Patricia

El libro para los amantes de los libros.

“Escribo porque no sé coser, ni hacer punto, nunca aprendí a bordar, pero me fascina la delicada urdimbre de las palabras. Cuento mis fantasías ovilladas con sueños y recuerdos. Me siento heredera de esas mujeres que desde siempre han tejido y destejido historias. Escribo para que no se rompa el viejo hilo de voz.”

This is a good book to learn more about the linkages between race and gender issues. I completely agree there is much more work to do to understand how class, race and gender issues intertwine, especially in policy making. We can't design policies to serve all if we do not have the experiences of the most vulnerable at the table. We simply can't.

However, in my personal view, it is too focused on the US. The author presents a very narrow view reducing the movement, or what she calls ‘mainstream feminism', to “American feminism” as if it was something universal. I found “American feminism” at most ”light”, as any other policy or movement in the US that gets a bit closer to something progressive or (God forbid!) socialist. There are some concepts that are totally alien to me like “conservative feminist”. You can't be conservative and feminist, it is an oxymoron, it cannot be. Not for being a woman or for beneficiating from what the movement has achieved you are a feminist. It's like saying all workers are socialist because they benefit from the socialist policies; all workers do benefit from what the working class and socialist movements, struggles and policies have conquered and not for that we would call them (or they would call themselves) socialist or vote for left-wing parties. No conservative woman in this side of the Atlantic would call herself a feminist; they tried for a while in my country when the feminist movement was at its top of popularity to jump in as feminist... obviously it didn't work, nobody in the movement bought that and then they came back to the narrative of feminist as radical communist witches who want to eat your babies. I usually have debates with much less radical feminist as myself, and none I know would say that a woman who voted for Trump is a feminist; you can't vote for a man that says things like “grabbing her by the pussy” and be a feminist, you can call yourself whatever you want. Validating and give credit a concept like “conservative feminism” is dangerous because it allows people (men and women) to think than fighting for equal pay is feminist enough and the movement should stop there, in a very very superficial layer, and that indeed as the author explains in the book do harm to women. This “light feminism” is not my movement. Fighting for reproductive rights and equal payment is the very very basics, and the movement that I've experienced is very aware of that, it's not there anymore, this has been overcome already.

Feminism is radical because it attacks root problems, otherwise is just a patch. Feminism is about challenging traditional social norms and cultures, not about how we get a little more visibility of power going around that. Feminism is anti-racist and anti-capitalist (I know, for an American this might be mind blowing), until we challenge this system based on inequalities and imbalance of power pillared in a patriarchal society, we'll do very little.

Brilliant! And so necessary. There are books that simply need to be written. I wish everybody reads it, especially men. / Hay libros que necesitan ser escritos. Se ha convertido en uno de mis imprescindibles. Ojalá todo el mundo lo leyera e hiciésemos algo al respecto.

“Las reformas sociales encontrarán sus límites naturales en el interés del capital”

Muy interesante reflexión. Leyendo este libro me venían a la mente muchos debates y anécdotas. Como un día hablando con unos compañeros sobre el tema de los piropos, uno de ellos argumentaba que él tenía derecho a decir lo que le diera la gana, aferrándose a la libertad de expresión, y que nosotras nos ofendíamos con demasiada facilidad. ¿Cómo es posible que tú, como hombre, tengas todo el derecho del mundo a opinar sobre mi cuerpo y que yo, como mujer y dueña de mi cuerpo, no tenga ninguno a decir que tu comentario me molesta, me disgusta, o me desagrada? Me convierto en una histérica automáticamente por dar mi opinión. Muchas reflexiones en un ensayo muy cortito, merece la pena leerlo. Y, en fin, nos quedaremos con lo bueno de todo esto: los señoros pataleando desde sus atalayas, que siempre es muy bonito de ver.