This is the web version of Americanas, the EL PAÍS America newsletter that addresses news and ideas with a gender perspective.
If you want to subscribe, you can do it at this link.
It's simple: to know something about the hatred of women on social networks you have to be a woman and have a social network.
Twitter, preferably, the most verbal of all, the most explicit in this sense.
And even if it disappeared, explicit hatred would find other outlets.
Before last year I had had to receive the occasional injury, some loose insult, I had watched some attacks in which I had intervened, earning myself some violent comments.
Casual, that's how generic it is to be a woman on a social network.
Until I had to be at the center of a media scandal.
Not a boy, not a Thursday one, of "I liked this movie, I'm going to tweet it to see if they don't cancel me", not a feminist comment in favor of decriminalizing abortion or in favor of trans rights that when they go out into that atmosphere they generate , as comets, contrails of
hate
.
It wasn't a bunch of tweets, no.
I had to be in the middle of a scandal that had the dimensions that the State has.
A president mentioning my name, addressing me as an adversary, as a conservative against his project.
A man who founded a political party, a president for whom more than 60 million Mexican men and women voted, among whom I was (three times) supporting a leftist project.
A man in the highest position of power against someone who writes and has a Twitter account.
And that, oops, she is a woman.
The formula to explode a hate bomb.
The president's statements, added to the number of media mentioning my name and the number of times my name was mentioned on social networks, made me see the hatred of women in its entire spectrum.
There yes, in various social networks, applications, platforms, messages,
attempts to hack my accounts, among other things.
In the distance, after that episode –out of focus in this text– I turn to him to talk about something that this large-scale reveals.
hate
towards women in social networks.
I would not like to quote or give space to hate messages, why replicate them?
On the other hand, what worse way to persecute yourself than to look for things that are said or written about yourself?
But it seems to me that it is worth dwelling on that spectrum of hatred that goes from the light —some mockery or mention of some physical trait—, that is, whoever seeks to humiliate, ridicule or insult, going through harassment, to the most serious that They are threats that could threaten integrity or life, that tip of the iceberg of hate speech.
In principle, social networks as a communication structure are the possibility of a utopia of horizontality.
Anyone can communicate with politicians, artists, musicians, friends, actors or strangers alike.
Social networks are also the natural inclination of democracy: all with the same number of characters, with a uniform typography, with complete and absolute freedom of expression.
All parts matter in the same way, we are all equally important in that virtual space.
However, it is more complicated.
Those of us who have access to the Internet enjoy certain privileges.
Or that other side, the anonymity that social networks suppose.
There is one of its dark sides, that anonymity that allows bot farms, for example, as a political instrument.
Or the same
hate
.
And far from that utopia of horizontality, the problems of a society are exacerbated in social networks.
In a society already in itself with serious problems of gender violence.
Like alcohol that multiplies euphoria, fatigue or violence in a person, being able to hide behind an arroba allows everything and, therefore, also allows unlimited violence.
Which, of course, is even worse when it's directed against women.
For example, according to the 2021 Report on Digital Violence against Women in Mexico City, 40% of women face harassment or sexual advances, the majority coming from anonymous accounts, and between 15,000 and 20,000 hate messages are registered daily by gender reasons.
If social networks are a thermometer of what is happening in this part of the region, what they reflect is an impossibly violent society.
Examples abound.
One of them is the recent case of the Colombian writer Carolina Sanín (let's also keep the controversy out of focus to focus on the
hate
she received).
She wrote a few tweets and in return she received hundreds of messages, multiplying here and there, against her.
Sure, it matters what she wrote in the tweets.
I myself believe and think the opposite of her about it.
However, the cancellation on social networks is fierce against women because it goes through violence.
The Argentine writer Mariana Enríquez ended up closing her Twitter account as a result of this controversy.
In social networks, hatred is mainly expressed through the verbal.
There are other ways – such as the content of the platforms, the images that are published – but the verbal one is the most explicit when it comes to hate.
The written word – the same material with which a tweet or a novel is made – is the one used to attack.
But, unlike fiction, where everything is possible and is one of the last spaces for freedom, on social networks we do not know to what extent what is written can cross that border of reality.
A delusion when you are there, with that impossibility of distinguishing what remains in the virtual space and what can cross over into reality.
At that border we can get lost.
In that violent vortex between what is written and what is real, we do not know when they can be confused, blurred.
And perhaps, through that gray area that I had to pass,
These are our recommended articles of the week:
And a suggestion to finish:
🗣️💜An event: An online conversation with young people about gender violence
By Lorraine Arroyo
I start this recommendation with the disclaimer or the warning that it comes with self-promotion, but this time I wanted to recommend following a virtual conversation that we will have this week in América Futura, EL PAÍS América's platform to report on sustainable development, which has as one of its pillars of gender equality.
To begin the events related to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, on Wednesday the 23rd we will have an online conversation with authorities and young people from different Latin American countries to talk about how gender violence affects them and think of solutions.
Among the participants will be Ana Baiardi, manager of Gender, Inclusion and Diversity at CAF-development bank of Latin America, Solana Quesada, director of the advisory for Gender Equality of the Municipality of Montevideo (Uruguay);
Anya Victoria Delgado, director of the regional project on gender violence of the Pan-American Foundation for Development, based in Mexico;
Nicolás Pontaquarto, from the Directorate for the Promotion of Masculinities for Equality of the Ministry of Women, Gender Policies and Sexual Diversity of the Province of Buenos Aires (Argentina);
Mónica Keragama, a young woman from the Emberá community of Katío (Colombia), Helenis Manolas, president of the National Youth Council of Panama and Laura Melo, a young Colombian woman who was a victim of violence in a relationship.
The virtual talk will be on Wednesday, November 23 at 3:00 p.m. (Colombia, Panama, Peru, and Ecuador time), 4:00 p.m. (Mexico, Bolivia, and Venezuela time) and 5:00 p.m. (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay time) ).
You can follow it on the EL PAÍS América website through América Futura.