(This article was published on 03/07/2019, but is still valid)
I recognize it, since I became the father of a daughter, my rejection of machismo, and its various forms, has been growing in parallel to how the now university student has matured over time. To the point that thanks to her I have understood that this machismo was more internalized in me than I believed, than much of my environment also believed; people, to understand us, who lived their adolescence in the eighties of the last century (the decade that consolidated the change of political cycle, from dictatorship to democracy) and who walked through life leaning towards progressive positions.
People like me were convinced that the achievements of feminism in past decades were already great advances because, of course, seen with perspective and compared to what the years of Franco were like, women had achieved “a lot.” It is enough to remember how in my town, Alzira, my teenage friends, in the late 70s and early 80s, hid having their period, because for some families it was something shameful or “dirty”; or how the mere fact of going out with a boy already generated so many suspicions that these girls had to feel guilty for the mere fact of being one; or how they had to be completely submissive in their workplaces and tolerant of those sexist comments that bosses and colleagues continually threw at them. I really am not exaggerating, it was a truly structural and almost invisible machismo because it was so widespread.
But the 80s arrived and that began to change; The woman became aware and over the years that battle offered great results, although insufficient. From my fatherhood, and how I have experienced all the processes of maturity with my daughter, I have understood that despite decades of struggle, the battle has only just begun. Because through her eyes, and her stories, I have discovered how behind we still are, and how much machismo still exists in all areas: family, work, educational, social, festive, sports, communication, as examples. It has been listening to her for years, to her and her friends and her friends, of all sexual identities, and understanding that I was wrong about many things that I believed were right; because I have perceived that machismo is, above all, intolerance and selfishness, which are two attributes that tend to tip societies towards the greatest disasters.
We have reached a point where it is she who guides me, which has, well seen, its flat points. Because she recommends readings, music, movies, environments, icons (she has made me passionate about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), as trends of that new feminism that is already the great ideological revolution of the 21st century. She is the one who, before anyone else, warns me about how certain proposals from the extreme right, and some from the PP, seek to push the rights of women and the LGTBI community towards the past, in a tactic of ultra-conservative involutionism. She is the one who is most outraged at home when certain judicial rulings are disclosed whose sexist whiff is unpresentable. And she is the one who better than anyone helps me understand what those millions of young women willing to leave home for a revolution that they are not willing to give up are now thinking. And I warn you, they are women, young and very well prepared.
My daughter's name is Anna, but she could be called Carlota, Lucia, Chloe, Estela, Olats or Linda, which are the names of some of her friends; and they all have the same convictions. I watch them, and I can't stop thinking about my friends from adolescence and youth in Alzira, and I see the enormous leap that feminism has taken in these forty years. It makes me somewhat uncomfortable to see myself in those years, accepting social behaviors that would be unacceptable now, that I now judge to be unacceptable; but I don't want to be harsh on myself and my generation, they were dark, black and white years, and social morality did not recognize women as subjects. I tell myself, sincerely, that I wish those childhood friends had grown up in this context, and that they had all agreed to be here today, March 8, ready to shout and fight for what is going to be the great battle of this century. And I, as a father and as a man, will do everything possible so that my daughter and her generation succeed in this fight against machismo.
