Interview with feminist philosopher Ana de Miguel: "Almodóvar has trained us to think that being a whore is wonderful"
By: Rebelión | Thursday, 22/03/2018 01:18 AM
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| Ana de Miguel |
By: Claudia González Romero
The feminist philosopher and professor honours the #8M strike, speaks about the umbrella girls controversy, prostitution, and the Weinstein affair, amongst other subjects, as part of her visit to Jerez to give a talk on feminism's challenges.
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Philosopher, writer, and professor, Ana de Miguel (Santander, Spain 1961) is one of the luminaries of the feminist movement in Spain, with more than 20 years dedicated to research to shed light on the origins of gender inequality and to become familiar with new mechanisms that allow patriarchy to continue 'asphyxiating' women in the 21st century. Her penultimate book, Sexual Neoliberalism: The Myth of Free Will, clarifies the Circuito de Jerez's umbrella girls controversy, a topic that caused an uproar in the town and that went on to spread all around the world. During this month of feminist causes, the philosopher visited the Jerezano city to give a talk on Feminism's Challenges: A World with a Way, organised by Ganemos Jerez, at the ONCE conference centre.
How do you rate the feminist strike of March 8?
Shocking. There is nobody who has not been impacted in this country. I do not think of anyone here or the rest of the world. Yesterday I spoke with a professor at the Columbia University and she said to me: "Explain this to me". Nobody could really underestimate it.
Are we still in the third wave of feminism or are we already in a fourth wave?
I study the Anglo-Saxon world a lot and we have to study what happens in the rest of the world. And Anglo-Saxon feminism has an immense influence in Spain. Authors like Judith Butler or some French ... And in the newspapers of the Anglo-Saxon world, it has been written that we have been in a fourth wave for 10 years. The refer to this "cool feminism" that actresses subscribe to and that is becoming increasingly fashionable. Like, Beyoncé refused to dance with boys and always dance with women. Feminism was taking spaces in a series of things with a lot of visibility: cinema, video clips, singers, fashion ... And the impact of new technologies, above all. These have given feminism a dimension it did not have before, which was to come from bloggers, YouTubers ... who exercise, as they call them influencers, a lot of influence on girls and boys.
About the Weinstein affair, do you think it was uncovered by the stakeholders in the film industry or because of media awareness?
Totally by conscience. Feminism, slowly - too slow, because we have been at it for more than 200 years - one convinces several more, and those, several more. It is a very slow conscious-raising process, and it has to be supported because women have a stronger position in society, more power in the sense of capability. Not in the sense of ownership, but in having capability. Letting our opinion be heard, being in the media, the ability to have studied and be in school ... In that sense, the Weinstein thing had a lot to do with Woody Allen's children. Woody Allen's son has spent years devoted to making the Hollywood community see what it means to underestimate his father's sexual abuse. It was him who started an investigation. Everyone knew it, right? But someone has to create an environment of "this is how far this has gone". Which is what happens in revolts, in revolutions. It's the slow process in which women go on to consider themselves people, and then that which was tolerable before - like getting patted on the butt - suddenly, it no longer is.
I have a 19 year-old daughter, and I show her a lot of movies that I like and a little while back I showed her the film "Chicago", starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones. In the first half, Catherine comes out naked, dancing in a cabaret. A dance where you see how sexy she is and how well she dances. And the other woman looks at her with a lot of envy. And while she's looking, a guy walks by, touches her butt, and in the following scene she is seen sleeping with him. And she was sleeping with him to get a spot and, whatever way she could, be able to become a chorus girl, to work. It was being seen as something absolutely normal. And they idealised it profoundly, "oh, how cool!" A 90's sex scene.
And I saw how my daughter looked at me and said: "And what is this? What are you teaching me? How can it be that you have to sleep with someone to get a job? " This, too, has not stood the test of time. Now, there are, otherwise, good ones. But it's that in the 90's, we were trained to use sexuality for everything and it's all good. Almodóvar has trained us to think that being a whore is wonderful, as it is raping transsexuals. And it's such a tiresome thing.
Jerez leapt to the forefront to head change: eliminating the concept of umbrella girls for the Circuito de Jerez for sexualizing women and turning them into a mere advertisement. But in the city there were more detractors than supporters, with the argument that they were going to lose their jobs, when they were thinking of relocating them. Your penultimate book, Sexual Neoliberalism: The Myth of Women's Free Will, deals with this, right?
