For years, feminism has been divided on a range of issues from pornography to prostitution, and now, increasingly, ‘gender self-determination.’ Just weeks after Spain’s governing Left majority passed the ‘Trans Law’ that allows for legal sex changes at will, this year’s International Women’s Day events displayed more than ever not only the divisions in feminism but also the increasing tensions, evident not only politically but also in the general public.
Watch it unfold in 24 hours.
March 8th: International Women’s Day, 2023
8:00 a.m.
In Barcelona, the country’s largest city, dozens of feminist protestors had blocked Diagonal and Meridiana Avenues, the city’s two main entry routes, during the morning rush hour. One driver, according to some media reports, a female taking her child to school, penetrated the unofficial blockade on Diagonal Avenue with her vehicle. In response, two protestors jumped on the hood of her car. The woman kept driving for several metres while other protestors banged on the car window. One protestor suffered bruising and the driver was taken into police custody.
10:00 a.m.
A group of feminists interrupts the government’s official Women’s Day event, led by Irene Montero and organised by the ministry of equality she heads. This is the same ministry that wrote and pushed through the ‘Trans Law,’ allowing for legal sex changes without medical evidence or prerequisites.
Attendees chanted for the disrupters to leave, but the organisers ceded them the floor.
“What is a woman? How can you defend women’s rights when you can’t even define a woman?” they asked Montero.
Her response?
“To be a woman is to be more at risk for suffering violence and poverty,” Montero said.
Happy Woman’s Day!
12:00 p.m.
A sign hung over a main road in the southern Madrid neighbourhood of Vallecas warning TERF (trans exclusive radical feminists) to “watch your backs.”
6:30 p.m.
The alternative woman’s march organised by the Madrid Feminist Movement begins. Under the current socialist-led government, the official, institutionalised march has been organised since 2018 by the 8M Commission, which can count on the support and participation of the country’s two principal (and government-funded) workers’ unions as well as the ministry of equality.
This year, TERF feminists gathered as the Madrid Feminist Movement—which includes a minority group of classical feminist MPs—to organise a separate march calling for the abolition of prostitution and the protection of women against transgender ideology. The Madrid Feminist Movement march left half an hour before the official 8M Commission march and followed its own route.
7:30 p.m.
Participants in the Madrid Feminists March burn hijabs. One of the themes of the march was “our bodies are not a sin,” carried on signs in both Spanish and Arabic.
8:00 p.m.
Members of the centre-right Partido Popular’s youth organisation are separated by police from the rest of the marchers for carrying a sign saying, “Let Tito Berni vote for you PSOE,” a reference to a scandal embroiled socialist MP. Among other allegations, he is accused of using public money to hire prostitutes.
8:30 p.m.
Angela Rodríguez, state secretary for the ministry of equality, records a video of marchers chanting “What a shame Abascal’s mother couldn’t abort,” in reference to the leader of right-wing VOX, Santiago Abascal. Rodriguez, number two in the government ministry dedicated to women’s rights, turns the camera on herself and smiles broadly. A minute later, she posts the video on social media.
Predictably, it did not go unnoticed and VOX called for her to be fired. The next day Rodríguez said the incident had been overly dramatised and that VOX simply didn’t understand what went on at International Women’s Day marches because it had never participated.
March 9th
8:00 a.m.
While Montero jetted off to New York for the United Nation’s annual Commission on the Status of Women in New York, two female janitors at the Complutense University of Madrid cleaned off the purple graffiti student feminists had splashed on an elevator the day before.