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Feminists Around the World: Veronica Gago · Stuff Mom Never Told You

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  Speaker 1: Hey, this and Samantha and welcome to stuff I Never
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  Speaker 1: told you, a production of iHeart Radio.
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  Speaker 2: And welcome to today's activists around the world. And today
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  Speaker 2: we're talking about an icon and the feminist anti fascist
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  Speaker 2: movement and research. She's a professor, an advocate, writer, leader,
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  Speaker 2: and so much more. We are talking about Veronica Gago.
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  Speaker 2: And Gago is a published author and professor of social
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  Speaker 2: science focusing on feminism and overall governmental policies and economy.
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  Speaker 2: So she's a professor for the Faculty of Social Science
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  Speaker 2: at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University
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  Speaker 2: of San Martin. Yes, this is also going to be
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  Speaker 2: a test into my high school Spanish apologies and advance,
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  Speaker 2: but here we go. So in addition to her research
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  Speaker 2: and published works, which she has several, she also has
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  Speaker 2: been an active member and co founder of the ni
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  Speaker 2: Unamentos movement or not One More in English, which hosted
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  Speaker 2: strikes throughout Argentina to protest the sexist and inhumane treatment
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  Speaker 2: of women in the country and anti abortion laws. They
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  Speaker 2: were part of that green movement, and we've talked about
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  Speaker 2: we praised and we wish for our own. But all
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  Speaker 2: of that to say she was one of the big
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  Speaker 2: centers and focuses of that. She grew up in Argentina
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  Speaker 2: during a time that caused a lot of financial and
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  Speaker 2: economic crisis in the country, so it's not surprising to
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  Speaker 2: know that her family were active within political discourse and
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  Speaker 2: this kind of like pushed her into activism as well,
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  Speaker 2: and she has put it into practice the different types
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  Speaker 2: of activism that pushed Argentina to step forward in their
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  Speaker 2: feminist movement. She is a force, and I will say
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  Speaker 2: after I was reading it all about her, there's so
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  Speaker 2: much information, of course, because she is a professional writer
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  Speaker 2: a researcher, that we couldn't focus on everything. So we
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  Speaker 2: were giving tidbits here and there, include some of the
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  Speaker 2: books that she has written. She has had many lectures,
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  Speaker 2: she is on YouTube, she's on different podcasts. We probably
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  Speaker 2: should have her on. I feel like that about many
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  Speaker 2: of our activists, but just so you know, we're just
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  Speaker 2: kind of dwindling it down to our fifteen minutes or
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  Speaker 2: less episode in this one. So apologies if I miss
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  Speaker 2: something that you think is important, and if you do,
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  Speaker 2: let me know, because I know, again she's an icon
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  Speaker 2: in this community. So here's a bit more about her.
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  Speaker 2: Organization ni Una Menals from her article titled violence of
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  Speaker 2: Feminist struggles against victimization to set fear on fire quote
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  Speaker 2: the nie Una Menals not one woman less movement emerged
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  Speaker 2: in response to the multiple and specific forms of violence
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  Speaker 2: faced by women, lesbian's, transtravistis and non binary people by
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  Speaker 2: occupying the streets at a mass scale in Argentina and Abiyayella.
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  Speaker 2: More broadly, the question of violence has escaped from its
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  Speaker 2: enclosure under the concept of domestic violence and the mode
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  Speaker 2: of its domestication through the response attempted by institutions, NGOs
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  Speaker 2: and philanthropic and paternalistic forms of management. So she has
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  Speaker 2: really dug deep into the connections of the multifaceted ways
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  Speaker 2: of striking against violence or protesting against violence and violations
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  Speaker 2: against the marginalized communities. She talks about using these tactics
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  Speaker 2: as a way of radicalizing a movement, not allowing for
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  Speaker 2: a single prong strategy, but more of a large scale response.
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  Speaker 2: So I think something is really important that we should
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  Speaker 2: be learning more about because we don't do this well.
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  Speaker 2: We don't do this well in the US, I think.
