What is actually happening behind the scenes

Ilustration by: Claudio Brites

I didn’t write yesterday about the case of domestic violence and the beating of Pamella Holanda, 27 years old.

The perpetrator, a DJ named Iverson de Souza Araújo, a.k.a. “DJ Ivis”, physically assaulted and beat Pamella, his wife, when she was pregnant. Yes, he punched a pregnant woman!

The physical aggression, however, certainly followed the psychological one. In 2005 the WHO (World Health Organization) – the same WHO which is now dealing with the pandemic – ascertained that physical violence is the last degree of violations that a woman suffers in a relationship.

When in a relationship, men immediately establish a sense of ownership over their partner’s body, believing that they have the legitimate right to say, or even decide, for example, what kind of clothes their girlfriends and wives are allowed to wear, what they are supposed to eat, where they are supposed to go, with whom they are (or not) allowed to keep friendships, how they should deal with their money. In doing so men become a “creditor” of the “debts” that women start having with him if they don’t follow strictly those rules that he has made up for the relationship. IF the women do not follow his rules, they instantly become disloyal, fraudulent, a liar, and a cheat in his sick mind, and for THIS reason, the women deserve punishment.

In this man’s mind, punishment will not re-educate his partner, but will, instead, intimidate her. Men who commit violence do not believe they are committing any violence, but only proposing a fair correction. Men like these believe that women are natural liars; and such punishment will, at most, prevent them from practicing “illicit acts” so often.

The relation of power is then established. Added to this is the physical strength of a male, his economic power, his family, even the FEMALE members, that tend to blame the partner; the friends, who do not intervene or get involved in any sort of situation and issue; the society, which isolates similar occurrences in the name of a “discreet and prudent” privacy, as if Brazilians are discreet and prudent in any crap in their life. That is the meaning of: “When husband and wife are fighting, don’t stick in your oar”, in other words: we all are discreet and prudent. Not being involved starts to mean the same as being mature, adult, “let them work it out”, “they are in this because they chose it”, which creates the impression that both of them, in that abusive relationship, have the same power of choice.

THEY DO NOT!

Most cases of femicide happen exactly when the woman decides to break up the relationship. The man does not accept having his power undermined, and then he really thinks that he has the right to annihilate his partner’s life. But no, he obviously has no right to do such a thing. People did not choose to be in that place, in that context, in that way. They have made a choice for something else, which, at that moment, no longer exists.

What most people do not understand, but need to, is that in a relationship like this, once the violence is established, there is no turning back. This man is committing a crime, and although there is indeed no punishment for psychological violence in the Penal Code, there is compensation for moral damages in the civil sphere.

From the first instance of violence, there will come others, such as patrimonial and physical violence. Patrimonial violence is when the man decides what to do with his partner’s money. This is a very complicated case. Picture this scene: a weakened, unhappy woman, afraid of going out, without the strength to break up, getting physical and psychological illnesses, getting weaker and weaker every day. Meanwhile, her partner is holding the greatest feeling of power, getting ready to punish her at the slightest mistake, a mistake only in his own interpretation, and he feels powerful enough to start the first physical aggression.

My friends, this path was a long one. The perpetrator, Iverson Araújo, has walked this path, and what the cameras recorded was a small part of what he, in fact, did to her. The cameras did not catch the wounds deep inside her soul. The psychological traumas. This is not perceptible on camera.

And she had to submit for reasons such as their baby and his economic power. But there was a moment when she realized that her dignity and right to life were endangered, that it was better to be starving with the child away from him, than staying in that private prison.

So the cameras do not show the whole ugly truth. There is MUCH MORE which was not recorded.

Pamella had the opportunity to go to the mass media. And while her case was being reported, 36,000 OTHER WOMEN WERE BEING VIOLATED. According to IPEC (a Brazilian research institute), 25 WOMEN SUFFER DOMESTIC VIOLENCE EVERY MINUTE IN BRAZIL, the same country where

3,200 WOMEN WERE MURDERED BY MEN, EX-HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, OR PARTNERS, according to data from G1 (Globo newspaper).

During the pandemic, 1,330 women were killed – that is,

for each Pamella, we have another 36,000 women who suffer violence every day.

EVERY SINGLE DAY.

TODAY, 36,000 MORE PAMELLAS.

TOMORROW, ANOTHER 36,000 PAMELLAS.

Violence is so banalized that Damares, Brazilian Minister of HUMAN AND WOMAN RIGHTS, extinguished the policies of Women’s Police Stations, in a country where 90% of the cities did not have these stations. Violence is so trivialized that the judiciary exposes and laughs at the victim, as they did in the judgement of influencer Mariana Ferrer’s case .

It is so banalized that this perpetrator, named Iverson, was rewarded for his crime.

DJ Ivis had 700,000 followers on Instagram. But after the spreading of the footage of him punching his wife, his account has reached almost ONE MILLION followers and supporters. It is worth noting that his new followers are men AND WOMEN.

First of all, THE VERY EXISTENCE OF IVERSON AS AN “ARTIST” ALREADY DENOTES THAT WE, AS BRAZILIAN PEOPLE, HAVE TOTALLY LOST OUR AESTHETIC CAPACITY and the use of art to enrich Brazilian popular culture.

No.

