Aggressions start at home: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

The chains of violence starting in the family that considers any sexual preference different from conventional stereotypes as a disease corrode, and those affected gradually lose the ability to exercise their citizenship and individual guarantees, said the researcher of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Science and Humanities (CEIICH), Siobhan Guerrero Mc Manus. They start at home, where there are usually stereotypes about the behavior that a man or a woman should have, and intensify when a person "comes out of the closet".

Participating in the talk "Human rights, equality and gender violence from diversity", as part of the activities programmed by UNAM on the occasion of the 25N "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women", the specialist pointed out that aggressions start when a person is faced with a body that does not fit gender stereotypes. In other words, a boy or girl does not need to publicly pronounce themselves as lesbian, trans, or bisexual, it is enough for them to be read as such; that is where the violence and "interventions" begin.

Guerrero Mc Manus added: "Sometimes doctors give them interventions that can be described as reparative therapies. LGBTIQ children and adolescents in Mexico are already being medicated and intervened from pathologizing perspectives, from perspectives that are considered torture, that seek to suppress sexual orientation or gender identity, or in the case of intersex people, to modify their body morphologies".

During the Permanent Seminar Gender Public Policy: Equality and Violence, she recalled that most LGBTI people who suffer these chains of aggressions end up expelled from their homes, in street situations, which translates into pauperization in all aspects of their lives, there is even a higher school dropout rate that prevents them from accessing jobs with social benefits.

Regarding cases of hate crimes, the university researcher referred that in 2020, in Mexico 52 percent of hate crimes against LGBTIQ people were against young trans women (20 to 30 years old) and young effeminate male homosexuals; followed by lesbian, bisexual and trans populations.

They hinder the fullness of life

Knowledge and research also suffer from gender violence, agreed on academics and specialists speaking at the Colloquium "Feminism, Philosophy and Science", organized by the Coordination for Gender Equality (CIGU) of the UNAM.

Mónica Gómez Salazar, an academic from UNAM's Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL), said: "This is a frontline issue at UNAM, with personal and social responsibility, which has an impact on students. What we do in these activities is how we can transform a vision of life, and question practices that should not be seen as normal".

For Dora Elvira García-González, Ph.D. in Philosophy from the Universidad Nacional and professor at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores Monterrey, the systemic violence that surrounds human life is a threat to the possibilities of a full life in all human spheres.

This violence, she continued, sometimes emerges in intangible areas, such as knowledge and research, which suffer actions of exclusion and, in general, of injustice that constitutes acts of epistemic aggressions.

Later, Miriam Betzabe Tecamachaltzi Silvarán, an academic and researcher at the Autonomous University of Tlaxcala, explained that gender inequalities in education also limit development.

"There is a masculinization of education in Mexico, usually women are focused on some areas of knowledge. In the National System of Researchers alone, they represent 37 percent", she pointed out.

Meanwhile, Dulce Alexandra Cepeda Robledo, professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, commented on her line of research on 45 women journalists in the state, who suffer systematic harassment from the outside and their environment, receive lower salaries, and suffer deep emotional exhaustion and stagnation in their work.