Rape culture is what allows cases like the 16-year-old girl brutally raped by more than 30 men and exposed like a trophy on social media to happen and continue to happen.
We are all horrified, perplexed, indignant, disgusted, calling for a position from public authorities, awaiting punishment, etc. Rape culture also normalizes the barbarity of rape, blaming the victim for the violence suffered. And how does this happen? Just read the newspapers that published the news of the violence. Many mentioned, even if subtly, the possibility of the girl being a drug user and living in a community dominated by drug trafficking. In this way, she becomes responsible for what happened, and is therefore guilty.
If the raped teenager had behaved according to the moral values of Brazilian culture, that is, as a “respectful girl”, none of this would have happened, this is what the society constituted in this culture thinks. It is necessary to leave the violent act and the victim in darkness, as we somehow remove the curse from us. In the same way, it is necessary to transform the perpetrator of violence into a monster, as this justifies public lynching and justice in its most varied forms of violence.
In rape culture, men are violent by nature, they do not “deny fire” with women considered unrespectable and marry beautiful, modest and homely women. Life goes on like this. However, in this same culture, when the perpetrator of violence responds for the crime, he is thrown into a cage to be punished by other equally violent men. It is part of our culture and we all understand it as something acceptable. We think this way because we put ourselves in the shoes of the family of the victim(s). What if it was our daughter, sister or someone close to us? The big problem is the naturalization of this cycle, which begins, ends and starts again for some time without any challenge capable of changing this reality. After all, it has always been like this.
Given our perplexity based on rape culture, let's wait for the next victim and call for justice for this monster. Meanwhile, in the name of God and the Brazilian family, we are passively watching the removal of the gender approach from education plans in states and municipalities. This is not just a detail, but the only way to fight rape culture.
It is through the reproduction of gender norms that it is culturally assumed that a woman's body is not hers. We remember that abortion in Brazil is criminalized, and, in the face of rape, there is a strong conservative lobby these days so that the victim has to follow an arduous bureaucratic procedure to prove violence and have the right to an abortion.
It is also in a reality where discussions about gender in schools are possible that children begin to understand that violence in interpersonal relationships is not natural. It is also at school that boys should learn that no means no, given the woman's denial of not wanting to have sexual relations. It is also at school that boys and girls should learn that differences should not be eliminated, since people in a democratic society are free to choose what they want to do with their bodies.
There is a strong discussion currently about “gender ideology”. This is yet another intellectual cynicism so that women's bodies continue to be the property of the State and men, in the end, so that they remain submissive; so that the LGBTI population remains distant from the few rights that are already guaranteed to them, but which are still not supported by our conservative society.
We need to understand that we are facing an opportunity like no other in our history. Fighting for democracy is fighting for civil rights. It is necessary to implement democracy with laws, rules and public policies. It only makes sense if there is social agreement. Let us thus transform our most genuine indignation into a public discussion that has as its main objective the elimination of violence (public and private), but not through traditional means (such as police and repression), but through the most revolutionary of democratic instruments that has a society: education.
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