Ana María Ortiz Madrid
Madrid
Updated Thursday, March 7, 2024-23:21
Equality The Government rules out protecting abortion in the Constitution due to lack of "consensus" and Sumar warns of forcing the debate in Congress
8-M The Minister of Equality will 'divide': she will go to the official march and support the alternative
In the run-up to 8-M, to which feminism is divided for the third consecutive year, this newspaper has proposed a meeting to the two currents to discuss their differences.
On the one hand, the
8M Commission
, defender of the trans law and without a defined position regarding prostitution.
On the other, the
Madrid Feminist Movement (MFM)
, contrary to the trans law and abolitionist of prostitution.
The former accept the joint interview, but not the latter: "We challenge power, not other women," they explain their refusal.
We therefore carried out the same questionnaire but separately.
Victoria García
and
Alía Yépez
respond
for the 8M Commission and
Jana Bravo
for the MFM.
ASK.
After taking office, the Minister of Equality,
Ana Redondo
, has declared her commitment to "recompose and rebuild the feminist movement."
Do you see it possible?
COMMISSION 8M (C8M).
The minister gives an image of the feminist movement as if it were absolutely destroyed, disintegrated, and to give that image of a movement that has been the strongest, the most important that there has been in recent years in the Spanish State, is to have a certain lack of knowledge. of the movement I should listen to.
I do not think that, with the institutional place she occupies, her main concern has to be rebuilding an autonomous movement, when she has so many problems to address from her position as minister, for example what is happening around feminicide.
The
health of the feminist movement is strong
.
As in any broad and diverse movement there are differences, they have them in Congress and they are 200-300, imagine a movement of millions of people.
MOV. MADRID FEMINIST (MFM).
Feminism itself
does
not need the minister or anyone to come
to put it back together or reconcile it
because it is already reconciled with itself.
The fact that there are two demonstrations does not mean that it is divided.
For us, feminism is
abolitionist
.
We cannot see as feminist a demonstration in which it is said that prostitution is a job or that there are pink and blue brains.
The minister talks about nuances or different tunes but with the same music, and that is not the case.
The claims are not that they are different, it is that they are contrary in many cases.
What we ask of the minister is that she does not infantilize feminists because it is not simply a question of nuances, that she stops instrumentalizing the struggle of women and that she does not confuse the population.
Q.
Has the minister contacted you regarding this "reconciliation"?
C8M.
Not today.
We do not have a direct communication channel with political representatives, we are an autonomous movement.
MFM.
With the Feminist Movement of Madrid, no.
I don't know if it is with any other association of our kind, but with the organizers, no.
Q.
Let's address the things that separate them, first of all, transsexuality.
What is your position?
C8M.
Trans people are people, they exist and their rights are human rights.
This is not a mere position or an ideological issue, it is institutionally recognized by the United Nations.
It is difficult to understand that there are those who want to take away rights from the most vulnerable people.
Their average age is 30 to 35 years, they have the highest unemployment rate, a shorter average life... And it is important to deny certain things.
Transitioning does not have to involve a radical transformation or a mandatory hormonal process.
The main demand of trans people is
"please call me according to my gender"
, to be able to have a change of roles.
People who deny trans rights, who attack trans people, talk about the violence of these processes, but they do not talk about the violence of denying them.
[[We ask about the Trans Law, which has allowed 5,100 people to change their gender in its first year, as the minister said yesterday, and which contemplates that from the age of 16 you can change your sex without the consent of your parents or guardians ]]
We understand that for parents, for the State, for the people who legislate, it is a very complex issue.
Why is it requested before the age of 16 or from the age of 16?
Because the body has to go through natural hormonal processes that will determine its adulthood.
Talking about this before the age of 16 or from the age of 16 is also recognizing the autonomy of that person.
It is very complex, but it is part of a right that children and young people have.
What was requested was that it stop being pathologized, that it stop being considered an illness and that, to begin with, these trans minors had the right to be named as such.
Then it happens that there are trans minors who take hormones but don't want to have surgery, and do you know what the right is telling you?
"You are monsters."
So, what are we left with? Are they operated, are they not operated?
[We asked him about the
cases of fraud
that have come to light, such as that of a police officer who changed into a woman before some exams.]
There is proof that transitioning is not a whim.
Three bastards come - sorry, but it's something that hurts, angers - who believe they're smarter than anyone else and have fallen into a fraud of the law thinking that doing this is a very easy thing, and no, it's a whole process. .
MFM.
Trans people have their own group, their spokespersons, and we believe that there are certain questions that are best asked of the representatives of the group itself.
For our part, what we are going to always do is defend women's rights.
