Coquetería torpe del cura hacia el monaguillo

Cómo sonaría el Manifiesto Deneuve, si versase sobre menores en vez de mujeres... La violación es un crimen. Pero el coqueteo insistente o torpe no es un crimen, ni la galantería es una agresión pedófila. Como resultado del caso Marcial Maciel en Latinoamérica, o de los abusos revelados por el Boston Globe hace unos años, ha habido una conciencia legítima de la violencia sexual contra los menores, particularmente en instituciones de la iglesia católica, donde algunos hombres abusan de su poder. Ella era necesaria. Pero esta liberación de la palabra se convierte hoy en su opuesto: ¡Nos ordenan hablar, a silenciar lo que enoja, y aquellos que se niegan a cumplir con tales órdenes se consideran traidores, cómplices! Pero es la característica del puritanismo: tomar prestado, en nombre de un llamado bien general, los argumentos de la protección de los menores y su bienestar para vincularlos a un estado de víctimas eternas, pobres pequeñas cosas bajo la influencia de demoníacos pedófilos. Supresiones y acusaciones De hecho, los escándalos hechos públicos en prensa, películas y documentales han provocado una campaña de denuncias públicas de personas que, sin tener la oportunidad de responder o defenderse, fueron puestas exactamente en el mismo nivel que los delincuentes sexuales. Esta justicia expedita ya tiene sus víctimas: hombres sancionados en el ejercicio de su profesión, obligados a renunciar, etc.; mientras que ellos solo se equivocaron al tocar una rodilla, tratar de robar un beso, o hablar sobre cosas "íntimas" ante un menor que no se sintió atraído por el otro. Esta fiebre para enviar a los "cerdos" al matadero, lejos de ayudar a quienes de menores sufrieron abusos, en realidad sirve a los intereses de los enemigos de la libertad sexual, los extremistas religiosos, los peores reaccionarios y los que creen -en nombre de una concepción sustancial de la moralidad buena y victoriana- que los menores son seres "asexuados" que no deberían pensar siquiera en el sexo. Del otro lado, se convoca a los hombres, en particular a sacerdotes, a encontrar, en lo más profundo de su conciencia retrospectiva, un "comportamiento fuera de lugar" que podrían haber tenido hace diez, veinte o treinta años, y del cual deberían arrepentirse. La confesión pública, la incursión de fiscales autoproclamados en la esfera privada, que se instala como un clima de sociedad totalitaria. Los editores ya piden que los personajes masculinos sean menos "sexistas", que hablemos de sexualidad y amor con menos desproporción, o que garanticemos que el "trauma experimentado por personajes abusados de niños" sea ¡más obvio! La libertad indispensable para ofender El filósofo Ruwen Ogien defendió una libertad de ofensa indispensable para la creación artística. De la misma manera, defendemos una libertad para importunar, indispensable para la libertad sexual. Ahora estamos suficientemente advertidos para admitir que el impulso sexual es por naturaleza ofensivo y salvaje: el impulso, el deseo sexual, no mide la edad de quien lo atrae, ni su condición, ni su consentimiento previo. Pero también somos lo suficientemente clarividentes como para no confundir el coqueteo torpe con el ataque sexual. Sobre todo, somos conscientes de que la persona humana no es monolítica: un menor de edad, en el mismo día, jugar fútbol en el cole y disfrutar siendo el objeto sexual de un hombre, sin ser un vil tentador. No tiene por qué sentirse traumatizado para siempre por un manoseador en el metro, incluso si se considera un delito. Incluso puede considerarlo como la expresión de una gran miseria sexual, o como si no hubiera ocurrido. Como adultos que hemos sido menores hormonados en algún momento, no nos reconocemos en este puritanismo que, más allá de la denuncia de los abusos de poder, toma el rostro del odio hacia los hombres y la sexualidad. Creemos que la libertad de decir no a una propuesta sexual no existe sin la libertad de importunar. Y consideramos que debemos saber cómo responder a esta libertad para importunar de otra manera que encerrándonos en el papel de la presa. Para aquellos de nosotros que hemos elegido tener hijos, creemos que es mejor criar a nuestros hijos para que estén informados y sean lo suficientemente conscientes como para vivir sin intimidación ni culpabilidad. Los incidentes que pueden tener relación con el cuerpo de un menor de edad no necesariamente comprometen su dignidad y no deben, por muy difíciles que sean, convertirlo necesariamente en una víctima perpetua. Porque no somos reducibles a nuestro cuerpo. Nuestra libertad interior es inviolable. Y esta libertad que valoramos no está exenta de riesgos o responsabilidades.

Es tiempo

Dicen mis amigas que es tiempo de que vuelva a escribir desde adentro de mi y no desde mis manos y mi cerebro. Traducir que es mi trabajo no me sale del alma sino de la mente Quizás mi exilio real va más allá del geográfico del haber abandonado país y familia para cruzar el mar y encontrarme en un paraje ajeno donde mis pies no pesan. Quizás mi exilio real sea el de escribir desde la mente siempre desde la mente y nunca desde el corazón.

