Entrevista en Lettera Dona

Me entrevistó Paola Giura para una revista italiana: 

https://www.letteradonna.it/it/articoli/fatti/2019/12/15/amore-romantico-coral-herrera/29512/?fbclid=IwAR1Abypm5aEU7Gj3o8bDpiq1YRcIofmYHaboePeyAwTjrQfMYcU69MlZYKw

A violência de gênero e o amor romântico

Autora: Coral Herrera Gómez

Traductora: Deborah Delage

Traduzido para o português do link original:

http://haikita.blogspot.com/2012/11/la-violencia-de-genero-y-el-amor.html

O amor romântico é a ferramenta mais potente para controlar e subjugar as mulheres, especialmente nos países onde elas são cidadãs de pleno direito e onde não são, do ponto de vista legal, propriedade de ninguém. Muitos sabem que combinar o afeto com o abuso em relação às mulheres serve para destruir  sua autoestima e causar dependência, e por isso usam o binômio abuso-afeto para que elas se apaixonem perdidamente, e eles, assim, possam domá-las.

Claves para la dependencia... traducido al idioma persa.

/

کلیدهایی برای کار روی وابستگی عاطفی

این متن ترجمه ای است از




ما زنها بیشتر از مردها از وابستگی عاطفی رنج می‌بریم چون فرهنگ مردسالار/پدرسالار به ما باورانده است  که با موهبتی ویژه برای عشق بی قید و شرط و دگرخواهانه به دنیا می آییم. از کودکی به ما می آموزند که اهمیت بیشتری به عشق و به مرد زندگیمان بدهیم تا به خودمان. به همین دلیل ما بیشتر رمانتیک و احساساتی هستیم و از شروع بلوغ ساعات زیادی خودمان را زمان ملاقات با "طرف" تجسم می‌کنیم، رمان می‌خوانیم، با دوستان از مشکلات احساسیمان حرف می‌زنیم، فیلم‌های رمانتیک تماشا می‌کنیم و نامه و یادداشتهای روزانه می نویسیم و خلاصه زندگی به شدت رمانتیکی داریم.

با داستانهایی که از کودکی برایمان می‌گویند یاد می‌گیریم خوشبختیمان را منوط کنیم به آمدن شاهزاده سوار بر اسبی که زندگیمان را تغییر دهد و اینطوری است که اگر نیاید رنج می‌بریم، اگر چنان که تجسمش می‌کردیم نبود یا اگر بعد از یک مدت تصمیم گرفت که از ما جدا بشود یا از قصرش بیرونمان انداخت . یادمان دادند از تنهایی بترسیم و به ما گفتند که بدون عشق هیچ چیزی نیستیم. به همین دلیل زمان و انرژی زیادی را صرف یافتن "طرف" می‌کنیم و به همین دلیل وقتی هم داریمش می‌ترسیم که از دستش بدهیم، بهش می‌چسبیم و انگار که کپسول اکسیژنی است که ادامه زندگی بدون او غیر ممکن است. 

وابستگی عاطفی را از طریق فرهنگ و تعاملات اجتماعی یاد می‌گیریم و با وابستگی اقتصادی، ترس‌ها و عدم اعتماد به خود تحکیم می شود. هرچه بیشتر تنها هستیم بیشتر احساس نیاز به او در ما تقویت می شود و این نیاز خطرهای خودش را دارد مثلاً انتخاب زوج نا مناسب یا کسی که ایجاد یک رابطه عاشقانه، سالم و متعادل با او غیر ممکن است. یا اصرار به ادامه رابطه ای که تو را شاد و خوشبخت نمی‌کند، یا گول زدن خودمان با این وعده که بلاخره "طرف" تغییر خواهد کرد، بهتر خواهد شد یا دوباره ما را مثل روزهای اول دوست خواهد داشت، یا زندگی با یک ترس دائمی که نکند ترکمان کنند، یا احتمال اینکه با یک غیرت احمقانه زندگیمان را تلخ کنند و یا هویت شخصیمان را برای عزیز بودن برای "طرف" از دست بدهیم، یا تحمل بدرفتاری در
رابطه  به دلیل ترس از تنها ماندن. 

وابستگی عاطفی مجموعه ای از ترس‌های فراوان است: ترس از تنها ماندن، ترس از اینکه لیاقت دوست داشته شدن را نداریم.

Romantic Love from a Queer perspective. Coral Herrera

ROMANTIC LOVE FROM A QUEER PERSPECTIVE

INTRODUCTION: ¿WHAT IS LOVE?

