The recent case involving actor José de Abreu and right-wing federal deputy Tábata Amaral is just one more sad episode in an empty and superficial soap opera set on social media.
It is in this soap opera that the petty bourgeoisie, on the right and on the left, daily builds castles in the air disguised as reality.
By claiming for herself the image of a woman victim of violent speech, Tábata appropriated and used a feminist argument to satisfy her personal interests of re-election in 2022. Her media reaction is propaganda and that's it.
We didn't know, however, where the Globo actor, a darling of the left-wing channels on YouTube, was thinking when he passed a ball with so much honey to the offended character.
As in these cases, the castle in the air of the private deputy also gained the unconditional defense of the mob of smart ones, a reaction with the face of an organized crowd to ensure maximum impact in the form of likes and shares.
Concrete, that is, of visible and palpable reality, is the fact that the privatized deputy is neither offended nor ashamed when she condemns Brazilian working women to terrible and inhuman poverty by voting in favor of economic agendas that favor of the rich population, which in exchange guarantees, among other benefits, generous spaces in the hegemonic press.
Currently, Brazilian working women cannot access the minimum social protection, such as labor rights, income to buy basic subsistence items for themselves and their children, and health, housing support, and retirement systems that can avoid life and an old age free from despair.
One of those responsible for this regrettable but totally avoidable situation is the private deputy. Tábata Amaral's violence against Brazilian women is conscious and committed to the economic interests of the wealthy class. Usually old white men whom she lets herself be served and used on her knees.
Interests are satisfied when legislation, approved by her and other colleagues from the privé club, authorize the inexhaustible transfer, to these rich, of the income produced by millions of Brazilian working women, completely eliminating minimum conditions for survival and condemning them and their children to horrible sufferings.
Tábata and his privatized colleagues legalize exploitation. The apathetic use of feminist arguments helps to delegitimize possible criticisms of her performance. Feminism becomes just a smokescreen used to cover up concrete attitudes that only spread horror and despair.
This isn't feminism.
“Petite-bourgeois feminism is insufficient to carry out the complete demystification of female consciousness, since, (...), it is committed to the social order of class societies (...)”.
The sentence above was written by researcher Heleieth Saffioti in her book The Woman in the Society of Classes, which had its first edition in 1969.
Florestan Fernandes was the advisor to the researcher, who died in 2010. She consolidated her career as a sociology professor at UNESP and dedicated her life to research related to violence against Brazilian women.
However, it is not surprising to note that, more than 50 years after the first edition of her book, the limited and individualist political horizon of the Tábatas is the only alternative in the private market of personalité deputies.
Tábata sells her image on social media as if she were a character in an American TV series from the 1960s.
It is even sadder to realize that we are in the middle of a class war that still seems like a fantasy to many who call themselves on the left.
Note that many women, public figures in politics, are on the fence. They claim to be left-wing, but they live in this petty-bourgeois castle made of air, taking advantage of the highlighted hashtags as much as Tábata.
They condemn the government, of course.
However, it is little: they do not manifest consistent, conscious, and concrete positions against social disaster and do not place class warfare at the center of the political debate. Basically, they are accomplices in the violence perpetrated by agents of the right.
There is nothing more comfortable than promoting #forabolsonaro. This hashtag removes the critical spotlight on their conformist attitudes and puts in the shadow the institutional bubble to which they belong and insist on keeping intact. And, most importantly, it guarantees the votes in 2022.