Data#VIAJOSOLA: I want to be free to travel and more…

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Prejudice and distorted reality are back, and reality is totally ignored preferring stupid reasons, motivated only by the statement “they were asking for trouble”. We will now tell the story of two girls, with an incredible curiosity, Marina Menegazzo and Maria Jose’ Coni, murdered barbarically by two men in Ecuador. A tragedy that should have caused an incredible number of messages of condolences towards the families of the two girls and towards all girls and women that now feel alone and scared. But instead, we are here, talking once again about discrimination. The media and the words of the psychiatrist highlight the fact that the two girls were travelling alone, in a very dangerous place in Ecuador, not a good place for women to stay. A violent murder, just as any murder, the umpteenth case of shared distinction and indifference towards rights like equality and parity that should by now have been consolidated. Everything would have stayed silent, under the apparent progress that we are experiencing right now, but a student from Paraguay, Guadalupe Acosta, decided to tell the truth to the whole world.  She published a post on Facebook, harsh, true, emotional, written as if the actual people writing it were the two dead girls  “Yesterday they killed me. I refused to let them touch me and so with a stick they crushed my skull. They stabbed me and left me to bleed until I died. Like rubbish, they put me in a black, plastic bin bag, wrapped with duct tape, and I was dumped on a beach, where hours later they found me. But, worse than death, was the humiliation that came afterwards”.

#Viajosola: the voice of omen on social networks

The post became immediately viral, generating more than 700.000 shares, but also in a few hours it became an international message supporting the fight against prejudice. Once again a social channel was chosen to spread a message and push for consideration. On Twitter with the hashtag #ViajoSola, thousands of messages of condolences, hopes and rage, to give a voice to women. I can almost hear all those comments “Why were you alone? How were you dressed? You went to a dangerous place, what were you expecting?”.

In her post, Acosta shares a sad truth “And only when dead did I realize that to the world I am not equal to a man. That dying was my fault, and it always will be”.

These words crush my heart and punch me in the stomach, because they are sadly true. But disappointment must lead to action. I want to share the hopes of Acosta “I ask you for myself and all the other women who were kept quiet, silenced and who had their lives and their dreams destroyed, to speak up”.

My message #Viajosola

It’s undeniable that diversities between men and women are still broadly accepted and shared. Despite years of fights and claims some thoughts are too eradicated in our culture and they have not changed despite progress. Women have less choices, especially when they go out of present boundaries, when they don’t respect the parameters of being a wife, a mother and then a grandma. If a woman wants to be something else, then she is just a spinster, repressed or worst, a whore. And it’s like this for any woman that doesn’t want to follow a conventional path. But maybe today there is a little flame of hope and we can’t find it thanks to politics or civil society, but thanks to the awareness of women, and their usage of social networks. Channels which, besides pure exhibitionism, can also be a place where people share and where there can be some political and social activism. I want to share my message also for these women that I’ve never known, for the sake of their enthusiasm and their sacred desire of freedom.

#Viajosola because in the future I would like my daughter to discover the world freely, seeing in other people just an opportunity…

 

Michela Di Nuzzo

« Se scrivo ciò che sento è perché così facendo abbasso la febbre di sentire». - Fernando Pessoa Giornalista e co-founder, vivo il digital come imprenditrice e appassionata. Percepisco il cambiamento come un'opportunitá mai una minaccia. Occhi spalancati e orecchie aperte, sempre pronta alla condivisione, la chiave di ogni evoluzione.

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