T11. Ep 14 Bonus Track: ¿Hombres incómodos?

En este episodio especial, la escritora Vanessa Rosales deja un ensayo sonoro sobre uno de los temas que más le interesan y que más urgente encuentra para el diálogo público y las políticas públicas: lo que está sucediendo con las masculinidades. En una época tan emocionante pero aún dolorosa para las mujeres, cuando las violencias suelen venir de los hombres de manera mayoritaria, ¿cuándo será urgente la conversación sobre las masculinidades? ¿Cuándo se incomodarán los hombres de manera amplia para interpelarse entre ellos y adaptarse a los tiempos que corren y a todas las transformaciones que han venido en las últimas décadas? ¿Qué está pasando con líderes de opinión tan oscuros y problemáticos como Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate, Temach? ¿Qué dicen los incels y su ira sobre lo que está pasando con los hombres más jóvenes? ¿Qué consecuencias está teniendo esto en las relaciones heterosexuales? ¿Por qué los modelos que están hablando a los hombres jóvenes en su mayoría quieren volver al mundo de antes y no adaptarse, cómo están tramitando las ansiedades ante tantos cambios? ¿Cómo mirar todo esto a la luz del trabajo de la doctora Mara Viveros para analizar la construcción de lo masculino en códigos de clase social y de raza? Sin una conversación amplia, urgente, sobre las masculinidades, no habrá revolución integral. Un ensayo para sembrar esta semilla sobre esta necesaria y urgente incomodidad.

Episode Transcript

(00:27):
Hey. Again I am welcoming thisspace called Uncomfortable Woman, which, how
you know who has been going andfor those who are coming, has been
a dedicated program over the last fiveyears. Inconvenient woman is fulfilling five years
of existence, but who has dedicatedhimself to heterogeneity or vidity, to combining

(00:49):
and mixing different themes that, ofcourse, is a reflection of the one
who does this podcast, but whohave taken great care of the critical theory
to include themes about aesthetics, aboutstyle, about history, about women'
s history, female literature, theconstruction and manufacture of the feminine and,
therefore, everything that has been uncomfortableAnd has also been a space where very

(01:11):
humbly and with a lot of integrityof heart and with a lot of reverence
for all that implies this important movementof theults of the last decades. It
has also been a space to tryto articulate the complexities, tensions, multiplicity,

(01:34):
theories and feminist voices. But nowI come to this end of the
eleventh season of uncomfortable woman who,as I said at the beginning, began
five years ago, that until today' s sun has five hundred or so
zero listeners, which began calling herselfanother way, started calling herself a woman

(02:00):
dressed by my associations always comfortable towardsfashion. And now I conclude this tenth
season with a bonus track, asGustavo Adrián Serati said, when in the
MTV Amplot he sang genesis of boxdan. This Bonus track has several reasons.
The first is to say goodbye fora while. I did this tenth

(02:23):
season again for several reasons, becauseI needed it, because I like to
think in public, because I amalso interested in generating as a shore where
gre as the great form of resistanceis complexity. I like to resist the

(02:44):
reductionisms, the vortex of digital networks. And I missed him. I missed
it because for a few months nowI decided to rethink my relationship with work
graduation, also with the times ofcreativity, production and public interaction, and

(03:05):
I have been creating a platform thatis called an illustrated style, which is
very beautiful. It' s acommunity that gets class, it' s
a place where I think out loud, where I share a lot of things.
We talked, we have reading circles, I create content and material,
especially for that community. We gofrom those I don' t know about
contemporary feminisms, to themes of stylehistory, but also how to analyze culture,

(03:30):
poetry, art exhibitions And also becauseI' m betting you on another
form of work, a longame ifyou want, a long game, a
work that is built in that hybridityproper to me, but that also believes
in writing about all things. Andin another relationship with digital, I'
ve become very anti- digital.If you like. I' ve read

(03:53):
a lot of chul Han, ofcourse, I' ve read a lot
about technofeudalism. I' ve reada lot of algorithm clocks. Ever since
I was in New York, inParson. I' m a scholar of
what technology does in subjectivity. So, for all these reasons, I had
retired a little uncomfortable woman. ThenI got it back because I wanted people

(04:15):
to come to the platform. Andnow I say goodbye for an indefinite time,
but I don' t want todo it without leaving what can be
right. One of the essays isthe most important that I am going to
leave here and it seems very symbolicalso that a space that was called a
woman dressed, taking into account allthe contempt and all the repudiation and antipathy

(04:41):
that generates the theme of fashion byits associations with the feminine, and that
then went on to be called anuncomfortable woman, because of all that also
implies discomfort, not only as beingan uncomfortable woman, an uncomfortable subject in
different contexts, but also that artor that trade of uncomfortable with her to
look back and keep looking intensely atthe world. And because I think intellectual

(05:03):
exercise, done with integrity, hasa lot to do with it. But
now I close this eleventh season withone of the topics that I have been
most concerned about for a few years, one of the topics that interests me
the most and one of the topicsthat I think we need to attend urgently,

(05:28):
because what we are seeing is quiteworrying and painful, As I have
also dedicated myself in recent years towhat it means to be a woman and,
in fact, this space in thebook Inconvenient Woman has had a lot
to do with that. I never, of course, speak of being a
woman as an essentialist or a monolithiccategory. But clearly for a few years,
when I started asking questions from myown situation for the feminine, for

(05:53):
feminism, for femininity, because thatalmost always led me also to the masculine,
especially considering that I am a womanwho loves men, a woman who
is heterosexual and who has been thinkingabout femininities and, therefore, also almost
simultaneously, masculinities. In these days, all the time, we are constantly

(06:17):
facing the phenomenon of femicide, allthe time we are seeing in digital networks
shocking complaints of harassment. Today,the case of three accused women facing legal
hermetism, a justice that is useless, came out of the country. Therefore,

