Some of the ways of exercising violence are so imperceptible that it is difficult to see them. It costs the lives of many adult women (and, for this reason, the Prime Minister has called for tomorrow, Tuesday, a summit against gender violence bringing together the plenary of the State Observatory on Violence against Women). And it’s hard for teenage girls when they start dating. According to the Anar Foundation, the majority of teenagers who reported an assault were not aware that the previous behavior of their partner or ex-partner was already violent. Then they had become entangled without realizing it with the slimy threads that power unfolds.
Hence the importance of becoming aware of what happens in relationships, unraveling the entanglements of the meaning of language, analyzing the emotions and actions it triggers. All this can be explained, even to children of early ages, but it is better understood if you experience it in your own skin. The authors of the “If you don’t live, don’t feel” project started from this premise, social educator Alberto González and audiovisual producer Diana Perdoma, and which was presented this week at the Edtech Congress, held at the UPF. His company, V-Tool, uses technology to educate about equality.
It is an immersive experience that views scenes that often take place between teenagers. They invite students, from the age of 10, to be in the shoes of a girl by putting on virtual reality glasses. They watch nine videos, always from the point of view of the woman’s body, which stage the nine steps of the scale of male violence devised by the sociologist Carmen Ruiz Repullo: friendships, phone control, hobbies, social networks, ways of dressing, ways of being, leisure spaces, family separation and sexual relations.
In one, the girl in the video (the wearer of the glasses) is sitting in a kitchen with her boyfriend, Carlos, preparing a snack. She, entertained with her cell phone, laughs amused, and he takes an interest in her. He explains that it will be his friend Marta’s birthday and they talk about the party, to which they are both invited. He expresses displeasure. He won’t be there because he has a soccer match; moreover, she doesn’t like those friends, and neither do her boyfriends, who have shown no interest in sport. “Will you go there?”, he adds. “Marta is my best friend”, the girl defends her desire to go there. “Will you come to the party?”, he replies. In the end, she shuts up and gives in: “Okay, I’ll tell them I’ll see them another day.” He smiles: “I love you”.
“Many think that it is not gender violence if there is no physical violence and, despite the fact that the immersive experience impacts them, they are altered”, explains González. “But it’s about this, that they express what they feel, whether it’s fear, sadness, or anger, and that they explore the beliefs behind it.”
There are girls who recognize it with some shame, boys who justify the boyfriend, and others are disturbed by the injustice. “In some schools you can see that they have worked on co-education, because both they and they see it clearly”, explains the educator. However, there are also students who point out that men are also subject to this kind of violence, but that no one seems to care because “now we only talk about women”.
It is an increasingly common phenomenon: to believe that there is equality when it comes to abuse despite the overwhelming numbers. Precisely, the Survey of School Coexistence and Safety in Catalonia that was published in the summer indicates that boys are “quite in agreement” with the phrase: “There are also many women who assault men, but this is not talked about”.
In another video, the young man shows dissatisfaction with the way he dresses, in shorts, and threatens to leave and leave her alone. “Clarify yourself, you’re either mine or everyone’s”. In the final scene, with the intimacy that can recreate an immersive experience, he pressures and coerces her to have sex, despite the fact that she keeps saying that she doesn’t feel ready, that now is not the time. “If you loved me…”.
The success of this program’s proposal, according to the founder, is that everything that happens in those scenes and the emotions it evokes are analyzed with the teachers. One of the objectives is also the power of the group in the discussion, as well as the importance of action, as in the case of bullying, if one witnesses it. To understand, for example, the importance of welcoming a friend who moved away to be with her partner, to let go of the pain that produced the distance and to understand that she was caught in a web. Now they, the friends, are his repair.
