Rocío Andrés, Scotland, SSH Blog Correspondent

Trigger Warning

At the beginning, you think you are ready to read about sexual violence against women. You really think. And then, starting with the first page, the testimonies are difficult to forget and the women´s faces stick heavy in your days. The mind is a demon, you say, while trying to estimate how human the barbarity is – how big and open the door. One day, counting on your fingers, you remember since when – beyond the index, the pages-, you have the sexual violence at home.

But we frequently underestimate this. Libraries are full of books on sexual violence during wars, in conflicts or any, apparently far, turbulent crisis context. We love durings. As if there were neither after nor before.

I, myself, read books. And articles, analysis, surveys and piles of good intentional measures. All of them related to the brutal, predatory violence during conflicts. I read about the rapes, the gang-rapes, the assaults, the trafficking, the mutilations, the feminicides and the pain. I read about the thousands of victims, the number of rapers, the datas of deaths, as it happens/ed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Rwanda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Bosnia-Herzegovina and etcetera. In Egypt, over the three years of the revolution, there have been demonstrations in which more than 80 women were violently attacked in the course of only one night, many of them gang-raped. These are the durings I´m used to.

Now, as I read, I also wonder about the days before, about the “peace times.” The days when women go to work and on their way back, a 9-year-old is telling them obscene words. They are sexually harassed, assaulted or raped in public spaces.

These instances are not put in numbers, groups, patterns like during war. They are just drops. Sometimes, they belong to a new form of sexual violence, which is usually and, due to its spatially diffuse-unknown nature, an almost unmeasurable data, as in the Internet cosmos. Sometimes, they are not marketable enough – like the sexual violence in prisons. Usually, they´ve always been there – unreported, unattended, unheard-, until somebody, tired of holding the keys as a carver, as a weapon, gave them a name, a voice: domestic violence, sexual harassment, street harassment.

How you reach and/or face street harassment might differ in form. However, among the many faces of sexual violence, this one, even without visiting libraries, I know is true: from a softer to a more hardcore level, as a little girl, as a woman, in the bus, in the metro, a lift, a shop, the streets-, all women are aware of. It´s your neighbour violence.

Fortunately, many actions are increasingly taking place to address street harassment, to fight it, including upcoming events in Scotland, Egypt, and the USA.

In Edinburgh, on 17^th March, Hollaback! Edinburgh will be at Stirling University for “Challenging Everyday Sexism,” a day of talks, workshops and debates about challenging sexism in public and private life. They will also be holding workshops at Abbey Mount Centre on 26^th April, as part of the Pussy Whipped Festival 2014.

In Egypt, after flash mob dancing against sexual harassment on St Valentine´s Day, women are also preparing a two-day training course on self-defense techniques and reactions on harassment with the voice, looks and body language. There is also a film you can now watch online 678, (created in 2010 – before the revolution) directed by Mohamed Diab and focusing on the sexual harassment of women in Egypt. In 2010, it was awarded in Muhr Arab category at the Dubai International Film Festival.

In the USA, Stop Telling Women to Smile will have a week full of workshops, discussions and exhibitions in Oakland (California), with the involvement of artists like Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, who will be portraying local Bay Area women.

These are just some examples showing that good things can also happen.

Rocío Andrés holds a Bachelor´s degree in Audiovisual Communication, History of Art (both Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain) and a Master´s in Education (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Spain, 2010). She has six years experience as a TV and advertising producer.