(06:38):
it seems to me very important alwaysto return to the figure of antigon,
the rebellion against the law of men. All the time we see these
cases where a woman is beheaded inpublic, in a city in Colombia,
where we see that women are inspaces where they would be supposed to be

(07:00):
figures like a shopping center and aresupported and killed by their former sentimental partners.
All eight meters all twenty- fiven and I want you to know
that all this I' m sayingand I have very erect skin, because
being a part of this age isvery important as a woman, all that

(07:21):
insurrection in subordination, all these achievements, all this spirit of liberation that we
women see today and what that canmean when we realize that neither for our
mothers, nor for our grandmothers,nor for our great- grandmothers and great
- grandmothers and ancestors was remotely alreadyremotely similar and, of course, without

(07:42):
neglecting that there are so many womenwho still do not know freedom. But
all twenty- five, not alleight meters when this beautiful, combative,
aching, insurgent, emancipating spirit ofwomen arises, is I ask myself the
same thing and men and men,because when we see clearly the phenomenon of

(08:11):
femicide, the phenomenon of sexual harassment, the phenomena of sexual violence, statistics,
figures, there is something about theconstructions of masculinities that has made it
statistically show that men, or certainmen, are more likely to show acts
of violence. So, generally,for a few years now, because I

(08:37):
have been studying contemporary feminism in itsmedia and digital and cultural and aesthetic and
political aspects a few years ago.I ask myself the same question in a
video essay that I saw recently ofmornyus which is like from these video essay
channels of the United States, ofAmerica, which does some interesting work to

(09:01):
break down as the spirit of culture, of the political, of the social.
Looks like one I love, whichis counterpoints. I think it'
s a glowing glow. Natlingwin sawa video essay called arman Ok. The
men are fine at first the presenter, who is very jocoso, who is
very witty, shows some videos wherehe comes out like Andretate Jorgean Peterson,

(09:28):
and shows some videos like some bootscampswhere they are attending certain male population segments
in the global north, in thiscase, of course, where a man
comes out pushing another with force running. Oh mamean im, am I a
man? I' m a man. So, clearly the presenter is said

(09:48):
as the ebre answer is that menare not well. The way men are.
The men are fine. Very oftenit also appears on Twitter as a
joke or a phrase that is funny, jockey and man. They are not
people who supposedly have as their rootsin the Venezuelan soap opera, but who

(10:11):
clearly allude to the feeling that manywomen have, from many edges, in
their relationship and experience with men.At other times also the term men arises,
as onb that, in term thatto me, personally, I do
not like. I do not likethat, of course, it has as
combative purposes and ends with comprehensible supersiondescendants. And all this is funny,

(10:39):
but it' s not so funnyto say that men aren' t people.
See what' s going on andI' m going to get into
that stuff. See what' sgoing on in the networks, see what
' s going on in the so- called minus spear, which is like
everything else, an Internet phenomenon inthe global north. See what' s
going on with young men. It' s not funny, and it'

(11:03):
s not just funny because violence,the object of violence, is women and
because this is having a terrible wreakon love relationships. I mean, of
course, please remember that I dofor simultaneous truths. Not to say,
there are cases of femicide, thereare cases of unacceptable violence, horrifying as

(11:28):
inadmissible, but there are also theseother instances of life, such as affections
heterosexuality, marriage, marriage, romanticlove, love between women and men,
the experience of heterosexuality. And itis very interesting because also in the last
few days they have come out isthat they continue as reiterating topics that I

(11:54):
have been talking about on my shoreand that written and that I have thought
also from my own incarnate experience.The desperation of many women, young people
who are completely devastated, desperate andfrustrated with the heterosexual experience, has gone
viral. Now I have a lotof discord with this display of intimate life

(12:22):
in order to generate notoriety in thenetworks. I am fed up with this
self- referential yoism, if Itell you, I am fed up with
it as well as this self-importance that we attach to ourselves. And
surely I have fallen there and warmedup there in other moments of my life,
but right now, perhaps because ofmy life cycle, I have many

(12:46):
distances with self- referenceality and selfas this great, as a stand we
make to the self, to thesuffering self, to the so special self.
But this is clearly talking about aphenomenon that has been showing and is
also being heard a few weeks ago, a few months ago an article came
out that went viral. I thinkthat in da independence, forgive me if

(13:09):
I don' t remember well howa gap was also showing up. Young
women are becoming more liberal, moreprogressive, and that, on the contrary,
is being accompanied, on the contrary, by the male population. So
the boys, younger are becoming moreconservative, more reactionary. There' s

(13:33):
a distance there. So, ifthe women who are starting the decade of
the two- thirty are now viralizingthrough digital platforms, the despair of heterosexual
experience, the women who are atthe end of the thirty or early forties,
we can also give an account andfaith of what the experience with heterosexuality

(13:56):
implies, the changes that have beentaking place in recent years and with the
ubiquity and omnipresence that feminism has hadin recent years, also thanks to digital
networks. Now I want to talka little bit about what is happening with
men as a heterosexual woman who lovesthem, who wants them, who loves

(14:22):
them, who wants to continue lovingthem, but who has also had the
same difficulties as thousands of women throughoutthe world. And there' s already
something comforting here, girls, there' s something comforting here. It is
likely that some of you feel thatthis passes through you alone. This is

(14:43):
a structural phenomenon that is being used, that is deepening and that is causing
a lot of damage and that itis important to analyze. I know this
is a super- fluous consolation ifyou want, but it' s a
comfort because I think one of theexperiences we have and have many uncomfortable women

(15:05):
who seek to live life on theirown terms, who have been asking questions
that have not been subordinated to theexpectations of their environments, in being simply
subordinate baby- makers, which isbasically what was asked of us, women
for a long time. I knowa lot of people feel like this is

