Woman 2 Woman, part of #MeToo

This is not about Lesbian love, in case someone gets the wrong idea.

This is still an attempt to articulate feelings, ideas and impressions at the same time –something I’ve never been good at- about all this men-abuse-of-women conversation and where we draw a line.

Gauguin – Two Tahitian Women

There is probably no line. There might be multiple lines spread around depending on where you grew up and what community raised you, no matter you’re male or female.

I met with female friends today and one of us was adamant that No means No, and then I retorted Well not really, in Cuba many times No means Yes, because No is utterly ignoring a guy’s existence, let alone encouraging any advance. Our discussion was endless, even though we agree on the core: nothing justifies abuse. But we saw differently what the role and responsibility of women are in all this flawed way of men and women interacting with each other.

We two did have different perspectives. And the third woman on the table had yet another point of view, with a third layer of nuances and values and “should” and “must”.

And after that lunch another angle to this conversation seemed even clearer to me, that I maybe owe a Mea Culpa to a couple of you girls out there.

I too believe that nothing justifies hurting women. NOTHING. PERIOD.

And there are gals out there pushing it really hard. I remember once passing by a couple, she was repeating “hit me, come on be a man and hit me. If you would be a real man you would hit me, if you were really brave you would hit me.” The guy was breathing deeply looking up to the sky and just taking it, walking heavily, with his hands inside his jacket’s pockets, looking like he was dragging a heavy burden. I don’t know what was going on with those two, what could have caused her to act that way. But I remember having thought that I wanted to make her stop, and I wasn’t him, so poor thing. He was so in the right side of that argument.

And I know sometimes in a conversation I might have criticized a woman because she was too flirty, and Girl If You Act Like That You Are Going To Confuse That Guy, And Then Don’t Be Surprised if He Makes a Move, Maybe a Rough Move.

But again, no justification for hurting women. NONE. PERIOD.

Years ago, still in boarding school, the rumor spread that a male classmate had attempted to rape a female student. We were summoned for a big meeting, to hear two spokespersons tell us about a potential rapist among us. These spokespersons did not identify the victim, nor the perpetrator. What we did hear is that actually, it had happened more than once, and to more than one woman. But we didn’t know who were the victims or culprits among us, and they claimed not wanting to say because they didn’t want to spoil anybody’s career, and because they just wanted to send a message: anything else would not be tolerated any longer.

The entire community came out of that meeting with a bad taste in our mouths. Distrust and suspicion taste really bad, and for weeks the tension in the place was so thick, so palpable, that it could be cut with scissors. I got angry. Angry at those two girls that acted as spokespersons for just putting so much weight on all of us, for spoiling it for all of us.

Days later I was having lunch with another female student. We were working on a project but we weren’t close friends. The topic came up, I said that if it had been really serious they would have acted more forcefully, that this looked like a melodrama to me, that many women around us really liked to get drunk to the point of blacking out and yes, sometimes alcohol makes you do things that in the morning you’ll regret, or be flirty and invite someone upstairs which sober you would not, but that was no reason to cry Rape, that was if anything an indication of bad judgment and that alcohol isn’t really good for you. And I added, You Know How an Undesired Guy Doesn’t Get in Your Bedroom? If you lock the door when you are in.

That girl listened to me, and argued very little, very weakly, that even with an open door no guy had the right to get into anybody’s room without being invited, being allowed. And I said that that was in the ideas world, wishful thinking world, but that down here if you don’t take care of yourself, nobody will. And I was sounding so self assured, so righteous…

That girl had to leave school shortly after. A family problem came up and she had to go back home for good. Time passed. Come a day that I hear from one of her best friends that she had been one of the girls that had suffered the visit of an uninvited guy. And I wanted for the Earth to open up to swallow me.

So to every female I know, friends or acquaintances and those that have yet to meet, I can be wrong even when I make it sound right. Even if you hear me yelling that you have to close your door to be safer, I do too believe you should sleep in peace with your door open. I am not going to hesitate to help you.

Nothing justifies hurting women. NOTHING. PERIOD.

The man, The woman, The #MeToo

If there’s a time, or rather topic, that I don’t really know how to start writing about, this might be on top of the list.

I didn’t even know what title to use, because “sexual harassment”, “sexual abuse”, “sexual misbehavior”, “sexual  violence” were all terms that crossed my mind, but at the same time none of those words really fit into what I want to say, and all terms fit too.

