"To analytically undo something to give it a new structure"; this is how the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) defines this transitive verb attributed to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 80s. This verb has been put back on the table, under the rug and inside the drawer, and next to feminism in recent years. We started hearing and normalizing it in the series Machos Alfa from Santi Millan's mouth in his academy of new masculinities. From humor and laughter, we have been incorporating it into our vocabulary of modern and liberated people. And apparently feminist.
To deconstruct ourselves is what we do when we try to unlearn, erase norms and deactivate the prejudices that lead us to do things under the same criteria without taking into account what has changed in us and in the environment. Precisely by being attentive to these changes, we have no choice but to deconstruct ourselves. Given the evolution of feminism, of feminisms, we cannot stagnate its meaning and scope. Feminism is a way of living, of opining, of deciding, of creating, of loving, of thinking, of educating... It is a way of being and being in the world. It is an attitude. Feminism runs parallel to the historical moment we are living and demands revisiting it.
In that deconstruction is when we must include men in the conversation, we must listen to them and explain to them what this equality thing is about. That it is not a matter of privileges, it is a matter of conquered rights, not acquired ones. It is a matter of not letting ourselves be carried away by inertia, because inertia is masculine. When we become aware of the power of being and being feminist, everything is easier. Being conscious, we detect the situations that we have normalized and that are hugely unfair.
I have been researching for six years what feminist men are like and how we imagine them; I am very interested in knowing what you think about feminism, how you live it, and how we can make you feel free, welcome, and happy in it. And a deconstruction, a reset, a clean slate is essential. We cannot face the 21st century, the century of #itsfinished and #metoo, with the limitations and thinking of the last century. And achieving this is passionately complex, because they don't know what to do and we are tired of being empathetic, patient, and generous. And this only leads us to polarize, to the manosphere and to the feminazis. And at these extremes we have social networks to amplify this distortion and manipulate everything that is being done to advance in feeding opposing opinions and in creating sides.
I see feminism as that embrace that dismantles us and where we would always stay, because it has relaxed us and humanized us. This is how I imagine feminism in men. That accepting another paradigm, other margins, other rules of the game, other ways of feeling. Unlearning, questioning, and becoming aware of inertia.