Lost and Found

Oh wow. I had totally forgotten that I even had this blog. In my conscious mind, at least...

I am still exiled, still here in Burgos, still not entirely at home here, after nearly, what? Eight years? But, this is not the city's fault. I float around wherever I am: I am one of those people that Cristina Peri Rossi so masterfully described in that story in which some citizens wander around floating about 6 inches from the ground, while the rest of the city folk walk with their feet firmly planted...

Or maybe I am just too lazy and too shy and too cowardly to try to make the city my own, or myself part of it. I still get lost, I still do not know where the three buses that stop IN FRONT OF my apartment building go. Well, I do know the endpoint of one of them. And that it goes by the hospital at some point--I guess that that is useful information to have...

I believe that the last time I wrote here, my daughter was not even a toddler. Now she is five years old. I am still a mother. Obviously I always will be now, even if she died, I would be a bereaved mother... but I mean, identity-wise. My primary identity is still "mother", and I constantly debate with myself whether this is good or bad for Aitana. For myself, I know the answer is "bad". I need to have multiple identities, not a primordial, central, hegemonic identity. I have no real job; I have no real life outside my motherhood; the only friend that I have made here is the mother of one of my daughter's friends... I believe that I usd to be "friend" and "daughter" and "girlfriend" and "student" and I dunno, other things. Now, I still am some of those, plus "wife", and "academic translator", but all these pale next to the central, overwhelming and underwhelming "mother" that I have become. My mother herself was so much more than just a mother, and I learned to be a person from her. I feel that I am short-changing my own daughter by providing her a horrible example as a woman... I wish that in time I can recover myself enough to change her perception of the primary woman in her life, into a complex vision of a complex person. Woman as complex, multi-layered, a being with a multi-identity-embodiment, and not a mother-wife, which is what she mostly sees now. Which is all I am now. And I am both better and happier at one of those two things, truth be told.  I must strive to be "writer" and "friend" and "thinker" and "daughter" again. Even if "professor" and "historian" are out of my reach, those others are not, and I should not give them up... patriarchy and a ridiculous labor market cannot hold me back!

Hell, I could also try "blogger".

Single moms

Today I had such bad cramps that I threw up four times before I could even have breakfast. Walking around doubled over (why "doubled", i wonder) I asked Ig to change the baby's diaper and dress her. And I thought, damn, single moms have to do these things regardless of how sick or in pain they are...

Single motherhood is definitely not something humans are meant to go through--there should be co-ops where single moms from all backgrounds can move to during the first three years of their children's lives... in every city in the world where family networks are not already co-op like...  then those days when they just can't, there's another person there who can help...

anyway. that's my great idea for today.

not really back

i'm here at home and have tons of writing and reading to do and translating and cleaning.
but instead of doing what i have to do, i am simply feeling good today. i feel at peace and joyous and well. for no reason. as if i did not have a care in the world.

which is why i cannot write. when life is good, what's there to say?

so no, i am not back yet. not really, not today.

Baby Einstein

Aitana likes Baby Monet's video of the seasons. I like to pretend that her favorite is Summer, but I think she prefers Spring. My theory is that since Spring is the first one, her attention is still fresh and impressionable. And the colors of the flowers help, too.

(I am multiply exiled. I no longer live in my country. I no longer live in a real community of friends or family--my own nuclear family does not count as a community. It is way too small. I feel like an outsider where I live, exiled from this society of an odd normalcy that I cannot relate to. And now, I am even exiled from my own blog. ..)

She is sitting on my lap wanting to do something interesting. But it's hard to do things with a creature whose head still falls forward when she sits up too straight.

Perhaps we should go outside. Perhaps perhaps perhaps.

Let us try another Baby Einstein video. Maybe that is interesting enough...

The Veil in School

And other things...

There is a debate here about Muslim women's veils... there are some schools in Spain where nobody can wear anything on their head (baseball caps or condom hats or veils... and wigs?)... so it's opened this debate which in France is more-or-less sealed: the state forbids females from wearing veils to school, whether they want to wear it or not, because it signals oppression. That means some teenage girls do not go to school at all. That means some teenage girls who might have grown to not wanting to wear it, will now wear it and be activists about it. That means that some who are religious and want to wear it are not allowed to do so by the state. And some who did not want to wear it at all are now happy because they don't have to and their parents still send them to school.

I think that no school should should forbid the veil (I'm not saying chador or burka), until it also forbids rosary beads, crucifixes and crosses on necklaces, t-shirts that claim any ethnic or regional identification... etc... as a matter of fact, it should be illegal for parents to pass on their religion to their children, because that violates kids' freedom of choice, dammit! If you grow up in an X-adoring household you will probably follow X without really having had the freedom to choose, to know options, to judge by yourself... that is one of the things that they say here: "if a girl grows up in a household in which the veil is so normal that she cannot imaginer herself without it, then she is sort of forced to wear it..."  Wha...!?

Well, Aitana is starting to change from Fidgety Baby to Fussy Baby so I better cut that transformation short!!!

-Y