(15:26):
yours. It' s not yours. This is a phenomenon, a structural
thing, and I think those whohear me and read me know that I
am deeply interested in structures. Besides, they know that I have spoken here
of the loneliness of the sultry inuncomfortable and bad woman. I don'
t remember the book. There's a chapter that starts. These are
the men I must love. Sothis is a long, long question and

(15:50):
that, of course, goes andcomes between what interests me a lot and
is the most embodied and human aspectof the intellectual process and also, of
course, the most theoretical and historicalreflection around this. But speaking of statistics,
statistics show that men commit suicide more. They also show that there are

(16:15):
very high percentages. Sixty- fivepercent of men are very reluctant to seek
help. Men are more depressed,they also tend to be more violent.
And what it has to do withwhen I also mean that this is structural.
It is that, if we thinkabout it and if we take into

(16:36):
account what is happening, it isthat the messages have changed a lot then,
while for women or for all thefeminine it has come as a frenzy
of decades that, of course,has been accentuated in recent years by the
digital, because the digital has hada great as a great force around making

(16:57):
feminism visible and making us as awareof a broader symptom of our time.
And it is that we are askingourselves about the ways in which gender constructions
have been at the service of aform of power, basically of or powerful
men, generating a system that iscalled patriarchal, where, therefore, the

(17:21):
idea is constructed that women and otherbeings, besides women, indigenous and indigenous
communities, Afro- everything else,sexualityes that are not. It' s
all inferior, isn' t it? Therefore, the term feminism is also
born to give an account, togive a name to a historical problem.

(17:42):
So, this is a phenomenon thatcomes as politically happening historically, happening with
all the liberation movements that arise inthe sixties. How does that look in
Latin America? How that will alsobe seen, of course, with the
way we feminise it, but alsothe thoughts of colonials, as they are

(18:03):
not only theories that intercede in academia, in episthemia, but, of course,
how that goes to political praxis.All of this has also been exacerbated
by what the Internet has done,in our lives and in our subjectivity and
in recent years, because what hashappened is that women primarily as the first

(18:26):
subject, as named of feminism,with all that that implies. Because I
' m not going into that.But I am not going to get into
that because I too am a littletired of alerting what feminism has become in
the networks. Don' t be, she' s boring me. I
' m handing you my card,and you' re there, and there

(18:47):
' s no one there, eventhough she' s feminist enough or nothing
enough. So, I kind ofdon' t know, and also how
patriarchal violence is exercised by the nameof such a feminism. But the truth
is that if there is an exacerbationof this also because of the subjectivity that
digital networks have had. So,in recent years, the message for women
has changed a lot and instead,women have come out like breaking down the

(19:12):
essentializing categories, that is, women. Then they no longer identify only with
being baby makers and being subordinate anddependent. This has also had to do
with political transformations in terms of rightsand conditions. Women couldn' t do

(19:33):
anything, vote or own property.And that, of course, is added
to the intersections of race, class, sexuality, gender as well. Yes,
we also have to look at theproblem that is like the word woman
as woman, because it is aswell what comes to teach us one of
the schools for me most relevant tounderstand the feminist theories that separate in these

(19:59):
complexities, it is like the blackFeminism. So that goes from the beginning
of time with her Gurner Truth whenshe asks the white suffragist feminist if she
' s not a woman too.But what I' m going to do
with all this is that, justas the word woman is problematic in both
category and uniform. If you want, the same thing happens with the term

(20:21):
man. What happens is that inrecent years and in recent decades, the
messages for women have changed significantly andfor men masculinity has to do with this
issue of enduring how hard the indurranceto the hard, real men are like
resisting war, fighting and resisting hardwork. That' s being a man,

(20:51):
not somehow. And what' sstarting to happen with the Internet is
that there' s a series ofmasculinity influencers that are grabbing a very scary
power, because they' re theonly ones that are addressing the anxieties that
many young men have. Now Istart to encounter this phenomenon when a few

(21:12):
months ago also because as a heterosexualwoman, I have had it for a
while, because for me fundamentally theproblem. I recently wrote it in a
column in the country about the homoerotismI see in football. I wrote it
in a column for medium context afew years ago, which was called the

(21:33):
divided men I wrote, of course, in uncomfortable woman. I wrote it
in a column in the viewer whowas called uncomfortable men, and it is
that fundamentally what pallored for me mygreat anxiety with this is what he writes
lived in Gornick. When referring tothe American writer ridgird Ford in the essay
tendhearlit Man, men of tender heart, gornicg analyzes how fort Y Carver and

(21:57):
Hemingway, three writers from the UnitedStates, have a more kind stance toward
women. However, Gornick says thatdeep down, Gornick' s women don
' t remind him of himself andfor me there is like the nerve point
of alienation between men and women.Written extensively about this too because in the

(22:22):
environment in which I grew up,of course, it resonates a lot with
books, as in December the breezesof Marvel Moreno arrived and in the Land
of God and Man, that is, they will patent Nostrom. My own
experience, as a socialized woman inthe Cartageneran bourgeoisie of the nineties, in
the Colombian Caribbean, is precisely likethese dissociations, which also implies not only

(22:45):
the patriarchal feminization that says it issexual object, but not sexual subject,
because you are basically slut the notbrimeryst the whores. No one marries the
whores of this dissociation, as Isaid, also happens in men, when
they are also taught that there arewomen with whom they exercise their political authority

(23:06):
in the world that is also sexual, as happens in the book of Silvana
Paternostro, but they marry virgins andit is they who guard virginity. It
is these men who learn that withthe mother of my children there is no
fleshly or lustful sexuality, because themother of the children cannot have that mistake.