It is a fortuitous example. However, we see how this ripples out: Formula 1, the bike race... The moment that women are presented as human beings, then, to see us or our sisters as part of the decor... One, whose meaning is to be a decorative ornament and a sexual ornament, because they aren't anything else, they're part of the background. Two, her attitude: to serve a regular human, who is the one to drive, climb a mountain, give a talk... And on television, we'll see those assistants that are everywhere, as well. Then someone can say, okay lady, if they want it... First of all, any person would want, if tomorrow we allowed polygamy, of course a lot of people will want it, but the fact is, which structures and which institutions do we want for a society working toward equality? And well, us women, we don't miss anything if we don't see half-naked guys all the time. What's more, good things happen to us because we do not learn and internalize that boys are beautiful pieces of meat at our service, while we perform our work clothed.
And I will tell you that young girls suffer enormous pressure for their bodies. I'm tired of being with teenagers, and there is not one who considers that her arms are okay. None, because, for example, in the series Wyoming, Sandra Sabatés comes out everyday showing her beautiful, shapely arms. I have been invited several times and if I go, I'll say, I'm going, but I want to see your shapely arms. Why does she have to look like this? It's not even that she's there as a sexual reference, but rather that girls are seeing others' nice bodies all day. And from that they don't come out well.
The woman-object, exploitation of women to satisfy men... You say that while we live in patriarchy, prostitution will continue to be a school of human inequality, perpetuating the relationship between sexuality and domination. What is your position on prostitution?
Prostitution is much more than prostitution. It is truly a school of inequality because it is where the young guys go, who are charming, but society is going to convince yout of this idea: women are there for you to enjoy. Period, so then, how, in an egalitarian society, how are you going to introduce that idea to them. Women are pieces of meat for you to be able to cum. Look, so that you feel pleasured, we're going to give you girls from around the world, who don't speak your language, and what do you know, they're pieces of meat.
Prostitution is an institution such that to the boy, male, future man, it says: if you have money in your pocket, we'll put you one in a ring or a brothel or in a shop window. We'll give you one so that you can get sexual pleasure from her. What is society saying to that boy?
Don't put yourself in her place, putting oneself in someone else's place is the number one point of that which we call moral positioning. I'm a professor of moral philosophy, and the definition of treating a person in a moral way is being broken. Two, thinking only of your own pleasure. What is being is constructed is the core of a person for a repugnant neoliberal, capitalist society predisposed to "so what about everyone else?" Only your own pleasure matters to you. So yeah, a handful of money in your pocket, because if not, you aren't going to mean anything to us either. And this is the message they're hearing over and over.
So I go to the cinema with my teenage boys, and it's all, "You, you're so transgressive, you don't limit yourself..." They all but say, "Become a whore." It is that this new human being is being built that under the pretense of being so rebellious and so transgressive, capitalism itself tells you from ads and prostitution is the consumption of human beings, not to set limits. It is a conglomeration of meanings that match. And that's what I hope to tell your colleagues in Jerez.
Everything very Roussonian, that society perverts people.
Yes. It is society but it is that society really leans on pink and blue, under the appearance that we educate in equality. It leans on making boys and girls in different ways. Yes, this. Study physics and language, all the same. But it is not studying that gives you your life's meaning, it is the values that are forged.
Is prostitution related to bellies being rented out for child-bearing?
It totally is, because patriarchy, what it has done, as a hard centre, is to construct women as second-class beings, the second sex with one motive. To make them more of a body than a mind. As bodies, women have performed many services in general, and for men in particular. To take care of the other bodies. I don't like to talk about "bodies" so much, as I believe that people are human beings and the body is part of the package, but for this very thing is the damage society does to women.
They are transformed into bodies for three reasons: 1. a body to take care of everyone else, using all their resources, also emotional, but, above all, physical. 2. a well-decorated body is a sexual object to give pleasure to others, like the umbrella girls, for example. 3. bodies to reproduce the species. Because if it doesn't reproduce - ah! - everything ends here! It's something very important, but concretely, to reproduce men. Because if you haven't realised, you take your father's last name, and you keep it because you are more of your father than of your mother. That it's your last name is the indelible symbol that you were born more by your father than by your mother, which is where you were baked. The father's law is that the sons are of the father, and only for them full custody, for centuries.
And now there are groups like the gays who never had any interest in women's bodies, in this third situation. And now, unfortunately, they do have. And they apply that theory of free will helter-skelter. What do we want? Women who bear our children. Well, let's develop the theory of free will. There, feminism has fought for the freedom of women, right? So then freedom for the women who want to do it. And just like that, so simple, with this cute little twist. Have you all fought to be free? Now you are going to be free to do freely what you previously did out of obligation. And then see who is able to oppose in a society that values freedom and where in all of the educational institutions, all of the boys and girls are already convinced that that's freedom, to choose how you're going to dress, or to choose whether or not you're a whore.
