Andrea Flores Hernández, Santa Cruz, Bolivia, SSH Blog Correspondent

59 mujeres. 59 mujeres de distintas regiones del país, de distintas edades, con distintas ambiciones. Todas ellas fueron víctimas de feminicidio en el primer semestre de este año. El feminicidio, se refiere al asesinato de mujeres por razones de género, y este tipo de asesinato ha cobrado más vidas femeninas que aquellos por inseguridad ciudadana.

Si bien el 9 de marzo de 2013, el Presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, promulgó la ley n° 348 “Ley Integral para garantizar a las mujeres una vida libre de violencia”, aún falta mucho por hacer. La burocracia frena a la justicia y esto ocasiona que muy pocos casos terminen con una sentencia. “Mientras no se implemente la Ley 348 y la mujer no tenga que peregrinar institución por institución para ser atendida cuando va a denunciar  violencia de género; y  la policía, fiscales y jueces dejen los prejuicios machistas, va a ser muy difícil que los casos de violencia contra la mujer lleguen a sentencia. Hay que cambiar la mentalidad colonizada y patriarcal de nuestra sociedad.” sentencia Carmen Sandoval, abogada con amplio conocimiento sobre la violencia contra la mujer boliviana.

Es bueno que existan leyes que protejan a la mujer. Pero, ¿no sería excelente si esa ley no tuviera motivo para existir? Quizá suene utópico, irreal, o algo imposible; pero el imaginar una mejor sociedad ¿no es acaso el origen de comenzar acciones que la hagan posible?

En Bolivia, las autoridades denuncian y condenan la violencia contra la mujer, pero pocos alzan la voz en contra del diario acoso callejero, que también es violencia. ¿Por qué? ¿Acaso hemos tomado el acoso como algo “normal” en nuestra sociedad?

El feminicidio es la manera más extremista del hombre para demostrar que la mujer es un objeto, y la manera cotidiana de demostrar esta idea es el acoso en las calles. ¿Por qué debemos esperar a que una mujer sea víctima mortal para recién comenzar a hacer algo?

La idea de que la mujer es un objeto es el verdadero virus de la sociedad. Un hombre que piense que esa idea es verdadera jamás podrá respetar plenamente a una mujer. Un hombre que vea a la mujer como objeto nunca comprenderá que la mujer es un ser independiente de él.

No dejemos que las víctimas de feminicidio que hay en tu país o en el mío, se conviertan solamente en cifras. No dejemos que se conviertan en simples números que alimentan los miles de reportes acerca del tema. No olvidemos que luego de la cifra se encuentra la palabra “mujeres”. No olvidemos que esa palabra contiene fuerza, voluntad, sueños y deseos. Para esas 59 mujeres víctimas de feminicidio todo eso se extinguió. Pero nosotras seguimos aquí. Y mientras sigamos aquí, actuemos. Hagamos algo por evitar que otras mujeres se conviertan en víctimas. Hagamos algo para que tú y yo no seamos víctimas. Tratando de eliminar esta idea despreciable de ver a la mujer como mero objeto, extinguiremos de a poco la violencia más cotidiana, como es el acoso callejero, hasta la más extremista, como es el feminicidio.

 

Bolivia: The extremism of a primitive idea.

59 women. 59 women from different regions of the country, of different ages, with different ambitions. All these women were victims of femicide in the first half of the year. Femicide refers to the murder of women because of their gender, and this type of murder has claimed more lives than those of insecurity.

Even though the 9 of March 2013 the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, promulgated the Law No. 348 “Integral Law to guarantee women a life free of violence,” much remains to be done. The bureaucracy slows justice and this causes very few cases end with a conviction. “While Law 348 is not implemented and the woman does not have to “pilgrimage” institution by institution, to denounce violence; and the police, prosecutors and judges do not leave male prejudices, will be very difficult for this type of violence come to judgment. We must change the colonized and patriarchal mentality of our society.” Says Carmen Sandoval, a lawyer with extensive knowledge on violence against Bolivian women.