(23:27):
These dissociations because they have to do. Of course, for me I
have always said this widely with archetypesor categorizations that dehumanize women, especially in
the imaginaries and psychonographs of Western Christianity. So clear to me, there'

(23:48):
s the nerve point of this wholething, and that' s always been
my concern with men who don't identify with me or my friends,
men forgive me boys, but notthe men with whom there are loving relationships.
That' s the big task,and that' s what football has.
For me, football is a greatshow of homoerotism, because it is

(24:11):
one of the spectacular and playful spaceswhere men are looking at other men,
doing extraordinary heroic things, like everythingsport does. But it is a space
where men who are well taught alsoby the masculinity most prevalent to which feelings
are feminine, are feminized and thatmust be purged. And real men don

(24:33):
' t show that. They find, however, in football a space where
on the contrary, the manes touch, kiss, hug, cry, scream,
have all the emotions. It isa space in some way that allows
the exercise of sentimentalism, but thatis fundamentally based on identifying with other men.

(24:57):
And that' s where the middleof this whole thing is for me
today is that we women don't remind men of themselves. And that
incubates in sexuality, in the perceptionthat one has of mothers, in the
perception that one has of wives,in the perception that one has if women
behave in some way, there isno homophilia. That' s what there

(25:18):
isn' t, that' swhat men have. No men love each
other. And in Colombian heterosexuality andLatin American heterosexuality, this I have found
myself at parties watching and saying isthat I have no pity and I will
never make for my male friends asa man and also as the way men
sometimes treat their own friends. Itis not one of the concerns that I

(25:42):
have had as a heterosexual woman,in practice, but if we also think
of these discourses of traditional masculinities,which is what these figures, these influencers,
or these authorities, like George Thaerson, who is a psychopath, are
embodying. The psychopaths are very quiet, and Jordan Peterson has that in the

(26:04):
argument and there is also, ofcourse, Andreu Tate and, of course,
there is also Christack. And like, usually, it' s these
men who are having an influence,but who are talking from a return to
tradition, that is, it's a return to the groald days like
the days before, where, byautonomasia, they' re days or times

(26:30):
where women had less rights. Then, going back to how I find myself
with this phenomenon, not only becauseof my own experience as a thinker of
these issues, but also as awoman who loves and looks intensely at men.
A few months ago, when Ivisited a university class that sometimes received

(26:51):
these generous invitations from people teaching indifferent institutions, because the class was called
feminism and law, which is likethe invitation that makes me a great friend
to his classroom, that I respectvery much, because it invites the complexity
of the discrepancy and the debate withheight and argumentative. And from the beginning
there was a very young boy,very very brave, very annoying, very

(27:15):
annoying. From the very first momentI spoke briefly, he asked for the
floor. He was very angry athis way of expressing himself. He began
by asking why the word femicide hadto exist legally. Also what happens is
that I now have it a littlehazy, but it was a young boy

(27:38):
who ended up being very very aggressivetowards me, even though I tried to
answer his questions with complexity and navigatethis that interests me the simultaneous truth.
He told me Baby Killer to bedemonized. He also told me that feminists
were like Muslims who sell good,something that was very shocking. His companions

(28:04):
were very mortified. But then someoneexplains to me that there is a term
that is insel and I start tolook at this and that' s what
' s going on with these influencerswho have appropriated something so it' s
called in the north and global theminusfear. Where there are different slopes.

(28:26):
There are those who are supposed tobe men' s rights activists. There
are others who are looking for otherpaths, creating as spaces only for men.
There are also inselts and incells,for example, are like this digital
court that basically what they preach isthat women use their sexual power to dominate

(28:49):
men socially and because they want revengeand a few days ago on Twitter,
an unwise place for everything in life, except sometimes I get stuff from film,
literature, art, so if Itolerate it for the rest. I
didn' t get an account,because I was incel, because like insulting

(29:12):
a little around how and said thatwomen are the ones who discriminate against men
and because of us, they aresubjected to an involuntary celibacy and from there
comes the term incero. What happensis that the founder of the movement,
Incel, did it many years agoin an Internet community. But it had

(29:36):
more to do with care. Italso had to do as with as with
a weary, also towards loving failures. And she never imagined, never foreordained
that this was going to be turnedinto a mob of men. Many young
people who have this belief and who, for example, show screens like I

(29:59):
don' t know in an apof dating, a guy who puts like
this space is just like a placeto feed the narcissism of the bitches that
are you, who are like superdemanding and with their vaginas infested with sex.
This is very worrying what is happening. But what' s the problem?
The problem is that Andrew Tate,who has also been accused of sex

(30:26):
trafficking and who is making millions ofdollars because he has created virtual schools where
these kids come to hear him talkabout how to be an alpha man,
how to be a real man,because he has been documented saying in public
spaces that he doesn' t marrybecause he literally says I' m going

(30:47):
to marry a club bitch. Tome, white dress means virgin. Andrew
Jade is one of these central figureswho is hoarding a very young masculinity,
there is also Jordan Pie, ofcourse in many ways also because from his
quietness, because he says similar things, then in Latin America we have Agustín

(31:11):
Laje. So what is happening alsoand what is happening in Latin America is
that we are also having figures likenothing more or less than the new President
of Argentina, Miley, in manyways, also fed precisely as of these
younger masculinities. So do people likeAndreu Tate, and so do men in

(31:33):
Mexico, as themed in Colombia.I don' t know very well who
could function as a referent of this, but they are basically a few male
figures with a great power of influence, that what they are telling young men
is that we have to go back, that is, that we don'
t have to adapt to the timethat runs, that we don' t

(31:56):
have to look for how to rethinkwhat masculinity means in light of the social
changes we have had with women andother subjectivities and other subjects, like daring
to want rights, that is,how they dare women to want rights.
And that' s very worrying,because, in addition, the problem is
that and this is one forgive me, excuse me, moment of being the

(32:21):
common woman. That is one ofmy great differences with contemporary feminism. We
' re talking to men and Iunderstand why and here they can cancel me,
burn me, we' re goingto navigate the simultaneous truths. I
understand the anger and anger involved,because systematic violence comes from the masculine side.
I understand clearly how this reluctance tomother men, to educate men,