Then I’ve ended up with a title that reminds me of a novel of a Cuban author that I have not read, by the way, called El Hombre, La Hembra y El Hambre. In Spanish, the sound and flow of that title is really awesome, so I thought, what the heck…

I live in NYC. I would need to be in a coma to not be aware that all around me the issue of problematic sexual interactions –and I appreciate the freaking irony of having to use such a cranky terminology because I don’t really know how to land this in a simple concept- is omnipresent. From whispered corporate stories of lawsuits to Donald Trump’s grab-them-by-the-pussy, this is something very hard to escape and it’s marking relationships with friends, family, coworkers.

And even to these days, I struggle with the narrative, the framing, the interpretation of all, because on the one hand I have beloved men in my family and I would be terrified if something was said about them. And false accusations from confused victims have happened before, and will happen again, because this will never be an easy straightforward issue to deal with.

I will, for example, cringe when I hear the word “rape”, or “violation”, used to loosely. I don’t believe every action has the same weight. A regretted night, a bad night, cannot be the same as what happened to a girl in my hometown when she was 15… She was coming from a party at 11pm, to comply with her parents’ curfew, when she was followed by three men. The men grabbed her, threaten her with knives, made her walk like a prisoner for blocks and when they found a dark alley they raped her, mercilessly. That girl was left for dead. She had been beaten and bitten; they bit her nipples and spat the skin. The tale of that girl haunted me for all the time I was a teenager. I guess her image is what I picture in my mind when people use that word, because it was the first time I remember to have heard of rape.

I also argued with female friends, mostly European women, when I saw them flirting too hard with no real intention of sex or romance, just for the fun of it and the desire to be looked at, or admired. A hundred times I begged them not to behave that way when dealing with Latino men, especially Cuban, because I knew the codes of relating to each other, men and women, were different, and I could see problems forming like clouds in the horizon. And once it happened. It was in a New Year Eve holiday when I’m part of a group meeting on some spot in the Alps and a male friend from Cuba meets a female friend from Germany, and I see the collision from a mile away. She flirted with him, even though she had a boyfriend that had not been able to join her. I told her many times to cut it because it would lead to a misunderstanding. But she was as beautiful as attention demanding, and one thing leads to another and once he was drunk, and she was drunk… and they’re in a forest walking a relatively steep hill, he makes a move, she rejects, he insists, she pushes him away… the end of the story is that they fell by accident and she twisted a wrist and he scratched himself, and was ashamed for the rest of the time there.

And I have to say, that time, I sided with him. I still do.

But the other day I checked Facebook and I see the raw emotion of a friend, telling a story, her story, of one more abuse. She is walking her way back home, 9am, minding her own business, when a guy coming out of nowhere grabs her, hugs her, touches her, and then walks away. And she tells how she felt crippled, abused, victimized, attacked, and all the common alarms start sounding –”was I dressed provocatively? Should I have taken a taxi home? Did I stare without noticing? What did I DO WRONG? WHY DID THIS HAPPEN TO ME?

And she knows the answer. She did nothing wrong. Nothing can justify what happened to her. And the most paranoid woman in the world will not think is dangerous to walk at 9am for a couple of blocks in her neighborhood… on your way home… at 9am… As she said, she has the right to fucking walk the streets. But she also said, that guy did what he did because he could, he was able to. He was stronger, therefore more powerful. And it was sheer power what he abused.

I felt once like my friend. Years ago I was walking at 6pm coming back from the university. I’m two blocks away from home when a young guy, a young teenager maybe, is walking towards me and when he passes by my side he hits me. With his hand full open, and with the force that comes from the speed of his walking and the opposing force of the speed of my walking in the other direction, he slaps my chest, right in the middle, between the breasts.

I stopped, gasping, breathless from the pain, the surprise, the anger, the frustration, the impotence… It all comes back to power. Always. I looked back; he is just turning the corner to disappear from my sight.

I didn’t know that boy. I had never seen him before, I don’t think I ever found him again.

But I have the memory of him, forever.

And later through the years, abuse or humiliation don’t need to be as aggressive. There was a drunkard Korean lawyer in a party suddenly grabbing my hips like I guess he does with his escorts back in Korea. I don’t think such moron can hold on to a proper girlfriend. His female colleague virtually had to pull him away from me while I could not believe what was happening. I started laughing in a sort of nervous breakdown, afraid of creating a scene and losing my job.

