Kleila Kalouta: Bimbos Against Capitalism
For example, the way we fight capitalism in my generation. It‘s “Oh, yeah, we´re going to buy the sustainable product.” You think you‘re helping, but at the same time you‘re still functioning under capitalism. It‘s an illusion of choice and you kind of have to be ignorant to stay sane. So people just go with the cute green capitalism, or pink capitalism stuff. I think that‘s where most liberals are, rainbow capitalism bimbos.
M° Earlier on you touched on the term “femcel” with which you also work in some of your texts. How do you relate to that word?
K° Femcel is the feminine version of “incel”, it got very normalized and trendy for a while. I was very angry at men because had trauma, so I decided that I hate all of them. But it made me very miserable to hate half of the population while also trying to date it.
It‘s objectifying men and dehumanizing them, adopting the patriarchy pretty much. Doing it back to them and at the same time completely forgetting that feminism is about all genders. You‘re not really helping by traumatizing another man. Then, this boy will go on to pass on the trauma to another girl and so on…
Yeah it sucks to educate them, sometimes. I wouldn‘t sit down and educate someone that‘s straight up sexist, but if someone just makes a mistake, not a very big one, I‘m going to try telling them, this is not okay. I‘m helping myself and the women after me.
I'm
pretty
boy-
crazy
for
a feminist...
In order to fight patriarchy, first of all, in my opinion, we need to unite. And we need to have more men joining in. Patriarchy is making everyone miserable, it‘s not just a woman‘s issue.
M° I think often feminism has a bad name in the media. But I think it‘s always important to try to agree with as many people as you can, on a base level. Because without that, you eliminate any option of conversation and you‘re never going to be able to come together and fight. You‘d find out that most people just want the same thing, to be comfortable and happy. We should try to find…
K° Middle ground, and realize that we‘re all doing it for the same reasons. One other thing about femcels is the fact they‘re waiting for men to make a mistake. I saw that in myself too, sometimes I would go out tagging, almost wanting some man to come up to me so that I could explode on him. Mocking men and making them feel what you have felt in the past - that takes a lot of energy from you. We have to be smart about what to throw that anger towards.
M° Since the topic of the whole issue is dragons and the year of the dragon is seen as a very powerful one, I want to ask a kind of cliché question - what do you find strength in?
K° It‘s a very basic answer but, in my body, in my physical ability to walk and carry stuff. I‘m quite strong and I‘m happy about that. I don‘t care about the way I look, I‘m happy to physically be able to go through winter and go through summer and go to uni and come back, carry heavy objects, swim. I just know I‘ll be fine. Also having a positive mindset about my own misery, when I have to struggle because I know that later I‘m gonna feel so good, I find beauty in struggle.