THE FIGHT TO STUDY GENDER
Emma
Holten[1]
Feminista Danesa-Sueca, activista online de los
derechos humanos, editor de la revista danesa Friktion. Maestra en Ciencias
Literarias por la Universidad de Copenhagen.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32870/lv.v0i0.8070
The
fight to study gender and its impacts is never won for good. Many of us learned
that the hard way when Victor Orbán, in Hungary, decided to shut the
educational institutions dedicated to the pursuit of the truth about how gender
shapes our lives. But the attack on gender studies that Orbán and later Donald
Trump has represented also shows us that we are right when we say: studying
gender and putting our knowledge to use is always a threat to those who
unjustly seek power and oppress their people.
This is because studying, discussing, and fighting (!) over the issues
of gender, sexuality, bodies and power always challenges oppression at its
roots. Feminists are not afraid of asking difficult questions that can be
painful to face head on. Not only for those who oppress us, but also rightly,
for ourselves. We often find that we are in situations where we must take a
long, hard look at our own privileges, choices and ways of life.
Looking back on the last 100 years all over the world, it is impossible
not the be stunned by the successes of the feminist movement. Over just few
generations, not a single life has not been touched by the fight to live free
of oppression on the basis of gender.
But as the case with Orbán and Trump shows, we cannot rest on our laurels.
As we celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the Gender Studies Center and the
Gender Studies Journal “La Ventana” of the University of Guadalajara, we are
also facing a significant backlash. Everywhere there is feminist success, there
is pushback. Neoconservative influencers and anti-feminist leaders are gaining
on most continents. I think many feminists are scared that we might lose much
of what we have gained.
This fear cannot paralyse us or turn us into cynics. It was always thus,
the fight for rights and equal access to power. It was never a straight line
going up, up, up. We tug and we pull, push and squabble. And this is where the
need for knowledge comes in.
Journals like “La Ventana” are crucial to the feminist fight because
they create a shared language and an access to knowledge about the structural
causes of the injustices of our lives. From sexual abuse to low salaries,
women’s suffering has always been assigned to individual factors: What were you
wearing? If you deserved higher pay you would have gotten it!
Journals make sense of these experiences and show that they are all
connected, that there are words we can use to describe what is happening. And
for a long time, that was what women didn’t have: words.
And we are going to need words to fight back and envision new realities.
Whatever the next 30 years will bring.