The situation in Spain

Hello Badgers, Cassius here again.

I’ve told you a few things before about my experiences with feminism and men’s rights in Spain, but now I would like to paint a broader picture for you, in case you are not familiar with the situation: Feminism is mainstream, it is a must for every political party and to disagree with a feminist is exposing yourself to lots of “machista” insults (“machista” being some kind of “misogynist”: male superiority, basically) and social isolation.

Domestic violence is a term that is almost never used, the preferred one being “gender violence” or even “machista violence”. The movement is very strong here, and as I said, unanimously defended by all major political parties. Most women that I know consider themselves to be feminists, but they also insist that feminism is “gender equality”, I think they never really reflected on what the data says, they just go along with the current.

We even had a Ministry of Equality (now it’s part of Public Health and Social Services) that basically made feminist propaganda and fought “sexism in language”.

The law against domestic violence has solved nothing and has created dozens of false reports of rape and violence (according to a documentary that was never aired in Spain, 400 false reports a day, most of which are never prosecuted and therefore don’t count as “false reports”, officially.

Male suicide triples female suicide, and the marital status has disappeared from suicide reports, because so many of them were listed as “in process of divorce”. Associations of divorced parents try to do what they can to raise
awareness about the “express courts” that judge and sentence men accused of
domestic violence.

Boys are falling behind at school and nobody gives a damn.

We’ve been bombarded with propaganda for breast cancer lately: campaigns, Facebook profile pictures, official races, pink water bottles and egg cartons. November is just a silent month. Nobody gives a damn about prostate or testicular cancer either.

But yes, feminism fighst for equality, and they are oppressed, not a powerful lobby. You also know what happened when the police (or to be more precise, the “Guardia Civil”) tried to publish an inclusive poster on Twitter, showing both a man and a woman as possible perpetrators of domestic violence: they received so much criticism that they had to remove it. No concern for male victims: Movember and the International Men’s Day receive no coverage whatsoever, while a major demonstration against “Machista violence” takes place in Madrid, and any journalist or politician who makes minor criticisms about it gets the “misogynist” treatment. They even invented now the term “neo-machista”, which basically means anyone who tries to oppose their views with arguments. That would include MRAs. As you see, it’s still a powerful “tag” that nobody wants to wear.

They insist on equating “women” with “feminists”, and “anti-feminist” with “misogynist”. Victim blaming, mansplainning, manspreading… we’ve got everything here. They did their homework, we even have our local version of #KillAllMen: “Al varón, castración” (Castration for males) and “Machete al Machote” (Machete for machos).

Fortunately, not everything is lost. Some journalists (men AND women), some writers and some political figures are starting to move and defy feminism and their extreme views; A Voice for Men is getting translated into Spanish, and we have help from Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, as well; in many feminist journal articles, I see more and more comments from men and women destroying their arguments and exposing them as what they are: radicals and fanatics.

But it’s still very Orwellian: I have to carefully choose with whom I talk about these things, of course. For now, only my mother, my father and my sister (my sister is an ardent advocate now, and heaven knows that she can have much more influence than I can), and a male friend of mine. You have to be careful, as this is a quick way of losing friends and work opportunities; I have to bite my tongue every day, I can’t share, I can’t discuss, I can’t raise awareness. For now.

YOU are making it possible I think that until something changes in America, Canada and other countries, nothing will really change here. So carry on, you are doing great work 🙂 I loved your video on Male suicide an mental health, it was just beautiful and insightful: I’m considering translating its main points for my father, who is starting to fall into depression, I’m afraid, and would benefit from it.

Lastly, I wanted to share with you the text of a picture that a female friend
published today: “Love advice: Choke your prince until he becomes blue”.
Nice, isn’t it?

Cheers, Cassius

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