They were “alone”

Some months ago, two young women were murdered in Ecuador. They were “traveling alone”, according to many international media headers. After that, people from social media started to ask questions, regarding their gender like: “what will they be doing to die like that?”, “maybe they had drugs”, “what were they wearing?”, and many other interrogations, where the victims were hardly judged because they decided to have an adventure and travel without male company.

After all the euphoria, fights, arguments on the internet with many postures and after some weeks (or even days), Marina Menegazzo and Maria José Coni, started to be part of that collective “discrete forget”, synonym of this cold society, the one who's always waiting for a fresh news. Without going further, 20 days before a female journalist was kidnapped and killed in Mexico. Her body was found it without life on February 9th. After this, authorities of the State of Veracruz (where the woman disappeared), said that “probably she will be related to drug dealers”, because is much easier to make someone a criminal before done a proper investigation, and it's been going on like this since many years ago.

The situation for us women continued being risky: choosing some type of clothes will make me look cheap or like a prude, going out with a guy -or many- will make me easy (or not going out a spinster), being a working mom will make me someone who doesn't care for their own children, but if I become a stay-at-home mom will make me a conformist, so, how can I make a society happy if they ask me to be myself, but then they will not be ok with that?

Sometimes, you just need to get out to the street at night, when you need to walk thru a dark street or maybe not a very friendly one, you think about all those bad news you read on your laptop or walking in front of a construction, will help you to increase your “collection of flattering words” (said no one), getting a promotion at work will make your colleagues what you did to deserve “such an honor”, and the never-ending list can go on until my fingers get numb...

The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”, but I believe that they forgot to add a phrase explaining why being a woman doesn't make you a felon or a victim, you're just a person who's trying to find, like anybody else, your place in this world.