The Daughters of Violence Fight Back Against Street Harassment in Mexico Gabriela Garcia Calderon - Global Voices
go to original February 14, 2016

Fighting Street Harassers With Confetti Guns and Punk Rock (AJ+)

Street sexual harrasment is a reality that many women in different countries face on a daily basis, and it's a pest that Global Voices has written about in the past more than once. In Mexico, the feminist group Las Hijas de Violencia (The daughters of Violence) has resolved to fight back against that verbal assault that women face daily through art:

The daughters of Violence […] We look, through art, punk and video, to address chauvinist violence socially legalized.
[…]
That's how the idea of carrying out this art project was born, that besides being an esthetic perspective, it might be a public outcry that invites to reflect upon the topics we address.
[…].
We are the daughters of Violence, we carry along years of walking through a hostile public space that has no place for woman's body as a circulating body but as something for external joy and pleasure.

The members of the group are Ana Karen, Ana Beatriz, Elisa Gutiérrez, Verónica Bravo, Betzabeth Torres and Patricia Rodríguez, and together:

[…] have decided to respond street harassment by symbolically shooting their attackers with confetti guns and singing their song Sexista Punk (Sexist Punk), where they denounce street harassment as a chauvinist aggression action.

In their song Sexist Punk, part of the lyrics says:

What you did
to me it's called harassment.
If you do that to me
like that I respond.
You don't have the right and what you do is typical of a slob
[…]
I imagine the day when I'd be able to walk
Without having to take care of myself, without having to hide my body
Sexist, chauvinist. What do you want?
Show off your manhood? Go fuck yourself!

The daughters of Violence have a strategy when they react:

They walk by the street and wait for a guy to call out ‘you, gorgeous’ or something like that. They chase the guy, shoot him with a confetti gun and sing a song that, summing up, says, ‘what you did to me is called harassment’. It's not a bad idea […] they suggest that the victim fights back in a playful way.

With the idea of spreading their witty and peaceful way of fighting back against street harassment, The daughters of Violence invite all women to join them:

[…] they recommend that the answer to these situations has to be fun ‘so you may not keep the feeling of the violence you've just been through, so you may go on your way with calm and knowing that you can still have an awesome day’.

On her blog Pornucopia, Estefanía Vela Barba makes us reflect and shows us that women are neither alone nor helpless:

Why is it that when discussing sexual violence, we always think of a man that is stronger than a woman — who we always imagine unarmed, helpless, fragile –, down a dark alley with no way out? Yes. That's a possible scenario. But it is not the only one. The performance by The daughters of Violence is extraordinary exactly because it shows a different possibility: it doesn't show a helpless, isolated woman, in a panic who can do nothing more than surrender when faced with a man.

See the original at Global Voices

Related: In Gender Equality, Mexico Still Has a Way to Go (Mexico News Daily)

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