Throughout the month of March we witness multiple events of claim for gender equality, an emancipatory struggle that comes from afar and which has convulsed heteropatriarchal societies at different latitudes of the globe. However, a fight that is still far from its goal (despite the great strides made up to now, albeit in a heterogeneous way) and in which it is necessary to defend every centimeter conquered every day, with tenacity and determination.
The different movements feministsunited in the fight against macho violence but divided in strategies and disagreeing on some decisive aspects, are advancing at alternating speeds, educating societies towards a new interpretation of social conventions (largely based on the privilege of the heterosexual white man) but clashing with a persistent distrust (when not ostracism) of a system that hides its distortions with increasingly advanced “social marketing” techniques.
And then we are scandalized by the transformation of language as a political manifesto of a conscious presence of the independent, autonomous and self-determined feminine, emphasizing the fact that changing an “o” for an “a” distorts the language: however, we do not analyze how this language used the “a” and “o” for ghettoize women by limiting them to certain professions (which do not coincidentally end with “a”) reserving those ending in “o” (not coincidentally the most economically rewarding and socially prestigious) for the exclusive use of the male universe.
An overt, manifest, voluntarily created non-neutrality which is also reflected in the Law, because as he claimed Catharine MacKinnon “The law sees and treats women as men see and treat women.” A great obstacle therefore towards obtaining that real equality which it was thought would have emanated naturally after the great battles of the past century for the recognition of women as equal rank compared to men, in the different legal systems of the planet (sadly not in all).
And so we come in Mexicoafter this dense but dutiful preamble, country where men kill more than 10 women a day and where feminist movements constantly face (paying daily with blood and tears) a violent, self-referential system imbued with machismo and misogyny. Faced with all this, the response of Mexican feminist movements, aware that the struggle is not only gender but also class, has been audacitypowerful, exemplary. An organic response that over time has been able to unite different worlds and disciplines, from academia to activism, from art to politics, from teenagers to elderly women. An organic body (retaining internal challenges and differences) that moves and responds to blows harder and harder of a wounded patriarchal system that does not want to give in. He does it in every space and he does it especially in the capital, Mexico Citya showcase of the country’s economic elite where gender, class and ethnic differences are extremely visible, where the intersectionality of oppression finds a clear and glaring manifestation of itself.
And so the feminist collectives have transformed the architecture and urban space of the city into a canvas that constantly alphabetizes whoever lives there: feminist concepts, emancipated, present in the crucial points of the capital, in a fluid but powerful and significant way. And so Mexico City has been transformed into an urban space, a territory of women in resistance, an articulated fabric of sisterhood (sorority) in expansion that fights openly and daily against the system that wants women mute, docile, merchandise. In this permanent demonstration, in every street, murals, in front of every government building and in the symbolic places of the cities, it seems to be able to hear the verses of the song by Live Quintanathe Mexican artist who created the anthem of this new stage of emancipation, fearless song (Song without fear).
But, going back to what MacKinnon said, it is important to recognize that the Law it is not neutral and for this reason, also in Mexico, courageous women have faced the system to create new normative outposts of real equality. That’s how we know Olimpia Coral Melo (1990), politician and activist against digital violence and for women’s rights, whose story and whose struggle they propitiated the law that bears his name “Olympia Law”, which sanctions digital violence and online harassment. Or Euphrosyne Cruz Mendoza (1979), Zapotec indigenous activist and politician (same ethnic group as Benito Juárez, first indigenous president of the Americas), who obtained a reform in Article 2 of the Constitution, to recognize indigenous women the right to active and passive voting. How not to mention then Marcela Lagarde (1974), politician, academic, anthropologist and one of the most prominent representatives of feminism in Latin America, who promoted the typification of feminicide in Mexico.
These are just a few names, to which are added those of the activist Yolitzin Jaimes (who led a campaign to denounce impunity and lack of access to justice for victims of sexual violence and human trafficking) and many others. Names known or not, who lead this new emancipatory ferment, women fully aware of their role in history and of their power, women who do not “ask permission” (and they shouldn’t) and who “dare” to question the system, with a movement that is already unstoppable and will be a great engine (perhaps the greatest) of the transformation of the country, to the cry If they touch one, we all answer! (if they touch one, we all answer).