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A Rapist In Your Way - Un Violador En Tu Camino

While we are still during the #16daysofactivism and still aligned with the topic of 2019, rape, I want to praise and shout from the rooftops about the amazing pacific protest started and made viral by the feminist collective 'La Tesis' in Chile.

The song (a rapist in your way) with simple but effective choreography and performed by numerous women with their eyes blindfolded has been in my head for over a week now, and every time I catch myself singing "And it wasn’t my fault, not where I was, nor how I was dressed", I smile, and then I say to myself, hell yes, and smile more because it is catchy, because it is strong, because it is viral. Which means that while I am smiling probably somebody else, in another part of the planet, is doing the same thing for the exact same reason.

Every sentence in the song hurts like a punch in the stomach, the pain of truth. Hurt for every single woman raped daily, hurt for the silence and complicity of the police, the judges, the presidents...hurt for a society that feels that we keep talking about it and we bore them.  The fear hurts. 

But they peacefully made all that pain into a song, and danced together in anger. And boom! It happened! It triggered something in us all, and people wanted to replicate it everywhere, and there are videos of the same song being performed in Colombia, in Madrid, in Australia, in Belgium, in Paris... with the same words (sometimes translated) same movements, same blindfolded eyes. All part of the same thing, having each others back, recognising each other in a global sisterhood that is sick of living in this reality.

Here are the lyrics of the song:

“The patriarchy is a judge
who tries us for being born
and our punishment
is the violence you see now.
It’s femicide,
impunity for my murderer,
it’s disappearance,
it’s rape.
And it wasn’t my fault, not where I was, nor how I was dressed.
You are the rapist,
(please note the super intense silence in the audience with this sentence)
you are the rapist.
It’s the police, the judges, the state, the president.
The oppressive state is a macho rapist.”

 

It seems to be the perfect hymn for the #metoo era, it replicates that same awareness, the same strong peaceful activism, the same recognition amongst women all over the world of the need to stand up together. So sing it, dance it, and smile when doing so because you are not alone and you are not the only one singing it, right now! 

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