To speak of femininity is, for this mother of four children, to speak of that part of humanity that either gives life or "stops it. For this reason, she considers abortion "as an irreversible fracture in the heart of femininity".
María Calvo offered the 221 participants a historical overview of the evolution of the feminist movement, from the French Revolution to the present day. She emphasized that feminism has had gains and losses; gains in the public sphere (women in the public sphere are now successful women) and losses in the "defeminization" of women, which has affected the concept of feminine identity. In the public sphere, feminism has achieved equity in equal rights and freedoms and has made women successful.
The feminist movement began with the French Revolution when a group of courageous women demanded equality in rights and freedoms, which German theologian and philosopher Jutta Burggraf called "a feminism of equality in the public sphere". These French women argued that if they could climb the Cadalso, they could climb the rostrum. In the end, they ended up being guillotined.
The first vindication of Women's Rights came in 1792 from the hand of the English philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft. These rights in the public sphere, based mainly on the right to education, do not violate the feminine essence such as motherhood.
María Calvo also recalled the figure in Spain of Concepción Arenal, for example, who, supported by her husband, dressed as a man in order to be able to study. "Her husband would take her disguised as a man to literary gatherings so that she could participate. I like to remember the support of men for women in that equality of rights and freedoms," she said.
He also recalled Emilia Pardo Bazán, who made a strong commitment to the education of girls, and Clara Campoamor, who won women's suffrage in 1931 in the Congress of Deputies.
Deputies in spite of the opposition of two women against her famous phrase: "Before being a woman, I am a citizen".
"This feminism of equity with legitimate demands on the same rights and freedoms as men, began to be corrupted in the 1940s by the influence of certain thinkers such as the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who advanced gender ideology and her slogan "You are not born a woman, you become one"," the writer recalled.
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From this decade onwards, a trend began to develop that considered that the idea of woman is a social construction, that biology does not count. French atheism, championed mainly by Jean Paul Sartre, also influenced this current of feminist thought, which was one of the origins of the May '68 revolution, "a revolution that wanted to be collectivist but was individualist in its purest form. It was a revolt against men and against masculinity, which they considered oppressive and authoritarian," María Calvo explains.
For the Carlos III University professor, the '68 revolution was also a revolt against women. Femininity entered into crisis. It implied emancipation from men, but it demanded not only equality in the public sphere, but also in the reproductive sphere. Women achieved this with contraception and abortion.
"At this moment, feminism is corrupted, deriving in a sexual liberation, separating sex from affectivity, commitment and reproduction. Sex remains as something playful and physiological," says María Calvo.
This way of seeing sexual relations has caused that in many situations they end up leading women to an unprecedented loneliness and to be seen as an object of desire.
The revolution of 1968 led to gender feminism that "for ideologues woman and man do not exist, they are just a social construct or based on something external that can be operated".
The university professor recalled that now a person can "be a man and a woman because of his or her desires, and desires become rights. In this feminism we cannot speak of a natural man and woman, because they deny nature. It is the death of reason. With this movement we are doing away with the bases of Western tradition, we do away with sexual otherness, and family and marriage become subjective concepts. The philosophical and juridical bases of our society are also denied, because everything is based on feelings and desires".
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After this feminism, we have now reached hypermodernity. "It is what I call magical feminism because all my desires magically become rights," says the expert.
At this point she recalled that the feminist movement as a whole, has always forgotten about motherhood and has never cared about mothers. "To ignore this very important factor is striking. Not even nowadays. Only seven autonomous communities in Spain give maternity benefits, while the State spends millions of euros on abortion," lamented the expert.
"Feminism has had gains and losses; gains in the public sphere (the woman in public is now a successful woman) and losses in the "defeminization" of women, which has affected the concept of female identity." Maria Calvo
María Calvo raises her voice about something inherent to women: the ability to be mothers, whether it materializes or not. "We have an indelible imprint in our brain for nurturing, for attachment, for care. Women are the humanizers of society, as St. John Paul II used to say".
In addition, science has now made it possible to demonstrate that female identity is a reality, that there is a sexual difference, from gestation. Science shows that the female and male brain are different, with the same rights, but different ways of looking at life.
"A female brain that gives us empathy to put ourselves in the shoes of others that is part of the feminine essence," she notes.
For María Calvo, we come to the conclusion that women in the public sphere are successful, they have become independent, but they are not completely free because they are subjected to "more perverse" slavery than in past centuries, such as surrogate wombs, -women are a container for a product-. "Other forms of slavery are pornography or being a woman with narcissistic professional success, which leads to an unprecedented loneliness," she said.
In this society in which the woman does not know exactly who she is because her essence is denied, according to some schools of psychiatry, deviations of femininity and decompensations are taking place. For example, the woman's psychological-maternal aspect is being cut off.
"All women have an indelible maternal imprint that makes us care about others, whether we are mothers or not, and the other side is the erotic-professional side. A woman's balance will come from these two parts, not from the denial of one over the other," she said.
Another type of deviance that psychiatrists talk about is the single mother, the one who wants to be alone by renouncing a man because she considers him harmful and disturbing. "These mothers condemn the child to be fatherless before birth. The father does not exist and instead of father, there is nothing, and that derives in psychic problems to those children. The human being needs to know his roots. Psychiatric studies show that these IVF children have an obsession to know the father they will never meet.
He also revealed that the model of single mothers is the one that is growing the most in Spain, single-parent families that condemn the child to paternal orphanhood. These children come to fill an existential void of the mother, which is what some psychiatrists call psychological incest. Subsequently, some of these children are aggressive towards these mothers because they have not given them autonomy, something that is normally led by the father. They also leave them spiritual orphans, incapable of knowing the divine filiation.
In this line, she responded to a question from the audience: "To children who tell you when they are little I feel like a woman you have to love them more than anything else in the world, but I think that the example of conduct is the most important thing. I believe that the father's example is fundamental. The primary sexual identification of children is with the mother, when they are born they identify with the feminine sexuality, which has to undergo a tearing and experience a link with the paternal magnetic field. That is why paternal absence is a current problem. That is why there is now a fear of being a man and expressing those essentially masculine attributes such as defending the weak, bravery and competitiveness".
To conclude, she considers that women must retake their psychic-maternal essence and their erotic-professional side in order to achieve balance. This freedom can be achieved more fully thanks to men. "When the man enters the home, we women will be able to go outside, and we will achieve more balance. This is why human otherness is so important.
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