Manifesto
I do believe in feminism.
During the last couple of weeks, I’ve been immersed in a world of Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. I have shared the #metoo, and I have shared a comment from a dear friend that explained why she refused to publish #metoo. I have done interviews about feminism, one radio segment on slut-shaming and participated in 2 radio debates about women’s oppression. The first one with the intention to explain that gay people are not part of the man side (which is apparently now the perpetrator's side) and the second one, with the goal to testify why is it important for women to come up. In the first one I ended up fighting with 2 guys that claimed they as gay were more oppressed than women and in the second one, I left home with a feeling that guys don't really get the fear women to develop when growing up. Sadly, the overall feeling was just a lack of connection between genders.
Feminism by definition means that women get to be treated the same as men (CambridgeDictionary, u.d.). But men are also objectified, and there are plenty of more genders in the world that are not included in that definition either. I don't believe we are all the same. Every gender has different needs, that's why there are so many. And I think that understanding those differences is important to understand what part of our identity is defined by that gender. I believe in equal treatment, in equal opportunities. I am very much aware of the power relationship there is from men oppressing women. I know that around the world, in different ways (religiously, politically, domestically, physically, what have you) women are the “less” gender. I have been harassed, and I have an extraordinary high number of dear close ones that have been raped. It is disgusting that we girls have to be raised to understand that this abuse is not going anywhere. It is disgusting that the people that represent us are often the ones encouraging it. It is disgusting that a majority of men still use a primitive technique of “empowerment” such as violence. Verbal, psychological, and physical. This is so much, that it has convinced us even today in a majority of places that this imaginary power structure is indeed real. We can't blame all the women for having allowed it so many years, as much as we can't blame all the men for having it echo as they were taught to. Both are results of years and years of everyday repetition. This is the way it has always been and that is why we have been tricked into believing nothing can change. This is not a black and white problem. Both men and women are victims, and both men and women have repeated this pattern. Nobody really cares until we are directly affected by it and yet, everybody knows there is something wrong. Even if we don't have the guidance for understanding it, we all know there is something odd and unfair about the way we are raised. In every part of the world, this is an undeniable social issue. Women in privileged positions and women in unprivileged positions have experienced it. Anybody who thinks today we live in a feminist society is lying or fooling him/her/they self. Sure, Germany has a women president let's call it score! women in power. She still doesn't get paid as much as any past male German president. So, if the truth is that men and women are not equal today 2017, where are we actually heading?
What if we never have had rules or norms of genders of how to behave? I propose a power structure that is not bound to performativity. I propose to base our system on equality. You call things by their rightful name and I don't think we need to come up with new words, just pick the right one. We don't want any more behavior or performance rules. A society based on equality and respect is what we are asking. Because the reality is that gender is not a behavior recipe. Some women like to have rough sex- being picked up and put down, tied up, beaten. Some like to be docile, gentle, sweet. Even when not talking about sexual life in specific, our personalities should not be a definer of how many rights and/or privileges we get. Creating profiles of what it means to be a feminist is just divisions within the movement. If we say a feminist is supposed to dress in buttoned shirts, have short hair and hate men, then when a 14 year-old-girl is married in India against her will, we don't consider her a feminist? Or that she isn't demanding better rights? Equality is not counting the number of which sex or race is in power, but to give the same amount of opportunities, treatment, validation and respect to whichever gender in whichever economic status. This means to accept our place as humans nonetheless our sexual preferences or our gender expression. And to be fair, I don't think we women want to be treated the same as men. We should all seek for better treatment and rights than the ones we have now to all of the sexes. This is how really a modern world should look like. Not people not expressing their sex, but not giving the importance or relevance to whichever your gender is in terms of how many human rights should you get. Even if it feels so far like an unrelatable universe, this principle could be actually achievable in a collective matter. And it begins with judging less our forms of expression and judging more the narcissistic ways we have accepted so far. It begins with speaking up.