A human flood flooded Barcelona this Wednesday, Women’s Day: 40,000 people, according to the Urban Police; 60,000, according to the organization (last year, 15,000 and 60,000 people, respectively). If in 2022, Rigoberta Bandini turned hers Ay, mamá into the unofficial hymn of the march, on this occasion the only musical winners were the batucadas. The mothers, however, were once again the main protagonists
“Calm down, mom, tonight I’m not going down the street alone.” There were scathing, playful, political, literary and even lletraferits banners and slogans: “Without Hermione, Harry would have died in the first book” or “Neruda, shut up you” (for his very famous “I like it when you shut up because you’re absent” ). Another motto was: “Real men are feminists.” But the question remains: why aren’t there more to these protests?
Would the same happen if 1,192 men had been killed by gender violence from 2003 to today? If the streets weren’t safe for us men. If they groped us in the subway or in the crowds. If our figure were judged. If they saw us as a phallus or genitals. If we became invisible after the age of 50. If at 11 a pack of minors threatened us with a knife and raped us.
If our bodies were spoils of war. If the rape culture objectified us and presented us as holes or receptacles. If we were victims of the pay gap. If we covered single-parent families. If we had to demonstrate twice as much as others with equal or inferior merits to ours. If we had had to fight twice as hard as the other half of humanity to get the right to vote.
If we needed laws to get closer to salary equality and parity in the boards of directors of companies. If other laws supposedly created to protect us ended up benefiting 700 (700!) of our sexual offenders, 70 (70!) of them released prematurely. If we were the majority in sectors such as nursing, but we would never have presided over the General Nursing Council.
If we were more and more in the promotions of judges, but we were underrepresented in the government chambers of the superior courts of justice, in the Supreme, the Constitutional and the General Council of the Judiciary. If it were considered normal, legal and even legitimate that selling our sex is a profession. If the human trafficking mafias made gold at the expense of our exploitation.
If we had contraceptive methods that prioritized the comfort of the couple, and not our hormonal balance. If they made fun of us and called us crazy or hysterical as soon as we raised our voices. If they denied us that history has wanted to chain us to the house, the kitchen, the bed. If we were more necessary than ever and we had to be as united or more than in 2018, but the ship had multiple leaks.
If we carried the weight of care. Yes, yes, yes… All the conditional sentences are inspired by the banners displayed or the slogans chanted this 8-M in Barcelona. Maybe if all these things happened, there would be more men in the marches and we would finally understand that feminism should not be an exclusively women’s issue. It should be a matter of justice. Or, plainly and simply, human rights.