(32:45):
as this anger is also worthy offeminism. I understand it perfectly and I
share it, especially in view ofthe daily realities in which there are and
are women in general public space,in the workplace, in all the places
that show us time and time againthat misogyny is rampant and that, as

(33:07):
the fairy tale of the pig thatI recommend you read shows that misogyny is
traversed by such virulent hatred that whatone of the characters in that tale asks
himself is asking a policeman. People, Mr Policeman, why, when men
are killed, don' t theytorture them? Why, when men kill

(33:28):
them, don' t they rapethem? Because when men are killed,
there is no sign that their nippleswere tortured or raped with artifacts, or
that they were cut, or thatthey were maimed, or that they were
deliberately mistreated. That' s themeasure of misogyny. So what is also
happening is that, for the sakeof that necessary force of the feminisms to

(33:54):
focus the liberation of women, whichhas had some changes, for example,
which are also the ones that explainthe rage, anger, pain and anxiety
of younger men, women are beingeducated more statistically? Women are doing more
things. Women are acting differently.And one of the things that have generated

(34:16):
all this is a great social anxiety, a great social anxiety that does not
correspond well, or does not govery well with what it implies, because
clearly the learnings of a masculinity where, as some statistics say, sixty-
five percent of men do not feelwilling to seek help. The highest percentage

(34:37):
of suicides is among men. Thereare also, like some, very high
rates of male presences in prisons.Of course, then it' s very
crazy because these are men who aretalking to young men. Feminism is not

(34:59):
talking to men. We' renot talking to men, and I personally
disagree deeply with this. Of course, not just me, that is,
the titan of all this. Forme, the academic to be heard,
the one to be read, theone to be deeply known, for me
in Colombia is Dr Mara Viveros,who I will talk a little about when
I landed these topics in Latin America. And what Dr Viveros advocates is for

(35:24):
a non- separatist feminism, whichis very typical of feminism tensions as well.
I' ve always said so inthis space. Feminism is an unstable,
heterogeneous terrain, full of multiple voicesof many edges, uncomfortable, not
monolithic, has many facets, hasmany intersections. It is an uncomfortable place

(35:45):
epistemically, practically theoretically and politically,but this is one of the consequences we
are having. On the one hand, in the female releases they have generated
a series of message changes for womenand that has not gone at the same
pace as what is happening for men. So, once again, I understand
the rage and reluctance of not goingto maternalize men, we' re not

(36:07):
going to educate men. They canalso be documented, They can also be
uncomfortable, and I agree, thepatriarchal pact between men is so strong that
many times among themselves they do notachieve or have as the ability or as
the courage to intercede among themselves.A few years ago, in Argentina,

(36:27):
a publicity came out that I inviteyou to see with everything that the advertising
of feminism implies. I don't care about their ways of educating and
raising awareness, too, because welive in capitalism. They know we live
in capitalism. We cannot free ourselvesfrom capitalism. And since capitalism, we
have to hack, too. Andthis publicity was called changing the deal.
And what this publicity had was notjust that it focused on certain behaviors of

(36:51):
the boys, such as, forexample, a male circulating a photo of
a girl with whom he was undressedamong friends, a male who makes several
lustful and violent comments to a girlon the street, a male who challenges
his father for the way he treatshis mother. It was not only that,
but it was precisely that element thatwere male interpelling among them, They

(37:14):
were male pointing out and focusing theirproblematic behaviors. So the problem is that
those who are speaking to men arethe Andrew Tates and the George Petersons and
the Javier Milay and the Augustinelas andthe Tematch. These are the men who
are talking to the young men andwhat they are telling them. They'

(37:37):
re telling you to go back tothe back time. You have to go
back to the time where men weregoing to war, where men resisted the
hard, where men kind of workedhard And many times you lose sight there,
that, that is, when welooked back, we went like the
fundamental matrix between the patriarchal system,Christianity that seider and capitalism. The division

(38:01):
of labour has some characteristics. Malelabour is remunerated but the proletariat can also
be exploited. That is to say, there is the class intersection of men,
of workers, as hard work doneby men poorly paid, while female
domestic work, for it is awork that is not remunerated and that is

(38:22):
expected and demanded, especially through motherhoodand the domestic. Not then these notions
of the world before we men canno longer be men. We' re
not men. And a boy asksGeorgen Peterson at a conference of these,
because we' re seeing young menpaying for Andrew Tate' s schools,

(38:43):
which makes a billion dollars, becausethey' re schools that teach men to
be men. Really, for example, seminars lectures where men are like looking
for what it means to be aman. But unlike what has happened with
femininity and with the feminine that isbecoming complicated, men are wanting to return
to the world before, but whatmany lose sight of is that the formerly

(39:06):
patriarchal world, for as this notionof the provider, who can provide a
home today is just that, noteven sometimes two people can and is also
like that. They lose sight ofthe fact that patriarchalism has also been a
court of powerful men who have createdsystems of exploitation that are the real culprits

(39:30):
of the problem of many men.What are the problems of many men?
Less and less access to education,depression, loneliness, isolation. They'
re not making so much money andthe message for men has been this being
provider, but in economic and socialchanges, that' s what it looks

(39:50):
like now. A lot of what' s going on with this is that
the guinea pig is feminism and women. Then they blame the feminisms and the
women and the minorities. And,therefore, we can also not lose sight
of these movements, such as incellsor men who speak as with these esoteric
terms of beta alpha. Simp whichis one thing that Tematch does, which

(40:15):
is a Mexican influencer who, likeJordan Peterson, speaks very calmly, very
convinced, as very confident in himself, use these terms. But what they
' re doing is they' retalking about how masculinity has to go back
to being like before, losing sightthat patriarchal damage to men also hurts men,