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  Speaker 2: But in another article published for the Journal of Latin
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  Speaker 2: American Geography for the University of Texas Press. She writes,
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  Speaker 2: Argentina's massive, popular and radical feminist movement has revitalized political
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  Speaker 2: struggles in the country, building a transversal movement capable of
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  Speaker 2: challenging multiple forms of violence that have differential impacts on
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  Speaker 2: women and feminized bodies. It has done so by opening
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  Speaker 2: up new forms of knowing and inventing new political tactics,
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  Speaker 2: by weaving together different no hows and knowledges based on
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  Speaker 2: multiple sus of heterogeneous concrete bodies and experience. Writing from
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  Speaker 2: this feminist movement and situated within the experience of feminist strike,
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  Speaker 2: we know how the strike as the process calls into
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  Speaker 2: question hegemonic forms of knowing and assumptions about the subject
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  Speaker 2: of that knowing through embodied an embedded process of investigation
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  Speaker 2: and knowledge creation that produce new subjects, new concepts, and
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  Speaker 2: new internationalists and plorer national alliances. That's a lot, but
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  Speaker 2: she does talk about the fact that it opens up
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  Speaker 2: so many things. Essentially, it brings in new ways of protests,
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  Speaker 2: of counter protests, of tactics of political movements, and how
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  Speaker 2: it does revitalize and revolutionizes something that has been needed
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  Speaker 2: for so long. And something that's been used for so long,
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  Speaker 2: go back and read our book about the different movements
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  Speaker 2: and protests throughout the years. And she continues with a practical,
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  Speaker 2: detailed approach, saying the feminist strike as an ongoing, evolving
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  Speaker 2: practice involves assemblies and meetings, work stoppages and blockades, encounters
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  Speaker 2: between women and other forms of being together, and practices
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  Speaker 2: of care and of invention among women. As such, the
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  Speaker 2: strike involves diverse forms of collective and embodied knowledge production
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  Speaker 2: that challenge clear divisions between scholars and activists. Not knowledge
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  Speaker 2: in the abstract. This feminists know how based on situated
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  Speaker 2: knowledge practices in concrete territories and bodies, implies other ways
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  Speaker 2: of knowing, valuing the knowing bodies, sensibilities and intuitions. This
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  Speaker 2: knowing from the body challenges the colonial, capitalist, patriarchal unconscious
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  Speaker 2: by questioning pre established identities and reactionary fears and creating
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  Speaker 2: new forms of desire and subjectivities. Rivera Koshinkanki also speaks
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  Speaker 2: of the importance of the body of weaving together manual
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  Speaker 2: tasks with intellectual ones, thinking with the hands, heart and
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  Speaker 2: brain at the same time in everyday collective practices. As
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  Speaker 2: an important feature of these new waves of movements. And
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  Speaker 2: I know we've talked about this before with previous people
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  Speaker 2: who were starting movements protests, about how that is so important,
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  Speaker 2: about being able to do it intellectually and with passion. Oh,
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  Speaker 2: this is like to do know how? Yeah, she has
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  Speaker 2: three different books about y'all. Within these published articles, she
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  Speaker 2: talks about roles these actions play, political tactic, and research methodology,
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  Speaker 2: and how those processes have to be large picture, including
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  Speaker 2: the entirety of the groups affected, so we have to
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  Speaker 2: understand intersectionality. But with that she digs deep into areas
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  Speaker 2: where it's characterized as feminized economy, meaning that the area
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  Speaker 2: is made up and largely ran by women, migrants, and
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  Speaker 2: other marginalized communities, but they are not given equity or equality.
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  Speaker 2: So feminized economy, I feel like that needs to be
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  Speaker 2: a phrase that we hear more often, so this would
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  Speaker 2: continue in her later works with the question of the
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  Speaker 2: backlash against women. From a Georgetown University's look into Gogo's book,
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  Speaker 2: Britique Ascan writes this of Gogo's book, Feminist International, a
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  Speaker 2: work of political analysis and self reflection, it was written
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  Speaker 2: from within the massive feminist mobilizations that swept Latin America
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  Speaker 2: from twenty seventeen onwards. Gago presents the seemingly inexorable rise
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  Speaker 2: of gender violence across the continent as a conservative backlash
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  Speaker 2: led by disenfranchised men against the appearance of women in
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  Speaker 2: the workplace, specifically in the informal sector, as in the
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  Speaker 2: Mechilidores and Quidad Warrez and other towns along the US
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  Speaker 2: Mexico border. And on the broader scope, Gago addresses the
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  Speaker 2: already existence of a large network of feminist movements. She writes,
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  Speaker 2: it is an internationalism that requires alliance in every possible place,
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  Speaker 2: with strawberry picking day laborers, Morocco women working during harvest
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  Speaker 2: times in Andalusia and the peasant unions and activist collectives
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  Speaker 2: of the towns and cities, Between women laid off from
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  Speaker 2: textile factories and students fighting against education cuts, Between indigenous