A little while back a campaign against harassment in the street, from the Andalusian Institute of Women, was momentarily taken down from YouTube because of the number of men who complained that the video incited hatred against men, when it's us who are intimidated and singled-out in the street. For you, what is a cat-call?
The question now seems so far out to me. I didn't even know that cat-calls still existed. I, as a person from the north, from Santander, or perhaps because of age... I observe that men have given us slaps on the butt as much as they wanted, when I was little, they pinched you, they put their hands on you.... But cat-calls.... This seems to me an unwarranted invasion in someone's personal space. But what worries me more is to see boys, and I see them constantly, spitting on the ground. Groups of 15 year-olds, 50 year-old men, 70 year-olds.... And without batting an eyelash. Me, more than hearing cat-calls to people, what I see them doing is spitting. Think about it, this is what they're doing in a public space. I don't ever see a woman spitting, unless it's an older person who has to. But, what the hell do they thing about public space? That it's theirs? But the thing about cat-calls... Whether a man or woman walks by in the street and the thing is, I couldn't imagine saying anything about their physique or anything else. I don't understand why others have to do so.
It turns out that when I usually discuss these issues, men think that they are lesser evils for women, and that at present the great struggle of women is the wage gap. What do you think when a man comes at you with this?
I think the same thing as Aleksandra Kolontái, the great feminist communist of the beginning of the twentieth century. Lenin, the leader of the Soviet Revolution, wanted some special work done with working-class women in order to make them communists. Because he was saying that women were the most backwards part of society. Since they were religious, family caretakers, more conservative... There had to be a special project to teach them the Marxist economy, the theory of the state and the revolution... But them, the workers, they would get together and they only wanted to talk about marriage issues, love, sexuality, how unhappy and bitter they felt toward their male companions, for how badly they treated them, surely with violence, or how they spent the little money they had in corner brothels or on drinking.
And Lenin, when he found out, flew into a rage. The first revolutionary state in danger and the workers' minds at night devoted to talking about issues of love and family in the present and future. Marxist feminists like Aleksandra Kolontái, of course they reflected on the economic, and on the subject of caretaking, and that men should start doing the caretaking, but they also talked about all of the subjects related to how unempowered they were, how they were being treated - like nothing - and about sexuality, a lot about love, taking care of children...
This laughable response that everything is the economy and the economy is reduced to the wage gap, let's see, there's a wage gap for a reason, the wage gap is the consequence of all of the above, all of the things that they wanted to talk about. About why men don't do anything around the house, about why men consider themselves the generic human being, about why everything they want to do in sexual and emotional relations is tolerated, like having two families, having illegitimate children running around. Now, that said, in the world in which we live, works is absolutely necessary because it is the basis of autonomy, intellectual, emotional, moral autonomy.
These days you have to have your independence and if you depend economically on someone, you are also in their hands in other ways. With some exceptions, which there always are. It's that those men, what they do is gaslight, saying, "Your problem is something in which, eh, look, something about which I can't do anything, the evil CEO or the evil government are the ones maintaining the wage gap." There's a wage gap because you're there, and because certainly, if you all have a child, and she takes part-time work... It's everything, it's a system and within that everyone performs a role.
In an interview with José Ángel Lozoya, he claimed that "there is no real equality without a change in men." But, what should be the role of men in the feminist movement?
The first thing is, sit down to read books and study. Read a book that tells you what feminism is, where we came from. In 200 years, how the women's struggle has been. Why men have put so many obstacles to get where we have come today. Why are we always making our demands and they, you know, look the other way. They have to sit down and read it. Feminism is a complete theory of life. We can no longer continue giving them private classes on stools at bars. We can't be holding debates that bore us because we have been doing it for 35 years.
They have to make the effort to train themselves a little bit, because within feminism, the simple intention to want to do something to be equal isn't worth anything. You have to know the causes of how inequality reproduces in order to attack them. And that you can only do by studying. The first thing is to understand the logic of the system, to understand how inequality is reproduced, how it is legitimized, and then to know how to begin to carry out actions that truly transform the patriarchal society.
To finish, what has been the macho utterance that has most offended you?
It's a long succession. But I'm going to have to offer this from Nietzsche: "One thing I'll tell you, Zarathustra, if you're going to be with women, don't forget the whip." For being a philosopher that my students adore. And every time I tell them this, they can't stand it. They raise their hands and tell me: "You have not understood Nietzsche." And I say, yes, tell me which part of the sentence I did not understand.
English Version: Brandon Joel Queen
Email: brandon_joel_queen@yahoo.ca
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