(40:38):
it also creates jails for men aswell. So the problem is that
these men are blaming women and feminismand not the patriarchal system, which also
exploits them, which also impregnates themeconomically, which also discriminates against them by
social class, by physical or byrace or by many other things that we
don' t talk about. Wedon' t talk about sexual abuse in

(41:02):
men. We are not talking aboutthis. How many cases of pederasty of
the Catholic Church there are, Whereare the rulers of the city of Cali
when more and more cases of Catholicpederasty come out here in Colombia, much
denounced in an extraordinary and necessary journalisticwork by Juan Pablo Barrientos, a very
uncomfortable journalist who has also been verymuch persecuted by the Church. We'

(41:25):
re not talking about the sexual abusethat men suffer. We are not talking
about prisons, which also implies acapitalist and neoliberal system in the economic precariousness
that exists today. When the messageis you have to be a provider,
when the message is you have tobe in a certain way and the world
structurally doesn' t work that way, what happens then what it means to

(41:50):
be a man. Today I constantlywonder who the models of children are,
who the models of young people are. So, what' s going on
is that the models these guys have, they' re also locked up in
isolation, because the Internet fucked uphumanity too and has created like this these
anxieties, this depression, this anxietyof this loneliness, this isolation. What

(42:14):
are the models of these guys,who talk to these guys, these men,
these men are hoarding their anxieties.Feminism is not talking to men.
This has me very, very,very worried for a few years now,
because this has a bad impact andit comes with the new generations how the
younger girls will live. Romantic loveand love of thirty are viralizing despair and

(42:37):
those of forty are also coming assituations where they have to come to terms
with singleness and loneliness? And lonelinessand singleness have prices and costs. In
the capitalist world, in terms ofeconomic autonomy, in social terms as well.
This is a world, this isa country that is designed for couples
and groups. This is not acountry for dual individual beings. So,

(43:00):
all this is tied up and itis very interesting to think about how that
mangefearcon a my is an economy thatis nourishing itself from these fears, from
these anxieties, from a pain.So, for example, there are influences
like Snico and not that there isa video where 12- year- olds,
thirteen- year- olds call himas a good fact, in fact

(43:22):
Wima and evil tell him no.No. No, no, no,
Will Love. We love women whenwhat is clearly happening is that the children
are giving back the reflection of whatthey are telling you. There are other
influencers who feel very brave to saywhat happens to women who want me not
to know what, such as why? That I don' t get married,
I don' t get married.So this is what he is doing
also in the light of the circumstances, neoliberalism, economic precariousness, but the

(43:45):
message that remains the same for masculinity. You have to be strong, you
have to be assertive, you haveto be hard, you have to be
supplier, you have to be ina certain way. It' s like
you' re also generating this effectof blaming for what happened to the witch

(44:06):
hunt in Western Europe, like creatingone another and blaming one another for fear
and anxiety and that, of course, is also reproducing a series of behaviors
and behaviors in the affective life ofmen. Well, to watch the Barbie
movie, with all the reviews thatwant to make it Fag, it is
a film aquilmense, It is apop movie that to me it seemed that

(44:30):
it did have some very strong points, very funny. It' s like
this notion. Okay. They rememberwhen Ken said that you' re my
low- commitment long- distance girlfriend. That is like a great metaphor of
what happens also in the political,of the affective with these masculinities. Men
don' t want to compromise.Men also want to look for certain forms

(44:51):
of women. They have rage,they have anxiety and the Internet algorithms only
feed this and figures like Jordan Petersonand Andrew Tate and te Manch and Miley
and Agustín Lage only gain strength becauseno one is talking to these men and
no one is talking to the youngboys. And the message they' re

(45:12):
getting is that you have to goback to the world before, you have
to be tough, you have togo to the world of war, of
work. And it' s veryimportant to think of Dr Mara nurseries here
and how we solve this, what' s going on with this. And
here comes one of my great differenceswith contemporary feminism. Now the feminisms have
many edges and to me whenever theyask me this is like what feminism with

(45:35):
which intersection. In this last seasonthere were some voices from the feminisms that
speak to us in different ways,the Sudaca Baroque economies, the economy of
care, in the relationship between debtfeminism and neo liberalism, in the feminist
look from the academy, linked,of course, also to sex work,
all these different elements. So thisis an artery of feminisms that seems absolutely

(46:00):
urgent to me. What' sgoing on with public policy. Why not
our nation' s Congress doesn't have a conversation about this. They
spend their time fighting between egos,seeing who' s right. Nobody cares
about the country. And you're not talking about masculinities. He'
s talking about masculinities in how mentreat women in public space. We are

(46:22):
not talking about education, which menhave about how they perceive and treat women
Every time there is a femicide issue, please, why do women keep talking
about women, by women with womenand men. Where men are, why
men are not outraged. Because thereis anxiety and fear, and that anxiety
and fear, mixed with the learningsof a certain masculinity, becomes violence.

(46:45):
Violence has many forms. It becomesfear, it becomes anxiety. Let us
remember that one of the great foundationsof patriarchal thought is to see the other
as a threat, as a threatto what, to be stigmatized, persecuted,
annihilated. So, many times,fear of the other, fear of
the unknown, becomes that becomes violence. And that' s what these moves

(47:07):
show that I missed saying. Wecannot ignore how vulnerable and fertile they are
for the far right. What happenedon January 6 at the U S Capitol
is this kind of masculinity. Incellsare very connected to the thoughts of a
Augustinelaje and my law And if wethink of the same milay, I don

(47:30):
' t know anything about the personallife of Augustine Laje, because frankly I
can' t. My problem isthat when you' re a thinker and
you incite your followers to rape someone, you' re not a thinker,
you' re a bully with sophisticatedrhetoric like a good fascist. And that
' s what worries me. WhenAugustine lashed, he decided to put my

