Jealousy disguised as protection, hurtful jokes, time controls, screaming, and humiliation are all expressions of a type of gender-based violence that afflicts Latino women. The data are compelling and very similar. They may change the typical dishes or climate from one country to another, but the effects of the region’s structural machismo endure regardless of borders.
Some data measuring the prevalence of psychological violence: In Mexico, 51.6% of women identify themselves as victims, according to the most recent national survey on household relationship dynamics presented by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI) in August 2022; Also in Colombia, the company Sisma Mujer ranks first with 54%, and the UNESCO survey on violence against adolescents in higher education institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, presented only in March 2023, found that 53% of the participants had experienced it in their school environment .
Peru has one of the most worrying indicators in the region as of November 2022: almost six out of ten women are affected, although Guatemala is higher with 69% women and care in 2021, according to the Rapid Gender Analysis conducted by the UN.
If you have read some of the manifestations, perhaps the temptation to think that it is not so serious has crossed your mind. How many times have I heard it! But gender-based aggression is a progressive phenomenon, and emotional violence is the prelude to all others, including sexual and physical.
Furthermore, official figures will never be able to capture the number of deaths in life due to everyday abuse, which is societally minimized and even internally normalized. They are all victims of what, with permissiveness and respect for proportion, I call an “emotional feminicide.” Shall we talk about it?
The challenge is clear: it is not easy to suspect that a family member, colleague or friend is a victim. There are no visible bruises or smudges on the skin to set off alarms, but there are marks with profound effects on mental health, self-esteem, and self-image. In fact, some scientific research has shown that recurrent psychological abuse is more difficult to heal than physical trauma.
Emotional femicide is an unprecedented concept that I am developing and documenting as part of my PhD at the Universidad Panamericana de México. It is not without controversy: I have sometimes been asked if, by naming the effects of this type of violence, I am downplaying the enormous femicide crisis that is also afflicting our countries. I believe the opposite is true: it allows us to generate a warning of the risk of not acting on time. And by on time I mean from the first attack.
It is a global problem and the United Nations makes this clear in its 2030 Agenda. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 137 women are murdered every day around the world by members of their own families. Low self-esteem, insecurity, and feelings of guilt caused by the emotional abuser are the beginning of femicide risk in regulatory and scientific investigations.
Here is a key to analysis: The body protects itself by blocking what is causing it distress, it is the survival instinct. Like the shock or faint we experience in the face of excruciating physical pain, the emotional body protects itself when it suffers. This natural response, combined with the unnatural gender roles and stereotypes that demand submission and a good face toward women—see Barbie, for easy references—is a dangerous cocktail.
A woman who is disconnected from her own body, or who cannot set boundaries or express feelings that society judges to be negative, such as anger or discomfort, presents an interface of vulnerability that requires urgent attention: let’s talk about emotional ones normalize femicide. Even if they call us exaggerated!
Maria Elena Esparza Guevara She is a PhD student in intellectual history at UP, a graduate of the Women’s Leadership Program at Oxford University and founder of Ola Violeta AC
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And one final suggestion:
A podcast: “Las Cabras” presented by Ana Julia Yeyé
From Almudena Barragán
“Las Cabras” is a narrative podcast that reflects on sexuality and the deconstruction of heteronormativity with a pinch of humor. It used to be an insult to call someone a goat. Today, in the words of the team behind this podcast, it’s a way to proudly make a name for yourself. Jotos, obstacles, goats, dikes, machorras, fagots, chichifos, colifatos… everyone chooses the one that best represents them.
Produced exclusively for Podimo, the project will be directed by comedian Ana Julia Yeyé in collaboration with Peruvian production company Decibelio85 and Spanish Podium Studios.
In each chapter of Las Cabras, he shares life stories of members of the LGTBIQ+ community. All, all, to know his protagonists’ points of view and how they dealt with circumstances of acceptance or rejection. Therefore, basic concepts are also addressed to understand the community of sexual diversity. In the first episode we meet a Mexican woman who, after marriage, the birth of a mother and divorce, recognizes herself as a lesbian when she accepts that she has never forgotten her first love, a schoolmate whom she fell in love with in elementary school and with whom she fell in love who met again 30 years later. Las Cabras becomes a unique place that “gets all eyes”, as its creators and creators say, through stories full of love, pain and happiness from people of all ages and nationalities.