I feel anger towards this and it only motivates me to continue fighting for feminism and to achieve real equality, because I do not want women to have to endure this. It does affect me, I will not stop, but it has consequences. Political participation is a fundamental right of all women and it is being conditioned.

Will they take it to the Public Prosecutor's Office?

— We haven't talked about it, to be honest. With the rape threats, we really should. We currently have a demonstration on September 10th against the far-right Aliança Catalana, who are the ones criminalizing immigrants, saying they are so sexist, yet it took them only two minutes to see a young woman and be the most sexist, lecherous scum. Before, when it was Twitter, there wasn't this far-right hegemony that we are seeing now. The feminist wave is calming down a bit and now we see them roaming the streets and social media.

Do you believe, then, that sexism is primarily right-wing?

— Yes. A large part of the way to continue with capitalism requires violence towards women, because it requires that women and the family unit continue to sustain part of what the system does not sustain, which is care work. It requires that women assume certain jobs that must be unpaid. How can you understand someone not revolting against this oppression? They have to make them feel small and that their place is inferior to that of the man. And how do they do it? With sexist violence, with domination.

In left-wing organizations, even in yours, we have known cases of sexual and psychological harassment of women.

— There is an ideological interest from the right to maintain sexism. Then, of course, since we have been educated in society and we all live in a patriarchy where there is domination towards women, we are all, in part, sexist. We also find that people on the left, who in principle should be against all oppression, have been educated in this system and may exhibit behaviors of sexist violence towards women. This has happened and our organizations, unfortunately, have found it very difficult to be safe spaces. What has changed are the protocols, the guarantees within our organizations to stop this. In other words, the method is now very efficient: if there is any type of sexist behavior, it immediately goes to the guarantee commission and work is done with that person, which does not automatically mean expelling them from the organization. To join Endavant, men must complete prior feminist training; otherwise, they do not join. Right now, in the pro-independence left, the leadership profile, that is to say, those who have the most say, are women. And this has been noticeable.

Is a right-wing woman less discriminated against than a left-wing one?

— Surely right-wing women also suffer a lot of harassment, the most internal kind, which comes more from within the party. On social media, they surely also suffer harassment, but it is usually different how they interact with the confrontational discourse of the left. We, usually, when we confront a person, whether it be a man or a woman on the right, do so with our arguments against the policy they have just expressed and we do not invalidate them because they are a woman or because of their physical appearance. It can happen, but it is not the method the left uses to invalidate arguments. I have seen how, on the other hand, when a girl gives a political opinion that is left-wing, within a minute she has someone who has gone to her profile picture, taken a screenshot of it, and is criticizing her body. It is used all the time from the right as an invalidating method, which delegitimizes, which insults this person and does not even engage with the argument.

Beyond social media, have you experienced harassment in politics?

— All women have suffered harassment, violence in many areas and at different levels. Being a CUP councilor, yes. Being called by girl names, being disrespected, not being considered enough, being treated as stupid without knowing you are a lawyer. With the amount of comments on the video, it felt like the networks are full of sexists. That is not the case. With all the support received, it can also be seen that they are not the majority, but there has been a setback. The far right is leading this involution towards the most retrograde postulates, saying that the feminist discourse has gone too far, or the nuisance that men are now reacting by becoming more sexist. But if you look at the statistics, the men who generationally lived through the feminist wave the most are the ones who currently perceive themselves as most feminist. Today's youth who are moving towards the far right are not radicalized by their schoolmates who are immigrants, but by social media.

Their video already has 3 million views. Have they managed to make their message, whether the feminist one or the one denouncing the expansion of the slaughterhouse, heard more?

— In this, the media has helped us the most, because they might have only seen three seconds of the video [about the slaughterhouse] before leaving comments. On the subject of harassment, yes, I think we have turned that around. Right now, people were very asleep, as if it were no longer necessary to be a feminist and we were in a situation of equality. With this video, I think it has been seen that feminism is still super necessary.