With regard to men and women, it is insisted, in the Western world, in which the achievements of the latter have been notorious, in equality policies: these are the ones that mark the European agendas, in which Portugal inevitably subscribes.
However, the numbers that give us back the violence exerted on women continue to be worrying and all too often culminate in homicide, in addition to detecting other indices, these related to an evident civilizational malaise.
Isn't it worth reflecting, for example, that women arrive at the shelves of bookstores with their literary production at a time when language is degraded, when words seem to have lost resonance, when instrumentality haunts the heart of thought?
Isn't it worth reflecting that universities have observed a mass access of female student population at a time when knowledge declines as mediation, when there is a laziness associated with the complexity of visions, in which well-spoken people are distrusted?
Finally, it is not worth reflecting that women have conquered the right to work outside their homes, where they continue to bear the burden of daily tasks, at a time of obvious degradation of the rights associated with work, in which they usually earn less than men, although they may even assume the same functions, and where they are certainly the most vulnerable to flexibilization?
Of course, the agendas of equality policies aim to balance a situation of secular subordination, restoring justice to opportunities and its effective performance.
However, the situation is likely to gain a different dimension if we add another variable to it, that is, one in which a female-becoming of culture is detected exactly in line with Modernity, this is the great project-epo in which we are inscribed and which, honestly, the covid-19 pandemic seems to me to have definitely ended to open up to an unknown, yet.
Thus, equality is measured by the degree of citizenship that the opening of the Contemporary Period has given us back: not to forget the values of the French Revolution, therefore, Freedom, Equality, Fraternity. The degree of citizenship comes from the progressive inclusion, since the citizen tailored in historical terms did not need women, as he repudiated the poor, as he pushed away those who did not meet the requirements of a masculine and proprietary identity, therefore, its primordial form is tending to be abstract for today, if in the genesis it was the direct and very palpable response of recognition of a privileged part of society.
As for the becoming-feminine of culture, it is detected by the questioning of a sovereign Enlightenment reason, that, no more or less, that was also responsible for carving the modern citizen and embodied by men who, as has been said, are not all included : hence we talk today about minority rights.
It turns out that, given the masculine and proprietary identity that is equivalent to the sovereign Enlightenment reason of Modernity, women have never been, are, will be, or would be a minority, simply because they are the ones who engender communally with men, first, then, because it is in the feminine and masculine, in the difference, in the sexual and erotic dimension, which begins the social, mainly, through thought and feeling, generative.
Here, we can see the existence of two planes: equality and difference, which are also equivalent to citizenship and the body. Both planes must be considered, both existentially and discursively.
Of course, the path that the West has taken towards spreading rights to people who were not included in the prototype of citizen carved at the opening of the Contemporary Era, which is therefore subsumed in the Modernity project, is essential and we should not give up on it.
But is it not open to serious reflection that, detecting a becoming-feminine of culture, one can observe, at the same time, the beginning of the great historical feminist struggles? And why is this? Because that path is based on equality and because that becoming defends difference: women, through the claims of feminism, want to be recognized as citizens, and to snatch rights that have been denied for centuries, and that contemporaneity has again congenitally denied; some men, through the critique of the larger project of Modernity based on a sovereign and overwhelming Enlightenment reason, on the other hand, approach the feminine as an alternative to an immemorial culture of male prevalence, in which many, almost all, possibilities of difference.
Here, one can see the almost generalized discomfort of part of current feminism in the face of a concept of difference that often claim to fall into a phantasmal essentialism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the appropriation of feminine values by men who want a new critical rationality, which integrates the unconscious, and difference itself.
We have, then, that women, generically, direct their gaze to men who did not recognize the privileges they rightfully deserved, and claim them; men, on the other hand, a significant part of those who intend to reinvent themselves, turn their gaze to women, and seek ways to think, and act, write, imagine, a different society in another way of being.
However, and in the face of the ghost of essentialism, if there is a resonant feminine argument, it is that it was men who named women, it was men who built the world, it was men who ensured the secondaryization of women, for women , generally speaking, this focus on their difference is quite uncomfortable, the same thing that excites men so much, when what they want involves, above all, equality: social, legal and economic. I therefore believe that a perspective of these two realities is required, without haunting, with patience and resistance.
Author: Claudia Ferreira
Science in the Regional Press – Ciência Viva
© 2020 – Science in the Regional Press / Ciência Viva
Cláudia Ferreira was born in Coimbra. Licensed in History/var. History of Art from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra, having attended Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art at FLUCL, in Lisbon. Women – Women in Society and Culture, specifically, at FCSH of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, to obtain a doctorate in Contemporary Studies at the University of Coimbra in 2019 with a thesis entitled The Face of the Hours: the feminine and the masculine, with art.
She is a researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the 20th Century – CEISXNUMX and performs the functions of Superior Technician at the Municipality of Condeixa.
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