-          How do we build our loving culture?

o   The social construction of romantic love: laws, institutions, gender roles, patriarchal hierarchies, tags, inequality, discrimination.

o   Cultural construction of romantic love: myths, traditions, stereotypes, beliefs.

o   Our loving model in our Patriarchal Romanticism.

-          The romantic postmodern utopia. Individualism and collective goals.

1 PATRIARCAL ROMANTICISM MYTHS 

o   Media Naranja Myth

o   Love forever myth

o   Wedding for love Myth

o   Omnipotence  of Love Myth

o   Heterosexuality Myth

o   Monogamy Myth

Gender Myths: Femininity and Masculinity Myths.

o   Good girls/bad girls

o   “Don Juan”, “Prince Charming” and “Alpha Macho” myths.

2 ANALYSIS OF LOVE IN OUR CULTURE

- Multidisciplinary analysis of two movies (Pretty Woman and Dirty Dancing) and a Coca Cola advertising campaign

- Royal Weddings Analysis

3 QUEER LOVE

- Models of diverse gender identities and relationships.

- Different love is possible. Proposals to make a better world.  Proposals to build good and beautiful relations between us.

INTRODUCTION: ¿WHAT IS LOVE?

Love is not only a human feeling. Animals enjoy loving relations between them and with humans. We have survived as species thanks to love, because we have been able to feel empathy and solidarity, and to care for our children and elderly, help our sick fellows, or any people that we find suffering.

We have a lot of ways to build loving or romantic relationships, and love has been changing as economy, politics and society have changed. Our grandmothers loved in a different way we love now in this 21 century.  Love changes with history, and the laws, the beliefs, the models, the heroes and heroines, and it changes at the same time as societies change.

 Love is a very complex phenomenon: It’s a mix between hormones, enzymes, amphetamines that transform the chemistry and physics of our bodies. When we fall in love, our bodies change, and we live a revolution inside of us. Love makes us usually more handsome, or prettier, because our eyes and hair are brighter, and because our happiness enhances our beauty … it is often contagious. Our behavior changes as well: We get nervous if we are waiting for a phone call, we are a little clumsier and sometimes we say or do things we don´t usually say or do. Love is a personal revolution in our lives, because we generally become very generous and nice when we feel something beautiful … we can make a lot of crazy things like leave our jobs to find a better one, or change our country of residence … we are able to do any kind of mad and strange things in the name of love.

Love is not only a chemical issue: Love is a social and cultural construction and has an hegemonic ideology in it that is not visible to us. We think that love is an universal feeling, but the way we love each other is not the same … we love according to our religions, our socioeconomic class, the education we have received, our age, the country where we were born, the language we speak, the gender we identify with.

Our societies are based on systems that are essentially unequal: The traditional division of gender roles is the principal way to divide us in two opposite human groups, women and men. This discrimination between us has been built to make us think that we are very different and that we must partner with a member of the other group to be completed.

"7 reason why I love new man" Coral Herrera Gomez at "The Good Men Project"

Coral Herrera Gomez describes the new man and says why she loves him. The Good Men Project

—

I like new men. They fascinate me. I’ve known they exist since I wrote my PhD thesis. I discovered them on their blogs and I follow them today like a groupie.

Actually my dad was a new man. My mother worked in a factory and my father, who was a writer, took care of my sister and me when we were kids. He cooked, did the dishes, changed diapers and cleaned his babies.

He loved to raise his girls and educated us so that we may become independent working girls.

My love is huge for him because dad was so beautiful, so feminist. I looked at other fathers as very patriarchal compared to mine. It might be slightly oedipal I think, but my first boyfriend was a new man as well. Thanks to them both and the life I’m living, I discovered why new men are the men I love.

1. They don’t believe they owe me

Coral Herrera en griego

El 30 de Mayo María Durán Barbero dará una charla para hablar de los mitos románticos y del trabajo de Silvia Federici y el mío. Es impresionante leerse en este idioma... yo estudié griego en el bachillerato pero no para comunicarme con los griegos y griegas contemporáneos, sino con los textos de los fílósofos de la Grecia Antigua, de modo que no entiendo nada, pero me emociono mucho viendo la belleza del alfabeto griego. 

