Ona: if you lived your whole life with the real feeling that what you think and feel doesn't matter, how would you feel? (Women Talking – Miriam Toews)

Why dedicate a season to women?

Until very recently (the world is very old), women haven't had the chance to explain who we are, what we feel, what we think, or what our view of the world is. Someone else has always spoken for us. Pages and pages of literature about "the weaker sex" have filled bookstores since the beginning of time. But until very recently, I insist, we hadn't had the chance to respond to the opinions and interpretations about what we feel, what we say, and why we do what we do... All interpretations have always come from the personal perspective of those who controlled the narrative. If a man desires a woman, "she was asking for it." If a woman is sexually abused, "she provoked it." If someone needs a surrogate, "women love being pregnant."

Owning our narrative is the only way we can truly explain ourselves as we are and perhaps reveal that all that has been said — and still is said — about our preferences, our pleasure, our emotions… is not true.

Virginia Woolf said that we should demand historians and writers — who are supposed to capture facts — to set aside their opinions and explain the actual conditions in which women lived in the periods they discuss. Woolf creates a metaphor that beautifully — and with her characteristic sense of humor — illustrates the situation of a woman artist in the 16th century, to show us where we come from and the burden we still carry. She claims that if Shakespeare had had a sister with the same talent, their father wouldn’t have sent her to school to study Virgil and Horace, like he did with her brother. Instead, she would have been made to mend their father’s and brother’s torn clothes, to cook for them; she would have been forced to marry someone she surely wouldn’t have loved (while her brother could go to the theater, which he adored, and have relationships with girls he loved…). But she, unable to marry someone she didn’t love, and not wanting to hurt her father, would have run away one night, gone to the theater, for she too was inclined, and said she wanted to act, to write. The theater owner — who, Woolf says, still laughs — would have told her women weren’t fit to do that, and eventually added what we all expect: maybe she was a… (another projection of his own desire?). And because she was young, talented, and with dreams she could never fulfill, "she would have killed herself one winter night and been buried somewhere buses pass today on their way to London."

What Woolf is trying to tell us is that in the 16th century, a woman with talent, dreams, and ambition would have been doomed — at war with herself, because all the conditions of her life were hostile to the mental state required to free her heart and her mind.

There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.
Virginia Woolf

And today? What happens today when we want to be independent, when we want equal rights and opportunities as men, when we denounce abuse, humiliation, invisibility, ageism? What happens when we’re not believed, when we say we’re discriminated against just for being born women, when we must endlessly prove our worth, that we’re not bad mothers, that we have the right to love or to stop loving whoever we choose, that we want a relationship and the right to end it ten minutes later? Or a year later? Or thirty years later? Why are we still expected to be pretty, young, cheerful, never angry, to be "ideal"? Even after a rape, we must be the "ideal" victim; even after a gang rape, we must be the "ideal" victim.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.
Hannah Arendt

After the #Metoo movement, as expected, there was a backlash in society’s attitude toward women’s rights and Feminism. An all-out attack. Violence against women continues to bring devastating statistics: according to official INEbase data, around 500 domestic violence reports daily, about 50 women murdered each year, and one reported rape every four hours in Spain; around 85,000 femicides in 2023 worldwide = 140 women murdered daily = 1 every 10 minutes. Young men aged 17 to 24 increasingly claim they’re victims of our demands... But, despite how hard-won they’ve been, rights can be lost in an instant. I believe that having had the chance to reclaim the narrative for a time and explain ourselves has united us and encouraged many men to stand with us, making many of today’s gains unstoppable.

Only after women began to feel at home on this earth did a Rosa Luxemburg or a Madame Curie appear. They show, brilliantly, that it wasn’t women’s inferiority that led to their historical insignificance.
Simone de Beauvoir

We must understand that women are diverse and many. We cannot allow talk of “the woman.” We are women — distinct, yet linked by an unjust, shared history across the globe and throughout time. We are the great plural of human history. We are not a collective; we are the only human group that, in number, represents more than half of the planet’s population.

The foundation of our existence — like that of all Humanity — is our body, our bodies, on which every battle has been fought for and against our dignity. Women’s bodies — which have perpetuated the human species, often dying in childbirth — continue today to serve others, especially in the world’s poorest regions. Deaths from unsafe abortions are still a reality; violence as a form of subjugation continues to result in the murder of women; forced marriages of girls in certain countries; female genital mutilation as a false cultural tradition that erases female pleasure; the buying of our bodies for others’ pleasure under the euphemism of “freedom of choice”; and “surrogacy” as a euphemism for renting our bodies.

Justice is not just an ideal — it’s a moral imperative. The right to have rights is the foundation of all freedom.
Hannah Arendt

How do we reclaim a nearly nonexistent dignity, stolen since the beginning of time? How do we speak on this issue without some reacting with discomfort, intolerance, disdain, or condescension? How do we recover a respect that society has never historically given us? How? By reclaiming the narrative, which gives us the opportunity to tell our story. To narrate, to narrate ourselves, is essential to guiding our actions and placing ourselves in time. We need, as Humanity, the ability to connect events with emotions. Failing to do so means waiting for someone else to give our story meaning. Failing to do so means giving up reliable evidence before believing anything we’re told. So we shouldn’t be surprised when someone on social media tells us that sheep breathe underwater — and we end up believing it.

Our dream has always been that what happens on stage might shift — even a millimeter — our understanding of the world, break the clichés imposed on us daily by dominant opinions.

We have stories written by women and others led by women, which we hope will help us open our minds and discover things we may never have had the chance to consider — a worldview that may be different; and perhaps they might change some of the ways we see them, their lives, their feelings… And maybe change our own view of the world. Why not? Maybe, all of us together, we can understand how crucial it is that we are the absolute owners of our bodies, free from the threat of slavery, of being used for someone else’s benefit; that we have the autonomy and safety to live as citizens of free societies where our human rights — all of ours — are respected under the same standards as men’s.

To hope in bad times is not romantic foolishness. It is based on the fact that human history is not only a history of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, and kindness.
Susan Sarandon

May you enjoy this season as joyfully as we offer it to you! Thank you for being by our side.

Carme Portaceli