It is good that there are laws to protect women. But would it not be great if that law had not reason to exist? It may sound utopian, unrealistic, or impossible; but imagine a better society is not perhaps the origin of starting actions that make it possible?

In Bolivia, authorities denounce and condemn violence against women, but few of them speak out against daily street harassment, which is also violence. Why? Have we taken the harassment as “normal” in our society?

Femicide is the most extreme way of a man to show that the woman is an object, and the daily way to prove this is the harassment on the streets. Why should we wait for a woman to be fatality to start doing something?

The idea that the woman is an object is the real virus of the society. A man who thinks that this idea is true will never fully respect a woman. A man who sees women as objects will never understand that woman is a human being independent of him.

Do not let the victims of femicide in your country or mine, become only numbers. Do not let them become simple numbers that feed the thousands of reports on the subject. Do not forget that after that number is the word “women.” Do not forget that words have power, will, dreams and desires. For these 59 women victims of femicide are dead. But we’re still here. And while we’re still here, we have to act. Let’s do something to prevent other women from becoming victims. Let’s do something in order that you and I cannot be victims. Trying to delete this despicable idea of seeing women as mere objects, we will slowly extinguish the daily violence, such as street harassment, to the more extreme, as is the femicide.

Andrea is in her second year of university, studying Social Communication. You can follow her on Twitter: @AndreaFlores116

Siel Devos, London, England, SSH Blog Correspondent

Last month I wrote about how I experienced harassment in Amman, and I ended my post by wondering how we can address this issue and bring a change to the mentality of Arab men and boys towards women. You can imagine my excitement when I came across a project called Women on Walls that focuses on women’s empowerment through graffiti and gives artists a chance to express themselves through street art.

Women on Walls (WOW) was founded by Angie Balata and Mia Grondahl, who recorded the contributions made by graffiti artists to the 25 January Revolution in Egypt in her book “The Revolution’s Graffiti”. After noticing that of the 17.000 street art photographed in the book only 253 featured women, they decided to take action and came up with the Women on Walls project to draw attention to women’s rights issues through street art. Thanks to their graffiti project in the Bourse area in Cairo, WOW gained more exposure, which eventually led them to collaborate with women’s and anti-harassment organisations like HarassMap and Uprising of Women in the Arab World in 2014. WOW is currently expanding through the region, starting with a street arts festival in Jordan, where 25 women artists from Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon contribute works to the wall to spark the conversation on women’s issues.

Laila Ajjawi, one of the artists participating in the WOW festival in Amman, says she wants to bring a message to men who still look at girls as objects instead of full-fledged human beings with intellectual depth. Research has shown that 80 percent of Jordanian women have experienced street harassment, and 99.3 percent of Egyptian women have reported being sexually harassed, so it’s clear that street harassment is still a problematic issue in the region. This is the reason why Ajjawi choose to focus on street harassment in line with the Women on Walls festival theme “Stories from Fear to Freedom”. She finds that street art is the perfect way to address the issue of street harassment because it reaches a much wider audience. “It challenges harassers in their domain: the streets. This kind of art doesn’t just decorate cement walls; it forces a conversation. “It catches the eye,” says Ajjawi. “But it’s not confrontational.”

Women are often fearful of speaking out against harassment, but Ajjawi hopes that her art may stand in for those who have been silenced into submission.

“If a women is silent, it’s because society compels her to be silent,” says Ajjawi.

The Amman festival combined the Women on Walls project with Baladak, launched by Al Balad Theatre in 2013, who aim to enhance the sense of citizenship through street art. In addition to revealing the street art gallery, the festival also included discussions, lectures and meetings initiated by local organisations to “raise awareness on women’s issues in Jordan and the Arab world, and create an inspirational space for artists to express their opinions,” says Al Balad Theatre Programme manager Lubna Al-Juqqa. The aim is to change the stereotypical image of women that is presented by the media as “just a pretty face”.