Or the other time when I tech guy I’ve known from work for more than a year, married, with kids, pater familia, gets totally drunk and grabs my arm wanting to pull me towards him “inviting” me to go out with him. And it is again a woman coworker of him that have to intervene and mediate, because that time I didn’t get nervous as much as angry and I was very determined to report him and create a huge scene.

But these or probably others that I don’t remember are only the cusp of the problem. Abuse of power against women takes much more nuanced forms. It was the time that I wanted to end with a boyfriend and he closed the door in front of me with way too much intensity, begging me to reconsider. But we were alone, and he was so strong. I said Yes I will, We will talk more But I have to go to class… I never allowed myself to be alone next to him again.

Or even in more indirect ways, anodyne ways, like in the form of salaries and promotions. A successful female friend originally from the Indian Subcontinent told me once, White Men go first in salaries, then White Women, then minority men, then minority women.

I am a woman, I am the daughter of a woman and I am friends with women, and I strongly believe that it is rare the woman who doesn’t have a horror story hidden at least in a very dark corner of her memory. If she’s lucky enough, because there are others with fresh, recent wounds caused by abuse.

A male friend, the other day, in a middle of a discussion about Kavanaugh, said that no matter the result it would be awful. Because the accuser was clearly truthful but how could we make our minds without evidence. How could a man react in front of an accusation that he knew was false, but had no way to prove otherwise. I didn’t say anything then. But later I thought… the best way of not getting accused of abuse by a woman, is not to abuse a woman.

La novela perdida

Ayer tropezé de nuevo con la literatura cubana. Llegué a las 6:25pm a una presentación que debía haber empezado a las 6:30pm, y por supuesto arrancó a las 7:00pm. El Libro es Memorias del Equilibrio y el autor José Fernández Pequeño.

Fui a la lectura porque me llegó vía una invitación de Facebook, donde se describía el libro como de relatos existenciales. Y yo quiero, siempre he querido pero ahora más, encontrar el libro existencial cubano. La promesa no se cumplió.

Pero lo que hizo  la experiencia extemporánea es que no sucedió en La Habana, en alguna sala de la UNEAC o el Pabellón Cuba o La UH. Pasó en New York, en una sala de NYU y entre quienes supongo serían también cubanos emigrantes. Salvo una amiga neoyorkina que me acompañó porque le supliqué que fuera conmigo para que me sirviera como ancla a la normalidad. Mi normalidad.

Memorias del Equilibrio resultó no ser lo que estaba buscando, pero fue de todos modos un descubrimiento interesante, por lo distinto. Un tono que para mí es costumbrista, como el mismo autor dijo, “del habla no del lenguaje”, presentado por un narrador que en primera persona o a la sombra de esta creaba juegos espaciales. Costumbrismo entregado en una estructura de nuevo milenio, aunque ya ese tono lo iban teniendo en Cuba desde mucho antes de 1999.

He tratado de entender durante el día qué es lo que me irrita en libros como Memorias del Equilibrio. Va más allá de que en sí mismos sumen a la imagen de lo cubano como lo burdo, lo tosco, donde yo no quiero encajar. Como si lo cubano no fuera también Eliseo Diego y Dulce María. Porque por más que me rebele contra la imagen ultra publicitada de los bicitaxis, los cerdos en la azotea, la vieja chismosa del CDR, inevitablemente eso también es Cuba.

Va más allá del sexismo que se cuela en el uso de la mujer como personajes y su forma de hablar. No logro imaginar a ninguna de las mujeres cubanas que conozco diciéndole a un amante que “le gusta por lo puerco que es”. Pero quizás sí existe. Sólo que yo no la quiero conocer. No por purdor o puritanismo, porque leer sobre un glande turgente no es nada luego de haber leído a Zoé Valdés, o Jesús David Curbelo, o Henry Miller, ya el resto no sorprende.

Va más allá de la reafirmación del arquetipo sexista: “el habla popular cubana es masculina porque es dura, directa, sarcástica”. Como si las mujeres fueran incapaces de ser duras y crueles, directas y sarcásticas.

