NO WOMAN IS AN ISLAND

Photo by Mario Azzi Unsplash

A friend sent me a video at 9am.

It was a security camera footage. In the picture, a woman was sitting on a couch, close to a stroller, which had probably her son or daughter in it, and this woman was being beaten.

As I watched it, the first thing that came into my mind, without any filter, was of my mother, in a panic, saying that the one, who my birth certificate defines as my father, had pulled out a KNIFE to kill her.

They lived together for over 30 years.

She worked as a street vendor, a maid, a cashier in a supermarket, she dedicated her life and all her health to raise three children, practically alone. My “father”, in turn, was a typical job hopper, and in a bad way, since he didn’t fit the job description for not having many skills or ambition in developing himself as a better employee. So, he couldn’t bring money back home. My mom worked hard to earn money, that he spent it all on beer and cigarettes, he also had the gift of simply disappearing with that money and coming back home owing people.

My whole childhood was inside a moving truck.

I lived in more than 25 different houses, in the North Zone of Rio de Janeiro, in several neighborhoods like Cavalcante, Cascadura, Madureira, Abolição, Piedade. Different streets, houses in pieces, losing furniture, moving all around. My mother was sustaining the whole family, trying to have and to give us hope, while he was living in a dissolute and irresponsible way.

For decades, my mother lived a life of humiliation.

My sisters, both victims of abuse and violence from their ex-husbands. My mother came with them to Rio de Janeiro, leaving Recife in 1968, in fucking poverty, because she had already been raped by her first husband.

And in Rio, working as a cashier in a supermarket, in a two-room house, WITH NO ACCESS TO CLEAN WATER or a proper and private bathroom, in the back of the house of an extremely arrogant and racist white woman, she then meets this man, who gets her pregnant, a pregnancy totally out of the plans. On December 3rd, 1974, I was born.

With no clothes to leave the maternity ward, it was her sister, my aunt, who got me a dress for a girl, so that I could have some clothes to leave the maternity ward on that rainy Tuesday. The man didn’t go there. Three days later, my mother was back at work, in the supermarket. In pain, due to post-childbirth bleeding, and that is the whole story.

A man, whose family, the black people of Candomblé, who in fatherhood did not find desire, a will to evolve as a person and as a human being.

I grew up alone, without any father reference, or even a masculine figure. Actually, I’ve been doubting all men around me. Until recently, I had HUGE difficulties talking to a man. I moved myself away from male circles. I have found myself in the speech, writing, in ways of seeing the world, the desires, and the longings of women, but never among men.

This definitely did not make me a better person. Hundreds of women hate what I write, and even though it’s strangely enough, 70% of my readers are not men, they are women.

My relationship with women has never been a bed of roses. I have quarreled with them, fought with them, told them to fuck off, got lots of enemies. On the other hand, I have 4 or 5 people in my life, who if I don’t listen to them, I wouldn’t be able to make any decisions for decades. And precisely because they are not men. I don’t trust men. And this is not good, I need you, men, to understand me. This is an awfully bad side effect.

And that scene in the video triggers me. A trigger to doom.

A woman gets beaten. That’s 36,000 women who are beaten EVERY DAY according to IPEC (a Brazilian research institute). That’s 25 women suffering domestic violence PER MINUTE.

AS IF THIS WAS NOT EXTREME, we still have its reverberation. To the family members who watch this closely. To the mother of the woman who was beaten by DJ Ivis, standing in that room. To the child, still, a lap infant, who doesn’t understand anything and will grow up knowing that their father was arrested on the national network. This child will also lack a father reference. One more Anderson in the world, who doesn’t end his life by shooting himself in the head only because of women who, investing on the individual level by helping them to go through all of this, or in other words, women who insist on holding on to and enhancing this social fabric, already torn by male violence. No woman suffers violence alone. Children, mothers, brothers, sisters, everyone is humiliated together.

The damage done by Iverson is immeasurable. For some people, he became an example. For others, he merely pushes back the desire for a peaceful society.

To write this text, I wrote two others, during the past week. They are already on our website, and I ask you to read and share them.

I talked to four female friends, who were beaten by their partners, one of them during the pandemic, and who is now divorced. All these couples lived together. There were cases of men escalating the assaults, and there was also the case of the guy who, out of nowhere, just became enraged and started beating his partner.

They are destroyed, they feel humiliated, and it is a terrible feeling.

It takes months, even years, to get into a relationship with another man, and when they finally get to do it, they are vigilant 24/7, so that they wouldn’t go through this shitty situation again.

I can’t find one single answer or suggestion for this to end. I think that the law, which already exists, needs to be enforced. But it won’t be applied in a country where the Women’s Police Offices are closed. And look, 90% of the cities didn’t have any DEAM (abbreviation of “Delegacia Especializada de Atendimento à Mulher”, Women’s Police Offices). Men need to be referred to therapy as abusers, in order to treat the potential criminals, that they are. The education system, the law, the prevention. The networks, especially the social ones. Finally, women, and men, who are willing to denounce the bastards who do this.

It is a very large number of women going through this, and we can’t just put ourselves out of it. Iverson is in jail, but don’t be alarmed or shocked if he is released in a few days.

Brazil hates women. Women are targets.

We are witnessing two exterminations in progress: of black people, and of women.