Rita Segato: Cuerpo, territorios y soberanía: violencia contra las mujeres

Hello, we are in the program Word of Women from the University of Costa Rica with the international guest Dr. Rita Laura Segato, who has worked on the issue of violence against women in a very systematic and very interesting and provocative way. Rita, are you talking to us in some way? that there is a systematic increase in violence against women but also a new form of cruelty and cruelty on women's bodies, how to understand this situation at this moment after two centuries of feminist struggles of the women's liberation movement that have produced profound changes at an institutional level but also at the level of daily life, they are social movements that also imply academic thinking, they also imply legal changes, etc.

I can understand this recognition at the moment, yes, of course, well, there are several, several hypotheses, one of them is the restoration hypothesis. of male revenge that is not there is that king of that response of masculinity but it is not me it is not the hypothesis or the explanation that I use more that I find more interesting yes naturally it is automatically the man emasculated by the ascension of the woman in part to recover his masculinity through taxation what I call in my book the elemental structures violence extraction of a tribute that comes from the feminine position to the masculine and that builds the masculine position then this would be the restoration of masculinity through victimization of women that is one side but the other side is also very important two more sides that I am going to refer to is that you cannot identify gender issues, that is, the gender issue is one of the problems that I see the errors of some feminisms is to consider the gender issue that a problem between men and women, that is, it is only a gender problem and I believe that the analysis has been very limited when it is identified when you close in that way on your central actors but that at the same time In turn, they are influenced, they are under the pressure of a period of society, of the economy of politics of the historical era in which we find ourselves, so I believe that it is very important to place violence, all forms of violence, and gender violence also in the historical phase. and see how power is expressed because the gender relationship is primarily a language of power, it is a power relationship that, as we said yesterday in class, is very difficult for jurists and judges when they give sentences to the operators of the right to work with that dimension of gender that is a relationship of power that is not a relationship between equal individuals because let's say lawyers who are all trained in law learn that we are a society of citizens of a society of

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ct where all people have equal freedom, equal power is in a position of equality with respect to the others and then when they go to judge gender crimes they cannot place those where they really should be located, which is in a scene of power and what is a scene of power not only of those two people who are or no, sometimes it is not just two people, it is a gang and a woman or a gang and more than one woman, that is, but those two positions in life that are the masculine and feminine positions and they consider that it is a relationship between people and they do not perceive that it is a relationship, a relational structure of asymmetrical differential powers that is expressed and that is why it is so difficult to obtain a good sentence and almost no one in our feminist movement ever leaves happy after a sentence for gender violence because justice is not think in terms of power relationship but that power relationship is affected by the economy it is affected by the political phase in time the historical phase with all its elements that is why an analysis of gender violence that is not placed in that historical context is insufficient From the other reason there is an increase because this historical moment, I call it the apocalyptic phase of capital, is a world of owners and in the gender relationship, power is currently expressed as owner, age, that is, power, is the owner, age is lordship over a body, lordship. about the pressure to exercise a lordship because the lordship the duena age is the form that power has in this era in which we live why because the economic concentration the concentration of wealth has reached levels never before seen in the world as a collection of The territories with far fewer common spaces than in the Middle Ages and that, let's say, let the fiefdoms go to a space of freedom, today we have gigantic corporate fiefdoms, that is, people who, due to the degree of wealth they have and because they administer, have power over the life and over death and that power over life over death that produces an institutional failure and shows the fictionality of the state is not expressed in what happens to women's bodies is expressed in domination in age. about the female body is like a symptom of that of that moment of an economy that is an economy of owners with weaker institutions, very very weak, it is very very weak because they cannot, there is really no institution that can put a limit on it, that can put the limit on it. this at those levels of wealth at those levels of concentration so we should not talk so much about their equality although of course not yes but that must be about unity, let's say to understand a little this extreme of power that is being exercised Of course, because it is insufficient, I am going to talk about inequality.

It is already an inequality of such magnitude, that is, the small group of rich people has such great wealth that in reality, more than being unequal, they are owners, they are owners of life and death, so I think we are in another historical phase in another phase of capital where that avenue, as I said, is expressed in what happens to the body of women and all those who are dissidents, divergent disobedients in relation to the mandate of unity, which is the patriarchal mandate and duality. It is the extreme form of patriarchy, not only of women but also of young people, children of the sexually diverse, obedience, racial disobedience that is felt as disrespect, everything that threatens everything that I know, everything that diverges from the security model. that we are all going to go to pause and we are talking about this

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diction in the face of the increase in violence against women and the forms of cruelty and the new forms of women's liberation that in that contradiction we cannot understand that another element if Well, there is the inability of the female complaint on the part of the state, that is, and we see that and we always confirm it constantly, that is, in the voice of the woman it is not heard in the state because she expresses herself in her corporality, her intonation up to her high register.

