“The burden of denunciation cannot fall on women’s backs, because the rest of society still does not denounce gender violence. Those who call 016 are the women, who decide to go to a court to report it or to the Security Forces and Corps, they are the women. When a woman does not report, she remains just as brave as when she reports.”
The Head of the Coordination Unit Against Gender Violence, Laura Segura, in an interview granted to Television Melilla, explained that women victims of gender violence can report or not based on many factors but “our obligation as an institution is to always support them, encourage them to report, of course, because that will serve to persecute the crime and the aggressor, and inform them of all the resources available to them.” “Our obligation, as an institution, is to support all of them, whether they want to or not want to denounce,” he said.
And, as he said, there are occasions that take refuge in the dispensation not to declare “because they are not prepared, because they are afraid, because there are pressures, because they remain within that circle of violence, because they continue to think that they have a dependence on the aggressor, they continue to think that some are in love, and that all they want is for it to change”.
“In many reports they point out that they do not want the aggressor to go to prison, since he is the father of their children, and that they only want to be left in peace,” he said, insisting that, in any case, “we have to help them get out of situations of violence.”
Violence, Power and Control
In her speech, the Head of Unit also wanted to address the figure of the abuser and correct errors in which we usually fall on them. “They’re not monsters, they’re machists,” he said. “They are people who act normally socially, these people who they choose to abuse are their women and their children, not the rest of society,” he said.
Moreover, he has made it clear that there may be situations that have to do with drug addiction or alcoholism “but those elements are de-inhibiting and violence, which is independent of all those other circumstances, was already there”.
Segura has stressed that violence “has to do with machismo, with power and control and with subordination.” “Gender violence is that. If I don’t have the power and control, I’m attacked, and if I still don’t have the power and control, I can end up murdering,” he explained.
“There are many pillars that support gender violence and, besides, machismo has an amazing ability to transform itself, camouflage itself and make us believe that everything is coming to an end when, really, the yoke of the system is still there,” he explained. Segura has pointed out that this violence is one of the most dangerous towards women, because it occurs in the home itself. “We have to help them get out of this kind of situation,” he said.
The Head of Unit recalled that so far this year, 55 women have been killed so far, including two minors, and stressed that with only one victim of this violence against women, Spain will need to continue improving.
However, he also wanted to send a positive message: “Our country is a pioneer in the field of gender violence, being able to prevent and act on this problem; unlike other countries that do not count the victims.” What is more, there are about 166,000 complaints annually, although it has also acknowledged that only about 25% of cases are reported and that the reality is that in Spain “one in two women has manifested suffering this violence”.
Feminism is equality
During the interview, Laura Segura referred to the importance of prevention and, above all, education and the need to influence the values of equality among the youngest.
With regard to this issue, he pointed out that studies indicate that, among young people, in terms of couple relationships, “girls do perceive, in a high percentage, gender violence and understand it as such, and refer to the importance of feminism and the importance of equality as a means to save lives.”
The problem, she said, is that “boys increasingly feel feminism as something more remote, they don’t even understand what the reality of feminism is.”
Thus he alluded to the manic phrase of ‘I am neither feminist nor male’, when “feminism defends equality and male chauvinism is a system of superiority that has to do with an entire cultural and patriarchal structure”, he made clear.
For this reason, he has advanced that “we have to continue working” even more when “there are couple relationships between young boys and girls, where control is totally normalized, where there is a continuous geolocation through social networks, where jealousy is still understood as a sign of love, where hegemonic masculinity continues to develop absolutely in couple relationships…”.
Laura Segura believes that much progress has been made and that it is enough to look back from five years to see that this is the case. “The ‘it’s over’ that we have experienced this year has not only come from women, it has also come from society,” he said. “Society has seen certain situations like violence and has understood the reality of consent and with that we have to stay,” he concluded.