Tania Sánchez, a member of the United Left (IU), participated in a television series in which she answered a question about the relationship between her party and Podemos. Right-wing journalist Eduardo Inda asked him: “But why are you always so angry?” Sanchez responded immediately: “I know you’re struggling to understand that there are women who are able to talk seriously about serious issues, but you have to get used to it, because we’re in the 21st century and women don’t smile to put you at your service or to like you.” The video was shared in the next 48 hours by 27,600 people through your Facebook account.

Tania Sánchez is undoubtedly a smart and good communicator policy. It is also young and beautiful, it is difficult not to look at it (among other things, in this type of series the contrast between the beauty of female and male guests is obvious and suspicious). In the 21st century, it is hard for male Machistas to feel respect for young and elegant women. When they have to argue with a smart woman, these kinds of phrases are often used to put the woman “in place.” In a way, what Inda meant was: “Don’t forget that you’re a nice woman and that your role is to decorate television.” Female luminosity causes a short circuit to the machists and the reaction is to try to neutralize the woman with an aging misogyny. A bad strategy, a smart woman, who instead of running out of power, is able to highlight the pathetic greed of the male chauvinist.

This is often the case in politics. Remember what PP candidate Miguel Arias Cañete said in the company for the European elections after a television interview with PSOE candidate Elena Valenciano: “It’s hard to argue with a woman: if you manifest or narrow your intellectual superiority they’ll call you a male chauvinist.”

I wrote in a newspaper a report on the machismo experienced by political women. Valenciano told me that among the three great spheres of power of our society – the religious, the economic and the political – men have seen their hegemony threatened politically. In this context, we must place the barbarities of the Machistas and celebrate that they are enraged by the loss of battle. They must be asked why they are angry with smart women.

But that comment, “Why are you always angry?” also brought me a lot of memories. Once in the evening, when I was coming home alone, a men's cloak told me: “Smile, girl, you’re pretty.” They told me about this situation on social media and accused me of being exaggerated by many men, that the sweeper seemed to be a decent guy and that that had nothing to do with sexism. In public jobs, it has happened to me many times to approach an unknown man to say, “Don’t be so serious, smile.” Male colleagues never received the requirement to work with a permanent smile.

The sociologist Pierre Bordieu explains it well: “In patriarchal society, women have to fulfill the status of a symbolic object, constantly feeling the view of others. The consequence is insecurity and passion for always being attractive, slender and useful.” In the twenty-first century, however, we are more and more women than in the media, in politics and on the street, we reject this order, turning the Machian knives into a struggle for equality.