When speaking, one encounters a limit or resistance, an incommensurability with state discourses, so the women who speak, who teach or who work in the public field in general, have to make an enormous effort so that we do not even perceive transvestism as how one presents oneself. In the countryside, in the public space and in the state offices, men do not have to do this exercise of transvestism because the state has it is part of the history of patriarchy, as I have said in my latest texts and refer to recent ones, it has the patriarchal dna the state of the genealogy of the state is the political space of men in the pre-colonial tribal sphere that is transformed into a public sphere but which has all the rules all the protocols of male life is one of distancing in a way a way of parleying is a form of self-presentation and rituality that does not come from the history of women's rituals, of course they are two stories, men and women, we are two stories that intertwine that converse but we only have different stories then when the woman and recently made 26 cases of violence of women who suffered violence in five different countries for a Basque organization called mugarik gabe and in all cases it includes Europeans but also our Latin American cases.

You see that the woman goes to the state counter and speaks to her. and there is no receiver, the other side does not get the public employee, the state agent, the typist, the one who is going to write down his complaint, he cannot understand, he cannot believe what he is saying, no, he does not understand his experience and his voice has no credibility, but It has to do with the female figure without having to do with the appearance, the voice and the figure that women have, that is, it is no, no, it does not obtain an automaton, it automatically takes credibility, audibility, then a way can be made for the state in a place of real otherness. clear state is a place of another age because they really are incommensurable modalities of existence, it is not that a man can have a feminine modality of existence, just as there are women who obtain or have a masculine modality of existence, but let's say as an icon of the feminine position the woman with her body with her voice with her intonation with her way of speaking with her way of having been raised etc. expresses herself in a way that the state is not a possible recipient for her complaint then in those stories that I am reading I have constantly confirmed on the European side and on the Latin American side, so that means that the laws have been a little innocuous because what we must modify is the relationship between the public sphere and minorities between the state and the lesser ideal is the minoritization of our issue as well as of others. many issues but as very important in that structure of domination is the minoritization of the issue of women until that relationship between central issues of a universal subject and issues of minorities is modified until the minorization of the issue of women is not modified.

It is resolved with trafficking with transversalization because three of transversalization is a euphemism to say it is a minority issue until this binary structure of management is transformed no matter how many laws we manage to pass in national congresses in parliaments we will not go to obtain a real impact to protect us, modernity and the state have not shown at any time their capacity to defend the lives of women. I want to ask you what is the role of men at this moment. Let's say the mind, the struggles of women are those of the new rights that women have, as you see, the role of men in this context, well, of course, it is a very strong debate within feminism today if men should participate in congresses or women's events if men should participate in marches If men can call themselves feminists or not, I think it is a false debate, it is a false debate and I do not see that said in many places, which is why I think it is important to say it here and emphasize that here it is a false debate because because the mandate of masculinity, which is the mandate of power that is transformed into one that is also a mandate of cruelty because a bad indication of power is a mandate of domination and a mandate of domination is a mandate of cruelty, it affects us all, it affects us women and men, then men are something a little strong and there is always a very great discomfort in the female stalls when I say this when I say this the first victim of the mandate of masculinity are men, not women because we still have other forms of contentment In the most hostile situations, in the most difficult situations, we women have forms of connection, forms of accompaniment between us, forms of solidarity that are part of our historical practices as women that allow us to find contentment, joy and lüthi zidane much more easily than men.

All the decided light of men is competitive, ours does not see, we have more access to laughter, to the joke, but to the joke, not with a scapegoat victim, not like there are many types of jokes, of course, not a joke that needs a victim who A scapegoat needs a sacrificial victim to be a joke. We have other types of jokes. Female humor is different from male humor. In those forms, there is a very strong envy on the part of men for the most feminine happiness and feminine well-being in any circumstance. So I have seen it there, I have examples of how a man can kill, he can attack out of envy, a question that seemed interesting to me, at some point you said this, I, my youth could do things that a young woman today cannot do, maybe in Europe but no.

In my continent, my daughter cannot have the same freedom of movement that I had 40 years ago. How to understand how to explain this terrible paradox, of course, because in addition to studying statistics, we have to understand that our life is an investigation, our life is a testimony, so there is There are several things that I have seen throughout my life, one is the one that I am going to answer in a minute, another is the fact that in a small community town in the Argentine Andes, in 50 years I have seen fall. I have seen the public administration to be more present and I have seen the prestige, autonomy and authority of women in that locality fall, I have not seen them increase their well-being their autonomy their authority but on the contrary I have seen in 50 years the abrupt fall of the position of women and the third change that is curious is what speaks to me a lot about the extraordinary increase when I started studying violence that I started due to a demand from the police of the secretary of public security of Brazil I thought it was something circumstantial that there was a problem in the city that we had to study and solve it was going to distance me from the subject forever and in my own life as a witness to a story as a witnesssixty-odd years old, I can tell you that I could never abandon the issue of violence because it only increased, it only appeared more in the public eye not only because there were more complaints but because there were more bodies because there were more injuries because there was because the problem of violence Not only is it still present but it is increasing in number and in forms of cruelty, so the third experience of my life is that I suddenly realized that my daughter cannot take trips like we did in my time in the 60s and 70s.

