Your association Piper Txuriak, and you in particular, have been working for years on masculinity with adolescent boys in the classroom. How did this need arise, what motivates schools or families to organise this type of work?
Are young boys no longer like the men of yesteryear, have they outgrown that Rambo-like masculinity, have they stopped being macho? Do young men today still repeat negative behaviours of that traditional masculinity? How can I help my son or my male students in their process of ‘becoming men’? These are questions that we often hear and that are often the motivation for activities on gender, equality or violence aimed at boys.
To put the focus on them as we have so far put it on them, to understand that they also need to revise their gender identity, and that it is essential to do so. But in what way? There seems to be a growing demand for gender-sensitive pedagogical tools to approach this work and relationships with boys. This is why it is common for schools to ask associations such as ours to collaborate with them.
Could you explain how you introduce this topic to children in your workshops?
When we are born we are given a suit that will condition what our life will be like. Moreover, as we grow up, the suit will become narrower and narrower, limiting our movements more and more. Until a moment comes when we no longer know which is the suit and which is our skin. It has become so tight that our skin is covered, and we believe that the suit is ‘natural’. And this ‘false skin’ is assigned a value and functions on a social level. This means gender.
With the excuse of a mere physical characteristic, we are classified as men or women... the criteria is as simple and reduced as that. However, it carries with it a tremendous social and familial burden. It is strong enough to build on that basis a huge and heavy castle that will determine our tastes, habits, decisions, thoughts, feelings, bodily gestures, ways of speaking, clothing, our games and toys, the films we like to watch, the studies and the profession we choose. Hence the first and most persistent question we ask ourselves, ‘Is it a boy or a girl? This is such a determining question that not even the Spanish language has a concept to refer to ‘people’ in a neutral way.
What motivated you to dedicate yourself to this work?
I really enjoy interacting with young people, and I always find it a luxury and a gift to have this privileged position of entering classrooms and youth groups through the role that I have. I learn a lot by figuring out how to effectively get my message across to them, through their resistance and mistrust, and I learn a lot by listening to their lives and thoughts on these issues. It is an enriching job and every minute I invest in it transforms me as a person, and helps me to better understand the reality of the men. It brings me down to earth... with them there is no need for technicalities or academic discourse. They force me to be authentic, integral and clear, that is their filter to open the door for me.
Can you tell us something about yourself regarding your career in the area of equality and masculinity?
We founded the Men's Association for Equality ‘Piper Txuriak’ in 2009, and since then I have dedicated myself to coordinating the association, attending to the different requests we receive, and providing a wide variety and quantity of awareness and sensitisation activities. At the same time, I have worked as an equality agent for the Deusto-San Ignacio Psycho-Social Assistance Module, focusing on the elimination of sexism and running programmes aimed at men.
