We fill our mouths with beautiful words and sometimes we even think that we have made a lot of progress, but the truth is that women continue to have a lower general esteem and that our lives are less important than those of men.
Anyone who has flown knows that security checks are long, tedious, sometimes unpleasant and, in general, a real nuisance for the traveler, but we all submit to them more or less willingly because we assume that they serve to avoid possible harm. What can happen if someone boards with a weapon or an object with which to make a weapon, threatens the pilot, diverts the plane from its course, murders a passenger or crew member? Nobody wants that to happen and that is why, even when we feel that it would not be necessary, we do not protest.
How many cases have there been in recent years of hijackings, murders of passengers, construction of explosive devices in the same tiny toilets on board? To my knowledge, zero. However, we continue to do it because… “just in case”, “for fear that this is it…” Meanwhile, it is so stuck in the minds of governments, passengers, police, all these people. are linked to a possible situation that no one is surprised by and, in fact, the events have been significantly reduced.
This is something that can happen to any of us, it is dangerous, it is destabilizing for a society. So we have to do something to prevent this from happening. Logical, right?
Now, I’m going to ask you to stretch your imagination a little: think of the hypothetical case where one day, on the news, we are told that a pharmacist has been murdered, for example. The following week, a pharmacist is murdered again in another city. And a few days later another one. At the most the third pharmacist, or firefighter, or teacher, we would have a national alarm and an astonishing police force would be deployed to prevent them from continuing to kill pharmacists. Continue to imagine a little further: what would happen if, instead of pharmacists, politicians – local, regional, national – were the victims? We would be on a war footing. Because we cannot allow anyone to assassinate our politicians, of course! All the forces of the country would be set in motion to prevent the monstrosity that would be the assassination of politicians, whatever their sex, gender or party.
Now think about what is happening with femicides. We have murdered over thirty adult women and just over ten minor girls so far this year. There are protests, demonstrations and pain, especially from feminist groups, although there are also many men who support the protests, but nothing is really happening to stop the situation. Everything is “regrettable” and “deplorable” in political jargon, but we do not feel that there is a real will to stop and eradicate what is happening. Women are still considered an extension of the man, the husband, the boyfriend. Rather the ex-husband or ex-boyfriend, who considers the woman to be property and does not want to allow her to leave him or choose another partner.
In our country, in the 21st century, many women are murdered – more than a thousand since we started counting – without the official reaction being more than lukewarm. “You do what you can” and we leave it at that. Would we do the same thing if there was an increase in terrorism? Would we simply do “what we can”? Would we be willing to accept the murder of university professors – men – by disgruntled students? Or judges, relatives of a person sentenced to a long prison term?
These are of course rhetorical questions: we would not be prepared to accept such a state of affairs. Any government would do absolutely everything possible to nip this evil in the bud. I am convinced that this would be done especially if the victims were men and they were murdered because they were men or because of their professional performance.
Let’s continue to imagine: the same situation I posed at the beginning, but in reverse. Let’s suppose that they murder a high school teacher, then another one, and a few weeks later another one, until one year we are forty. I imagine that all the TV channels would rub their hands (metaphorically) at such bait, everything would be filled with programs about psychopaths, serial killers, parallels with other murderers from other countries, photos of the victims and everything else. and most likely, it was said that “we strongly condemn violence in all its manifestations” and that “a police operation has been deployed to find out what is happening and how to stop it”. Basically, the same thing that is generally done in the case of violence against women because of being women, this clear reality – gender violence – that some far-right parties nevertheless refuse to acknowledge.
We fill our mouths with nice words and sometimes we even think that we have made a lot of progress, but the truth is that women continue to have a lower general esteem and that our lives are less important than those of men. They continue to charge less, the tests of new drugs hardly take into account their action on a female body (the damn hormones of women, which complicate everything, they say), there are still longer waits at the hospital when the patient is a woman… And the worst, the worst of all: when someone talks about these things and protests against the situation, it is called exaggerated, old, feminazi and other worse things.
The news has just broken that in Afghanistan, the monstrous regime of torturers and murderers that has been in power since the withdrawal of American troops (and let us note that I am not defending the American presence in Afghanistan or in any other country) has decided that a woman’s voice should not be heard outside the intimate sphere. This is in addition to all the horrible prohibitions that we already know, such as denying girls education beyond the age of twelve, forbidding them to work, denying them access to health care (because they cannot be treated by a male doctor, and it is doctors who are forbidden to practice), covering them from head to toe, forbidding their footsteps to be heard, barricading the windows of their houses, denying them the opportunity to laugh and sing (I don’t think they want to do that much either, in this death in life those who have been condemned) and forcing them to marry unknown men who can rape them, beat them and even kill them within the law.
What is the international community doing to put an end to these savages, this flagrant disregard for human rights? Little, almost nothing. Condemn it firmly, judge it deplorable, offer the various consulates and embassies in Kabul the possibility of requesting asylum abroad, procedures that last more than two years and for which one must leave home (it is forbidden if one is not accompanied by a man or one of your immediate family) and have access to a computer. I know that the consulates are overloaded with work, I know that most countries do not want to welcome immigrants (the right-wing parties, even moderate ones, are increasingly opposed to welcoming and helping people in desperate situations), I know above all that no one cares too much about what happens to women.
I am distressed by the cold that is spreading in our Western countries. I fear that everything will become an intellectual reflection and that everything will be attributed to the narrative that is made of events (which is of crucial importance, but is nothing compared to the real pain of the people).
I have never been able to understand that half of the population oppresses, subjugates and murders the other half (look at what happens to women in India, the statistical lack of girls in China, the deaths from clitoral ablation in Africa, the femicides in Mexico, the gender violence in Spain and other European countries) and, above all, that it is not considered a national emergency, that we are not willing to put all our resources to contribute to this emergency to solve it once and for all.
It is not enough to say, as is often said in political tweets: “You are not alone.” Of course, they are alone! They are alone because we leave them alone. Because deep down, we do not care what happens to them. There are more important and more pressing issues, I suppose.
We see that in some political spheres, they do not have the empathy to understand what a woman must suffer, feeling unprotected and helpless, knowing that her ex-partner will force his way into the house where she has managed to take refuge one day and he will murder her, and perhaps her children too.
It is essential that we start doing something serious about this, if we want to continue to consider ourselves civilized.