I was a backpacker, I traveled alone and I traveled on countless routes with friends on some occasions and alone and there was no fear, the terror that women feel today, so we have to think about that because women's ability to circulate and move has been restricted. Instead of expanding, it means that we are betting all the chips of the state, all the chips of the institutional field, but in reality life is getting worse, that is, they are improving if you have a salary, that is, for some who have a public salary, those who are, let's say. employees with a public salary practice a profession, some may enter a field of their vocation and that is being a teacher, professional advisor, teacher or doctor within the world of law or politics or in economic administration in fields, but those are very few women and also These women suffer reprisals in their lives and in their personal lives because as that woman gains positions it is very difficult for her partner not to resent her and not punish her there, yes, for that, for that, for that progress, for that reason, for that success, that whatever. woman who is successful in any profession knows it knows it so what happens is that we have to think better about how we have made our way here and learn from history learn the beatings that history gives us okay we are talking a little simply against women and violence between men, how do you see the suffering of men in this context, of course, we give not without finishing the previous answer.

Well, I believe that this male suffering has to result in a politicization of men, but a politicization of men, which is not to support the problem of women but to support themselves, that is, to free themselves from a mandate that victimizes them, it is the mandate to be more powerful, to demonstrate their sexual power, economic, war, political, intellectual, moral, so if you show us that you have that power of some in some of the fields is a defeated man so that produces pain a knit that produces oppression presses him and produces a very great pain that makes the man violent so he has to fight for his own freedom from that command of masculinity of that mandate of power of that mandate of cruelty that generates unhappiness in the aggressor.

I have seen it because I have worked for many years with aggressors in prison of course and not a little, not 12 months but a long time with many students and that aggressor is a be destroyed we do not have to think that the aggressor is a being built by his aggression, which is what the mandate of masculinity tells men and women that is built by attacking, we have to undo that belief and the world is going to change that seems very really important and one last thing to see if we can touch a little on the issue of the murder of girls and young people in Guatemala in this safe home virgin of the mission this prison orphanage shelter 42 burned girls it seems that they are more like you see these children who have suffered physical violence, sexual abuse in families, but also in the same shelter, in a brutal way, they escape, they lock them up here, this one who is on the throne, and they leave them locked up and he leaves the majority of them to die that we can understand from being at this level of brutality, let's say, and cruelty against girls and adolescents, lack of empathy, lack of compassion and experiencing pain with others, we are in a world that works in the direction of those powers, those owners, the result of that age is a process of decrease in empathy, decrease in bonding and that, and decrease in compassion, that is, the ability to feel what the other is feeling.

Of the modal personality of our time, the one that works well is the one that has a psychopathic structure, so that in general now that aggression is an aggression to the world that aggression through and through those girls is an aggression in the first place to all women because all the women I know scattered in a large number of countries have suffered enormously from those deaths They caused a suffering that will reach many hearts that caused us enormous damage to know that this could happen that that girl was being used, raped, raped, the 9 survivors are pregnant and they were also left to burn to death, that is a pain that cannot be You can remain silent, you cannot remain silent, and thirdly, the history of Guatemala, some things that have been stated many times are that after the war, people become cruel in the war environment, forms of cruelty, insensitivity that did not exist, appear as a consequence of the war.

They go spontaneously from the life of the indigenous peasant households of the Guatemalan and Salvadoran households of Mexico and other countries that have a very big problem of informal war, whether it is a repressive war as was the case of the Guatemalan war of the years 80 be a mafia war era of the maras gangs and various types of mafia organizations are all wars and informal are all expressions of an expansion of the parastatal sphere of control of life so a vision of this from this this process that It is not mine, it is that from the gender violence of patriarchy that lives in the homes of simple people, sexual and feminicidal violence spreads to war, it is absolutely not my position, there could be patriarchy, inequality in a hierarchical form, it is ultimately a differential of prestige between men. and women in an indigenous peasant home, but it is not a femicidal home, it is not a place, it is not a rapist home, it is not now destroying women's bodies, so the war brings that to the homes, the environment of extreme violence, the economic wars that are the Mafia wars or repressive wars, as was the case in Guatemala, produce and are violent genetics.

Of course, the neuro-war programming ends up being violent genetics for the entire society and then in the case of the country in which Serrat, the history of war is present. less than closing many thanks to Rita Laura and the public and the talented word woman