Violence against women, with an emphasis on sexual abuse that, in many cases, materializes in rape, is very common in Brazil. Given the seriousness of the fact, the attention that the topic has been receiving is positive, as well as the effort of many to break with its naturalization. My understanding of this issue was built from the favela where I grew up and lived for 28 years: Nova Holanda, Maré, Rio de Janeiro.
In this territory, which is no different from others in the city, I learned to recognize sexist relations as a central root of violence directed at women, despite peculiar characteristics of the reality in favela. There, the culture of rape is present, historically, as in other parts of the city, but it has suffered different sanctions over the years. In this sense, I go back to an episode from the 70s, when I was a child: a resident close to my house became known as a pervert because he had the practice of grabbing women. At the time, when we met with him, some friends and I shouted: “Perv!” and we ran. He kept looking for whoever shouted, started to voice and curse us. He was often harassed and lived alone; his wife had left him.
In the 1980s, I recall two striking situations: a man was accused of abusing a child. Given the situation, the head of the armed group, at the time, who was just a teenager, but with a strong charisma, dressed him as a woman and crippled him, shooting each knee of the suspect. From there, he was marked and became the object of offenses and interdictions. In the second situation, another armed group leader took a more extreme stance: a man accused of raping a woman was imprisoned by the traffickers, severely beaten, killed, his penis cut and exposed in a wooden cart. In this case, there are residents who even today say that it was an unfair punishment, since it was not this person who committed the crime, but his brother. All of this was made in a way to expose the suspects to public execration in order to set an example for others. Thus, since that time, rape, as well as theft, assault or homicide without authorization from the head of the armed group, came to be a death sentenced. The same is true in many Rio’s favelas. Rape in a public space became strongly inhibited in these regions. Sexual abuse, on the other hand, which takes place in private spaces and is often carried out by family members, not so much.
Despite the aberration of thinking that this type of violation occurs in Rio de Janeiro and there are armed civilian groups, which in certain regions of the city can exercise the type of practice presented without any intervention by the State; the ban, in my understanding, of that type of rape does not derive from the recognition of respect for the women´s body or the guarantee of their rights, far from it. In reality, it is common for a woman's partner, boyfriend or husband to sometimes occupy the place of the rapist, being, in some cases, even allowed to sponsor collective rapes, such as what may have happened in the episode that came public on May 26 this year.
It should be noted that this violence is so old and recurring that a specific term was created to define it, and that, rarely, it has been used in debates: curra. The curra is as old as classes and it’s present in all female history, legitimized from the beginning by religious interpretations, in particular monotheistic ones, which place women in a lower position and as a representation of evil, and should therefore be curtailed, controlled, repressed and punished when expressing autonomous positions, which escape traditional male authority.
The word MAN to designate us as a human species, which includes men and women, demonstrates the lack of recognition that women should be thought of independently and in their specificity as a gender. In other words, as the philosopher Simone de Beauvoir said, “Nobody is born a woman: she becomes a woman”. In this sense, what characterizes femininity is not related to what women carry as biological, but rather to what has been accumulated from the point of view of culture and beliefs.
It is crucial to recognize that violence against women has historically become natural, and this is a process that relates to power relations established in society. The different actions / violence, with a gender focus, that purposefully cause physical, sexual and psychological pain in a woman, whether in the private or public sphere, such as rape, occur as a consequence of an essentially male practice.
I acquired a critical judgment of sexism in my process of expanding my cultural, social and educational repertoire. I know many women in the favelas who have not yet questioned sexism and naturalize it as inherent in male-female relationships. In this sense, I am clear that there is an immense challenge to broaden the understanding of the majority of women and, also, of men from the slums about women's rights and overcoming the process of transforming gender difference into inequality. Like racial struggles, gender struggles, as organized movements, are still hegemonized, unfortunately, by women in the middle sectors. This undoubtedly needs to change urgently. I realize, however, that there is an incipient movement of many women from the favelas, especially the younger ones, and based on new cultural references, they question the supremacy of the masculine and criticize when they acquire hypersexualized expressions.
Our search must be to incorporate more and more women into this field of struggle, recognizing that men need to be questioned and brought into this debate, as they are part of the problem and, also, the solution. We have to train our sons, daughters, grandchildren in a social and human perspective that is based on empathy, and the need to recognize the right, the pain and the joy from others. Only in this way will it be possible to denaturalize this form of oppression so violent, creating forms of relationship in which women and men can be just people, equal in their differences, in their desires and the search for a full, free and safe life.
Eliana Sousa Silva
Director and founder of NGO Redes da Maré, researcher in public security and visiting professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at USP
This article was originally published at UOL on December 26 of 2016