Do not come to me with the left-wing understanding statement that says EVERYTHING that is done in popular culture should be honored. It should not. DJ Pedrinho, a funk MC, when he was 11 years old, said he got “the young girls to suck his dick”. If this is not a fucking apology for pedophilia, in a time when underage girls are being dumped without any criteria at the TikTok doing the Big Bank challenge and showing their butts, as if they were adult women, then nothing else will be pedophilia.

A lot of shit is produced in the name of “popular culture”. The singers push a truckload of money up their ass and go live in a goddamn big house, FAR AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SPONSORING THEIR “ART”.

A shitty art, qualified by the number of views on Spotify.

A shitty art, with a guy who has not done any musical research, does not know how to handle a Technics but calls himself a DJ. An opportunistic bum with a cancerous, putrefied aesthetic capacity, who gives people what makes them feel lazier than they already are. That art does not challenge the audience to go a step further, to learn something more, to know the roots of Brazilian culture.

It’s all about alcoholic beverages, betrayal, drugs, and superficialities, be it in ‘sertanejo’ (Brazilian country music), be it in this shit that this dude played. Thank God I didn’t even have to unfollow him since I have never even followed him.

I didn’t even know that this motherfucker was out there in the world.

A country that gave the world Arthur Verocai and Chico Pinheiro, also presented DJ Ivis.

It is even a sin to mention Arthur and Chico in a piece where I have to go into the depths of this sewer.

The very existence of Ivis denotes the failure of Brazilian education. We are garbage people, who express themselves in a garbage way and listen to garbage things. And that is why we live in garbage, support a garbage president, and when a man beats a woman, WE CANNOT EXPECT OUR REACTION TO BE OTHER THAN GARBAGE, such as when he gets more followers. The audience that supports this guy does so because they are the same people who are victims of a country with no project on critical education, and therefore tend to reproduce a subculture that is more and more neighing. I came from the favela and damn it, in the favela we have Cartola (a singer, composer, and poet considered to be one of the founding fathers of samba in Brazil).

The show business will react in two ways: the companies are obliged to react under the law, – THEY ARE FUCKING OBLIGED TO. And the public will be cheering the guy on.

Yesterday, an Instagram profile called @wgabriel had the guts to post a question:

IF YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF DJ IVIS’ CAREER, WHAT WOULD YOU DO NOW TO TAKE CARE OF HIS PUBLIC IMAGE?

And his administrative staff said that they will wait for “THE DEVELOPMENT OF FACTS BEFORE SPEAKING OUT”. Both this mediocre Gabriel, as well as the assessorship, SHOULD RESIGN, and not offer to defend a scoundrel.

The press, the “influencers” and “celebrities” need to stop capitalizing on the violence against a woman and act seriously. We know that many people only talked about this case to get likes, views, to improve their “public image”. Who, among this group, has informed you that, according to IPEC, 36 thousand women suffer domestic violence every day in Brazil?

This is Brazil, 2021. The worst version of all the Brazils that came before, all together, one-up the other’s ass, and made up this monster that we are seeing today.

A country that, according to the numbers, is facing the extermination of women’s lives. Whether she is a judge or an unemployed woman in the favela. There is, in my understanding, the extermination of black people, and the extermination of women.

BUT IT IS QUITE EASY TO DRAW AN ANALYSIS BEING OUTSIDE OF THE WHOLE PROBLEM.

The hard thing is to put yourself as part of this shit. If you are a woman, what kind of education are you giving to your male child? What do you say in the kitchen, when there is only you and your kids? What kind of man are you raising? And LET’S BE HONEST: few parents take the responsibility of explaining the basics to their children: don’t be criminals.

Women need to make it clear to their partners that they NEED to be directly involved in the children-raising process. AND FRIENDS OF THESE MEN NEED TO DO SO AS WELL. Common, stop this bullshit, dudes. Ideal world. Do you swear that men are reading this text?

ARE THERE MEN READING THIS TEXT?

If so, let me tell you:

WE, AS A GROUP AND AS A GENDER, ARE EQUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERY SLAP IN THE FACE THAT PAMELLA GOT.

The bastard who WITNESSED her being attacked and did nothing about it, that guy has to be arrested as an accomplice. You, who KNOWS about your friend or a neighbor – you don’t even need to know his name – who beats his wife, and you do nothing about it,

you cannot come on the internet and be left-ish and complain that Bolsonaro did nothing about the Covaxin case. He prevaricates in government, you prevaricate at home.

Please be aware: we are facing a massacre. Defending the end of violence against women will not make you a feminist, but rather, a CITIZEN. Civilized. You do not need to get a banner and go to any fucking protest. It is about ending the patriarchal society, which is much more in your hands than in the women’s hands. It is about putting an end to this massacre. Either by law, by punishment, or by YOUR intervention. If you do not want to, or cannot punch the guy, you can go to the police, call a sheriff. Men understand each other, and you KNOW IT. Fix it. Find a way. If the guy is your friend, make it clear to him that you will not hang out with him anymore. That you will not work with him. That you will not add him to your networks. Figure it out, bro. FIGURE IT OUT!

We are facing extermination. And approaching this topic for ONE day is not enough.

On the day I wrote this article, 36 thousand women suffered violence.

Tomorrow there will be 36,000 more.

Extermination of women’s lives, that’s how we must call it.