Why Are You So Angry? by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Please be warned, this post details violence against women.

A new March 8.
Another year protesting
Another evening taking the streets of our cities around the world
In Rome, in Lima and Santander
A new slogan, a new banner, for the same rage

A decent man, one of those who define himself as a good citizen and father stands in front of me asking: “Why are you so angry? …. Why are feminists so angry? I am asking you: Why are you so fucking angry?”

Why are you angry?
Because my friend went to the police to put a complaint that her husband beat her and they did not take the complaint. When she returned home, her husband hit her again.

Why are you angry?
Because I am 16 years old and every day after school, older men shout sexual things to me in the street, they even follow me and when I get upset and tell them not to do it they say that I am being rude … I am afraid to walk in the street.

Why are you angry?
Because Marita Veron, my neighbor, went out and has not returned. The police told her mother not to worry, surely Marita was with a boyfriend, but she has not returned home since 2002.

Why are you angry?
I’m 12 years old and a teacher at school touched me under the skirt. He told me not to say anything and when I told the Director, he did not believe me.

Why are you angry?
Can you understand what I say? I don´t see my baby girl anymore. I’m Joane Florvil,  immigrant from Haiti. I speak bad Spanish. They did not listen when I explained that my ID was stolen. I was denounced, arrested, accused of being illegal and abandoning my baby. Despair and anguish caused me a heart attack.

Why are you angry?
Because I saw on TV how a man said that women deserved to be raped sometimes and people around him laughed and many girls will grow up thinking that’s normal.

Why are you angry?
I was gang raped when I was walking back from work. I went to the police, I made the report, I identified my attackers and a month later, the court released them. My name is Macarena Marin. I had to live with it every day. I could not stand it. I hung myself.

Why are you angry?
I am a girl in Nigeria and at dawn I will go through the rite of genital mutilation. An old woman from the village will cut my clitoris with a rusty razor blade, while my mother and my aunts hold me by my legs and arms. The pain will be unbearable and if I survive infections and bleeding, I will suffer the rest of my life because of fistula.

Why are you angry?
Because I went to walk to the beach and they murdered me. My name is Lola Chomnalez and I am fifteen years old.

Why are you angry?
Because they murdered me and threw my body in a trash bin 7 blocks from my house and 6 years later, the criminals are still unpunished. My name is Candela Sol Rodriguez.

Why are you angry?
Because my teacher raped me and strangled me. Then he threw my body in a forest. On February 12, I would have been 17 years old. My name is Anahi.

Why are you angry?
Because all my children are the product of marital rape and my husband raped my daughters too. I never said anything, I ate my rage because the priest in the Church said that my silence is a virtue.

Why are you angry?
Because I spent 10 years locked up in a prison in El Salvador. My name is Teodora Vasquez. I suffered a miscarriage while working as a cleaner in a school. Still with the hemorrhage, the police took me arrested. I was convicted of murdering my unborn baby.

Why are you angry?
I am an environmental activist. I reported harassment, serious threats of death and violence against me and my family. At midnight on March 2, 2016, a hit man shot me in my own house. I am a woman, I am indigenous, I am from Honduras … I am Berta Cáceres

Have we spoken clearly? Do not ask about our struggle, as if it were just a headache on a bad day … in every bad day we are organizing our rage, from the roots of pain and the bowels of memory.

A new March 8.
Another year protesting
Another evening taking the streets of our cities around the world
In Buenos Aires, in Rabat and New York
A new slogan, a new banner, for the same rage

#NiUnaMenos

 

Photo: Women’s rights are Human Rights, Joel Raskin in Flickr

Note: This text is the first of a series of writings that I will present at the Women’s Book Club in my city throughout this year.

Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente is a specialist in training and community outreach in Gender, Communication and Interculturality. She’s also a learning and social projects designer and a qualitative researcher; an awarded activist for women’s rights who too does independent scholarship in Religion, Gender and Social Discourses. Nomadic writer. A woman with stories and geographies, lover of books, cats and spicy Chai.