(47:52):
name on one of his videos.In all my history with digital networks and
I' ve been on digital networkssince they started from two thousand seven,
and twitter is from two thousand nine, Instagram from two thousand thirteen. Never
in my life and despite being widelybullied by different segments and in this country

(48:12):
and in the virtual, I havenever received so much violence. Then it
' s very dicient. That's a pain in the ass. But
the same milay when they analyze Mileyand we can kind of make fun of
him, he' s a guywith a lot of complexes. He'
s a guy, he' sa clearly wounded man. He is a
man who is certainly a great metaphorfor the anxiety, fear, anger,
loneliness that men feel. And oneof the things that happens is that,

(48:37):
instead of thinking of the masculine asa way to adapt. As a good
thing, how we adapt to thisworld, how we navigate the changes that
have had the feminine or just aswe can change the masculine. What there
is is like a setback in theserhetorics, to the notion that being manly,
being man, is assertive. Butit' s not assertive that what

(49:00):
gets confused many times in these speechesis that being accurate for men to be
violent, that is, it's treating others like shit, it'
s treating women like shit, it' s being a bad person. And
this is one of the strongest thingsthat exist, and it is that,
like men, they are often strippedfrom so many children of tenderness, of
the care of feeling, because oneof the great tragedies of this masculinity is

(49:22):
that it is based on purging thefeminine, in which the world is feminizing.
And these discourses can be traced tothe 19th century, the beginning of
the 20th century and are, ofcourse, very present on the right of
the global north and Latin America,that the world is feminized, that it
is necessary to return to the hardand it is lost sight there that patriarchal

(49:45):
powerful men. Powerful men are theones who have fucked men and not women
and not feminism. So before,for example, it was precisely because it
was a world where women had norights and where other minorities had no rights,
because there were social clubs and whathappened these social clubs, who were
going to be pure man Everything waspure man and to the extent that those

(50:07):
models, for example, began tofeel obsolete. The men, they began
to run out of spaces for socialization. And what many of these movements of
the economics of the ugly mange orthe schools of Andrewutate prove is that men
have nowhere to socialize. Men arealone like girls. Also because this is
what the Internet is doing. TheInternet has stripped us of the Community,

(50:31):
stripped us of sitting around a campfireand telling stories. It has led us
to this alienation, it has ledus as to this separation and this loneliness.
Of course, also one of thefundamental things that is not cultivated because

(50:51):
it was not cultivated, for example, since I was a child and that
is also at the center of genderdifferences, is the absence of friendship between
men and women, and this isvery important, genuine friendship, because friendship
germinates involves seeing the other as homophilia, like recognizing oneself in the other.
And that only happens between men andmen. It is not free for these

(51:14):
young boys who feel lonely, whofeel disconnected, who have the dare to
say that they are celibate because itis the fault of women, because women
discriminate against them, because women forcethem to be celibate. Be seeking above
all sociability with those with other men, but with men who are indisposed to

(51:35):
adapt and indisposed to say as good. I' m going to check why
women don' t want to sleepwith me? I' m going to
check why women don' t wantto go out with me like the violence
they' ve learned, and thisanger and this poorly handled anxiety also leads
to how men are treating women inthe affective. Now this has been one

(51:58):
of my great concerns, as thebeginning said, that lack of identification between
men and women, which is atthe center of all this. Now,
Dr Mara Viveros, for example,promptly, talks about how masculinity in Colombia
can be better understood by examining towhat extent all norms, positions and forms

(52:19):
of masculinity are relative and are oftenshaped by class, color, race and
region. So, for example,I don' t think all men have
privileges if there are privileges of masculinity, of course they do remember, I
advocate simultaneous truths. I don't believe in dichotomy as a way of

(52:44):
thinking some things. The discomfort ofsimultaneity must be navigated. Of course there
are privileges of masculinity. But allmen are privileged. Black children in or
the Herrera in Cartagena de India areprivileged. Men who do buildings and work
under certain working circumstances are privileged.Racialized men in Colombia are privileged. Right

(53:09):
now I' m seeing dobyer Ihadn' t seen her and I'
m putting my heart to the fourthseason where they are precisely showing us a
series of teenagers who live in thesystem as well as homes of passage that
are like in the marginal parts ofthe cities, who have drug dealers there

(53:31):
and who are also beginning to developa way of being a man linked,
in that case, to violence,to crime, to the abuse of the
other, to the lack of compassiontowards the other, to the bully,
to aggression. And this is verytypical also of the masculinities that we see
in school and that we live manyand many of us. The mountaineer among
men, the abuse that was calledfaggot baby, that is, everything that

(53:54):
has been associated with the feminine isundesirable for that masculinity. And that'
s the speech that all these menhave, that they' re essentialists and
that' s very problematic, becauseif we think about it, it'
s like these evils want to goback to the fifty. And that'
s scary, that is, it' s like a sense of threat so

(54:15):
deep that, instead of seeing themasculine or the mandle or the virile as
we adapt, we' re goingto adapt, we' re going to
flow with the times, ask questions. It is like this thing of threat
and fear and revenge that seek,for example, the incesses, the insels.
It' s a very scary move, because this has repercussions on real

(54:36):
life. The men of the Inceromovement have sometimes been murderers as well.
And all this connects with of course, one of the great issues of mental
health. But then the class,which is one of my great concerns in
this world, is one of mygreat ways to look at the world.