Me siento muy afortunada, y desde aquí quiero dar las gracias a todas las madrinas traductoras y en especial a María por su arduo y bello trabajo, mil gracias por la difusión de mi obra en la isla de Syros : 

Ο ΡΟΜΑΝΤΙΣΜΟΣ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΠΟΛΙΤΙΚΟ ΘΕΜΑ

Αγαπάμε πατριαρχικά. Αγαπάμε δημοκρατικά. Αγαπάμε σαν τους καπιταλιστές. Με τη αδηφάγο ανησυχία να κατακτήσουμε το αντικείμενο του έρωτα, με την βάναυση ανησυχία όπως αυτός που συλλέγει κυνηγημένα ζώα. Κατακτιόμαστε, γλυκαινόμαστε, συγχωνευόμαστε, χωρίζουμε, καταστρεφόμαστε αμοιβαία ο δικός μας τρόπος αγάπης είναι διαποτισμένος από ιδεολογία, σαν τα άλλα τα φαινόμενα κοινωνικά και πολιτικά.

Τον ρομαντικό έρωτα τον έχουμε κληρονομήσει  από την αστική τάξη του 19ου αιώνα και είναι βασισμένος στον πιο αποτρόπαιο ατομικισμό.. Να μας κοπανάνε με την ιδέα ότι πρέπει να ενωνόμαστε δυο,  το δυο δεν είναι τυχαίο. Κάτω από τη φιλοσοφία, του να ο σωζων εαυτόν σοθήτου, ο πατριαρχικός ρομαντισμός διαιωνίζεται στα παραμύθια που μας λένε στα διάφορα μέσα (σινεμά, τηλεόραση, περιοδικά)

Amor romântico vs. igualdade de gênero: uma entrevista com Coral Herrera

• 
  

Este post faz parte da nossa série sobre género e sexualidade na América Latina e Caraíbas [en], 

em colaboração com o Congresso Norte-americano sobre a América Latina [en] (NACLA, 

da sigla em inglês). Fique atento a mais artigos.

Ler Coral Herrera é como soprar uma rajada de ar fresco e optimismo na luta pelo respeito à diversidade. 

O seu blogue [es], os seus artigos, os seus livros [es] e as suas ideias são viagens ao fundo do que é 

considerado óbvio e normal. Coral interessa-se sobretudo pela igualdade de género e pelo efeito que

 os imaginários românticos têm na maneira como os homens e as mulheres se relacionam e se vêem a

 si mesmos.

Poderia também dizer-se que Coral Herrera pertence a uma nova geração de activistas que partem da

 luta pela igualdade de género mas que se recusam a ficar por aí. Os seus escritos analisam problemas

 estruturais nas sociedades ocidentais e identificam o desconforto que se expande para a vida íntima

 de homens e mulheres. A ideia é fazer uma desconstrução e uma crítica honesta das causas e 

consequências dos conceitos que são perpetuados e dos imaginários que defendemos sem sequer 

saber porquê.

Coral Herrera é uma grande entusiasta dos novos media e utiliza-os para partilhar uma grande parte do

 seu trabalho. Mas além de blogueira, Coral é também doutorada em Humanidades e Comunicação 

Audiovisual. Nascida em Espanha, mudou-se para a Costa Rica há alguns anos e trabalhou como

 professora e consultora para a UNESCO, para o Instituto Latino-americano das Nações Unidas

 para Prevenção do Delito e Tratamento do Delinquente (ILANUD), para a Agência Espanhola de 

Cooperação Internacional para o Desenvolvimento (AECID), a Universidade Sorbonne em Paris 

e a Universidade Carlos III em Madrid. A sua principal especialização é em matéria de género, 

e o seu ponto de partida o amor romântico. Assim, muito do trabalho que Coral Herrera tem 

publicado online está centrado na defesa da diversidade de amores [es], os mitos [es] e a

 dimensão política e colectiva do que entendemos por amor. Em Os mitos românticos [es], 

por exemplo, aborda as origens das imagens que temos sobre o amor e põe o dedo directamente

 na ferida:

Através do amor romântico, inoculando desejos alheios, o patriarcado aproveita para controlar 

os nossos corpos, para heterodirigir o nosso erotismo, para conseguir que assumamos os limites 

que tem a feminilidade e sonhemos com a chegada do Salvador (Jesus, o Príncipe Encantado…) 

que nos escolha como boas esposas e nos ofereça o trono do matrimónio.

“We Are More Alive Than Ever:” Coral Herrera and the Struggle for Gender Equality

This post is part of our series on gender and sexuality in Latin America and the Caribbean, in collaboration with NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America). This is the continuation of a conversation with Coral Herrera Gómez, published in two parts, the first of which can be read here.

In the first part of our dialog about the work of artist, blogger, and scholar Coral Herrera, we discussed the opportunities presented by new technology for gender equality and the social struggle for the rights of women and LGBT persons. This time we will enter into a discussion about the struggle for gender equality in Latin America.

