Dear reader, I invite you to reflect just one moment with me. Have you been watching the news this week? What do you say about the past month? Many things have happened: the exchange rate rose, fall, rolled in the air; some politician was criticized for talking more or for talking less than he was supposed to… well, always the same news. Do you know what was another recurrent headline? A girl was found dead. How bad it is to say it with that lightness, “a girl was killed”, it feels far and close at the same time; far because it didn’t happen to somebody close to me nor to myself, and close because that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen tomorrow…
We are all going to die, that is a fact. I’m not being fatalist nor I have an aluminium paper cone on my head while I’m writing this. However, to the biotechnology fans, I must admit this may change eventually. You always think about what you are going to do when you grow up, you think about your future house, job, family, love and many other things. Slowly this future somehow starts becoming into reality; like it or not, we grow. If anybody reading this doesn’t think about the future, then think about your loved ones for a moment.Do you have sisters, cousins, mothers, friends, daughters, nieces? Don’t you wish for them possibility of walking peacefully down the street, saying, “what a nice day, and tomorrow it will be better!”? What happens when that tomorrow never comes?
I would never say that a woman’s murder is worse than a man’s, or a child’s, or nobody’s. Every conscious interruption of life is equally terrible. However, let’s think about the headline again. Today statistics say that every 30 hours a woman dies in Argentina. To every woman reading this, how many times have you avoided big groups of men in the street? And construction sites? Has ever happened to you to feel somebody’s stare? You may have never felt it, but I’m sure you have heard it or, why not, you were on the offender side and not on the offeded side.
I’m not innocent enough to say, after all these paragraphs, “to kill is bad” because it wouldn’t make much sense… I think. Simply, I decided to take some time to meditate how hard being a woman currently is. As if our daily worries were not enough, now women have to be worried about many other things; constantly worrying about being raped in a taxi or drugged and kidnapped in the bus or the subway, thinking “I hope that white van keeps driving and doesn’t stop”, or “please, I hop that guy who said something to me stays where he is and doesn’t follow me nor get close to me”. Has anybody memorized Taken, just in case it comes in handy?
Addressing this issue, does anybody feels it is worth it to bring it to justice? Does somebody truly believes in justice in this country? Criminals are getting their sentences reduced, as if it was something unimportant. Why don’t they look into the eyes of a parent whose girl was raped, murdered and dumped as if she was just meat, dehumanized in extreme, and say to him, “This person who took your daughter from you, in a couple of months will be eating BBQ with his buddies. Cry in church”. Why don’t they have the spirit to tell to her best friend, “Well, you can look for another one. Are you telling me it can’t be replaced?”
On a personal level, think for a moment if you have ever assaulted a woman in any of the ways described before. If you find any example that fits, I invite you to make to exchanges of roles: first, assuming you are the victim, and second, assuming the victim is somebody you love. Now everything changes, doesn’t it? Well, please remember not only that the victim is somebody’s loved one, but that the victim is always a person.
I invite you all to think about what is failing: society, justice, both? As a women, very cynically I sat down to write in a very upset way, to naively and honestly say that I want to go out and, when I reach the crossroads and I have to look to both sides, I do it only to check there are no cars coming, nothing more.
I’m tired of seeing the woman being dehumanized just for being a woman. I don’t know about the rest but, for me, it’s the most beautiful thing.
