Stop justifying violence against women
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Cases like what happened in Italy are one more reason to stop justifying male violence against women
In recent days, women belonging to the city of Ancona in Italy, came out to protest after it became known that in 2017, Italian judges, three of them women, decided to absolve two Peruvians accused of rape in prison in 2015. The defendants were convicted in the first degree for raping a woman also Peruvian, and who at that time was 20 years old. Because of the severity of her injuries, the victim had to go to the hospital, where she had to suture 14 points in the vagina, as reported by CNN.
Even though her story and the evidence found inside her blood showed that, in effect, the attackers had raped her, they were not convicted. Among the arguments presented by the judges, the one that generated the most indignation, is that the victim "was too masculine, ugly and unattractive to be raped."
It seems that the standards of beauty with which women fight every day, reached the courts, and now are part of the decisions of judges. However, comments of this kind are not new. The current president of Brazil, known for his misogynistic speech, addressed an opposition deputy in 2003 and affirmed that she did not deserve to be raped simply because she was "very ugly and very bad".
These examples are more common than one may think. With regard to the situation of the Colombian women's soccer team, where several players denounced the sexual and labor harassment suffered, I heard comments stating that because they were not arranged, because they were "manly", people didn't think someone could harass them.
Also read: How do the institutions in charge of closing the gender gap are standing?
You can imagine the anger that, as a woman, I feel for those comments. At all times, male violence against women is being justified. In this precise case it is because of the appearance, so they were not pretty enough, masculine, etc; but in other cases it happens to us what happens to us because we are too trimmed, to have skirts, dresses, which are the pretext to use the famous phrase "is that if I was dressed like that, it was because I wanted".
No, our decisions, our way of dressing, of fixing ourselves, are not the pretext for men to feel they have the power to violate us, to make comments. And why do they think they can decide on us? For the simple fact that as a society we have naturalized the different 'microsexism' (ideas, gestures, attitudes and daily behaviors, internalized and justified as natural, that condition the daily life of women, according to the definition of BBC).
If from us, from our gender, we begin to support ourselves more, which is a current that with the passage of time has been strengthening more, we can fight
It was women who decided to remove the conviction of rapists for the simple fact that the victim was ugly.microsexism. Still, there is also the importance of men in this case. It is not a bad idea to explain the situations of inequality to which we are subjected every day. To fight with value judgments about our appearance, about who pays the bill, etc., lies in the education that as a society we begin to create.with
LatinAmerican Post | Laura Viviana Guevara Muñoz
Translated from "Dejemos de justificar la violencia contra la mujer"
