Being exposed it’s not something that we love, let’s be clear. But sometimes it is important to take a stand, especially when it concerns our beliefs and rights. Of course, there are those who love some attention and that’s cool, but that’s different when that happens without consent or in a harmful way. We want to be out there but without being attacked, but reality shows us otherwise. As a result, we end up concealing important things. Life’s too hard the way it is.
I often think about LGBTQIA+’s peeps, and how undeniable brave they are to declare who they are to the world. But then I think it’s a silly thought because, what else could they do? Pretending not being who they are? It’s more like they have no choice but to be honest with themselves, despite all the prejudice they might find out there.
So, what’s left to me, a latin-white-cis-heterosexual woman? My beliefs and my struggles that are common to most women, regardless their background. Stating the obvious, we live in a capitalist and patriarcal world, and that put us on the aim.
When I started my studies in feminism I guess it was 2014, but I can recall being Feminist really before that, I just didn’t know there was a name for it. I’ve always been really mindful about the differences of being a girl “in a men’s world” and how that really angered me, and still does. I didn’t read Simone Beauvoir back then, but by instinct I came to many conclusions she wrote on her books. And that was not because I’m super smart or anything like it, I’m not. It’s about life experiences and how crazy is that decades after Beauvoir’s death the same sh*t is still running around.
So yes, I define myself as a feminist. A person who believes in economic, social and politic equality between men and women. We are not the same, but we are equal. And when I declare myself as that, the backlashes starts. After all, “this is a men’s world”.
Identifying myself as a feminist allowed me to dive deep in studies about feminism. I learned about my place of speech, to acknowledge my privileges, to understand how white people are racist even if they don’t believe they are, especially growing up in Brazil with the wrong idea of a beautiful mixed-race country without thinking properly about this process. I’m proud to say that I learned a lot all these years and I’ve changed and evolved in so many ways, and there’s so much more to learn.
I’ve always been a very politicized person. I started voting at the age of 16, always engaged in student movements, from high school to college. But it was only in 2018 that I began to study about marxism. Not because I wanted to understand what Marx and Engels had written, but because I thought capitalist society would be the end of humanity and I wanted to believe that there was a possible alternative for us. And that’s when I realized I was a marxist too!
But let me tell you, if calling myself a feminist really took a toll on me (again, with all my privileges taken into consideration), calling myself a marxist-communist-socialist was even worse. People would look down on me, thinking I’m a stupid, violent person or even dumb, because how come I don’t believe capitalism is the best economic system we will ever get, right?
I could spend many more paragraphs telling you guys how crazy and elucidating this whole process has been. The texts, videos, books, discussions, everything that most of time got me like that emoji: 🤯 you know the feeling, right?
And how hypocrite our society is too… but there’s this aphorism from Gramsci that says: the pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. Meaning that we must see things how they are, but with the true desire of changing it, and I cannot be more motivational than that. So I’ll leave you with that. 🙂
(Mexico workers union motto)