2018; -44
We have become accustomed to counting each year the ones that are missing, as if it were just another statistical data. An analysis figure such as the unemployment or birth rate, a piece of data that alarms most of us, but something we have normalized.
What's more, it would seem strange to us to count 0 victims of gender violence in one of these years, because that would be an exceptional piece of data. 2019: 0 victims. We would celebrate it.
But... how can we celebrate and qualify as excellent data that they don't murder us?
Because we are at that point of normalizing the murders of WOMEN for the mere fact of being Women.
This fact does alarm when people are asked... what if it were your mother? your sister? your friend? I always see the same expression... the change in features, the gray and fearful looks, at that moment the issue does begin to be worrying and real. We forget that those 44 women had cousins, they had children, they had friends... and yet they still seem distant to us.
But the reality is that we are at a point where in the name of heteropatriarchal love you can kill.
I can't stop thinking that surely those 44 women at one time were excited at some point when their murderers called them by their names or said nice things in their ears or by Whatsapp. Surely, most of those women at some point felt loved and protected by their future murderers. And that's where we are, as Rosalía says in her album El Mal Querer, dedicated to everything but love: "SAY MY NAME when there's no one around. Let the things you tell me not leave through that door." The things you tell me, which are surely anything but nice, as they surely were at the beginning. Because most beginnings are beautiful.
But if we go back to other times... when murders were not counted, all those generations of women who have gone through life keeping quiet and carrying... keeping quiet and carrying... I can't stop thinking about them, how many were not counted but simply, we were told that they "died".
Gender violence is not just a pinch or a push. It is a look of disgust and defiance, it is a snub or a mockery.
Bad love is everything that doesn't make you feel good or comfortable.
Another type of violence "normalized and unpunished";
"Pornography is a form of sexual violence exercised against
women because it promotes an image of the stereotyped woman,
exalting violence and/or degradation and violates the condition and
quality of life of women, and even belittles their basic rights."
The other day Évole on Salvados asked a group of young people if they thought that the sexual relations they had could be loaded with consensual violence, following the porn model. After thinking for a while, they all said that "it surely influences".
I have the feeling that women have almost always been the crying towel of the species. The worst off, historically, that's for sure. Is the thing changing? Possibly... but the change is still slow.
Those 44 women have names and no one will ever be able to erase them.
Hopefully soon there will be no day when we have to demand that they don't kill us, hopefully every November 25th will be just another day. A cold day, but only because it's winter.
If you are reading me and you have the slightest doubt that you may run the risk of being the 45th, sister, get out. Don't take that risk, your life is worth more than any other possibility. Get out of there. You have a lot to live for.
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By Amalia Fajardo.
