“The women of yesteryear were strong and had to fight for equality. My mother had 9 children and she only asked to find a gynecologist who understood that she could not have more children and wanted to enjoy a sexual life without bringing one more life into this world.”. This is what Rosa, an attractive middle-aged woman was telling me in the gym locker room this morning. With Rosa there has always been a special chemistry. She is also the daughter of fishmongers, and that gives us a certain complicity of having lived the hardness of the market, of enterprising families, of very hard jobs and houses with very masculine disciplines and authorities. Today she spoke to me about her mother and her grandmother, for that little tribute we pay when we talk about the women who educated us, who with their silence, solitude and generosity have made us educate and step from assertiveness. When she was telling me that her mother didn’t want any more pregnancies and finding pills or condoms was something clandestine and frowned upon, and I see where we have come to, I feel lucky to have been born in the 70s and to be the protagonist of my own sexuality.
I get out of the pool (I only go to the gym to swim) and look at my Whatsapp, which was on fire. I see and read the news that a 44% of men think that the promotion of equality discriminates against menthe headline is controversial. We can interpret in the same way that more than the majority, 56% do not feel discriminated against by feminism. But this headline would be too positive and would not light up the radio talk shows or make the front page of the major newspapers.
As I read the news and contrasted it I have shared it with men and women in my life whose opinion I greatly respect. They don’t think like me, that’s why I generate the debate, to question me, always. My friend who is a professor of law tells me that the most worrying thing is that adolescents are part of this high percentage; my advertising friend tells me that we have lost the plot and now the balance is on the other side, that our discourse has generated enemies; my sociologist friend tells me that this is not proven, that it is pure controversy and that it is done to mislead public opinion, and tells me about the Ockham’s razor to synthesize and understand it better.
My engineer and feminist friend compares it to apartheid and argues that those born with a given advantage will never give it up or admit it; my journalist friend tells me that macho men go from executioners to victims; my multinational executive friend highlights the alarming way teenagers think; my entrepreneur friend and mother of three teenagers also emphasizes the new generations, and my friend, an expert in new masculinities and gender, points out that 56% of men do not feel discriminated against.
In a couple of hours I’ve gone from swimming and talking to the daughter of fishmongers who reminded her mother that she wanted illegal contraceptives, to interacting with eight educated and well-traveled professionals who view feminism and the news of the day from different prisms.
What is clear is that we cannot ignore what the women of the post-war period suffered so that we can be where we are, and so that our sons and daughters, the macho adolescents in the study, understand that women owe nothing to men and that acquired advantages should cease to be acquired advantages.
It is necessary to rethink feminism and we can not burden what so many women and some men have lost in order to be where we are.
In the last study we conducted, I found that linking products to feminism is uncomfortable and that a redefinition of the concept is necessary. It is necessary to rethink feminism and we cannot burden ourselves with what so many women and some men have lost to be where we are. I vindicate everyday feminism, the feminism that makes us all equal, that makes us better people, better mothers and fathers and that invites us to the great effort of unlearning and eliminating acquired biases and privileges.