And if there are laws to theoretically protect other groups that are going to affect women's rights, there we are going to raise our voices.
For us,
bodies are not wrong
, what is wrong is
society
.
We have a biological reality that is sex, which is material, it is biological, and then there is another thing that is gender.
We are gender abolitionists.
What we say is that a woman is a person of the female sex and that
sex is immutable
, but we want each person to dress as they want, be called as they want, act as they want.
But, if simply going to the Registry and saying 'I am a woman' in the case of a man is going to affect our non-mixed spaces, sports, laws, legal elements, then no, because it is detrimental to the women's rights and we cannot pass through there.
Q.
Another point of friction between both movements is prostitution...
C8M.
In our assembly, which is intergenerational, very broad, there are all positions on prostitution, from pro-rights people to abolitionists.
We have two things clear.
One, that we are absolutely against trafficking, that it must be eradicated.
And two, that prostitution is such a complex issue that it cannot be addressed or legislated without listening to all voices.
The position we have is
pro-rights for these women
: the right to get out of trafficking, to have papers, to have access to healthcare... When we say pro-rights it does not mean that we are in favor of regularizing it;
No, because
there is no consensus on what prostitution is
.
What many of us think is: denial of the problem and prohibition lead to more violence.
And that is the case of France.
What happens there?
That women end up working in the forests and there is a higher rate of violence, of murders.
The prostitution debate also becomes more complex year after year with new technologies. What is a
sugar baby
? Is it pornography? Is it prostitution? What is a
cammer
?
MFM.
It is our motto this year: "Prostitution is not a job,
abolition now
."
We want to focus on prostitution because it is something that seems urgent to us and that is always left for later.
They want to sell it to us as a job when it is not.
There cannot be women in a first category, where if an attack against their body is illegal, it is rape, and women in a second category, where there is a space of absolute impunity.
Irene Montero
tried to sell it as there being a social debate about prostitution.
No, from feminism there is no social debate.
You cannot rape a woman with a bill and there cannot be a space of impunity in which if you pay you can do whatever you want with the woman's body.
Then there is the
Organic Law for the Abolition of the Prostitution System
, the LOASP, which was presented in 2020, four years ago, and about which nothing has been heard.
It seems that it has been put in a drawer and that's it.
These were not the promises of the Government, they were not the promises of
Pedro Sánchez
.
Q.
Let's talk about pornography.
MFM.
It is another of our pillars, the abolition of pornography.
It is sexual violence
, it is violence against women;
in porn they teach how to rape;
The most viewed pornographic video is a group rape of a woman, evidently by men;
access to pornography is now at 8 years old.
If this doesn't help us reflect... For those who say pornography is fiction, no, pornography is not fiction, because what happens there is real and because it goes beyond the screen, because those kids put it into practice.
Group rapes of minors are increasing greatly.
C8M.
Pornography has changed a lot, from 100 years ago when photographs began to now when it is generated by artificial intelligence.
There is a debate about what we call pornography and what is part of the practice of prostitution, and it is very complex to enter into this discussion.
And we must distinguish between pornography or pornographic material and crimes against sexual freedom, which is a line that is becoming blurred.
Undressing minors with artificial intelligence
cannot be considered pornographic material
.
It is a crime and it must be said very clearly.
More than prohibiting or not prohibiting the Internet, which there are specialists who say is like putting up fences in the countryside... do we really have the ability to prohibit our minors and adolescents from using the Internet?
Is banning the solution?
We must talk about what sexual education we are having in this country and what technologies are being taught to our minors and the entire population, what new tools are being ways to commit certain crimes.
Q.
Ideologically, the 8M Commission is identified as close to Podemos and the Madrid Feminist Movement as close to the PSOE.
MFM.
That is
the most false thing we can hear
.
We do not have any type of connection or affinity with any political party.
Our banner is held by women from associations of the Community of Madrid that have nothing to do with political parties, we are not close to the PSOE, of course, nor to Podemos, nor to the PP nor to any party.
C8M.
We existed before Podemos was founded.
We are not a movement that came to be born in the heat of any institution.
Furthermore, it is curious to say that the other movement is closer to the PSOE.
We should ask
Pedro Sánchez
, who in his investiture session is the one he names the 8M Commission when he says that this country has changed after the last 8M, when we had a feminist strike.
That Podemos or that the statements made by Podemos representatives seem to be closer to us and as long as
Carmen Calvo
denies the existence of trans people and the director of the Women's Institute continues in her line of hate speeches... If these people belong to the PSOE, it is normal for them to feel that they are more interested in other agendas than ours, but we do not belong to any party.