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  Speaker 2: women in rebellion and community organizers in each neighborhood of
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  Speaker 2: the urban peripheries. So again, this kind of is that
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  Speaker 2: larger question of the pushback versus the entire entity of
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  Speaker 2: those marginalized and those who were oppressed, And how big
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  Speaker 2: of a part that does play in movements like these,
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  Speaker 2: and with that talking about one of the biggest forces
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  Speaker 2: of oppression on women around the world, debt and finances,
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  Speaker 2: which we talked about before, which she expands upon in
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  Speaker 2: her latest book, A Feminist Reading of Debt, which she
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  Speaker 2: co wrote with Lucy Cavillerro. A bit more from Asakan's article,
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  Speaker 2: they write she focuses on how the patriarchal financial APPARATUSUS
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  Speaker 2: renew the colonial pact in the present, combining it with
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  Speaker 2: forms of domination and exploitation. In her argument, the patriarchal
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  Speaker 2: financial apparatus are revealed to be fundamental for understanding the
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  Speaker 2: counterinsurgent dimension of war against women and feminized bodies. This
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  Speaker 2: requires that feminism be international too. Yeah, yeah, Like I know,
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  Speaker 2: there are so many conversations where we talked about how
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  Speaker 2: feminism is so weaponized and so looked down upon. But
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  Speaker 2: this type of conversation is why that word is so important,
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  Speaker 2: so important. Obviously, when you have a feminist giant like Gotcks,
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  Speaker 2: we're only skimming the vast amount of knowledge and research
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  Speaker 2: that Gogoes has laid out. But one thing that did
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  Speaker 2: catch my eye was her response to the US's Roe
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  Speaker 2: v Wade overturning, and she was quick to speak up
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  Speaker 2: about the importance of mobilization. So she actually wrote this
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  Speaker 2: for The Guardian, and it's titled What Latin American feminists
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  Speaker 2: can teach American Women about the Abortion Fight. She writes,
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  Speaker 2: an important element for understanding the massiveness of these mobilizations
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  Speaker 2: was precisely the way in which the struggle for abortion
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  Speaker 2: was woven together with other feminist struggles. This allowed for
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  Speaker 2: cognitively and politically connecting the different forms of violence against
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  Speaker 2: women and feminized bodies as systemic violence. The violence of
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  Speaker 2: often deadly and costly, clandestine abortion was thus connected to
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  Speaker 2: domestic violence, sexual harassment, and the gender pay gap in
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  Speaker 2: the workplace, and to the murders of female environment and
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  Speaker 2: indigenous activists in the rural areas. In turn, this enabled
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  Speaker 2: constructing the demand of abortion in terms that go beyond
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  Speaker 2: merely individual right, challenging the conception of the body as
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  Speaker 2: private property. The green Tide flooded spaces everywhere, including schools, slums,
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  Speaker 2: union squares, and soup kitchens. Through this transversality, the body
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  Speaker 2: that had been put up for debate took on a
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  Speaker 2: collective and class dimension. This occurred because discussion about the
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  Speaker 2: clandestine condition of abortion directly referred to the costs that
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  Speaker 2: make it differentially risky according to one's social and economic position.
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  Speaker 2: Those who were most harmed by the criminalization of abortion
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  Speaker 2: were the women and people with the capacity to just
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  Speaker 2: state with the fewest economic resources, those who could not
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  Speaker 2: pay for safe abortions. Therefore, the right to abortion was
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  Speaker 2: considered inseparable from the demand that it be guaranteed in
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  Speaker 2: the public healthcare system. In turn, the demand for a
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  Speaker 2: comprehensive sexual education in the public education that's curriculum allow
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  Speaker 2: for deepening debates about sexualities, corporalities, relationships, and effects, displacing
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  Speaker 2: the question in a radical way. So there was a lot.
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  Speaker 2: It was very obviously, very thorough, But I feel like
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  Speaker 2: there's so much in this conversation we don't we haven't
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  Speaker 2: talked enough about what it looks like to come together today.
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  Speaker 2: I don't get me wrong. There's a lot of protests,
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  Speaker 2: and we know there's a lot of protests happening in
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  Speaker 2: LA and all over the country today that we're not
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  Speaker 2: seeing news about because of course they want to hide that.
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  Speaker 2: And we love that and we want to talk more
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  Speaker 2: about it. But this is the understanding of what it
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  Speaker 2: looks like, what it's a mass movement with the understanding
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  Speaker 2: that this is intersectional. It has to be intersectional for
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  Speaker 2: it to be mobilized and to actually open up into
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  Speaker 2: an entire national movement, it has to be intersectional. So
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  Speaker 2: I found her works to be really fascinating, and I
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  Speaker 2: think we have to dig more into her words for sure.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, absolutely, and listeners. If you have any thoughts
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  Speaker 1: on any of this or what works we should delve
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  Speaker 1: into next of what she has done, please let us know.
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  Speaker 1: You can email us at Hello at Stuffwenevertold You dot com.
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