Sorry Giulia if we couldn’t save you, now we will scream even louder

I hoped I was wrong, I empathised with the concern and anxiety of the family of this young girl who had her whole life ahead of her. It was snatched away from her, out of selfishness, by a man who ran away and did not take responsibility for what he did. Giulia Cecchettin was a person who was graduating, she wanted to build a future, not with him, not with the man who became her murderer. She had had the strength to remove herself from the power of a man who, according to Giulia’s sister (who posted a ‘He was your good boy!’) was violent, miserably tolerated by those who considered him ‘a normal person’.

Those who commit feminicides, however, need not show anything diabolical. The feminicide lurks among us, in our homes, in the relationships we live, the signs to perceive it lie in an awareness that unveils every sexist stereotype that values possession or jealousy as demonstrations of love rather than the mere exercise of the feminicide’s control and power over his victim.

Giulia was a woman who had the right to choose freely, but she was hit, tugged, stabbed several times, massacred, while she tried to defend herself as best she could, finally killed, placed in a car, lifeless and barbarously dumped in a gully. Meanwhile he, a coward, fled, hid, hid the truth from the world.

Giulia was one of us, we who have survived men like her ex, so we are grief-stricken, sorry, angry, because another woman was killed out of sheer selfishness by a man who did not accept that she said No and went on alone, building another life. Giulia is one of us and we will not forget her, just as we will not forget all the other victims of feminicide, which since the beginning of the year number in the hundreds (103), and yet we talk about sporadic issues, we subtlety about the terms to be used when we talk about gender violence, and we get the message by returning inadequate measures that do not lead to any cultural change, a culture that considers jealousy and control normal, the same culture that legitimises feminicide.

To prevent further deaths we need a gender education course in schools, we need everyone to talk about it, we need the woman who has suffered violence not to be invisible but to be celebrated, and we need to stop empathising with her murderer. We want justice, we want the right to self-defence, we want change, we want no more Giulia to make us fear for our lives and those of our daughters to come. We want an end to complicity, to the silence about violence in relationships, we want it to be clear that what happens to one happens to all of us. Giulia was murdered. That death weighs on all of us. Those who defend her murderer or those who continue to cultivate the pitiful culture of sexist stereotypes will not get away with it. Children must be educated to respect women, to accept that if a woman says No, it is No. We must intervene in every school, every square, every place. With a big hug in solidarity to Giulia’s family.

Goodnight little flower, we are with you. We will remember you. Forgive us if we failed to prevent your death too. We will scream louder. Louder and louder.

(tnx per la traduzione a Sabrina)