Catalan Parliament deputy Jenn Díaz (ERC) believes that 8th March last year set a precedent. "It gave us a measure of the state of the health of the feminist movement," she says. That day, she saw women of all ages and classes, and also many men. "All these initiatives we've had in the last few years have made us aware of the power of our voices."
A month ago, in a speech in the Catalan Parliament, she told her own story: "Hello, I'm Jenn Díaz, and ten years ago I suffered domestic violence. Physical and psychological. But I'm not saying that here, in the Parliament, as a victim, but as a survivor" (link in Catalan). Those comments, from a visibly moved Díaz, part of a debate on a motion on violence against women, brought the majority of the chamber to its feet.
What brought you to make it public now?
I've dedicated myself to politics for a year and a half, but it's been six years that I've had a platform through literature. Since I turned to politics, I'd decided that I'd make it public sooner or later but I didn't know in what context nor when. It seemed to me that one of the problems I'd borne from having suffered gender violence was that I'd never considered myself a victim because I didn't meet the standards. I felt that it was an outstanding duty I'd got, that I wanted to explain it, because very often when I've mentioned it to people close to me they've ended up telling me: "I'd never have imagined". Why? Because I'm a young woman, middle-class, educated, a woman without a full-time job, but, in the eyes of this society which values things based on the publicity they enjoy, a successful woman. Well, I was. I was a victim. I strongly wanted to defend the fact that the figure of the victim is varied and has no specific profile.
Since I turned to politics, I'd decided that I'd make it public sooner or later but I didn't know in what context nor when
Did you know what it would be like?
I'd always thought it would be in writing. A year ago, when we announced with Carme Forcadell the measures and reasons we were striking for, I thought: "Shoot! Some day I'll do some kind of action like this to explain my case". But I wasn't consciously searching for the moment. When I accepted to bring the motion on denialist attitudes, I felt it was time. I was ready to do it. I've got a network of female friends who I consulted some months beforehand about what had led them to say publicly that they'd been raped or that they'd suffered abuse. What had made them decide. They all told me that the response could be positive or negative and that you had to be strong to come to terms with the negatives.
It had been ten years since I had gone through my personal process and had gone from victim to survivor. It was the time to do it. The solemnity of the podium makes it more formal and more institutional and let me add that I'm the first deputy who's made it public in the Parliament. It gave it a whole character that went very well for me because the impact went much further than an article [would have].
You were commenting that the social stigma of who is susceptible to gender-based violence is still very pronounced. What can be done to change it?
I think that coming out and putting faces [to the issue] helps make society aware. It also helps those who are or will be victims identify with someone because they see a woman who can represent themselves perfectly. It helped me enormously, despite considering myself a survivor. And the Sense Ficció documentary that Ariadna Oltra made [for Catalan public broadcaster TV3]. That included lawyers, teachers, women hiding their faces... The range of profiles is opening up and that shows there isn't one [single profile]. For years we've had it in our heads that to be susceptible to suffer from gender violence, you have to be a working-class woman, little education, no purchasing power, a mother who stays at home, her husband beats her daily... Ten years ago, nobody thought that you could suffer violence against women outside of those parameters. Previously we'd put more emphasis on the fact that there was no typical abuser but the fact is that there's no typical victim either. I did it basically to try to blur the image of this stereotype and to be able to help a possible victim.
Over these ten years with partners, friends, people I've talked about it with... perhaps they've got an idea of who you are, they see a woman, especially in recent years, who's done a lot of work personally to become aware. I've reached this level of sensitivity precisely because I went through all that. Perhaps if I'd explained it then, nobody would have been surprised. I went through a huge change. The only thing they see now is a woman with enough power and arguments to take down any abuser. An empowered woman, a feminist who fights where she can. And that's precisely what I'm hoping for.
What made you take the decision to bring an end to the relationship?
I think that all these cases are unique. Caught up in mine was a topic of mental illness on the part of my abuser. As such, the evolution of my relationship... I was very aware that it wasn't normal what was happening. I was aware that there was an abuse of power. That physical and psychological violence weren't normal. But the fact is that I was in love with this person. Society's focus asks you "how can you fall in love [with them]?". But that's not the focus. That's not the problem. The problem is that he was an abuser.
And what happened?
I tried to trust that that relationship would end up working. And that meant we'd only be left with the mutual understanding we had. There's a whole process to arrive at the violence. It's not that one day they insult you and the next day they hit you. He was an intelligent person with a sense of humour that meant I had a good time. I wanted to stay with what I liked about him and eliminate the rest. I tried to the last moment, until I realised that not only couldn't I change it, but that when you took out the toxic part, he was a person who didn't deserve my admiration. When I isolated that part, I saw that he was a mediocre person and bit by bit the spell was broken and I didn't need to continue pursuing that ideal love story because it didn't exist. Because he wasn't the person I would spend the rest of my life with. But it took me a long time to accept it. I didn't want my sister to ask me why I loved him. It's very hard to explain.
They now see a woman with enough power and arguments to take down any abuser
What role does romantic love play in all this?
It's crucial. We have to think that romantic love affects us all throughout our lives. It's very important during adolescence and the first years of maturity because the baggage we've got is very limited. We don't have experience to compare anything to and romantic love is possessive, it absorbs jealousy, domination as something natural. Now we're adding to that new technologies which make domination and supervision of what the other person is and isn't doing in real time very important. At that time, when you're desperate and you think that you cannot live without the other person and you've got many points of reference in fiction and non-fiction which validate what you're feeling. That without that person you'll die, that you won't be able to breathe. There are poems and songs and films which attest that what's happening is love.
When you reach emotional maturity and start having sexual-emotional relationships, you've already assimilated the idea that "quién bien te quiere té hará llorar" (whoever loves you will make you cry). It took me a long time to have healthy relationships because I didn't know how to love if I wasn't suffering. Before and after my abuser. I suppose that without that it seemed to me that there wasn't enough.
One year after ending the relationship you decided to report him? Why?
What motivated me to report it was a whole kind of cyber-bullying and [the opportunity] to explain everything. It had been more than a year and I didn't have witnesses, I had neither medical reports nor photographs. It was his word against mine. I knew that it wouldn't achieve much, but I needed it to be recorded somewhere. Very often, a murdered woman will appear and they'll say that she hadn't reported anything. And I preferred there to be a report. I wanted it to appear in his file. Maybe it wouldn't make a difference for me, but for another woman it would.
It was his word against mine
What was that experience like?
The experience of going to court was terrible. Suddenly, I found myself justifying myself. I went to accuse something and what happened is that I was defending myself, I was defending that what had happened to me was true.
