ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the female Falangists resemanticized feminine surrender to their advantage implies that at least the women who joined Falangist organizations at their start should be seen as representing a conservative feminism. It considers what might have attracted certain Spanish women to fascism. The chapter explores the ways in which cross-gendered identifications might have worked for women. It presents historical evidence based on novels, autobiographies, speeches, and handbooks by Spanish female fascist activists, mostly founding members of the Spanish fascist party Falange Espanola's Student Union in 1933 and of its Women's Movement in 1934. The chapter examines the more complex picture that emerges from female fascists' representations of their own sex. It also examines the ambivalent disavowal of the feminine, and specifically of the mother, in the work of the Spanish male avant-garde writer and founding fascist, Ernesto Gimenez Caballero.
