Lakshmi Roset Sala: "The far-right took two minutes to see a young woman and demonstrate that they are the slimiest people in the world"

BarcelonaThe CUP councilor in Moià, Lakshmi Roset Sala (Moià, 1995), stood her ground last Friday when the video in which she criticized the expansion of the slaughterhouse accumulated hundreds of misogynistic messages about her physique and her political affiliation.

Why did she decide to respond?

— Until now we had been told: "Let's ignore it". But this time there were a lot of messages and they were very annoying. I spoke about it with my comrades from the CUP and Endavant and I decided to send 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, a political experience and a discipline and a conviction that will not make me back down, but I am perfectly aware that there are many women who will 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, many other network users start reporting it too. It is intolerable, comments against women cannot be allowed on social media or anywhere else. The problem is that a woman sees this and might decide to abandon social media because she doesn't want to be seen that way. But that 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 from both the Catalan far-right and the Spanish far-right.

Do you still want to dedicate yourself to politics?

— I feel helplessness and I feel anger against this and it only motivates me to continue fighting for feminism and to achieve real equality, because I don't want women to have to put up with this. It does affect me, I won't stop, but it has consequences. Political participation is a fundamental right for all women and it is being conditioned.

Will they take him to the Prosecutor's Office?

— We haven't discussed it, the truth is. With the rape threats, we really should. We currently have a call on September 10th against the far-right Aliança Catalana, who are the ones who criminalize immigrants, who say they are so sexist, but then they took two minutes to see a young woman and be the most sexist, slobbering, and scummy people. 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 how they roam the streets and social media.

So, do you believe that sexism is mainly right-wing?

— Yes. A large part of the way capitalism continues requires violence towards women, because it requires women and the family unit to continue to sustain part of what the system does not sustain, which is care. It requires women to take on certain jobs that must be free. How do you understand that someone does not rebel against this oppression? They must be made to feel small and that their place is inferior to that of men. And how do they do it? With sexist violence, with domination.

In left-wing organizations, even in our own, 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 left-wing individuals, who in principle should be against all oppression, have been educated in this system and can exhibit sexist violence towards women. This has happened and it has been very difficult for our organizations, unfortunately, to become safe spaces. What has changed are the protocols, the guarantees within our organizations to stop this. In other words, now the method is very efficient: if there is any type of sexist conduct, it immediately goes to the guarantees commission and work is done with that person, which does not automatically mean expelling them from the organization. To join Endavant, men must undergo prior feminist training; otherwise, they do not join. Right now, within the independentist left, the profile of leadership militancy, meaning those who have the most say, are women. And this has been noticed.

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

— Right-wing women probably also suffer a lot from harassment, the most internal kind, which comes more from the party. On social media they probably also suffer harassment, but normally it's different how they interact with left-wing confrontational discourse. We, normally, when we confront a person, whether they are a right-wing man or woman, 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 they have a certain physical appearance. It can happen, but it's not the method that the left uses to invalidate arguments. I have seen how, on the other hand, when a girl expresses a political opinion that is left-wing, within a minute someone has gone to her profile picture, taken a screenshot, and is criticizing her body. It is used all the time from the right as an invalidating method, which delegitimizes, which humiliates this person and doesn't even get into the argument.

Beyond social media, have you experienced harassment in politics?

— All women have suffered harassment, violence in many areas at different levels. Being a councilor of the CUP, yes. Being called childish names, being disrespected, not being considered enough, being treated as stupid without knowing you are a lawyer. With the number of comments on the video, it gave the impression that social networks are full of misogynists. This 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 extreme right is leading this involution towards the most retrograde postulates, saying that the discourse of feminism has gone too far, or the nagging that now men are reacting by becoming more misogynistic. But if you look at the statistics, the men who generationally experienced the feminist wave the most are those who now perceive themselves as more feminist. Today's youth who are going towards the extreme right are not radicalized by their schoolmates who are immigrants, but by social networks.

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

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