We asked Coral to give us her impressions of the evolution of these struggles, both online and off, and we also talked about the road we have traveled and the one that remains before us.

Global Voices: What have you discovered about the pro-gender equality movements thanks to new media?

Coral Herrera: I am amazed by social networks because they have opened doors and windows for me to the entire world, they have broaden my horizons on all levels of my life: at the intellectual, personal, and professional levels. Before connecting to the world, I felt very alone with my books and my research, but now I sense that there are a lot of people who are also writing and sharing, with whom I can debate, build up, and deconstruct collectively.

When I got connected to these networks, I entered into contact with a diverse group of women who fascinated me because they allowed me to meet other realities beyond what I had known in Spain. I'm amazed at the struggle of peasant women, Afro-descendant woman, indigenous women, migrant women, victims of trafficking, factory workers, domestic workers, disabled women, and being able to come into contact with them has allowed me to grow beyond the Euro-centric feminism in which I was living.

Besides meeting with activists, it was fascinating to connect with feminist writers who were not only still living, but were also very active on social networks. Being able to follow them on a daily basis and to get to know them so “up close” allowed me to connect with feminist organizations and online publications from all over Latin America, and that was how I began to expand my networks and make contact with the groups of egalitarian men and LGBT activists, and with the queer groups that are slowly emerging.

GV: What are the most pressing conversations that you're finding in the area of gender in Latin America?

CH: Above all, I think it's necessary to continue to highlight the struggles of women for access to land and water, and the work being carried out in fighting against genetically modified crops and for obtaining food sovereignty.

We also have to open up the debate within the feminisms in order to engage in self-criticism; it worries me that young people aren't identifying with feminist values and that our struggles are stereotyped in such a negative way.

I believe it's a problem in communication: we feminists are the object of ridicule, jokes, insults, and pejorative comments; we are called ugly, witches, man-haters, sexually frustrated, etc. This is what's going on in Europe; in other parts of the world you can be murdered for being a feminist, as has happened in Mexico with human rights activists, for example.

Within the feminisms, I think we have to create networks that are more horizontal and more inclusive. As in all social and political movements, within the feminisms there are still hierarchies, relationships of power, patriarchal power structures that we have to eliminate in order to be able to transform the world we live in. It's necessary to expand our sisterhood not only to those who are our equals, but also to humanity as a whole. [...] Diversity is an asset we have to take advantage of in order for, say, post-modern women to identify with the struggles of indigenous women, cissexual women with the demands of transexual women, women entrepreneurs with working-class women, Catholic women who struggle to depatriarchalize their religion with Islamic feminist women, etc.

Written by Laura Vidal

Read more: https://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/18/we-are-more-alive-ever-coral-herrera-and-gender-equality-part-2

Amore romantico vs uguaglianza di genere.

Un'intervista con Coral Herrera.da Laura Vidal para Global Voices
Traducione di Anita Silviano:

Leggere Coral  Herrera è respirare una boccata di aria fresca e di stimolante ottimismo nella lotta per il rispetto della diversità. Il suo blog, i suoi articoli, i suoi libri e le sue idee sono viaggi nel profondo di ciò che si crede ovvio e normale. Coral si occupa principalmente di uguaglianza di genere e degli effetti che hanno prodotto gli immaginari romantici per il modo in cui gli uomini e le donne si rapportano e vedono se stessi.
Si potrebbe anche dire che Coral Herrera è parte di una nuova generazione di guerrigliere che cominciano con l’uguaglianza di genere, ma si rifiutano di rimanere lì. I suoi scritti analizzano i problemi strutturali nelle società occidentali. Essi identificano anche l’esteso disagio nella vita intima di uomini e donne. L’idea è di fare una decostruzione e un’onesta critica alle cause e conseguenze delle immagini che si perpetuano e degli immaginari che difendiamo senza nemmeno sapere il perché. Coral Herrera è una grande fan dei nuovi media, nei quali condivide gran parte del suo lavoro. Oltre a essere una blogger è anche Dottora in Lettere e Comunicazioni audio-visive. E’ nata in Spagna e da pochi anni, residente in Costa Rica, Coral ha lavorato come docente e consulente per l’UNESCO, ILANUD e AECID, presso l'Università della Sorbona a Parigi IV e l'Università Carlos III di Madrid. La sua specializzazione principale è il genere e il punto di partenza, l'amore romantico. Così, gran parte del lavoro pubblicato in linea Coral Herrera si concentra sulla difesa degli amori diversi, i miti e la dimensione politica e collettiva di ciò che intendiamo per amore. Ne I miti romantici, per esempio, va alle origini delle immagini che abbiamo sull’amore e mette il dito sulla piaga:

