We can regret not living in better times, say that things in the past were more bearable, that the world is heading towards the precipice. Each generation has its contradictions and each century its wars. Clara Campoamor was the one who successfully promoted the vote for women in the Second Republic while Victoria Kent, another progressive woman from the thirties, was not a supporter because she feared that the female vote could be influenced by the Church and lean towards conservatism .
Campoamor won the debate and Kent lost it. Women voted for the first time in the 1933 elections, which were won by the rights. Rereading the minutes of the Republican Cortes of October 1931, the dialectic of the two Republican deputies who defended the same thing but with different approaches can be appreciated. Campoamor rightly said that the vote was an undeniable right of every woman and Kent also considered it that way, but for the good of the Republic it was preferable to postpone the female vote. Kent said that “within the same parties and the same ideologies, there are different opinions.”
That debate in the Republican Cortes was furious and today it seems outdated, unacceptable and very old-fashioned. But if there is one thing I take away from that dispute between two lucid and progressive women, it is the style, respect and elegance in their arguments.
It is what I miss in the language of the feminist factions, who are not disputing the right to vote but rather how feminism should be interpreted ideologically in a Spain with a left-wing coalition government.
There are plenty of unnecessary gestures, shouts, personal attacks, insulting banners, and there is a need for more political talent and more knowledge of the legal derivatives of the laws. And, above all, disrespect the adversary. George Steiner said that we are completely surrounded by a new illiteracy, the illiteracy of those who can read harsh words and hateful and flashy words, but who are incapable of understanding the meaning of language in terms of its beauty or its truth.
There are no harmless words. Insults feed hate.