Some of the ways of exercising violence are so imperceptible that it is difficult to see them in time. It costs the lives of many adult women (and that is why the President of the Government has called for tomorrow, Tuesday, a summit against gender violence bringing together the plenary session of the State Observatory of Violence against Women). And it is difficult for teenagers when they are entering into their first relationships. According to the Anar Foundation, the majority of adolescents who reported an attack were not aware that the previous behavior of their partner or ex-partner was already violent. By then they had inadvertently become entangled in the viscous threads that power unfolds.
Hence the importance of becoming aware of what happens in relationships, unraveling the ins and outs of the meaning of language, analyzing the emotions and actions it triggers. All of this can be explained, even to children at an early age, but it is better understood if one experiences it firsthand. The authors of the project “if you don’t live it, you don’t feel it” started from this premise, the social educator Alberto González and the audiovisual producer, Diana Perdoma, which was presented this week at the Edtech Congress. His company, V-Tool, uses technology to educate on equality.
It is an immersive experience that views scenes that frequently occur among teenagers. They invite students, ages 10 and up, to put themselves in the shoes of a girl by putting on virtual reality glasses. They watch nine videos, always taking the woman’s body, which stage the nine steps of the ladder of sexist violence devised by the sociologist Carmen Ruiz Repullo: friendships, telephone control, hobbies, social networks, ways of dressing, ways of being, spaces leisure, family separation and sexual relations.
In one of them, the girl in the video (the glasses wearer) is sitting in a kitchen in the company of her boyfriend, Carlos, who is preparing a snack. She, busy with her cell phone, laughs with amusement. And he is interested in what she does. He explains to her that it is going to be her friend Marta’s birthday and they are talking about the party to which they are both invited. He expresses her displeasure. He won’t go because she has a soccer game, plus he doesn’t like those friends and neither do their boyfriends who haven’t shown interest in the sport. “Are you going?” he adds. “Marta is my best friend,” the girl defends her desire to go. “Aren’t you coming to the game?” he replies. In the end, she remains silent and gives in: “Okay, I’ll tell you that I’ll see you another day.” He smiles: “I love you.”
“Many think that it is not gender violence if there is physical violence and although the immersive experience impacts them, they bounce back,” explains González. “But that’s what it’s about, expressing what they feel, be it fear, sadness or anger, and exploring the beliefs behind those emotions.”
There are girls who recognize themselves with a certain shame, boys who justify their boyfriend, and others who are angered by injustice. “In some schools you can see that they have worked on coeducation because both they see it clearly,” says the educator. However, there are also students who state that men are also the object of this type of violence, but that no one seems to care because “now only women are talked about.”
This is an increasingly common phenomenon: believing that there is equality in abuse despite the overwhelming numbers. Precisely, the Survey on School Coexistence and Safety in Catalonia that was published last summer indicates that boys “quite agree” with the phrase: “There are also many women who attack men, but that is not talked about.”
In another video, the young man shows his disagreement with the way she dresses, wearing shorts, and threatens to leave her alone. “Make it clear, you are either mine or everyone’s.” In the final scene, with the intimacy that an immersive experience of her can recreate, he pressures and coerces her to have sexual relations even though she keeps saying that she doesn’t feel ready, that now is not the time. “If you wanted me….”.
The success of this program’s proposal, according to its founder, is that everything that happens in those scenes and the emotions it arouses is analyzed with its teachers. One of the objectives is also the power of the group in the discussion. And the importance of the action, as in the case of bullying, if one is a witness. Understand, for example, the importance of welcoming a friend who moved away to be with her partner. Let go of the pain caused by the estrangement and understand that she was trapped in a spider’s web. Now they, her friends, are her reparation.