(54:57):
It is also fundamental to understand thisfinger of the masculine and privileges, the
Nordic countries, Sweden, New Zealand, Iceland, that well, are examples
as of high standards and are verydifferent countries, as with lower population densities,
with very different economic resources. Theyare countries that have made changes around

(55:20):
this issue because they have combined culturaland public conversation with public policies. Where
are our politicians around this. Idon' t see any debate in Congress
about parental leave In this is acountry that has glorified the mother head of
the family, when that would haveto be called otherwise. That' s

(55:43):
parental abandonment that younger kids are learningabout pregnancy or sexuality. How men continue
to see women in terms of beingsexual subjects andreutates and all insls And all
these men talk about virginity, talkabout venereal disease- infested vulvas, talk
about whores in this level of violence. Where are the politicians of this fucking

(56:08):
country forgive me, because this reallymakes me angry. Where they' re
talking about these issues. I don' t see this issue anywhere. I
also do not see men becoming modelsof this capable that here and there one
has made as a statement about theimportance of this. But we don'

(56:30):
t have models for younger boys.We don' t have in the United
States there are some blasting baldonning it' s very important what he' s
done with the manen Off movement,the podcast he rode, the books he
' s written. There is anInstagram account and some very nice Instagram accounts
also of men who are trying tobe influencers of a masculinity as more kind,

(56:53):
more connected with tenderness. I sometimeswatch videos as positive masculinity and they
are men doing tender things, thatis, this theft also of men of
tenderness, of care, this notionthat they have to be hard, that
they have to power with everything,that they have to go to war.
It has to be said that ina country like Colombia, although, of

(57:15):
course, war situations always confront whathappens to women in terms of violence and
the pattern of obregón, the violencethat is a picture that I find very
difficult to see passing through the beingthat is in the bank of the Republic,
which is a portrait of an x- ray of Colombian violence. She
' s a woman, but whoput and who put the bodies of war,

(57:38):
too, boys who are not privileged. What is happening now with the
police and the army, without defendingany kind of patriarchal violence here, but
who are the police, from youngpeople, to whom. That is traversed
by the experience of social class.The social class experience is very important to
understand also the male ones in LatinAmerica. That' s one of the

(58:02):
things we said at the beginning aboutblack femen. In the black femense it
has taught us that ideologies of race, we have to cross them with the
domains of gender and the way inwhich they play a central role between the
relationship, between the theoretical and thepolitical. And, therefore, I do
publicly defend non- separatist feminism.In addition, obviously, one of the

(58:27):
things that the Doctor of Vivera hasdone is how to look, look very
keenly, as that role of masculinityin the continuum of violence, of what
is called in some epistemic movements ourLatin America, when examining the continuities between
violence and these other intersections. Butthis episode is called uncomfortable men, and

(58:49):
one of you once on Twitter answeredme so to be uncomfortable, but not
in the right way. And thisis worrying and painful, and it'
s something we need to meet andwe need to mobilize the public conversation.
We need men to question each other. We need politicians to talk about this,
look at how the left is alsoinfested with machismo and patriarchalism and misogyny,

(59:15):
and this has been bullshit with women. Let us also tell ourselves the
truth has always been known. Butwhere is also the public conversation around this,
where who are the men who aregoing to talk to the boys and
the younger ones about how being aman is like being a woman being anything.

(59:36):
It can be many things that weare going to do also with the
stands that this is generating in heterosexuality, in the loving relationships, This is
generating some disagreements and a very tremendousdifference. I know that many of you
live it. I know many ofyou feel it. So I wanted to
sow this reflection, because it's one of the issues that worries me

(59:58):
the most, that worries me themost about those I' ve been talking
about. I took up my goodinsults a few years ago from certain POP
feminists when I spoke about the importanceof declaring men also feminists. Yeah.
That' s another debate. Butthat already, as I said that I
already give you my feminist ram,has never been feminist enough, anti-
racist enough or insufficiently anti- classistso you know that here you have my

(01:00:25):
flesh I am already in a positionof yes, as I am already feminist,
because I am not talking about that. So I' m not talking
about anti- classist, because thenI' m not anti- classist enough.
This is like one and it's like endless this, but it
' s really a very important debate. It' s a debate we need.
Besides, for me the political.I don' t believe in electoral

(01:00:46):
politics, I don' t believein institutional politics. I' m anarch
in that sense. And more andmore, politics is at stake in life.
The political is played in everyday life. The political stakes are on affections.
Political how we treat others and others. The political thing happens there also
in the texture of life. Whatare we going to do with men,

(01:01:07):
what are we going to do withmasculinities? As long as the masculinities are
not part of this, of thepublic conversation, of the public policies,
of the reminder we have with thefeminisms. There will never be structural revolution.
So, about that, I wantedto leave this sonorous essay, as

(01:01:30):
I was saying at the beginning.With this I leave for an uncomfortable woman
' s time. If you wantto accompany me in my work, I
invite you to come to be illustratedin a very beautiful platform of learning,
of editorial culture, of fashion,of style, of history, of art,
of cinema, of television, ofthought. They get classes, they

(01:01:50):
get podcasts, they can hear me. I also send you audio messages of
what you ask me on telegram,we have reading circles, we see each
other virtually, we have a chat, we have a community. Community is
one of the things that interests memost right now, too, so I
hope you can accompany me there.I also hope that this uncomfortable woman space

(01:02:12):
has been and is of some usein the lives of some and some of
you who generously listen to me,gives me a little guado, gives me
a little nostalgia for this moment ofwhat I am recording. But sometimes we
also need, as I said,to address other things and talk about community,

(01:02:34):
this is precisely what men lack.And notice that statistically, in the
United States, men who belong totrade unions tend to make more money because
they have a sense of collectivity,because they have a sense of community.
What happens is that the Community thatmen used to have in times when women
had no rights and other minorities hadno right. It was based on that,

(01:02:55):
that it was a world for them. And even though that has changed
significantly, that is the question thatwe also need to ask ourselves, and
that is what it means to bea man today and why they have to
turn like this to go back,because no one is talking to them,
because those who are talking to themare very dangerous subjects, that what they

(01:03:19):
are basically saying is that the worldbefore, when women had no rights,
when other beings had no rights,was better. So I look forward to
your comments on this sonorous essay thatI leave with a lot of heart.
Thank you so much for hearing.Thank you so much for joining me in
all my loving gratitude.