You learned philosophy for your family’s terror, he says.
Yes. His terror. It was not for your work! That is precisely why I found it interesting. I thought that non-production-oriented studies would give us knowledge on their own. I was looking for that purity. Of course, it wasn't. But I was 20 years old, what you want. But it was worth it, because it made me think a lot about how to organize society. Of power. Limits. Two things happened at that time: I met Michel Foucault and started working in a psychiatric center. Foucault explained how political and economic power controls us, without realizing it, through norms of consensus and accepted in some way, creating a society based fundamentally on the discipline. To do so, I used the example of the health centers, and at the age of 23, I started working in a psychiatric center, as a monitor, in the emergency room, at night. A very heavy experience. And of course, there was everything that Foucault described from the prenatal reality.

He talked about spiing and punishing.
The same thing. How you can control people progressively. The idea of respect caught my attention, for example. It may be a lack of respect to throw a pencil on the ground with rage in a psychiatric center. And letting a person not do it at a given moment can be very violent. On the contrary, the lack of respect is one of those who have thrown the pencil, and it is therefore worth it. Where I worked, they were very proud -- and they said to the four winds -- that they didn't connect people, but then they were given neuroleptics to make them still. It's the same thing. Civics and nonviolence are not the same thing. The same happens outside of psychiatric centers. Behind the walls of prisons and psychiatric wards there are more walls. The hardest thing is not explicit bans or police control, but indirect control, which is shaking the flag of civility.

That experience affected me enthusiastically. Notice, I came out of that center with a diagnosis: severe depression. It was very symptomatic. The psychiatrist told me I was 25 years old and I couldn't go on like that. They gave me antidepressants and I started working in the bar. And on the other hand, I started participating in the Social Office of Anthropology and Prison.

So did the issue of abuse come into your life?
For many years, if we weren't in safe spaces at night, in a normative environment, I felt very unprotected. When I felt that they were attacking me, I was attacking. Very violent. And when I was 28, my roommate told me to look. That my responses were disproportionate. By then I knew there was something in me. I started coming my memories. Images of a violation. Because when I got out of the closet, that was the first answer. A violation. He was 18 years old and 3 months old. This issue of memories was very dark. I remember the images, but the emotions didn't reach me. I only saw it when I remembered it. I didn't understand anything. I felt it was too much. And I put it aside. I went into a thousand accounts and forgot myself again.

But over time, I saw the images again. And with the images, the feelings. That was terrible. I exploded. My body recovered everything. I felt again those horrible caresses that made me when I was a child, which they told me… everything. Because, of course, there are not only physical ill-treatment, but also psychological – in addition to the psychological abuse of the abuse itself. I had to stop working. I had to leave everything. I went to the psychologist, I was given antidepressants again... and there began a process. Long and hard process.

He says the writing did him well.
Little by little I came to remember everything. Lived and felt. I heard voices, I felt what had happened a long time ago… I didn’t know what to do with it. I've written it since I was young, and I started writing everything I thought at the time. Anything that comes to mind. On the one hand I wanted to vomit and on the other I wanted to understand it. And writing helped me a lot. Notes and work absences. It was very precarious, but I had the opportunity, fortunately. And I spent over a year at full time writing. This allowed me not only to empty myself, but also to read myself again. I wrote a lot of poems. And make self-portraits. I used the photos to help me see myself. And in that process, I put myself back at the center of my life. I understood that I was immersed in a deep process. Reading the poems, I understood that the process was not linear. I didn't always talk about the same issues. Sometimes one emotion had been overcome and sometimes another… but there were some axes. And we divided the writings and the photographs into four blocks. Temporal amnesia, silence, fracture and moment of strength.

Silence after amnesia.
In the post-amnestic phase, I was constantly turning to silence. Silence and feelings of guilt. For you realize that you have been silent, that inside you knew and have been silent in you, and also others. And you feel guilty. Little by little I understood that I did not have a responsibility in that either. That amnesia itself is a survival strategy. That the sexual abuse experienced in childhood are border experiences. You know, consciously or unconsciously, that in such a situation your physical integrity is in danger. And before that, you do what you can. No more. And you'll do anything to survive. Forget about it, among other things.

But you realize you're not the only one who's shut down. That others have also been silent. Because we understand the issue of childhood sexual abuse as an exclusive relationship between the victim and the abuser. But that's not the case. There is a whole structure that supports and enables abuses. And being aware of it led me to break.

What does the fracture change at that time? When that rupture occurred, I stopped obsessively wondering why I, why I, how I left it, how I've been silent... I realized that if I focused
on those questions I would once again strengthen their authority and my guilt. There doesn't have to be a cause.

It was an experience. It happened and it's over. And that's where I could understand a lot. Why did he respond so violently to attacks at night, for example? Or where did my mutism or paralysis come from at some point? It was to stand in front of a mirror. I am, too. I had this exciting experience. Indeed. And now what am I going to do with that? It's actually inevitable that this partly defines your life. If I deal with this at my conferences and courses, it's because I've been abused. But I have decided, as far as possible, how that experience will define me.

