They tell me that continuing to talk about how our society classifies us into men and women from the moment we are born through, perhaps in the first place, the use of the colors that correspond to us according to gender (pink and light blue), is nonsense, something superfluous. That talk about gender stereotypes backwards and that there are more important things that this, like specific situations of violence, people who do not have money to eat or to be able to access justice, among many other things that it is difficult for me to continue hearing.
I understand the proposition, I understand the anger and I agree on the seriousness of these situations, but I know that speeches, as many scholars before me have said, have concrete effects on bodies and lives.
Symbolic violence is not minor violence, are the bricks that are being piled up to sustain other forms of violence. I am concerned about the lack of knowledge about this, even among people who work in the media, the area from which the proposal came to me.
i saw the belgian movie Close, directed by Lukas Dhontwhich is the story of two pre-teen friends, Leo and Rami, very close friends, who spend all day together, sleep together, make up games together, imagine the world together, until they have to enter a new high school.
There that relationship begins to be questioned. Some girls, between giggles, tell/ask them if they are “together”, if they are boyfriends, couples or whatever they want to call themselves. Leo says no, laughs awkwardly, but the thorn begins to dig into him. Another day, some men tell him if he is tense because his menstruation has come down. They hint that he is gay and tease him for it. Leo feels cornered and decides to act. He no longer wants to sleep with his friend. They fight about it. Remi cries. Leo walks away from Remi at recess while he tries to blend in with the other boys, who are always with a ball and playing “boys’ games.” He enrolls in ice hockey classes, a sport in which you have to be very strong, collide, hit and bank, as he learns from the instructions he receives from the coach and what her body experiences. Remi tells him that maybe he can sign up too. Silence.
One day Leo decides not to wait for Remi at the point where they always ride their bikes to school together. Remi, always silent, this time faces him. She asks him why she didn’t wait for him and Leo tries an excuse that neither of them buys. Once again they grab pineapples. At that point, Leo is completely adapted to the place that society has reserved for meneven today, despite those who believe that talking about pink and light blue is an antiquity. Remi no se adapta.
What follows I will not tell. Anyone who is sensitive to gender or dry sensitivity can imagine that things end badly, very badly.
It is a fiction, they will say. Of course it is a fiction. But fictions are creations that are born from somewhere and if they often resonate or move it is because something in that story does not seem nonsense to us. We believe it because it is quite similar to something we know or something we know could have happened or, why not, something we fear will happen to us.
Close It reminded me of a piece of news from a few months ago about which nothing was heard after the first impact: the two twelve-year-old Argentine twin sisters, who were living in Barcelona and who jumped from a balcony. One of them died. Or actually we should say him. The family claims they suffered bullying for his Argentine accent and that the situation worsened when one of them cut her hair, she dressed as a boy and she wanted to be called Ivan. I mean, began to be perceived as a trans male. Ivan is dead today. I don’t want to imagine how her sister is.
