There is a problem when the same street is not the same for a man as for a woman. When the feeling of security, of exposure, of vulnerability is radically different. When a simple journey, even in daylight, turns into an obstacle course over hostile territory. The showcase of aggressions is so wide, so varied, that it is very possible that each woman has some experience to add to the sample of machismo.
The recent rape of the young woman from Igualada shocked society. The brutality of the aggression left no ground for speculation. The unanimity in the sentence could only be total, it was an extreme, unquestionable violence. But it is not always so easy to judge a macho aggression. Especially when it is not a physical attack, when it leaves no wounds on the body to show. Moral, psychological, economic violence and, without a doubt, the most presented in our streets, the verbal. How to measure its damage?
As a result of the debate on the law for the comprehensive guarantee of sexual freedom, known as the law of ‘only yes is yes’, there was extensive debate on the difference between a compliment and street harassment. In this context, the bill considers the perpetrator of a minor crime to be those who “address another person with expressions, behaviors or propositions of a sexual nature that create the victim a objectively humiliating, hostile or intimidating situation, without constituting other more serious crimes ”. The text is explanatory. Perhaps it is not so easy to overcome a cultural inheritance that, too often, has played to confusion and has normalized a degrading treatment of women, minimizing the effect caused. An inheritance that, historically, has given the floor to man and has despised the power that this could have over women. But verbal aggressiveness is not harmless. Words do not leave marks on the skin, but they are intimidating and undermine self-esteem. They expel from the spaces.
All sexist aggression is a social scourge that must be eradicated and that requires the collective will. It is necessary to understand that a man raping a woman in a public space it is not simply a dispute between two individuals: is an aggressor attacking a victim. An act of sexist violence to which we must all feel challenged. It is necessary to act.
This Friday, EL PERIÓDICO collects the testimony of Samar Elansari, a student at the University of Barcelona (UB) and a journalist in training at this newspaper. Last Wednesday she was complimented, vilified and highly aggressively threatened in the middle of the street, in the light of day, by a stranger in the face of the total passivity of the rest of the pedestrians. No one came to his defense, no one was fazed. On the contrary, when she published her experience on the networks, a veritable flood of messages from other women shielded her courage and solidarity.
Elansari has decided to report the events to the police station. It will be difficult for the aggressor to be located, hooded and with a mask, but his complaint points the right way. Because silence only reinforces the aggressor. He cannot stay with impunity, while the victim is left with fear. This perverse situation only undermines the self-esteem of women and gives wings to the aggressor to continue influencing violence. The silence of the rest is an accomplice of a machismo that, among all of us, can only be banished from the streets.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com