The crack opened on March 8, 2022: for the first time in history, feminism marched in two separate calls. He did it in Madrid, where the pulse of the movement is measured, but also in another twenty Spanish capitals and cities. It has not been closed, the fragmentation has been repeated in the two most important annual events since then: the International Day against Sexist Violence, on November 25, and 8M, International Women's Day. This will be the third year that this has happened, for reasons that, with more or less weight depending on the moment, are the same from the beginning. Visibly and explicitly, on the banners and in the slogans, the abolition of prostitution; but in essence, the incorporation of the so-called agenda queer (that of groups with minority sexual identities) to the history of feminism and ley trans, which is opposed by the part of the movement that argues that “it erases women”; and, at the base, the internal political clash that occurred between socialists and Unidas Podemos with the entry of Irene Montero to the Ministry of Equality and that ended up reaching the organizations, and the streets.
This dismemberment, which came at a time when Spanish feminism had been a focus point of the global movement for several years, seems to be already established even after the heated debate on the law for the rights of the LGTBIQ collective and its entry into force, after Montero left the ministry and even after that ministry returned to socialist hands with Ana Redondo in the portfolio. The two organizations that are convening in Madrid this year know that a single march is no longer possible.
“Right now there is no real possibility, we are aware, of matching the messages of one demonstration and another,†says Ana de Blas, of the Feminist Movement of Madrid, who is calling for the one that will leave at 7:00 p.m. from Cibeles, will go up along Gran Vía and will arrive at Plaza de España with the motto with the motto Prostitution is not a job. Abolition now!
It is the part of the movement opposed to an approach to prostitution that is not abolition – as feminism has largely and historically defended -, also opposed to the gender self-determination that established the ley trans “This conglomerate of organizations includes some such as Against the Erasure of Women, which was born precisely as a platform with and against the processing of the law”; and they were critical of Montero's policies and also now of Redondo's position, which in their manifesto for this 8M they ask “to cease its campaign of confusion about the demands that will be in the streets on March 8.”
Redondo, since he entered office, assumed the ley trans as her own and has been clear regarding trans women – they are women – and this Wednesday she explained at a press conference for the campaign for this International Women's Day that “it It is important to go out into the streets” and not to have “one, two or 20 demonstrations”. She has also said that she, the PSOE, will go “as the party has always been doing†to the demonstration called by the 8M Commission, which will also leave at 7:00 p.m., from Atocha, to go up Cibeles. to Colón, the march, transinclusive, with the motto Patriarchy, Genocides, Privileges #SeAcabó.
For the Feminist Movement of Madrid, that issue – the trans issue – is not only important, but is part of the reason for its split as it was part of an internal schism within socialism itself. “We respect everyone's freedom of expression, but we understand that feminism is one and it is what defends the rights of women, and we are not going to empty that of political content,” says De Blas, who adds to that demands “the rest of which the political manifesto is made up of.”
Among its points are some historical ones, such as sexist violence and femicides, and “everything that has to do with the commodification of women, their conversion into sexual and reproductive servants (through rented wombs and the ova) and the inequalities that affect the workplace in a very serious way and that is a fundamental point and the origin of this day, which is that of the working woman.
On many of these issues they agree with Commission 8M, the other convener. In the historical ones – the murders, the structural violence – and also in those in the current context, such as “the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian population”, “the suffering of Afghan women”, “the absence of rights for women in other countries under oppressive regimes”, the situation of health, education and social services or “patriarchal justice”, which also includes the Commission's manifesto.
The difference lies mainly in trans-inclusiveness and in the different positions in addressing prostitution and pornography, because although there are abolitionists of both issues in this part of the movement, there are also regulationist blocs of prostitution (which differentiate from exploitation sexual), and contrary or open to the debate on the prohibition of pornography.
Siham Korriche, spokesperson for this conglomerate of organizations and associations, speaks of “the diversity and plurality of women†as “one of the potentialities†of the Commission: “There are many historical political issues, which we have been debating and dialoguing since decades ago and when a consensus is reached on an issue it is the result of that debate. If for some comrades dissent has weighed more and from there they move away and do something else, for us the debate is the essence, our commitment will always be to continue dialoguing, to build.”
The Commission, Korriche argues, “has not moved from its place since the seventies,” when they began to organize the demonstration. The point is that, for 40 years, the movement had organized together and had marched together, seamlessly in the streets on key days on the most basic issues, of course, always with blocks with concrete demands. within the different circumstances and contexts that affect women – migrants, racialized women, gypsies, young people, LGTBIQ women – and historical moments, as is happening now with the invasion of Ukraine, the attack on Gaza. Also now with a reactionary wave to feminism and against women's rights that has been growing for several years and which does not help, but does not harm, the division of the movement.
Does it affect the common response? De Blas, from the Madrid Feminist Movement, assures that they are “very aware of the rearmament of the extreme right.” “In this we are radicals, they will always have us in front of them. Now, in what way do we oppose it? With more feminism and feminist reasons, not with an irrational agenda or with half-words regarding commodification,” she adds, emphasizing the agenda of minority sexual identities, prostitution and surrogacy.
Korrechi, from the 8M Commission, says that sometimes he thinks “that the waves of reaction arrive because something is in motion”, that “many steps have been taken that the patriarchy has become nervous and kicks.” He also remembers: “Feminism is the movement that brings the most people to the streets every year, and not only in big cities. We will always look for ways to confront these waves that are contrary to our rights, those of all women.â€
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