René Peña

Creo que lo que más me molestó, no del libro que no he leído, y no leeré, sino de la experiencia en sí es la promesa rota. El no encontrar el libro existencial cubano que me defina desde adentro, al margen, o más allá, o por encima, de los momentos políticos, un acento o un habla, el edificio icónico, el referente espacial. Todo lo que nos habla sólo a nosotros y nos separa de los demás, de quienquiera que no es cubano de Cuba. Porque tenemos códigos tan cerrados, tan de Isla, que no dejan entrar ni a cubanos de Miami, ni a cubanos de New Jersey, ni a Cubanos de Madrid. Qué le queda entonces esperar al cubano de Finlandia o de Australia…

Otro escritor me dijo hoy que Cuba carece de la gravedad, o la visión en la distancia, o el largo aliento para producir ese tipo de literatura, porque el trópico nos drena, por eso Cuba da buenos cuentistas y poetas.

Pero no me acaba de cerrar la hipótesis. Hace aguas cuando recuerdo la novela del colombiano que no recuerdo su nombre pero sí el título, Érase una vez el amor pero tuve que matarlo. Y colombiano no cachaco, sino costeño, tan atrapado por el calor como nosotros. O La Muerte de Artemio Cruz, o Aura, de Fuentes. No creo que Fuentes se estuviera congelando en México.

Cirenaica Moreira

Mi teoría para explicarme por qué no tenemos la novela épica existencial es porque en Cuba no se tolera el dolor. Admitir el dolor. El dolor es de débiles, de flojos. Lo que hay detrás de la explicación del choteo que da Mañach es una alergia generacional al dolor. Por eso los cubanos podemos ser grandes cínicos, geniales manejando el doble sentido, jugando vivo, machacando en baja… Pero tan pronto alguien se pone serio y expone el dolor, todos nos anticipamos la risa, porque necesitamos desesperadamente que la tragedia se vuelva tragicomedia. En un libro de cuentos cubano un hombre decía a la mujer que amaba que “en Cuba no se podía decir te quiero”… Me gustaría saber si los cubanos podríamos tomar en serio un ciclo de psicoterapia freudiana.

Y para lograr escribir las grandes novelas al dolor hay que atraesarlo como a una tormenta, un ejercicio de apnea submarina. Hay que hundirse y respirarlo, de frente, sin escudarse en esquinas de humor negro o sardonismos.

Me pregunto si algo tiene que ver la oda nacional al choteo con tener un país con los más altos índices de suicidio, a niveles de los países nórdicos, a pesar de todo ese sol. En Cuba los hombres se ahorcan y las mujeres se dan candela, dice el refrán. Porque rumiamos el dolor sin enseñarlo a nadie, sin reconocer que está, y esperamos que se vaya por sí mismo, porque Dios nos libre de mostrar tamaña vulnerabilidad.

Y así nuestras grandes obras son sardónicas, juguetonas si bien oscuras, como Novás Calvo, Virgilio, Onelio Jorge Cardoso, Jesús Díaz, Reinaldo Arenas… Donde el dolor va por debajo, el dolor por el padre que abandona, por la madre que rechaza, por el amante que engaña, por la decepción hacia el ideal. El dolor se arrastra a hurtadillas, sobreentendido por quién lee pero jamás admitido por quien narra.

Claro que habrán excepciones. Pero Dulce María, Eliseo Diego, o Cirilo Villaverde tienen quizá mucho en sí de la madre España.

La excepción más gigantesca es quizás en cine, Fernando Pérez. Pero incluso en él, el dolor está marcado por la muerte.

Como si la muerte fuese la única disculpa para sentir dolor, para traslucir el dolor.

Quizás es eso lo que más me irrita de momentos como el de ayer. Que por más que busco no encuentro el autor cubano que escriba para explicarme mi lugar en el mundo, y que destile la esencia de quiénes somos, desnudos de espacio y de madre patria. el autor que escriba La Montaña Mágica cubana.

Thank God for my Barbieless childhood

I’ve heard there’s a new barbie in the market now. A Barbie that it’s supposed to be realistic, it’s smaller than classic Barbie, more curvy and… more anatomically possible. I’m not so sure about that. I haven’t read if manufacturers added anything that may remotely resemble a vagina… But that’s a discussion for another day. The thing is girls can add bruises and scars and cellulite when they play with the doll, so this one should make them feel better about themselves as females, as future women…

I grew up in Cuba, in the 80s. No Barbies in my toy kingdom back then. It was the Golden Age of the Soviet era. Everything was made in USSR.

Vintage set, exactly like mine.