Attraverso l'amore romantico, instillando desideri esterni, il patriarcato ne approfitta per controllare i nostri corpi, per etero-dirigere il nostro erotismo, allo scopo di garantire che assumiamo i limiti che ha la femminilità e sogniamo l’arrivo del Salvatore (Gesù, il principe azzurro.) che ci scelga come buone mogli e ci offra il trono del matrimonio.
Quanto alle strutture culturali dentro le quali ha luogo questo fenomeno, dichiara:
Nella nostra cultura occidentale l’amore è obbligato perlomeno, nel discorso culturale egemonico. L'omofobia è culturale, la trans fobia è culturale, il razzismo e lo specismo sono culturali. In questa cultura si sviluppa la paura dell’altro, del diverso: si creano miti, mete, divieti, pregiudizi, e gli obblighi sociali. 
L'autrice rileva inoltre l'importanza delle storie che raccontiamo in questi contesti. La finalità del lavoro di Herrera è aiutare a capire come gli immaginari, ideali e obiettivi sono tramandati di generazione in generazione attraverso narrazioni su noi stessi che sono anche supportati dai circoli dominanti. Tuttavia, in accordo a ciò che pensano i movimenti sociali, ciò che si attrezzi in una direzione potrebbe riconsiderarsi e prendere un’altra rotta:
La cosa più logica sarebbe poter trasformare le storie, raccontarne di nuove, cambiare i modelli idealizzati oramai obsoleti, costruire eroi ed eroine in carne ed ossa, creare nuovi miti per aiutarci a costruire una società più giusta, egualitaria, ecologista, colta e pacifista. Indirizzare i nostri sforzi per il bene comune, lavorare per proporre altre realtà, lottare per costruirne di nuove, piuttosto che fuggire da ciò che c'è mediante paradisi e motivi e salvezze individuali. 
I suoi libri sono facilmente reperibili attraverso il suo blog, nel quale Coral condivide anche i suoi articoli di stampa e il suo canale You Tube, dove si possono vedere alcune sue conferenze e discussioni accademiche. Il suo ultimo libro Bodas diversas y amores queer è “un libro a metà strada tra un saggio e un racconto in cui si mescolano riflessioni teoriche, aneddoti personali, storie di vita e qualche analisi di riti nuziali romantici alternativi.
“ Perché la gente si sposa così massicciamente? Perché ci sono persone che si sposano una sola volta nella vita e altre che si sposano più volte? (…) Perché tutti chiedono un bebè, però è malvista una fidanzata incinta? Perché le donne investono tante risorse per incontrare un partner? (...) perché non possono sposare tre persone che si amano e vivono insieme ? Perché ci emozioniamo quando ci offrono  il matrimonio? Perché lo desideriamo tanto? Perché la gente sopporta inferni coniugali per tanti anni? Perché ci sono persone che non si sposano?  … come sono i matrimoni in altre culture ? Che c’è dietro il matrimonio?” 
Per approfondire la riflessione sulla lotta per l'uguaglianza di genere su internet, presenteremo il lavoro di Coral Herrera in due parti . Chiudiamo questa edizione con la prima parte di una discussione online avuta con Coral nella quale parliamo sul ruolo dei nuovi, media nella lotta per l' uguaglianza di genere e le lotte che prendono forma grazie alle nuove tecnologie.


Global Voices: Come possono, i nuovi media sfidare quelli vecchio circa la costruzione dei miti romantici? Come possono i nuovi media cadere nello stesso ruolo dei media tradizionali? 

Coral Herrera: I media tradizionali ancora si aggrappano ancora ai modelli tradizionali e a una visione del mondo totalmente patriarcale e capitalista, continuano a venderci ideologia egemonica in forma d’intrattenimento.  Pubblicità e cultura di massa trasmettono valori totalmente egoisti, individualisti, basati sulla paura e la permanente insoddisfazione tipica, di quest’era consumistica.
Per questo credo che una delle cose migliori che sono successe in questi ultimi anni sia Internet. Ciò che non è chiaro e se possiamo vivere di questo, perché ci siamo abituati in modo che tutto sia gratis. Io stessa non posso sostenere economicamente la gente che leggo, per la mia situazione precaria in Spagna prima e poi come migrante in Costa Rica , anche se pago la compagnia telefonica per avere accesso a tutti i contenuti. E anche se credo che non abbiamo ancora trovato un modo per guadagnare un reddito (anche se ci sono casi di persone che vivono di questo) , penso che la crisi che stiamo vivendo stiano rendendo più consapevoli di ciò che consumiamo , da dove proviene ciò che consumiamo , e in quali condizioni è stato prodotto. Il consumo di cultura è oggi (e sarà sempre) un atto politico , una dimostrazione di sostegno agli artisti e pensatori che ci offrono storie in tutti i formati e programmi possibili. Internet è stato vantaggioso per la cultura in generale , perché ora abbiamo accesso alle coreografie , sculture , film, reportage giornalistici,creazioni-video, canzoni, racconti, saggi, articoli accademici, cortometraggi, fotografie… I /le creativi/ve abbiamo più libertà nell’innovare e offrire altri modelli, altre eroine, altre situazioni, altri modi di relazionarsi. In definitiva, credo che stiamo rompendo con le vecchie strutture narrative che ci riducono a conflitti semplificati. 

