In a recent comment, Stefanos Kasselakis referred to his defeated rival for the SYRIZA leadership, Euclid Tsakalotos, by his full name, but to his chief rival in this Sunday’s runoff, Effie Achtsioglou, by her first name only. She’s just Effie to him.
The incident has been widely commented on in social media and branded as sexism – the kind of sexism that is rooted deeply in the collective subconscious and slips out unconsciously, even from a person who departs so distinctly from the traditional profile of the phallocratic male.
It has also been commented on by Achtsioglou, who said, when asked by journalist Thodoris Antonopoulos from Lifo: “Yes, why did Mr Kasselakis refer, in the same statement, to Euclid Tsakalotos, who is a man, by his full name? And would he ever invite him to go on a tour with him, or tell him to ‘get on with it,’ or urge him not to go to a second round? No, it is not a matter of familiarity, because as I have already said, we barely know each other. He referred to me in this derogatory manner precisely because I am a woman. But I am one of those women who are determined not to submit to the ‘natural’ order of things, to become a decorative object in a male-dominated universe.”
Greek society is more prepared to accept a basically unknown man from the LGBT community than a woman with a well-known political trajectory
In the same interview, Achtsioglou also noted that she has publicly condemned the homophobic vitriol directed at her fellow candidate, hinting at something else that is being widely discussed: that Kasselakis has been completely silent about the verbal assaults Achtsioglou has come under, mainly from SYRIZA firebrand Pavlos Polakis. That said, Kasselakis did post a comment on social media saying that he believes Achtsioglou’s denial of claims that she sent an SMS to former party chief Alexis Tsipras calling for his resignation – but he has not outright condemned such barbs, at least not until these lines were being written.
Achtsioglou is indeed fighting an uneven battle because she’s a woman. It appears that despite its homophobia, Greek society is more prepared to accept a basically unknown man from the LGBT community than a woman with a well-known political trajectory.
But: While Achtsioglou may be frustrated by Polakis’ attacks – and rightly so – Polakis is behaving exactly as he has done for years toward all of his political rivals outside SYRIZA, yet not once do we remember her condemning such practices.
Basically, the tone that has been cultivated by SYRIZA for years is now being felt inside the party ranks.
