Do not call them ladies | Opinion

In 1907 Picasso finished painting a picture. Later (perhaps years passed), he taught his friends and time later assigned a title: The ladies of Aviñón, thus evoking Barcelona Street in Aviñón, where there was a brothel whose women were portrayed with the angular face of Cubism. The title was after the work, and prostitutes were called Ladies. This is precisely the opposite, in times and ideas, which I do in this tribune: its title is the first thing I have written and I think that prostitutes should not be called them Ladies.

Since Picasso’s work at the current moment in which I write, of course, more than 100 years, enough time for a word like this, which alluded to the woman in terms of their civil status, has varied their level of use and the connotations that they have adhered. It has not changed, however, the social tendency to turn to words looking for How to name prostitution in the public sphere.

I examine the word Miss in its most recent media use. On account of the payments, with public money or through placements in state companies, which allegedly dispensed a Spanish minister to different women from his surroundings, The word has been used again in media, in gatherings (« Apartment with young ladies », « meetings with ladies »), in the commission created for the investigation of this matter (« Do you know this lady? ») And in statements of the accused himself, already former minister (« They cannot prove that I have been with ladies »). The ladies who are named, are they like those of Aviñón?

That word that today is discredited and that aims to be a euphemism to name prostitution was well advanced in the twentieth century a common way of calling single women. The recent and highly recommended book In the American garden, from Cristina Oñoro, Explore the memory of the Foundation in Spain at the beginning of the 20th century of the so -called International Institute, a very advanced female education center for its time, brother of the residence of ladies who, so called, is A fundamental reference in the feminist genealogy of our country And in the history of the protection of young women ( ladies) They wanted to study and train. Cleaning of degrading connotations, illustrative of an entity that was historically very significant, the name of the residence of Milk shows a venerable use of a word that today, however, we reject.

That story of rejection of the word Miss It is wide, but not old. Just as there is a part of the stable vocabulary in its meaning and in their appreciation by speakers, everything that has to do with the ways in which we qualify people is quite unstable in the language and is conditioned by the transformations that society is going through. The twentieth century, vertiginous when it comes to the role of women, has led to numerous linguistic changes of this type. Young gentleman It was marked as the stereotyped denomination for the useless vividor, singularized in the Son of the Lord; Missused before for the unmarried, implied a distinction of civil status in women in a way that was not practiced for men. It ended up declining. And the same has happened in other languages: the French equivalent Mademoiselle He was eliminated from the official forms boxes in France in 2012.

Regardless of their matrimonial status and their age, men are sirs and women ladies (Although many women despise this word overact as if being called lady out aging tag). We keep calling breast either Miss The school’s teacher, and in America there are countries where beauty contests are not called Misses but of Ladiesbut in general we have assumed that, outside those uses, Miss It is not an adequate word to define a woman.

In my opinion, say Miss Wanting prostitute It is of great frivolity: links prostitution with the sympathetic party of someone who can pay for a woman as other whims can be paid; puts the focus of prostitution About the prostituted woman And not on who consumes prostitution, knowing that it usually borders on criminal areas such as sexual exploitation and trafficking. Let’s not say that someone was with young ladies, but that he was with ladies or women, or Let’s dare to call them Prostitutes If we are considering the relationship, That in the case of the former minister is even more reprehensible, because a public office is presupposed. As is The sinister patio of corruption this week, I am ashamed to use this word. But I write it and claim it. Because in any corruption story the first corruption always occurs in words.

I go back in time, now two centuries before Picasso was born. In verse and naming the opposite models of female behavior that symbolized the caste Lucrecia and the courtesan Tais, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz It was one of the first women who criticized the double standard with which women were judged in relation to sexuality. The Mexican nun told men: « Let them do or make them which you are looking for. » Those who call them today Ladies I tell them: « Call them which you treat or treat them which you call them. »