And at the time of force did he publish the book?
Yes. I had to settle somewhere else. Need to read and tell what was experienced from another place. The publication of the book was a form of public denunciation. A way to make the issue of abuse visible and explain what the person who has experienced it can feel. I understand it as a political act, not as a testimony. It was an exercise to put the victim out of the role.

Why the need to place the victim out of the role?
I have been abused and, therefore, I am a victim. And I need your recognition. But this role has strict limitations. And sometimes there's no way out, and in the long run, it's not a habitable place. What happens is, if you take the victim out of the role, they take you even further away. The category of victims, like all social categories, generates homogenisation. Abusing a child can be touching him/her physically, but also making him/her watch a pornographic film, or witnessing the rape of another… There are a thousand types of abuse and a thousand ways of living each. But from the moment you're a victim, it seems that you're part of a giant magma, and that all the people who are part of it have lived the same way. We feel the same and we have the same needs. And that goes from being an interpretation to being a requirement. So if you don't add up to that pattern, your word will be questioned.

In addition to losing her name, the victim loses her voice, if not to be told exactly what terrible things they did to her. As a victim, certain attitudes are expected from you. Victim attitudes. You can't express your anger by aggressiveness. You can't be happy. Go juerga. You have to be sad. Low Weak. Silence. Same as in rape cases.
I don't mean we have to give up the role of victim and get out of that role violently. Let people who have been abused do whatever they want and can. Others have a role in this. To change the way of thinking. To ask about the recognition of victims from a parallel relationship or above the shoulder and from the distance.

It's hard to feel close to something that's taboo.
Yes. That is why tobacco must be exploited. Child abuse is seen as a horror, but rather than a horror, it is something that is accepted and allowed. The moral perspective is too simple and, above all, does not provide much. Child abuse is a political problem. A public health problem. If we limit ourselves to morally analyzing, we will not understand the social mechanisms on which sexual abuse of children is based, related to some forms of relationship of this society. It's not about differentiating human beings from monsters. It's about understanding how a society creates individuals who abuse children. There is an abuser and it can be the most normal. In this same neighborhood where we're living, several people will live.

It's also taboo because if we start talking about child abuse, we'll end up talking about the family, and the family is the most important institution that supports the state and the capitalist system. But for many children, the family is not a safe place. These children also know that opening the mouth is a family explosion. And their responsibility is too heavy for a child or adolescent.

It's everybody's responsibility. But what do we do for our responsibility?
It's very complicated. I believe that these times are appropriate to think about it, to eliminate this moral burden and to analyse the issue from a political point of view. But, first of all, putting at the same level those who have been abused and those who have not done so would not be wrong. And on the other hand, place the theme in the routine, and not in punctual journalistic titles. According to Save The Children, in the Spanish state one in four girls and one in seven children have suffered sexual abuse during their childhood or adolescence. They are, therefore, common in statistics and frequent in the lives of many: many children suffer abuse every day, today and tomorrow as well.

And linking this reality to our relationship forms is imperative. Become aware of the power that we adults have to decide the limits and that we take children away from them. Why should the grandson kiss his grandfather when he doesn't want? You will have to give two kisses to someone who does not support. But do we want the child to feel compelled too? How far? We do a lot of things by convention, but disabling children to set their limits is a danger. The child is told who should love, who should not, what desire has to have and what should not. And without the abuse, we adults take over the bodies of children. We educate them to accept the limitations imposed by adults, but we don't teach them where the limitations they can place on adults.

* * * * * * * * * * *

#MEETOINCEST
“A year ago, the phenomenon #SmileToInceste took place in France. People started to tell the abuses they suffered in childhood through Twitter and a big upheaval emerged. This responds to the rise of feminism today, but also to frivolization. There is already a request to break that silence. “Break the silence! Breaking the silence!” It is not fair to place the responsibility of silence in abuses. A person breaks the silence when they have an environment that protects it. When I broke, I had a zone. I had support. But actually, on the Internet, this breakup doesn't guarantee a real network. And it gives me a little bit of anger to push people to talk. Do you want to break the silence? We'll break it. All of us who have been abused in childhood will tell you what happened to us. OK. Now say it, do you think you're going to be able to bear it? What is society going to maintain? Is the silence breaking and is it already? Talking is not enough.”

RABIA
"Rabies is criminalized, but for me it has been and is very useful. In the era of the commodification of spirituality, conflict, aggressiveness, are poorly seen, but rabies is a very healthy emotion. My poems and recitals start from rabies. When I start, my voice, my body and my words don't match the image that people have of the victim. And that causes discomfort. And that's what interests me. I wrote the book from rage, I use rabies in recitals, and since that rage causes discomfort in listeners, possibilities of change arise. An analytical approach is also needed for the political reading of child sexual abuse. But one doesn't take away the other, and in my workshops I work both at once."