GV: Che cosa significano le nuove tecnologie nella lotta per l’uguaglianza di genere?

CH: Grazie a Internet tutti siamo emittenti. [ Questo ci fa ] meno vulnerabili alla costruzione della realtà che ci impongono dall’alto, perché siamo in grado di confutare le loro affermazioni , perché possiamo visualizzare tutto ciò che rimane nascosto per mantenere le cose così come stanno.
E’ vero che dobbiamo renderci conto che la privacy è inesistente, che ci controllano, che commerciano con i nostri dati e ci censurano, ma penso che bisogni essere in rete comunque.

GV: Quali vantaggi si hanno dall’uso delle nuove tecnologie per le discussioni sul genere (soprattutto in America Latina)? 
CH: “ Io sono molto ottimista. Nonostante il divario digitale che ci separa , penso che stiamo creando reti d’informazione e di riflessione collettiva transazionale. Queste reti ci permettono di appoggiarci l’una alle altre, visibilizzare le problematiche, raccogliere firme per incidere politicamente, chiamare alle azioni nel mondo reale che risuonino nel mondo virtuale. Possiamo unire le sinergie, scambiarci idee, copiare modelli che funzionano in altri paesi e adattarli alla nostra realtà locale, possiamo insegnarci a vicenda, possiamo contribuire alla costruzione di consapevolezza collettiva e possiamo modificare le agende politiche grazie all'eco delle azioni nelle reti sociali.”. 
Nella parte successiva di questo documento, che sarà pubblicato la prossima settimana, discuteremo con Coral dell’evoluzione della lotta per l’uguaglianza di genere e di altre questioni ancora da approfondire.
Nel frattempo, consigliamo la visita al progetto editoriale Haika, promosso e gestito dall’autora e dal quale si possono scaricare molti dei suoi lavori.


Entrevista en Global Voices en Español, I Parte:
http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/12/amor-romantico-vs-igualdad-de-genero-una-entrevista-con-coral-herrera/http://haikita.blogspot.fr/

Entrevista en Español, II parte:
http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/18/estamos-mas-vivs-que-nunca-coral-herrera-y-las-luchas-por-la-igualdad-de-genero/



Otros artículos traducidos al italiano: 

• IT: ll manifesto degli amori queer
• IT: La violenza di genere e l'amore romantico
• IT: Che ogni pecora venga accoppiata…
• IT Gli amori Queer di Coral Herrera Gòmez

Gender, Sexuality, and New Media: An Interview with Coral Herrera in NANCLA

The NACLA Archive of Latin Americana is a historic documentation project that grew out of NACLA's research, publications, and activist network and is now administered by the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Coral Herrera blows a blast of fresh air into the struggle for the respect for diversity. Her blog, her articles, her books, and her ideas examine pointedly the notions of the “obvious” and the “normal.” Coral is mainly interested in gender equality and the effect of romantic imaginaries on the way men and women relate to each other and see themselves.

A contributor to publications such as Uruguay’sLa Red 21 and Chile’s El Ciudadano, Coral Herrera is also part of a new generation of fighters who start with gender equality but refuse to stay there. Her writings analyze structural problems in Western societies and the discomfort that arises in the intimate lives of men and women. Her work conducts a deconstructive critique of the causes and consequences of societal norms and the imaginaries that we defend without knowing why.

Coral Herrera is a great enthusiast of new media, where she shares a large part of her work. But in addition to blogging, Coral also pursues an academic path, with a PhD in Humanities and Audiovisual Communication. Born in Spain, she moved to Costa Rica a few years ago, and has worked as a teacher and consultant for UNESCO, the United Nations Latin American Institute for Crime Prevention and Treatment of Delinquents (ILANUD), and the Spanish International Development Agency (AECID), at the Paris-Sorbonne University and in Madrid’s Universidad Carlos III.

