The skin is political with whom we touch. It's also what we call skin. Identities are also political, or where we place the dimension of sexuality. Heteronorma, as a regulator of public and private life, limits people and practices; it determines what is good and what is bad. Therefore, sexuality is also a political conflict. For this reason, Euskal Herriko Bilgune Feminist and the Topatu Gazte Communication Project have jointly created the documentary Arrakala, zirrikitu bat hatzean. Through a fortnight of interviews, testimonies have been collected from people who have chosen other identity, experiential and sexual options. The authors compare heteronorma with a rigid rock, so the concept of gap refers to it. Because they want to open a gap in the "rock."

The documentary will be released on June 13 at the Doka Kafe de Donostia-San Sebastián, from 19:30 a.m.

We then interviewed two interlocutors of the documentary:

Ainhoa Etxaide

"If we build another Basque country, we must also talk about heteronorms"

You've been a mother, but your partner gave birth. Do you think that the mother and the other mother who bring the newborn into the world is socially valued?

No, there is still one single maternity: a woman giving birth, with a happy pregnancy... Motherhood that makes her full woman. Then there seem to be secondary maternity hospitals. There is a constriction that I have experienced. On the one hand, people don't understand that I was denied pregnancy. “I don’t want to have it,” he said, and it seemed like he was sick. On the other hand, being a second mother. When we say the role of the second mother, that “second” is not the one next door, but the one below. That main model of motherhood is in force.

How did they get taken in the union that you had to be a mother?

The union is the photograph of society: Within the union there is a struggle for a model of life in freedom, but it is true that there are views that dominate in society. When I said, because my belly didn't grow, it didn't seem like the time of pregnancy was coming. “It doesn’t yet come,” as if you thought. And I had no children inside! The contradictions caused by these kinds of situations still show the way forward.

In the video he says it has been “easy” to be a lesbian and to work in unionism, because after all you are the general secretary, but it is more difficult for those in lower positions.

My experience is there and it reflects a reality, but I would not dare to say that that is the only reality in the union. Isn't there a homophobic attitude at LAB because I haven't had any problems? I don't think so. This brings me to another thought: it's certainly easier to live things in freedom when you have power, when you have possibilities, and when you have tools, than in other areas. In general in life, also in the union. They see me as secretary general, and then being a lesbian is a feature.

For example, I am sure that when a woman goes to a workplace to discuss between men, they have often seen only one woman and not one union leader. Also, I am sure that when a lesbian sees her situation at work, she will find difficulties that I have not encountered.

Are the popular movement and militancy in the Basque Country as progressive as it is believed?

We have to recognize that the struggle for freedom has been especially related to our people, to the working class, to the class struggle... and to them have joined the struggles for free lives. But they're added. Much remains to be done. I do not believe that we in the Basque Country are more outlawed than others, nor that we are more reactionary. There is a problem here – that of heteronorma – it is a political issue, and in order to build another Basque country we have to talk about it and make decisions.

We're used to fatalistic discourses about homosexuality. You, however, in the documentary, relate lesbianism to freedom and enjoyment.

Yes, dissent, disobedience, a return to the situation... makes you free. Dissidence generates illusion, positive vision, you can make jokes ... Another thing is that dissent sometimes, many times, brings sorrows, or discriminates against you, or they turn you away and attack you. You can't get anything good at punishment, you have to fight punishment. In any case, in fact, we have to positivise the difference, overcome the limits that they want to impose on us... It's a lot more suffering and a lot more sad to live low and as you're told. Dissidence is delicious and see how you break the schemes to people. The system punishes everything that is different, but it is best that it is different.

Zuriñe M. Baztan

"If reality wasn't binary, I wouldn't qualify as a man or as a woman."

You were socialized as a man, but you felt like a woman.

When I was 9, I knew I had something different from the rest of the kids. I identified with my sister at the time. Unfortunately, in those years, I didn't know that that was called transsexuality.

How did you decide to start identifying yourself as a woman?

At first I was a man for the world, and I wasn't afraid to teach my body as a man, but after all, I didn't notice anything weird. Although she felt like a woman, she didn't see her from the outside. In addition, I hid in kindness: playing football, being tough, miserable ... But after my father's death and my incarceration, I decided to live my own life, not the life that society has sought for me. So I started trying to become a woman. Then I did the operations.

You went from being a man to being a woman. On the contrary, it criticizes the binarism of gender and sex.

This society is binary: there are women and men. Only if there are two options, because I see myself in the body of man and I don't identify myself, I'm a woman. Furthermore, I have also taken the identity of women as a political option. To the extent that it serves to defend the rights and demands of women, it is politically very interesting. If reality wasn't binary, would I be somewhere else? I probably wouldn't qualify as a man or as a woman.

In short, because identities are multiple.

Let's imagine it like this: at one end of a rope are men and at the other end are women. If we understood that there is a continuum and that we don't have to be a corner, if we were a more complex issue... It is not “XY zara”, therefore, a body with a penis; therefore, a man; and since you are a man, you have to educate in masculinity... That is not the case. We mean parallel lines that don't touch being a man or a woman. No, by no means. Some of us would be in the middle, or on the shore, or around -- and we can even make zigzag!

In this sense, I've already done an operation. But from the present point of view, I am not sure that it did. In other words, it is a political fiction to ask now whether or not I had operated at that time, if I had then known the political theories that exist today.

At that time, I wanted a surgical procedure, and nothing else. To what extent did social pressure condition my decision to operate, and to what extent can I live, being the woman I am, with the body I am? Namely, it is very difficult to say so.