Susan Rawlings locks herself in room 19 at Fred's Hotel. Alone, without
responsibilities, after twelve years of marriage she insists on lookingfor herself again. She is angry, in an irrational and absurd way, shehas lost her space within the only one that is allowed to us: thedomestic. Masterfully and openly, Doris Lessing portrays in her story'To Room 19' the sought-after solitude, invisibility and the need toidentify with the space that surrounds us based on our own identity, andnot on being a person "in function of": mother of, wife of, daughterof... Who are WE and what is our space?We women live caged in our own perception of identity. We see lifethrough the vertex of an acute angle without really being aware of it.We grow up in small tobacconist-departments defined by the socialconstruction of our gender, with transparent walls, always being able tosee the space that the other occupies, but without the possibility ofreaching it. And those walls have a name. Or many.To be a saint or a whore. Work or take care Love or be alone Loving andbeing alone, equally. Dichotomies, divergent paths without a change indirection, our life is a permanent countdown around the reproductive agelimit. Postponing, procrastinating, we become unfinished projects, ahouse with exposed bricks.Since we are born, the imposition of the symbolic game guides us towardsthe world of care. We are not educated to enjoy the vastness of thepark, the public space. Since childhood we are taught to feelcomfortable in the small, the closed, the lines that will define ourliving space are marked with chalk on the floor. And if we go outside,let it be on pink skates, please.Our house is our castle. Our body, our border. And we don't even ownthat space. Legislative impositions are a slab on our ability to makedecisions about our own body.The schoolyards continue to be monopolized by soccer. And while a groupof children monopolize the only leisure space, the rest strive to movearound, occupying the residue. We, the girls, are in that group. Theytaught me to walk my doll's pram along the road, without stepping out,one little foot after another. without falling without staining me And Idon't know how to unlearn that.Girls grow up without real benchmarks for what they can be. Personal andprofessional success is determined by the social stratum. We cannotignore the conditions and impositions of an economic system that profitsfrom the free labor of millions of women. Because when we working-classwomen want to progress, we do so at the cost of another woman'ssacrifice to delegate to. And so on infinitely in a pyramidal schemeburied underground, invisible. The women who are shown to us as abenchmark of progress are in another social dimension. They aredaughters of privilege. Your life is not defined by permanentresignations. They, like the rest of their class, live on the shouldersof the exploitation of other people. And they are not, should not be,models of anything. They are not examples. Society looks at them as aconstant reaffirmation of what they cannot become. They are the image ofthe cruelty of social immobility.What is the space of women in the social struggle? Why are the names ofwomen dedicated to politics relevant but not to the union struggle, forexample? How do we continue to let them become the battering ram for theachievement of labor and social rights that are not going to contemplatethe gender paradigm at any time? What is the barrier that prevents uswomen from dedicating ourselves to claiming the labor bases of a realreconciliation that allows us to fulfill ourselves as people in its fullsense, without renouncing?We are in the second line of struggle, compañeras. And this is so bothbecause of our null capacity for self-convincing regarding our ownpossibilities, and because of the resistance offered by the other halfto taking responsibility for what has traditionally been our task. Whatwe know for reconciling, for them is delegating. And they don't care.They neither look back nor feel guilty about it. For us, there is abefore and after care work. And all the space we occupied, everything wethought we could do, everything becomes a mirage that we replay in ourminds as we put our lives on pause. Newton's third law says that: "Forevery action there is an equal and opposite reaction." This means thatwhenever an object performs an action such as moving, pushing orpressing another object, the latter reacts by returning the same force.And so the system reacts. For each worker struggle, for each achievementfought for, the resistance of the powerful, and for us, the creation ofdikes around our work beyond the door of the home. Our claims run inparallel, but without being fully assumed by any organization. "There issomeone even more oppressed than the worker, and she is the worker'swife," said Flora Tristán more than two centuries ago. Two hundredyears, the same demands.Our house is our castle. Our body, our border. And we don't even ownthat space. Legislative impositions are a slab on our ability to makedecisions about our own body. Aesthetic impositions amputate us, fleeceus, our space becomes an infinite Russian doll of inward limitations.Aesthetic impositions amputate us, our space becomes an infinite Russiandoll of inward limitations.There is a space of full freedom, and Virginia Woolf knew it well."There is no barrier, lock or bolt that you can impose on the freedom ofmy mind." It's just not true. And she demonstrated it by ending hervital slackness in the water of a river. Our mind is often our prison.Patriarchal ideological conditioning and the overwhelming reality shapeour thoughts to cradle us and curb the cognitive dissonance thatinaction produces in the face of a situation of oppression that we fullyidentify but which we do not know or can stop.The way out of this mouse maze that a woman's life becomes is calledother women. It is listening to another voice beyond the wall thatbreaks down barriers. It is the tribe of hands that weaves other lives.To create new spaces we must modify the relational paradigm between us.And that happens by destroying the system that imposes delegating careresponsibilities from one to another, and by fighting the preconceptionsregarding our own possibilities in a morally capable society thatdepletes our potential as people with full rights. It is unlearning loveso that it becomes a liberating tool and stops transforming our livesinto scale models of reality. Claim love as a builder of spaces beyondromantic dreams and, above all, promote love between us, withoutcensorship, as a fighting tool and foundation of places and notegalitarian and full places.Invade, conquer, that's our mantra. Being invaded and conquered, ourlearning. What for men is a natural habitat, for us is parasitism ofother people's spaces. There are no concessions for women, there is noright that we have not fought for, there is no rest, only in the gaze ofthe friend. And so until we discover that stepping on the paths, eventhose that are already traced, is creating, and that each step broadensthe horizon and the reality that our space, even the one we cannot see,can be scratched with the tips of our fingers. . We are half. Half ofeverything around you. We know our place.And we no longer ask for permission.https://www.cnt.es/noticias/mujer-reserva-natural-protegida/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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