Her main specialization is in gender, and her point of departure, romantic love. Thus much of the work that Coral Herrera has published online focuses on the defense of diverse loves, myths, and the political and collective dimension of how we understand love. In Los mitos románticos (Romantic Myths), for example, she traces some of the origin stories of societal glorification of heterosexual love:

Through romantic love, inoculating foreign desires, patriarchy also controls our bodies in order to hetero-direct our eroticism, and make us assume the limits of femininity and dream about the arrival of The Saviour (Jesus, Prince Charming…) who will choose us as good wives and offer us the throne of marriage.

Herrera draws on what she sees as the realm of “culture” to explore common societal limitations on love and acceptance:

In our Western culture, love is constrained, at least in the hegemonic cultural discourse. Homophobia is cultural, transphobia is cultural, racism and speciesism are cultural. Culture is where the fear of the other, of the different, grows; it is in culture where myths, goals, prohibitions, prejudices and social obligations are created.

Herrera also highlights the importance of the stories we tell ourselves—the ways certain imaginaries, ideals, and goals are passed down from generation to generation. She notes the limitations of trying to rework established narratives of gender and sexuality with an immediate cultural reversal, but she still dreams about the hopeful possibility:

The logical thing should be to transform the stories and tell new ones, change the idealized models that have become obsolete, construct flesh-and-blood heroes and heroines, create new myths that help us construct societies that are more just, egalitarian, environmentalist, cultured, and pacifist. Direct our efforts towards the common good, work to propose other realities, fight to construct new ones, instead of fleeing from emotional paradises and individual promises of salvation.

Her books are readily available on her blog, where Coral also shares her press articles, her YouTube channel, and her conferences and academic talks. Her last book  Bodas diversas y amores queer (Diverse Weddings and Queer Loves) is a book she describes as lying “halfway between an essay and a story, in which theoretical reflections are mixed with personal anecdotes, life stories, and analyses of alternative romantic nuptial rituals.” Her work on marriage demonstrates the wit and incisiveness that dominate her writing:

Why do people get married on such a massive scale? Why are there some people who only get married once, while others get married seven times?...Why does everyone ask about a baby but it’s frowned upon if the bride is pregnant? Why do we make romantic videos of our weddings and torture our relatives for months? Why do women invest so many resources in finding a partner?…Why can’t three people who love each other live together and get married? Why do we get excited when we are offered marriage? Why do we want this so much? Why do people endure conjugal hell for so many years? Why are there people who never get married? What are weddings like in other cultures? What comes after weddings?

To offer a more thorough reflection on the struggle for gender equality on the internet, we will present Coral Herrera’s work in two parts. We will close this installment with the first part of an on-line discussion we had with Coral, in which we talked about the role of new media in the struggle for gender equality.

Read the interview at:

 http://nacla.org/blog/2013/12/12/gender-sexuality-and-new-media-interview-coral-herrera-part-1

En Global Voices en español: 

http://es.globalvoicesonline.org/2013/12/12/amor-romantico-vs-igualdad-de-genero-una-entrevista-con-coral-herrera/

Violenza di genere e amore romantico

Violenza di genere e amore romantico

di Coral Herrera Gómez

L'amore romantico è lo strumento più potente per controllare e sottomettere le donne, soprattutto nei paesi in cui sono cittadine di pieno diritto e dove non sono, legalmente, proprietà di nessuno. Molti sono coloro che sanno che unire l'affetto al maltrattamento di una donna serve a distruggerne l'autostima e provocarne la dipendenza, perciò utilizzano il binomio maltrattamento-buone maniere per farle innamorare perdutamente e poter così domarle.

QUEER LOVE MANIFESTO

1. Queer Love is a process to enjoy, not a goal to be reached.

2. Queer Lovers deny the traditional love stories that sell promises of everlasting happiness, and want to finish with the exclusivity over cocks, pussies and hearts of the people.

3. Queer lovers reject the tyranny of the orgasm and expand to the entire body eroticism without being stuck in the genitals, enhancing the sensitivity of all parties, discovering new ways of sex beyond the genital pleasure.

4. Queer lovers do not desire eternity and we don’t fall in the trauma of divorce, because we enjoy the stories until they are finished. We feel happy to live them, because we don’t feel we have lost anything or anyone "forever."

5.  Queer lovers reject the hell of forced cohabitation, and we don´t idealize people, we like people as they are. We don’t believe in the monogamous heterosexual reproductive model imposed on us by the cultural industries through the audiovisual stories.

