Autor: Coral Herrera

Publicado el

What Are Women For?

What Are Women For?

For providing sexual services.

For reproductive service: gestating sons and daughters, descendants and heirs of men.

For raising, educating, and caring for the new generations of workers and servants.

For taking care of the home and family: cleaning, organizing, feeding, managing and administering domestic logistics.

For taking care of dependent family members: elderly or disabled individuals, those who suffer accidents or illnesses.

For taking care of animals, plants, trees, and family gardens.

For tending to the homes, family members, and animals of privileged classes.

For serving as vessels and containers, for serving as commodities in men's businesses, and for enriching them using our bodies and our babies.

For entertaining, decorating, and brightening up men's gatherings and parties.

For pleasing their eyes, providing them pleasure, and making them feel powerful.

For enhancing the prestige of males, which increases according to the number of women they manage to seduce, enamor, and subdue.

For working for the husband for free, and also working for others for a meager wage.

For supporting their husbands in their projects, remaining unconditionally by their side, facilitating their social advancement, tending to their social and emotional networks, and devoting themselves entirely to the mission of making them happy.

For allowing the accumulation of resources by men and sustaining capitalism as an organizational form based on men's hoarding of wealth and power.

The root of patriarchy is the servitude of women, and from the verb "to serve" derive the words services, servers, and servants.

We are used in households, brothels, churches, fields, factories, reproductive clinics, and baby farms. We are used for their businesses, all of which are controlled by men.

This is why women have been fighting against enslavement and labor, domestic, emotional, sexual, and reproductive exploitation for centuries. Both inside and outside the home.

Women, forced to satisfy the needs and desires of men, are fighting to no longer be treated as maids and to build an egalitarian society without hierarchies, domination, or submission. Not from men to women, nor among women.

Do you now understand why feminism is the movement for women's liberation?

The primary goal of the feminist struggle is to free girls and women worldwide from the abuse and oppression we suffer from husbands and employers.

None of us came into this world to serve, neither to offer services to men nor to wealthy women. Neither for free nor in exchange for coins.

In this struggle for liberation, women have a lot at stake. Every day.

Men who do not recognize us as free beings use us, punish us, rape us, rent us, buy us, and sell us.

Some kill us when we disobey and when we attempt to escape male exploitation and violence.

137 defiant women are killed every day on this planet by their partners.

Society looks the other way, and the media blames us for the violence we suffer.

They silence us when we protest against injustices and demand equality.

The two key words to position ourselves in the present and understand the world we live in are WOMAN and TO SERVE.

And the key word to change this unjust and violent world is LIBERATION.

Coral Herrera Gómez

Publicado el

The pact of fidelity is a pact of care.

 

The pact of fidelity is a pact of care. When we make a pact of fidelity, we are not promising our partner that we will never feel attracted to someone else or that we will never fall in love with another person.

That cannot be promised, as we do not know if it will happen.

You can express that you would like to love them for your whole life, but you cannot swear that love will never run out.

The only thing we can promise each other when we come together is that, no matter what happens, we will be loyal and take care of each other.

The pact of fidelity is actually a pact of mutual care in which we commit to being honest with our partner if our love ends or if we fall in love with someone else.

It is a pact in which we commit to being truthful if we are strongly attracted to someone else or if we are starting to feel something strong for someone else. We will share what is happening and what we are feeling, so that we can manage the crisis or the ending without violence.

Because deceit and lies cause a lot of harm, so as we love each other, we will not make each other suffer. Or at least, we will try with all our hearts.

I trust my partner, but I don't expect that they will never stop loving me or that they will never fall in love with someone else.

I trust that if that ever happens, I will be the first person to know, I trust that they will not lie to me or deceive me. I trust that they will not be in two relationships at the same time for months or years. I trust that the other person will not enter my home or my bed. I trust that the other person will care for me even when they are beginning to detach romantically from me.

This is how I understand the pact of care upon which I build my romantic relationships: I cannot promise that I will love you forever.

But in the time we are together, and even if we fall out of love, I will be brave to tell you how I feel, to listen to how you feel. We will take care of each other, and we will assess together whether we want to continue the relationship or if it's better to end it.

