Chutnik: I am from the 1970s generation. I constantly heard about the pervert in the elevator. We were warned

Klaudia Kolasa, nazwa.gazeta.pl: I have just finished reading your collection of short stories “Dintojra”. I must say that for me this book was like a conversation with friends. On the one hand, the stories are made up, on the other hand, they seem surprisingly close.

You never know how to talk about truth in the context of literature. This is an invented truth. It’s always the case that you mix your experiences, stories and those of your loved ones with fiction. These stories could have happened and these heroes and heroines could have existed – if it weren’t for the fact that I made them up.

You said in one of the interviews that for you literature is a punch between the eyes. Who was that fist aimed at this time?

This time it was a little different. I could easily give it a face or a name like “Cwaniar”. Then this fist was aimed at the patriarchal system, developers. It was more about life here. This is a book about survival. I don’t know who the enemy is. Sometimes we are each other’s enemies, sometimes someone else hurts us. And some stories are simply about the inability to adapt to life and the social system in which we live. If we want to live on the margins, we also suffer the consequences.

Your heroines struggle with dilemmas and conflicts that are close to all of us. You write about broken hearts and loneliness, but also about motherhood and the experience of rape and sexual violence. Supposedly, times are changing and things should be getting better for us, but while reading, I wondered whether the lives of contemporary women are really so different from the lives of women from previous generations.

It’s a hard question. I immediately think of the story “Rape. Voices” and the fact that sexual violence and violence against women in general is still a problem we struggle with. In the 21st century, in a country in the middle of Europe, we have to fight for the adoption of the Geneva Convention. There is still some political chaos around it. This is insanely sad to me. I feel like it’s one and the same story.

Some time ago I worked on publishing the essay “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf, which is 100 years old. This essay is still relevant. To be free, a woman must be economically independent and have her own space. And now the question is, is it great that we still find ourselves in the text from a hundred years ago, or do we think to ourselves: “Really? Nothing has happened in all these years?”

Of course, a lot has changed for the better, but in personal matters that concern our own freedom, there is still some enslavement. We need to find our way around social media. We have to find our way in the professional market, which is different than it was when I was growing up. We have to find our way in the face of violence and barely visible things that are easier to let go of than to catch. We have to learn to say: Hello, it’s bad that someone slapped my butt or stared at me persistently. Finally, we must constantly fight to talk about our experiences in a way that others will acknowledge them.

The story “Rape. Voices” you mentioned is based on true stories. Stories of women who have experienced sexual violence. There’s a phrase we always hear when we leave the house: “Take care of yourself.” Except that the things that can happen outside are not up to us at all.

Each of us knows what lies behind this sentence. Of course, apart from great concern, it’s simply: “Take care of yourself, because you’re a chick in public space.” This story was based on over 20 in-depth interviews with women who experienced violence. All the sentences I wrote down in this text were really said. I combined the stories of almost 30 women into one. Later, based on these interviews and research, a report on sexual violence was also prepared. The percentages we find in the story are also true. Except I might as well make them up. It wouldn’t change much.

Because it is impossible to precisely examine the scale of this phenomenon.

Of course. Many abuses go unreported at all. Not only do women not report violence to the police, they also do not speak out about it, so we will never know its true scale, especially sexual violence. However, we have been hearing unwritten messages and having to deal with them for as long as I can remember.

I’m from the 1970s generation. I constantly heard about a pervert who rides in an elevator. We were warned: “Children, be careful, because there is an old man exposing himself in the bushes.” In later years, when I returned from a party, my mother was awake and waiting. And all this did not end in adulthood. Still, when, for example, a friend goes on a Tinder date, she sends me the location. We must constantly watch out for ourselves and each other. Let us remember that most perpetrators are people we know.

Sylwia Chutnik ‘Dintojra’ press materials

In your story, the voice of the thirty women is an old lady. Why?

I wanted to show the multigenerational nature of this experience and the fact that violence against women has no age, nationality or religion, but gender. This story “take care of yourself”, “don’t come in here”, “don’t talk to a stranger” applies to generations of our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, us, our daughters. This is some kind of endless matrilineal herstory. The experience of older women is often depreciated. And they don’t talk about their experiences as older women because no one listens to them. I wanted to give a voice to the older heroine.

Often, these stories do not resonate in families. We don’t know what our grandmothers went through.

First of all, they survived the war. They don’t want to talk about different things, because after the war people didn’t talk about their experiences. Because there was a brave new world and people believed that it could actually be like that. They didn’t want to go back to the past. Only this past continues to haunt us in subsequent generations. And in the context of such a universal experience as violence, it is difficult to talk about it. Because when? At dinner? As a secret? As a warning? It is not known what form to find for this.

What was it like working on this text?

It was hard work. The recordings shocked me. From a literary perspective, I would never have come up with all these sentences. It was very important for me to submit them 1:1 and to cast a collective vote. I had Bożena Keff’s “Song about Mother and Homeland” in my head all the time. Although this is a slightly different topic, it was shocking to me. The dispassionate voice of the narrator talking about something terrible. It stimulates the imagination more than drastic scenes in a horror movie. I wanted it to be a text like this.

I remember it was vacation when I was writing. I sat in a summer dress and processed the experiences not only of the women I was listening to, but also of millions of women around the world. This is still a tabooed topic. People who experience it don’t talk about it. And if they do, they have to explain it. This also happened after the results of this research on sexual violence were published. The report, which was published, was immediately denied.

On what basis?

That the methodology was bad, that it was not true, where did these data, where did these people come from? Talking about violence is always conditioned by the fact that you have to explain yourself. You – not the perpetrator. When writing this, I also realized that it could be perceived this way. “Oh Jesus, the same thing again”, “made up”, “exaggerated”, “blown up”. As a woman and a feminist, I still have to face this.

Do you think that after the change of government, women in Poland will be better?

Of course not. I’m a whiner. I’m a grumpy by education, I’m a grumpy by passion because I’ve been involved in social activities for years, but I’m also common sense. This does not mean that this is such a pessimistic vision. I think it’s my job to whine and look at my hands. Don’t go crazy in a bubble of ecstasy that knights on white horses have arrived.

I am a few years old and I remember the demonstration from 1993, when they introduced the so-called compromise, i.e. a ban on abortion. I know that not much has changed on this matter since then, and many years and many governments have passed. I know, however, that until certain things are won – which consists in whining and talking like a broken record about problems – there will be no gifts. It’s already visible. Not much passed and after three days they said that abortion “is no exaggeration.” While according to research, abortion was in second place when it comes to the issue of a quick and urgent change of the ruling team.

There is no logic here. It would seem that they saw us on the street and knew how strong we were, but: “girls, it’s not that simple.” Suddenly it turns out that for the government this is an irrelevant topic, related to morals; “Later, later. First we have very important things here.” We just don’t know what kind. I’m a complainer, I want to count and keep an eye on my hands. Of course, I give credit, but without exaggeration.