I had a set of Matryoshkas, I had a baby boy doll with stuffed body. Or at least I thought it was a baby boy, even though it was dressed in pink… what a lovely thing to think for a girl back then. I had a lot of stuffed animals that I like to vaccinate pretending I was a nurse and they needed to receive medication via a syringe. About that baby boy doll, I remember I really liked that toy.

Of course, as a girl, there’s always this doll that you care a lot for. You don’t love it as much as you admire it. You don’t play that much with it, instead you put it in a visible place to be admired, queen among all the others, because you think it’s beautiful and you feel you would like to be like “her”.

For me, it was a tall doll, brown eyes with long eyelashes, black hair slightly curled, with a skin several tones darker than mine, like an Indian skin, or mixed race skin. Her body was solid, curvy, and with its round face you wouldn’t think it as thin. It wore a pink, loose dress and it had definitely an adult expression, a somehow distant maturity and mystery in her eyes. It didn’t look like a girl doll, but a woman doll.

Barbies actually came later to my life. My aunt came back from Angola with two of those, when the war ended or at least Cuban troops were dismissed. One was dressed in white, like a bride. The other was dressed in black, like an elegant femme fatale or a millionaire orphan. Both were skinny, so tall with impossibly long legs. They used heels, but they couldn’t stand, they needed some sort of plastic device to help them stand. I didn’t play with those either. I sat them in front of the queen, on the other extreme of the shelf.

As a woman, I left behind those dolls a long time ago. Not just because I’m a migrant and dolls don’t fit in my luggage, but they were out of sight even before, when my mom moved to Havana and I refurnished my bedroom as university student.

Now I wonder if I don’t have a lot to thank to that queen doll. Even if I envied her, even if I wished I looked more like her, with those big mysterious eyes and darker skin and less like myself. As every girl/woman, I would want to be different. Back then more than now. But also now.

Yet not to the point of having plastic surgery, or spending hours and tons of money on makeup, or rejecting who I am and how I’m made. I’m fine with the way I am, even when I’m not at my best. Maybe it’s true and I have that doll to thank for, because at least she had a body that resemble mine, because she resembled a human female, not an impossible fantasy of some feverish, sick mind.

The issue with satyric news

On The Onion: Little-Known Facts About The Founding Fathers

It is no news. Fake and satyric news have been there for a while. And we [journalists] love it. From The Daily Show with John Stewart  to The Onion and The Daily Currant, we follow their accounts via Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, or whatever social media is fashionable at the moment and we may be using.

The reason we love it, it’s the witty. Humor -smart humor at least- takes creativity, intelligence as well as to be informed. I’m not referring to the fake alerts that invade Internet with every new storm or flood, warning about sharks exploring parts of Manhattan with very bad Photoshop. I mean the good job, the one that takes time and it’s believable because something inside your brain agrees that no matter how crazy that sound, it eventually could happen.

On The Onion: Bold New Pope Shows Crowd In Saint Peter’s Square How To Apply Condom

Sometimes the lines are so blurred, and the comedy is so clever and the writing has been taken so far, that we buy the content, we believe the joke to be true for a moment, until someone calls it for what it is: they’re making fun of whoever is the target of the occasion. So we need someone who call us back to reality: “check it again, it’s in The Onion, the Pope wasn’t teaching how to use a condom in public”.

There are other styles in satira. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is a very good example. We appreciate so much the exquisite work of John Oliver’s team because they take the time to gather all facts and statements to mock a politician, a celebrity, a public official, or the general stance of a government towards a newsworthy situation. This time is about strong analysis, debunking misguided notions and bringing facts to the table again.

But sometimes the joke isn’t so clear and the issue is upsetting enough. I really resent this attempt by the “National Report” to throw accusations of doping over the Dutch Football Team in the World Cup. There’s nothing hilarious about it.

There’s nothing on the outlet’s presentation that leads to believe it is about Satira. Moreover, the tone and style of the writing do not suggest any satyric intention. By all means.

I know it’s up the reader to be aware and suspect the probable irrationality of it all. But sometimes emotions are too heavy and that’s a good moment to step back or be very clear about the intention.

I felt really dubious about The Netherlands’ performance against Costa Rica, mostly because I was rooting for CR, but also because I bought the fake report of a doping scandal. The fact that FIFA is so corrupt and so dirty and so unfair and disgusting, didn’t help to raise my flags.

Anyway, this is a note to self, and a suggestion to online readers. Wait a bit before making up your mind. You may be stumbling upon some fake, badly written, satirical attempt of news.