Sara Rigon, Italy, SSH Blog Correspondent
For the past two years I lived the life of an expat. I left my hometown in northern Italy to live and work in New Zealand first and then Denmark. It was an incredible adventure personally and professionally, with unexpected side effects.
Usually, the first question people generally ask when they learn I’ve lived in Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, all by myself for more than one year, is: “Why New Zealand?”
I can perfectly understand the puzzled tone of voice and curiosity, Oceania is so far away and Kiwi land is not the most popular destination in the South Pacific. I wonder if people would ask me: “Why Australia?” I’ll never know, but I doubt it.
I have a standard reply. I’ve been saying this so many times, that at one point I didn’t have to think about it and I started listening to what I was saying, it was a revelation.
So, why NZ? “Well, I was looking for an English-speaking country, nice sunny weather most of the year and beautiful landscapes (I was leaving Italy, after all), and most important I needed a safe place for a single woman to travel and move around.”
A safe place. In the life of a woman, safety is an everyday concern, one that pervades your existence in almost every aspect and in the end regulates the course of your life. On top of that, you know, safety is YOUR problem, as in the unfortunate case something happen, people will kindly remind you that “you should have known better.” Meaning that you shouldn’t have worn such a short skirt, walked home at such late hour or taken that lonely walk on the beach at night. Victim-blaming is so incredibly common, almost expected, sometime I wonder if women change their behavior for safety reasons or simply to avoid the humiliating and shaming reprimand.
As a woman, you are well aware that safety needs to be taken into account, it will always be part of the equations, a fundamental component of most of the choices you’ll make through out your life.
Safety will determine your outfit, it doesn’t matter the occasion, it could be work, a party or the gym, you just want to keep the wolf whistles at the minimum (as if you could control them). For safety reasons you will leave the pub at a “decent hour” (I wish I could tell you what time is that) on a Friday night and you will not have “too many” drinks at a party. You know you always need to be aware of your surroundings and you shouldn’t lose control. Safety will also help you choose your travel destination for that trip you want to take on your own or with your girlfriends and which country you are moving to as a professional medical doctor. You might have one of the most powerful passports in the world, but as a woman you still can’t go everywhere you want, not without consequences.
You know all that, it’s normal, it’s the way the world turns. Moreover people say equality is already a reality so this must be it, it can’t get better than this: catcalling is a complement and victim-blaming is a useful reproach to suggest you the appropriate behavior. You might get used to this, it is your life, after all. Nevertheless, it is not okay; in fact, this is structural violence.
Structural violence, has described by the Norwegian sociologist and mathematicians Johan Goltgun who first used it in the article “Violence, Peace and peace research” (1969), is “avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs or.. the impairment of human life which lower the actual degree to which someone is able to reach their needs below that which would otherwise be possible”. In other words, systemic ways in which social structures harm or disadvantage individuals or groups by preventing them from reaching their full potential.
Embedded in longstanding “ubiquitous” social structures – economics, political, religious and cultural – as well as normalized by stable institutions and regular experience, structural violence is often invisible at our own eyes. This is how we all perpetrate and be subjected to adultism, ageism, classism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, sexism without even knowing it. This is the odious power of structural violence.
When I first realized I was a victim of such violence and discrimination in a society that proudly proclaims itself fair and egalitarian, I felt deceived and helpless. With a wolf whistle after another I started thinking it was better in the old days, when men were gentlemen and you just knew you were not allowed certain behaviors or privileges. It was the rule and everybody knew it and lived accordingly. Yet this is can be the answer. Violence and injustice may apparently hurt less if they are institutionalized and regulated by law, but in fact they don’t.
I feel privileged to live in a world where I have civil rights that other men and women fought injustices to secure. It is my turn now and I want to do my part to create a future where women will be able to walk down the street with no risk of being shouted or whistled at or assaulted.
What to do then? The shocking murder of Mary Spears reminds us that safety is still an issue, standing up for your rights, speaking up and saying no have a price and it can be very high. I wish I could be brave enough to ignore conventions, shaming and victim-blaming everyday to be myself and live my life at its full potential. Instead, at times I play it safe and choose to move to New Zealand over other possible destinations. Nonetheless I’m not giving up, today I wrote this post.
Sara is a registered General Practitioner in Italy and New Zealand. She is the founder and current lead of the newly established Equally Different group within the European Junior General Practitioners Organization, the Vasco da Gama Movement, branch of the World Organization of Family Doctors. Follow her on Twitter @rgn_sr.
