{"id":2753,"date":"2023-12-11T02:03:41","date_gmt":"2023-12-11T02:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/descarriadas-y-visibles-contra-las-violencias-machistas\/"},"modified":"2025-01-17T02:05:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T02:05:00","slug":"deviant-and-visible-against-sexist-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/deviant-and-visible-against-sexist-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Deviant and visible against sexist violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

As women who use drugs, we are\u00a025 times<\/strong>\u00a0more likely than others to experience violence. Various conditions of vulnerability, such as living without a home, having unstable income, or living with mental health diagnoses often push us to the fringes of society, where we endure the daily oppression stemming from this patriarchal, racist, colonial, and LGBTQIphobic system.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s as if almost 100 years hadn\u2019t passed, for our current situation is far too similar to that of the women incarcerated by the \u201cPatronato de Protecci\u00f3n a la Mujer\u201c (\u201cWomen\u2019s Protection Board\u201d<\/strong>). A francoist institution operating under the Ministry of Justice, the \u201cWomen\u2019s Protection Board\u201d used religious doctrines to manage centers of repression between 1941 to 1984. Young women and girls between 16 and 25 years old\u00a0were<\/strong>\u00a0sent there for<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cimmoral\u201d conduct<\/strong>, which included things like kissing in public, walking hand in hand with one another, smoking, dressing in a certain way, having been sexually assaulted, etc.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Far from offering protection, the \u201cWomen\u2019s Protection Board\u201d was the place where women were sent when they were seen to be \u201cbad apples\u201d who had gone astray, women who dared to defy the status quo, women who were free. These women could have been us, and in fact\u2026 we are them. Because\u00a0while these institutions may have changed their names<\/strong>, they remain governed by the same powers with the same objective:\u00a0to control our bodies through oppression, violence, and prohibition.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For these reasons, at Metzineres we have once again taken to the streets for the\u00a0International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women<\/strong>. We believe it absolutely necessary to keep\u00a0denouncing the discrimination, stigmatization, and criminalization<\/strong>\u00a0that we face. We must make\u00a0historical memory using a feminist perspective<\/strong>\u00a0that, among other things, demands reparations from the institutions complicit in the existence and crimes committed by the \u201cWomen\u2019s Protection Board.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This 2023, we protested\u00a0with our faces exposed<\/strong>; we didn\u2019t wear masks or disguises. Because we want to be seen. We will no longer hide. For it is enough that the\u00a0States and governments<\/strong>\u00a0exclude us from their services, like health, social, judicial, labor, and housing services; that the\u00a0media<\/strong>\u00a0dehumanizes us and makes us invisible behind numbers and headlines; and that\u00a0a large part of society<\/strong>\u00a0treats us like delinquents, bad womxn, bad daughters, and bad mothers.<\/p>\n

If we have one thing clear it\u2019s that we will never again stay in the shadows:\u00a0there are many of us, and we have names and diverse lived realities that need to be brought to light.<\/strong>\u00a0And so, on the 24th and 25th of November, with our lights and our signs we stepped out into the open. We made ourselves heard, shouting once again that\u00a0we are anti-prohibition feminists<\/strong>. Throughout history, we have been (and continue to be) forbidden from doing many things: studying, managing our money, dancing, kissing each other in public, smoking, drinking and using other drugs, having an abortion\u2026 and what we have found is that far from helping to educate and discipline,\u00a0prohibition only leads to secrecy, disinformation, and violence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Following many years of work,\u00a0we are now organized and can fight together,<\/strong>\u00a0like we did on Saturday, November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. After gathering at the door of our locale to read the\u00a0manifesto<\/strong>\u00a0(link) we recently published through the campaign\u00a0#EVAWUD2023<\/strong>, we headed towards the Paseo de Gracia con Diagonal.<\/p>\n

Dancing through feathers, we were an intergenerational mass of people.\u00a0We do not always have the opportunity to make our presence known and to occupy certain spaces because we are busy trying to survive<\/strong>. Our presence there was a way to put various demands on the table:\u00a0our participation<\/strong>\u00a0in creating, developing, and monitoring the politics that affect our lives; a guaranteed\u00a0access to systems that protect and denounce<\/strong>\u00a0violence against women, as well as for\u00a0sexual and reproductive health<\/strong>;\u00a0the end of prohibition and criminalization<\/strong>;\u00a0the expansion of \u201cfull spectrum harm reduction,\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0a perspective that deconstructs falsities about substance use and places focus on the exclusion and marginalization that don\u2019t allow wellbeing to those who are vulnerable.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

On both days, we heard proclamations from our Palestinian comrades. Among others,\u00a0\u201cQueers in Palestine\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0called for solidarity from intersectional feminist groups and that we show up for them and their resistance the same as with all\u00a0decolonial struggles<\/strong>\u00a0in the world. Other comrades talked of voluntary motherhood and parenting, denouncing\u00a0custody losses<\/strong>, calling for the\u00a0abolition of the immigration law<\/strong>, and asking that Metzineres join them, as well.<\/p>\n

All in all, we can say that we have put our heart and soul into fighting for what we deserve. But, above all, we have kept celebrating (and will continue celebrating) that\u00a0we are alive, together, and strong<\/strong>, and that\u00a0no one can stop us!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As women who use drugs, we are\u00a025 times\u00a0more likely than others to experience violence. Various conditions of vulnerability, such as living without a home, having unstable income, or living with mental health diagnoses often push us to the fringes of society, where we endure the daily oppression stemming from this patriarchal, racist, colonial, and LGBTQIphobic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2754,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions\/2754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/metzineres.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}