Well, there's a character that is married but has a series of affairs. It also appears to be the case, because it has a few very definite rules ...
IP: It is Guilherme and ends up being perhaps the most misogynist of all, because he does it all but has the wife is at home at his service. Perhaps the most serious case, because the other one isolates from them, but he uses them and throws them out, which is very common. We also agreed with it by saying, well we are all free and all equal, but a woman who is a Casanova, a seductive is not well accepted by society, or is treated the same way. If this man who does this to women if he knew that the wife had a lover, and we know lots of cases, he will probably say I know it's unfair, but it is different. It is different why? So these are the questions, there is no reason to be different. Not legally.
This book hurts deeply because it almost demystifies the romantic concept we have of men. A woman ever approached you to say that?
IP: It is funny, but no. What happened to me was that men react badly.
Really? What did they say?
IP: I like to think that we are not like that. I emphasized that he could not say us, because it was a specific group, but felt immediately reached personally that he reacted and that was amusing. He told me: we are not so cynical and selfish as in the book. It is clear that is written by a woman who has a female view. But why? What is not there? No one can explain. The consciousness that I have, although the novels of fiction are not scientific documents, but I documented myself enough, I've been listening for years and taking notes, is that choosing a woman is like a car, which is plastered in the character of the older man. I took notes of the conversations of my friends, acquaintances, and I asked a kind of sociological study that points tics of language, ways of speaking.
You said previously that you take notes, started doing it when you finished the previous book?
IP: No, I'm always taking notes. But, since "in your hands" I thought I wanted to do a male counterpart, because it was a book for women, which is the twentieth century feminine view, how it changed the situation of Portuguese women and I thought: how about men? Because after all, is more defined which is the emancipation of women than of men and their male chauvinism. On the other hand, I see that are a bit lost because they do not know which model to follow, sometimes I say as a joke, women want sensitive men, but they want the same time the guardian and the one that deals with practical matters. All we hold certain stereotypes, blue for boy and pink for girls. If you go the supermarket there is a section for boys and one for girls, I think it should not even be legal, because for her we babies toys and kitchens sets and every type of game is for boys. These marks. I wanted to write a book about intimacy, which at bottom is a theme that you can work in several aspects, which is they among themselves and they with women, because the relationships have changed much from the moment that could divorce, which is recent. In the past, men had the right to open the correspondence of their wives, adultery was criminalized only if it was perpetuate by women. This equality has changed the relations in very little time.
They do not victimize then self's to much? When they claim the trauma that was caused by a woman and that made them so.
IP: Sometimes not even justified. There are many who say, I know I did wrong, but I am like that. I've heard over the years that same excuse, I am this way and I say don't be. It's like a snake that has to attack, because it has poison. It's stronger than me; it cannot be because a woman does not have this kind of discourse.
They are also the result of one certain mother who always excused because they are male.
IP: Yes exactly and we see it today, me and my generation of women. I often noted that they expect from me much more, that do not expect from my brothers. As an example, did you visit the great-aunt who is ill? Have you asked this to my brother? Oh, you know that man does not have the same attention. But, they should have, I have a life of work as he does. Since childhood I have more social obligations than he and even have a mother who considers herself a feminist and emancipated in relation in comp arising to her generation. At the time of April 25th there were moves to abolish the miss competitions and she supported this idea. My mother who grew up in equal rights expected things of me that she did not expect from the boys who accompanied me throughout life. My grandmother said that a man in the kitchen is a hamper if he is there is because the woman does not fulfill its role. In the Christmas dinner at home of my grandparents first were served the men of the house and only after women because they are less worthy. If you read "until tomorrow comrades" of Alvaro Cunhal, which is a neo realistic novel of the struggle and resistance against the dictatorship, the comrades who were distributing the underground press have wife's, and they ate only at the end if something was left over, because Comrades needed food to have more endurance. Karl Marx in his house was the only one who ate meat, because he needed as the thinker, the wife and children ate the potatoes.
I also recall that Einstein was also an intellectual, a thinker of another area, was also concerned with the immense humanity, but his behavior towards the family was atrocious, the wife did not exist if not to serve him.
IP: In a debate in SIC 1996, with Antonio Barreto and Pacheco Pereira and Ana Vicente and I and about feminism, the first of then said: Well, I think women's rights are ok, but I'm not a feminist. I interrupted him and said, so you are not anti-racist, because you are not black. And he replied: I never thought things through that perspective. Women's rights are less visible. In Western democratic society no one dares to discriminate against a person of color, race or even by social origin, you can still see it in relation to women; hence the high rates of domestic violence in our country. I think it's worrying a study that was done in universities in which a significant amount of youth that are dating accepted violence as proof of love. This means that these values are slowly changing and self-esteem of women is very low.
But my generation and I'm 40 years old, not so tacitly accepted these violent behaviors and makes me confusion that these girls that are more evolved perpetuates them with all the information at their disposal.
IP: Because the values did not have an effective change was apparent. It was very fast, now we are all equal. But what is isolated is sexism and they have no memory of the struggle against it, and also in a financial crisis there are these social discourses that speak of the importance of motherhood and breastfeeding. All this speeches have as backdrop, to keep the women away from work and say what is most essential the mother to the child and some feminists have fallen a little in this deception, but the fact is that the father is as essential as the mother they also have paternity leave. Until there is parity in life and we live in a society dominated by the beauty and physical appearance, women fear that if they not accept these rule created by men, get passed over and they still live in this illusion that a man is successful if they have a career and their welfare, for a woman is to find a man, because who does not find a pair is because it had not enough value.
