Learning To Ask For Help

Dear Insane Minds:

A couple of weeks ago I published “5 feminist proposals to the flames on social networks” and now, two weeks later, I realize that I left some things that I have learned as I go along.

One of them was taught to me by my friend Laia in a pim pam conversation. I was complaining about not receiving public support in full flame and she answered me: aunt, tell us what you need.

Boom.

So clear, so obvious, so feminist. Ask for help, ask for support, say clearly what you need, do not assume that others read your mind or that your needs are obvious, because they are not.

What do we need, that thing that is so difficult for us to say to women because of the construction of gender that teaches us that what is ours is never so serious or such a priority. And that is something that, in addition, intersects with being an activist, because activists seem to be afraid of becoming victims, because there are always things more important than our own misery.

And in the end we get out of hand and we forget ourselves.

This is not said by me, it is said by my therapist whom I call La Más Grande, with the permission of Rocío Jurado, who was also one. The greatest, I mean, not a therapist.

Thus, when we are receiving a flame it seems to us that everyone has found out and that everyone knows what we need. Well no. You have to ask clearly: I need you to do this. And each one who decides whether to do it or not.

The other thing I’ve learned these days is that we can abandon social media. I know, I know, that it is fatal to vacate the places of speech, that we cannot withdraw from the spaces of speech, in the end violence always wins, that plim and that plam. Already.

But we still have to think about ourselves collectively and not individually, it is not you or I who are essential in social networks, but a collective voice that must be collectivized, that must be transferred and that must be taken over, at the same time. weather.

Because a single little body cannot withstand so much violence by itself, but the collective body can.

This reminds me of the subject of pedagogy. From the critical movements we claim the right not to do pedagogy, we are not obliged to do it, but everyone should feel challenged to be trained in critical issues.

Agree.

But that’s on a personal level: neither you nor I are obliged to spend the day explaining things to people who could inform themselves and stop giving us the tabarra by questioning such obvious things as that racism exists, machismo exists, Classism exists, lesbophobia exists …

But I’m not so sure that we can stop doing pedagogy collectively. I think about our dead and what they would think if we told them that we have decided not to do pedagogy. The collective body has to assume those spaces, and the collective body has to be built between all of them in order to fill those spaces.

Happy week, Minds!