That is because queer lovers do not suffer frustration about romantic love; we love to enjoy life, sex and emotions with people of flesh and bone.

6.  Queer Love advocates relationships based on freedom and the autonomy of the lovers. We try to break with the traditional division of gender roles and we don’t share the tasks by an unequal and unfair way.

7.  Everyone has the right to live their performances of love created between two or more people to live a fictional illusion through the body and eroticism. We can also live virtual love, impossible or platonic loves, at the age we want and with whom we please.

8. The Queer love advocate a society where eroticism is free of emotional and physical repression, and where all the people can engage in freedom and the way they like. That's why every queer love is different, as there are so many people that don’t fits in the normal straight, homophobic, misogynist and oriented to reproduction model.

9. Queer lovers are people of the suburbs, but we do not exclude anyone. Queer movement includes men, women, intersex, transgender, transvestites, queers dykes, prostitutes, hustlers, blacks, Latin’s, heterosexual people… Because on queer fits all ages and socioeconomic classes, all tastes, all races and religions without any way of discrimination.

10.   Queer Love is bisex, trisex and extends to infinity. It doesn´t categorize the traditional sexual orientation (gay, straight, bisexual), because it doesn´t understand the relationships as only "about two", so queer lovers don´t divide humanity into two opposite genders (women/men), because of the amount of degrees of intensity that postmodern identities have, and the amount of masks and theatric performances that we are able to perform on the same day.

11. Queer loves also include asexual people, single, promiscuous, addicted and no appetite people; freaks, rare people, minorities of any kind, or anyone who is curious to broaden horizons in their mind, emotions, body, and sexuality.

12.  Queer Love does not exclude the sex of the mind, neither the feeling from sex. Queer relationships do not divide the population into people with whom they fuck or people they could love, because everyone is fuckable and loveable. 


Queer lovers assume our contradictions and do not distinguish between body and soul, mind and emotion, but live it as a whole, accepting and enriching the complexity of feelings and human desire.

13. Queer Love explores power relations taking them to the sex play, and liberates love from the binary categories Sumsion-domination. Queer relationships are intended to be equal because in a queer future, no one will be higher when the discriminatory ratings disappear. 
Sadomasoquism will be only a roleplay to enjoy sex.

14.  Loves Queer reject the necessity as the base for a relationship, and denounce the mutual dependence (emotional and financial) that holds the patriarchal love system. It’s prettier to love from the free desire that being together because one have signed a formal contract.

15.  Queer Love believes that Church, Treasury or the State mustn´t continue to have power over the private life of people, over our sexuality and feelings. Lovers do not need blessings, but freedom to come and go, love and share, without ties that turn commitments into prisons.

16. The queers do not discriminate anyone because of their height , or smallness, thinness, obesity, or their wrinkles, imperfections, its deformations… the queer love is freed from the tyranny of the beauty and the fascism cult of body .

17.  Queer Love denounces the hypocrisy of bourgeois romanticism about female fidelity and male promiscuity, adultery and prostitution as a way to escape the boredom of marriage.

18.  Sexual and affective relations must move away from selfishness intrinsic to the capitalist and democratic system, based on the desire to possess bodies and minds of others. 


People have to free ourselves of loyalty as a requirement to live an affair with someone. We have to stop consider the others as objects made for our enjoyment.

19.  The queer loves are dynamic, alive, in constant movement. Our feelings are not subject to taboos, prohibitions, rigid rules, so is more free. The queer love is away from the lies and betrayal, of guilty and repression because they do not need them to relate to free people.

20.  The queer loves do not need, either, love traditional structures. We are working to create new, open and flexible love structures, where people can spend more energy to enjoy and less to dream with impossible princesses and princes. The adventure of inventing new ways is exciting queer, because each one live their own affair in the way we want. 


Queer positive feelings get feedback themselves, do not die, because they aren`t concentrated, but spread and multiply. We don´t hate and we don´t destroy our love, because we are always regenerating, sharing, creating networks, combining chemicals, insatiably.

Coral Herrera Gómez

To Judy Jack Hallberstam, with queer love ;)

Romantic Love from a Queer perspective. Coral Herrera

"7 reason why I love new man" Coral Herrera Gomez at "The Good Men Project"

“We Are More Alive Than Ever:” Coral Herrera and the Struggle for Gender Equality

Gender, Sexuality, and New Media: An Interview with Coral Herrera in NANCLA

MANIFIESTO DE LOS AMORES QUEER (en castellano)