Deputy Javier Olivares (PDG) never misses an opportunity to offend. He goes looking for them. He did it before by wearing a Pinochet-style cape. This time it was by attacking former president Bachelet and former mayor Matthei. After "there is no second without a first," the phrase that set the idea of a third presidential candidacy circulating, the deputy sent her back to the kitchen. To the Chilean woman who has gone the furthest in the public sphere in our country, he sent her to the domestic space. "I hope Mrs. Bachelet goes home and enjoys her grandchildren, that she is with them and as far away as possible from the political debate." And then he went further: "I wish her good luck, she could follow the same steps as Mrs. Matthei, cooking and making some good cazuelas to teach people," he added.
You will tell me: why respond to someone who only does this to provoke, to call attention to himself, to get some retweets and likes? That is a valid point. Talking about him, describing his phrases in this column, gives more repercussion to something that perhaps would be better omitted or downplayed. Not giving him the attention he so longs for and desperately seeks. However, if every sexist outrage that emerges is left unanswered, it is possible that the backlash underway, this wave of attempted rollback in gender equality, will advance. And that by keeping silent there is a risk that the bar will gradually keep moving, until, like the frog in boiling water, the alarms go off when it is too late. (In fact, the phrases of Senator Carter against Matthei followed afterward —"I hope that when I reach her age I don't end up like that"— and of Kaiser against Bachelet, whom he considers old and "deteriorated.")
The phrase of Deputy Olivares is offensive toward both, but not only toward them. It constitutes an example of hostility and discrimination toward women, especially those who inhabit the world of power. Instead of discussing what both think, do, propose —today and before—, he shifts the debate toward dismissing their figures, toward trivializing them. Both are key figures of their respective sectors. Bachelet, twice President; Matthei —those who today, from his sector, troll her forget— was the best-evaluated figure of the right for years. Olivares dismisses them and sends them back to the kitchen to make cazuelas. He makes his own what the "manosphere" postulates: that women have reached too many positions of power, and that they must be returned to the place from which they should never have left: the private sphere.
It is difficult to find a phrase as chemically pure misogyny as his. It conveys the contempt of machismo toward women with power and trajectory. From that machismo derives the fact that political leaders are so severely judged when they make mistakes, and so ambivalently celebrated when they get things right. (And don't even mention how that goes viral on social media.) It is not surprising that for that very reason there are women who do not want to be in spaces of power, doubly harsh if one is a woman.
And secondly, Olivares trivializes care work, which he sees as "plan b," after failing or being out of the game. As a consolation prize, something for "losers." "Let her go take care of grandchildren," his phrase, offends grandmothers and grandfathers who care for and love their grandchildren, not because they have nothing else to do, but because they consider it a gift of life. Not the space of the devalued, but of the valuable.
Olivares's phrase reflects the prejudice that prevents men from engaging more in care work: that it is seen, at least by people like Olivares, as a subordinate, second-class job, without social or personal importance. What social and personal myopia. As if society as a whole did not depend on those who care, and who cared for us, and who did it not because they had nothing else to do, but because they considered it important, gratifying, wonderful, despite its complexity. And meaningful, deeply meaningful, both for those who receive it and for those who give it.
What society needs is to show women and men who care for others, and who do it because it is important, as part of a life project that also includes, of course, work, which must be compatible with caring. If we do not break out of the scheme in which one either works or cares, society will have no future; it will be a society without children. If making both things compatible continues to be an exhausting juggling act for women, Chile will continue sliding downhill in its fertility rate, today at the levels of an Asian country, the worst in the region.
The deputy of the cape tried to laugh at Bachelet and Matthei, to expose them and ridicule them. But the only one who has been exposed and shamed is him.
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