Sabrina Tellez-Vera

TW: Mention of sexual, verbal and physical assault, rape, domestic abuse, child abuse, violence against women and children, femicide. 

“If a boy is mean to you, it's because he likes you”. I think of this phrase every single time a man has sexually harassed or assaulted me, flabbergasted at the normalization of violence against women. I think of the white man three years ago who caressed my thigh on the bus ride home and told me he wanted to “rape me and show me the night of my life”. Did he like me? I think of the boyfriend I had who constantly belittled me, physically and verbally assaulted me and made me want to die.  I think of all the countless stories women have told, and the ones never told because they never had the space or support to share. I think of the women and children sex trafficked everyday and the countless videos of non-consensual violent pornography displayed to the public, both crimes and profitable for those uploading it. I think about how one of those videos could have been me when I found out my childhood babysitter was a pedophile who abused me and other kids. Or when I found out one of my high school teachers was arrested for child pornography and making minors do sexual things for his pleasure. I think of the never- ending stories of violence our women endure, profitable within our society. Like the murder of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz and her daughter Rubi Marisol Fraire Escobedo. Her daughter was killed for wanting to leave her murderer, after finding out he wasn’t who she fell in love with. And just like her daughter, after protesting and raising awareness relentlessly of the murder and the Mexican government’s compliance in it, Marisela was silenced and killed.

 Women are constantly having to fight for their right to live and be treated as equals. And when we do, we are either criticized, assaulted, raped, silenced or killed. It’s difficult to live within a world that thrives off of breaking you and normalizing your pain, Your oppression becomes part of their daily routine. There's a poet called Olivia Gatwood and her poem “If A Girl Screams In The Middle Of The Night'' (2019), describing the violent endings many women encounter. She begins her poem by stating in caps the truth that society will hide from many women in order to control and oppress them;

“IF A GIRL SCREAMS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

and no one is there to hear it

here’s what happens. i’ll tell you.” (Gatwood, 5, 2019)

Gatwood illustrates the violent murders of women and the suffering endured.  

“if she is in the woods, it shoots

from the cannon of her throat

& smacks itself against a branch,

whips around it like a tetherball.”  (Gatwood, 5, 2019)

The disappearance of women.

“if she is facedown in the moss,

it seeps into the forest floor’s pores,

& every time a hiker passes through,

the days beyond her unravel..”  (Gatwood, 5, 2019)

Mistreatment of women experiencing trauma and violence.

“if the girl is in the city,

the scream get lodged

in the cubby of a neighbor’s ear

prevents him from sleeping at night

& so naturally, he sells it to a second hand store

he takes it to the buying counter

in a jewelry box & says,

i don't know who this belonged to

but i don't want it anymore.

& though the pierced & dyed employee

is reluctant to take it, she sees the purple

bags rotting figs under the neighbor’s eyes

so she offers store credit.”  (Gatwood, 5, 2019)

Pleasure derived from perpetrating violence on women.

“& so not to startle customers,

a small label will be placed on the box

that says A SCREAM & each time a person cracks

it open the the girl’s rattling tongue will shake loose

into the store. this happens for months but no one

wants to buy it, to take care of it. everyone wants to hear it once to feel something & then go back

to their quiet homes, so the store throws it

in a dumpster out back, where the garbage

truck picks it up & smashes it beneath

its hydraulic fists. the scream will get buried

in a landfill somewhere in new jersey

& later the landfill will be coated in a grass,

where a wandering child will see a hill,

will throw her body against it

& shriek the whole way down” (Gatwood, 5-6, 2019)

Femicides occurring in Juárez Mexico are proof of institutionalized violence against women. Since the mid-1990s, “international media began to fixate on hundreds of gruesome killings of women: mostly young women of modest means. News stories reported on bodies found en masse in the Chihuahuan desert, at times describing evidence of trauma and torture in lurid and objectifying detail. No one knows exactly how many women have been killed or kidnapped in Juárez, but gender-based killings continue”. It wasn't until 2019 when the Mexican government “registered 1,006 victims of gender-based homicide across the country, with 31 of those in Chihuahua state, where Juárez is located”. According to Mexico's attorney general, that is a “137% increase over five years”, including only women who have been found”. Countless amounts of “crimes go undiscovered, unsolved and unpunished, enough that homicide on the basis of gender has generated its own official classification in Mexico and in much of Latin America: femicide”. Femicide encapsulates not only the “killing of victims who happen to be female” but also “the systematic violation of human rights. Whether through domestic violence or sexual assault, the victims of femicide are women who were killed because they are women” and it should be recognized as such (Chin & Schultz, 2020).

Women’s stories are constantly disposed of, silenced and erased from the world because it exposes the structural violence we experience and how embedded it is within our society. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “1 in 5 women” are “victims of rape or attempted rape during their lifetime”,”1 in 5 women” have “experienced contact sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime”, “19.1 million women” have been stalked, and “1 in 2 female murder victims” are “ killed by intimate partners” (NCADV, 2, 2020). The list goes on and on. And that again, only counts for REPORTED acts of violence. For an institutional and global issue, we must create an institutional and globally effective solution to end the normalization of gendered and sexual violence against women.

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

If you are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1.

For anonymous, confidential help, 24/7, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or  1-800-787-3224 (TTY).

National Child Abuse Coalition:

If you know someone who is in trouble or needs assistance, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453).

Works Cited:

Chin, Corinne, and Erika Schultz. “Disappearing Daughters.” The Seattle Times, 8 March 2020, https://projects.seattletimes.com/2020/femicide-juarez-mexico-border/.

Gatwood, Olivia. “If You Hear A Girl Scream In the Woods.” The Life of the Party, 1 ed., Dial Press Trade, 2019, pp. 5-6.

Jana Leo’s memoir Rape New York chronicles her traumatic experiences as a survivor, revealing the myriad of neglected realities of survivors unable to voice their truth and the intertwined structural acts of violence, contributing to the likelihood of one out of ten women, being raped.

Towards the end of the novel, Leo reveals what life has been like as a survivor of rape. She states that instead of “blaming him”, she “calmly analyzed the damage done by his abuse”. Her “relationships suffered and eventually ended”. She felt like a “refugee without a home” and had lost “self-control and hope”. “Constantly sad” and “lacking enthusiasm”, Leo ended up isolating herself, changing her perception of life. She began to “live in fear” (Leo, 109). Her world shifted the minute he decided to feel the need to take control and invade her home and body. She states “his presence altered my life to such an extent that I too became a stranger, strange to myself and strange to others” (Leo, 4). The author details the feelings of dissociation that survivors have, which is a coping mechanism for people suffering from PTSD. Weeks after the rape, as Leo was picking up mail from her old apartment, she thought she saw her “assailant in the grocery store” (Leo, 48) and Detective M brushed it off, as it being someone’s normal response after going through something traumatic. But in Leo’s gut and body, she knew that it was him. After seeing him, Leo began to question the whereabouts of the rapist and his knowledge of her location.“Would he return?... Where does rape happen and where doesn’t it happen?”. This led to Leo revealing the “myths associated with rape and the home” such as “the image of the house as a safe place, offering comfort and suppressing the threat of rape from the mind” (Leo, 49). However, the reality is that “one in four female rape victims is rapes in or around her own residence” (Leo,50). And it is because “rape is domestic” due to the failed efforts of securing “buildings, tenants and the home”, exposing the tenants to violence (Leo,51).