We will continue to be allies and companions until the end, and we will not engage in wars, because we have committed to taking care of each other, in good times and in bad, from the first day to the last.

Coral Herrera Gómez

Publicado el

Stop mothering adult men, and start mothering yourself.

Yesterday you asked me what it means to stop mothering an adult man, and how to achieve it.

The first thing is to make two things clear: one, that care in a relationship should be mutual.

Two, that what you need is a partner, not a grown-up child.

How to achieve it?

First, explain to him that to be independent, he needs to learn to take care of himself, his relationships, and his home.

Second, negotiate to establish cohabitation agreements and to divide up caregiving tasks and day-to-day logistics.

Men can learn to cook, keep their home tidy and clean, do laundry and put it away, make a grocery list, go grocery shopping, and prepare meals.

Men can handle household finances, go to the doctor on their own initiative, keep track of household accounts, care for plants and a garden if you have one.

They can learn to plan leisure activities, organize trips as a couple or a family, check the weather, and pack for trips.

They can attend school meetings, participate in activities that require parents' involvement, keep track of check-ups for children and pets, be aware of social and family events, and participate in organization as a functional adult (birthdays, surgeries and illnesses, weddings and divorces, births and funerals, and other important moments).

They can learn to create costumes for special occasions, take kids to their friends' birthdays, socialize with other parents on their own.

They can take care of children's clothes, pass on clothes that no longer fit to others, and organize the ones you receive.

Remember, achieving a more equal distribution of responsibilities and roles in a relationship requires open communication, mutual understanding, and a willingness to work together as partners.

He can change diapers, wipe runny noses, clean up vomit, monitor fevers at night, give bottles, handle school enrollment and all kinds of administrative tasks, help his sons and daughters with their homework.

He can learn to do deep cleaning in the home, organize the storage room, go to the bank for errands, buy tickets to go to the theater or cinema, switch out summer clothes for winter clothes.

He can tend to and heal wounds, plan weekly menus, sit down and have intimate conversations with teenagers about sex, emotions, and feelings, emotionally support friends and family members during difficult moments in their lives, accompany and care for them when they're sick. They can spend nights in hospitals with their relatives and friends if needed, be attentive to medication.

All men can take care of themselves and seek help from their loved ones or professionals when they don't feel well.

If in your relationship you're the one handling everything while he plays video games or entertains himself with his phone, if you don't have free time and he does, if you feel like his servant because he can't do anything, he's treating you as if you were a devoted and dedicated mother.

Many women do this because we believe they don't know how to do it properly, but also because we think that way they will value us more and need us.

Beware of ego: we like to feel important and indispensable, and we believe they'll be so grateful that they'll never leave us. But they do.

Mothering a man as if he were a teenager creates a relationship of mutual dependence.

Let's not forget that we are all replaceable: there are millions of women eager to take care of men who don't take care of themselves and don't care for them. We've been taught to give "without asking for anything in return," and to believe that we were born to serve.

What does the radical change I propose consist of?

It's simply about taking care of yourself and prioritizing your rest and enjoyment. It's about your partner committing to working as a team and taking on their responsibilities as a functional adult, working deeply on their sexism and everything that needs to be worked on to learn to love you, treat you, and behave as a partner.

If you have their cooperation to make the radical change you both need, great. If they work on themselves to become self-reliant and behave as an adult, and as a partner, great. If they learn to communicate to express their emotions and needs, fantastic. If they learn to negotiate to reach agreements and share tasks, that's great too.

If not, you'll have to make the necessary decisions to take care of yourself and stop relating to them as if they were a dependent being.

Remember that you can't change your partner, they can only change themselves, and any change has to come from their own initiative. We've always tried to educate and guide men, but none of them evolve if they don't need to.

Remember that a partner is not a child, and that care in a relationship between adults should always be mutual. And if it's not mutual, it's emotional and domestic exploitation.

Remember that you have the right to have free time and to rest, and to live in equal conditions with the men you relate to.

 

Coral Herrera Gómez