Iva Marín Adrichem, who is the new guest on Sölva Tryggvason’s podcast, says she was a curious child and interacted a lot with adults, especially because she was blind:
“I was always strong and rebellious. I was a kid who jumped and ran all the time and made noise. I didn’t feel like I was treated like other kids. Because of my disability and I was also very curious and eager to listen to adults talk I was 10 when the bank collapsed and I remember my mum had to explain to me Icesave, bubble loans and the causes of the collapse. During this time, my classmates were playing. I think the fact that I started learning all kinds of things very early and was discriminated against made me very angry during teenagehood.”
When asked what people with full sight should keep in mind when it comes to blind people, she says she appreciates that people don’t reach out too much:
“I think people overdo it. Sometimes I take longer to do things, but that’s also because I’m a perfectionist. People can allow you to make mistakes, and I really like it if people allow me to make mistakes and push myself, but don’t constantly reach out to someone.”
Iva has recently come under fire after being removed from the tourism agency’s videos because of her opinions. She says the sequence of events was difficult, but it helped to have had a previous experience of being unpopular with some people:
“It reopened old wounds I had previously had and I made a conscious decision to step back from the discussion which I felt had become very odious and was taking too long.” I participated in all kinds of discussions for a while and sometimes publicly. But it was around 2018 that I started to feel that I was becoming unpopular with some people. I started denying my own marginalization and that was the first step into a certain group of people who didn’t like me. I have interacted with many people who define their social status completely in terms of dates and live their lives according to the parameters that characterize your status. Both marginalization and privilege. You really live in a power structure and are very aware of your position. At some point I realized that I didn’t want to live my life this way and that was quite a leap. Then I felt that some people were very angry with me, and that’s when I first learned what it was like to be unpopular just for stating your own position and taking independent decisions.
Iva says that at some point she felt that she could no longer hold independent opinions if she had to belong to certain groups.
“I saw no way out. If you constantly think about these power structures, you get stuck in your marginalization forever, and I wasn’t interested in that. From that groupthink comes the idea that you owe something thing to the group. I must have had certain political opinions because I belong to certain social groups and I had a duty to defend the rights of these groups using the methods that had been decided. And then if you have a different opinion, you are simply seen as a dangerous person or a threat. In fact, the group that claims to be advocating for the marginalized has begun to marginalize other individuals.”
She says that being blind, gay and a feminist has made members of the groups she belongs to even more angry with her than others who question their ideology:
“I tick all sorts of boxes when it comes to marginalized groups. But when it comes to diversity in thought and discussion, there’s very little tolerance. I’ve actually been exposed to what “hate speech is often called lately. By people in a group that likes to accuse others of hate speech. Some people have accused me of fanciful things that are very far from the truth and I know that some of them are deliberate just to divert the discussion. I feel that, among other things, because they feel like they are losing control because I belonged to their group. It is dangerous that someone who was in their group thinks differently, and maybe others will follow.”
The episode with Iva and all the other episodes of Sölva can be accessed at solvitryggva.is
