It’s like there’s a crosshair there, ready to shoot and hit right in the chest whenever a woman moves. If you are too thin you are anorexic, if you are chubby you are obese, if you are single you are a spinster but if you are engaged you are a girl toy, if you wear skimpy clothes you are a slut but if you cover yourself you are too frigid, and then even worse if we like to have sex we deserve to be pilloried and if we go out to have fun at a party, well, we should expect a man to try to abuse us. To put it in black and white it seems to describe the Paleolithic, but how many have happened to suffer certain attacks or worse to unwittingly reach these identical and sad conclusions?
Today, November 25, 2020, the International Day Against Violence Against Women is celebrated all over the world, as if it were an anniversary or an event that must not be forgotten. The truth is that violence against women is carried out every day and not only by men but by women themselves. In fact, we women are often the first to overcome the limit of mutual respect, sadly continuing to give rise to misogynistic and ignorant men the right to exercise a social power that in reality no one has conferred on them. We live in an age in which privacy does not exist, news is running and the centrality that image and aesthetics have undergone are used as a ploy and yet another justification for certain behaviours. Of course it is normal to think that a girl who publishes her photos in costume or lingerie deserves to be abused because “she was looking for it” right? And how come if a man does it, certain facts don’t happen? Why can a man send intimate photos and videos to a woman without being terrified that she will post them on the net putting him to the pillory? While the digital world in which we live has helped to increase awareness and the fight against certain crimes, on the other hand it has increased the very possibility that they will happen. There are crimes that stop before femicide or abuse, but they must not be considered less serious for this.
What is Victim Blaming? In victim-blaming, the blame is shifted from the aggressor to the victim indiscriminately by men, women and the media. The media, in particular, are responsible in trying to justify the crime in some way by blaming the victim with irrelevant blame such as jealousy, skimpy clothing or a simple “he was a good man”. The fear of judgment experienced by women also derives from these justifications, specifically many women fear to expose a complaint because at the time the crime occurs they wore clothing that for social clichés cannot be considered appropriate, or they were in situations, such as a party or an evening with friends, in which drinking an extra glass by a woman is already considered in itself as a motive.
What is Slut-Shaming? Slut Shaming means making a woman feel guilty or inferior for certain sexual attitudes or desires that are intended to be contrary to a hypothetical feminine ideal. The most striking example is that of Revenge Porn in which women are stigmatized as guilty almost as if having a sex life was a shame that one deserves to be fed to an audience of thousands of strangers, for having shot videos. or photographed in intimate attitudes. What we do not think about and unfortunately do not give weight is that the crime in question is not at all having a sexual life, like almost all of the human race, but becoming victims of shaming by those who feel authorized to circulate certain contents, destroying what, let us remember, is a constitutionally protected right in every civilized country: privacy. It is not an act of student spirit, but a crime.
But why do these things happen almost exclusively to women? The society we live in is underpinned by double standards, what does this mean? That a man is not judged for his sexual freedom the same way it is for a woman. Revenge porn is a weapon of destruction of a person’s reputation and, in the worst cases, of professional and family life. The fact that certain acts are justified with the student spirit completely decentralizes the blame, even in this case, from the executioner to the victim. It is not taken seriously because it belittles everything with the goliardic and playful act, which however, unfortunately, is not done only by men but also by women. Sadly, it is also women who use strong derogations that touch the sexual sphere, even in the simple judgment that is given to someone we do not like or are not particularly sympathetic to, feeding this misogynistic culture that should no longer exist for a while.
The International Day Against Violence Against Women in 2020 must not only be the memory of the violence that a woman suffers every day, it does not have to do with “the digitalized world we live in”, but is the restoration of a primordial right: freedom and the respect for it. We must be able to be free to be women in the same way a man is free to be a man, with his carnal instincts, his mistakes and his choices. We must be able to be free to be women and to live in a world where the fight for equality is not “you fought for equality and now you want to be brought out for dinner” but is being able to be yourself without judgment. We must be able to be free to have freedom.
We are by your side, from Women to Women.