“We can change it”

“THERE IS STILL A LOT TO DO IN MANY PARTS OF THE WORLD AND IN VARIOUS AREAS TO DESTROY THAT UNFAIR AND DEMOLITING MENTALITY THAT CONSIDERS THE HUMAN BEING AS A THING, AS AN OBJECT FOR SALE, AS AN INSTRUMENT... “. “ONLY THE OPEN RECOGNITION OF THE PERSONAL DIGNITY OF WOMEN AND MEN CONSTITUTES THE FIRST STEP TO BE TAKEN TO PROMOTE THEIR FULL PARTICIPATION BOTH IN THE ECCLESIAL AND IN THE SOCIAL AND PUBLIC LIFE”

(CHRISTIFIDELI LAICI 24)

Violence in its different manifestations is an issue that affects all of us. Both men and women tend to be objects and subjects of violence, although the situation of social subordination of women favors that they become, much more frequently, the recipients of structural and circumstantial violence.

Listening to and thinking about the violence exercised against women (from different social sectors, age, religion, ethnicity, etc.) produces discomfort, shudders, stupor, and indignation. We can learn about violence when it invades the public sphere through police reports or when it is imposed as a spectacle in the print or television media. These establish a standard of visibility of violent events, considered as “everyday” or “natural”, in which the public – violence as a reality that people suffer – and the private – the privacy of the violated people – intersect. The narrative - written, radio and television - makes it ostentatious, almost obscene when it promotes a hypertrophy of listening and seeing, a voyeuristic tendency of fascination of those who "passively" attend the violence suffered and exercised.

The rise of social networks and the mass media of information changes the place of violence and introduces it into the lives of those who watch or listen to it as just another fact. Thus, domesticated and converted into an object that can be tolerated and consumed, violence is neutralized, canceling out, in many people, its negative charge and censorship. Or avoidance and rejection mechanisms are used (blocking, changing the station or channel) as a way to avoid the discomfort caused by seeing and hearing violent events.

Resistance to knowing or hearing about violence is a defensive mechanism that is used when the discomfort is not tolerated. An uncomfortable and threatening reality is denied or concealed that will make it difficult to recognize certain behaviors as violence and to assume a critical attitude towards them. Avoidance and rejection are manifested by feelings of discomfort and attacks on intimacy, defensive body postures, concealing verbal expressions or complicit silences. A violent event - beating, rape, abuse - generates various types of expressions both in the community and in the victim and the aggressor.

The community What does it usually say?

-“That happens to certain women”

-“It's not that big of a deal”

-“We can't talk about that, we don't have to get involved in that”

-“They have no shame or modesty, we're not going to get into other people's problems”

-“And… something must have been done… for a reason it must have been”

- “Those degenerates must be killed”

-“Women have to report what happened to them so that people know what things are like and prevent them from happening again”

For her part, the victim usually says:

-“Why me?

-“I will never be able to tell it”

-“Maybe I deserve it”

-“I feel afraid of provoking, how should I dress to go out?”

-“You don't know what this is, I won't be able to forget it”

-“I didn't provoke it nor did I want this to happen to me”

-“I need you to believe me and help me”

And the aggressor usually express:

-“Men are like that”

-“And… what does it provoke?

- “I was looking for it”

-“Women like it”

-“I do it for her own good”

-“It is very good for her if I make her understand how things should be”

-“When a woman says no, what she means is yes”

-“Women are fanciful, exaggerated and also liars”

-“Well… it got out of hand! But it makes everything a drama!

These expressions of protagonists and witnesses of violent events range from apparent indifference, quick explanations, justifications, desires for revenge and vindictive positions to direct criticism and censorship. The myths and stereotypes that express these ideas. the social imaginary about acts of violence against women

This imaginary responds to the dynamics of complex social processes that, in the form of ideologies, privilege certain values, overshadowing or postponing others, proposing or defending different ethics that define themselves as unique and the best. This social imaginary acts on the personal imaginary, transforming the ideology that promotes it into thoughts and actions that are immutable and excluded from all questioning. Over time, they are reproduced by social consensus and perpetuate a symbolic efficacy that operates as truth itself. The consequence is that acts of violence are minimized or denied, considering them “normal” or “habitual”, women's experiences are denied and responsibility is diverted from the aggressors. But, when the unobjectionable presence of the event does not allow those mechanisms of rejection and avoidance to be put into action, one can no longer remain in a neutral position: the conflict raised between the aggressor and the aggressor. The victim wants to forget, but cannot and demands commitment and censure for what happened. The attacker calls not to speak and asks for complicity and for what happened to be forgotten. For its part, the entire community wants to forget what was unpleasant and generally succeeds in doing so, although the forms of forgetting involve the repetition of the spectacle or the existence of violence, as if knowing and acting on the violence were as dangerous as the violence itself.

The expected consequence will be to decontextualize the violated people. considering them isolated singularities that must remain secret and silent. A silence that, on the one hand, is exercised by society and, on the other, by the victims, denying the social mechanisms of production and reproduction of daily violence.

But there are also other ways to connect with the issue that are neither ostentatious visuality nor denial nor rejection. prevent their psychological and social exclusion.

EQUITY WORK TEAM FOR MEN AND WOMEN

LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN SECRETARIAT OF CARITAS

SELACC