On Witches, Bitches and New Feminisms after 9M

What can be said of the last two days in Mexico City? March 8th, marked the beginning of a National Female strike set for the 9th. A personal commitment prevented me for walking alongside fellow women on the 8th, women of all ages, facing the crowd or hiding underneath a mask, with poignant messages written on carboards or simply stating the obvious written on their bodies, which was a plea: Stop Killing Us.

In a country where 10 women are killed every day, this effort seems faint, but when I watched women torching, defacing the most dear part of our national monuments, every blow with a fierce hammer, hurt. To me, one who loves art and believes these structures have no other obigation rather than to exist and be appreciated, was where the radical feminists enfuriated me.

#Moka, protected the Francisco I. Madero statue on 8M

But yesterday, I did manage to reflect on certain issues. I imagined a day without me. I forced myself to be invisible for a day, not blogging, not replying to emails and being solidary with other women who stayed indoors to protest our involuntary dissappearance by men's raging hands.

The excercise was hard. Not much changed, the world kept spinning as usual. Yet. While some men expressed their loss, some other were doing the opposite (either ignoring the fact, or making fun of it):

Our President, ignoring the female storm ahead.

A reason to make tacos, and celebrate the lack of nagging women.

Men wiithout "them".

I couldn't suppress my voice, by 8 p.m., I needed to say something, at least of what I was watching, listening and gathering from social media. I wanted to express the relief of not being dead. That whatever it is we are doing, is for our nieces, students, daughters and their daughters. That defacing seemed such a brute and stereotypical male behavior that we need to understand femeneity in new ways. I'm not saying subtle or light, I'm saying witty, using our rage in different ways.

But just as I was imagining my invisibility, I also imagined a day without any of my friends, students, colleagues or nieces, a government revictimizing them, making it look like it was their own fault, not making an effort to solve or change anything in this complex machinery of machism, and that anger fueled me up very fast. Would I shout? Would I be able to live with such a painful notion? Would I grab a hammer and spray paint their names on the walls? As I was lucky to come back from a voluntary silence to say something, what about all those women who couldn't say anything anymore?

Then, I wanted my voice to reach all the women that went to work not because they couldn't miss work, but the ones who jokingly asked all the men in the empty rooms, if all the 'feminazi' women really believed this shit about striking and didn't come to work. Those especially, are the ones 9M message must have reached. I have seen them, the ones that affiliate to men by being coherced to act dismissive towards other women, "the one of the guys" women out there that are so oblivious of how this has damaged and belittled them in their self-esteem that believe that alliance makes them of value to men.

To all the men who kept their own ignorant posture, who managed to attack female politologists or any women in the process through social media, all I can say is, backlash was expected. Few hours after 8M and 9M two women were killed and another was almost raped by a Uber driver on the way to the march.

There's an opportunity for new feminisms to arise. Of great importance to me, is not the male perspective, but of how women relate to women. Of how women teach or talk to other girls about issues that deal with men. Of how women can't coalesce if they are either too radical, or too soft, or plainly, too individualistic to make one cause enough to engage towards this vast ocean of female diversity.

I remember several things growing up, friends or older women telling me how it was 'normal' men behaved the way they did towards women (not only in Mexico but abroad), or how I had to start learning about soccer games or teams to talk about common issues with men. Why? I asked. They said that was the way things were and kept their lips shut tight. As if you were not supposed to make these questions or if you chose other path, then you were somehow out of the "game". Enduring those attitudes came from what was believed it was normal. Stupid jokes about my intelligence were normal, men being dismissive was normal, men being men was normal. But I don't want that for myself, my students, friends or nieces. I want a new normal where they relate better to other women than to become a bitch to other women or men, in order to survive, literally and socially; one where your credentials don't matter to anyone but the mere fact of you speaking is enough to be listened at. No more, no less.

And my strongest wish in the 9M aftermath: For women not to be vanished from this earth in (any of course but) such pitiful circumstances, fearful, by themselves on lone, deserted places, feeling they had messed up, knowing they were about to cease their existence in the way they knew the world to be before a violent incident, understanding that even if they managed to survive, they would be somehow, partially vanished from their will to live, sequestered from laughter and prone to sorrow and anger.