A great initiative if you ask me – I hope Women on Walls will expand throughout the region and most importantly, continue to raise awareness of street harassment and women’s issues in the Middle East.

Siel is a master’s student in Middle Eastern studies with a major in contemporary Islam at SOAS University in London. Find her on twitter and instagram under @mademoisielle.

Khiara Ortiz, NY, USA, SSH Blog Correspondent

As a woman living in New York City, it’s a given that I have to put up with street harassment on an almost daily basis. I leave my apartment in the mornings on my way to work and the men at the produce market on the corner of my street will toss out sexually fueled comments like biscuits to a dog, hoping I’ll bite. I don’t, but it’s not always easy to ignore them. Sometimes, I change the route I take to the train just to avoid them, only to be greeted by another slew of catcalls on the other side of the street.

And it doesn’t stop there. I work in the midtown neighborhood of Manhattan where there’s always an endless amount of construction work being done and an endless amount of street harassment from construction workers polluting the streets like the dirt and dust clouds from a drilling site.

All of these instances have made me think about why street harassment happens. Most women in America are aware that street harassment either happens to other women, happens to them, that they will probably experience it at least once a week, and that they’ll just have to put up with it. But I’ve begun to wonder how many of the victims of street harassment think about the why; why is this man calling me out for being female?; why does he think he can talk to me like that?; why can’t he see me as his equal, as another human being going about her day, NOT wanting to draw any type of attention towards herself, much less any sexual attention?

In New York, anonymity is easy. You see hundreds, maybe thousands, of people every day. The chances of remembering a face you saw the day before or even that morning are slim. People go unnoticed all the time. This has led me to consider the reasons men feel comfortable practicing street harassment and entitled in doing so. Perhaps the man feels he will not be punished because the woman he is calling out to won’t remember him. Or maybe the complete opposite is true and the man wants to be remembered by a woman, wants to feel more masculine, and therefore calls out to the woman at her expense and for his own psychological benefit. He has now brought himself to the surface of the woman’s psyche and may not even realize he’s done so in a negative way.

In either situation, I think there’s an underlying factor: the release of aggression. An article published in The New York Times in 1983 cited that while “psychologists and psychiatrists often disagree sharply when they discuss whether behavioral differences between the sexes exist, many agree on one difference – that boys and men are still the more aggressive and violent [sex].”

An article published last month in Psychology Today addressing the same issue, the differences in aggression between men and women, theorized about the reasons behind this seemingly factual statement. The article cites a theory by Leonard Berkowitz, a leading American psychologist, who says that “men and women are educated, traditionally, to carry out different social roles.”

The type of aggression that occurs among women is “verbal aggression in intrasexual competition”, not the more obvious, testosterone-fueled aggression that’s valued in men by societal standards. Men’s aggressive tendencies are rooted in the way they are brought up by their parents, in the positive reinforcements they experience when they play rough or practice aggression, to an extent, in sports. When they grow up to become men and no longer have the outlets they did as little boys – sports, games between friends, etc. – they lose a clear target towards which to direct their aggression, which by this time can manifest itself in sexual forms. I believe that sexual harassment, street harassment, and catcalling are all outlets for men who don’t know how to deal with their cultivated aggression. And the streets are places outside their homes, away from their wives and children, where they don’t have anyone to tell them any better because they know the women they target will most likely walk by, leaving them anonymous and free of punishment.

I think that an effective way to break this cycle is to start calling men out on the wrongness of street harassment. Make them uncomfortable, make them realize that their targets aren’t just objects of sex walking by like sponges ready to absorb insults. In the way that the parents of a kidnapped daughter might use photos of the daughter or stories about her to humanize her to the kidnapper, women must humanize themselves before these men to make them realize they cannot and will not be used as targets for male aggression.

Khiara is a recent graduate of New York University with a BAS in Journalism and Psychology who works as an assistant in the contracts department for Hachette Book Group. She is also the co-social media manager for Stop Street Harassment.