"HAPPILY EVER AFTER; UNTIL DEATH DO US PART" ... AND SEPARATED: FEMICIDES IN BRAZIL AND THE VIOLATION OF THE RIGHT TO LIVE

Abstract

This article discusses the occurrence of feminicides in Brazil as a violation of the right to (sur)live. It brings up points debated by some theorists, but tries to bring concern to the reader, asking how we should react to so many deaths of women by their companions, based on anachronistic machismo. It is necessary to emphasize the need for public recognition of these losses that remain unknown and unmourned. Under what circumstances is it possible to mourn a lost life? Whose lives are considered mournful in our public world? What are these lives that, when lost, will not be considered a loss at all? Is it possible that some of our lives are considered tearful and others are not? We need to ask these difficult and disturbing questions because we need to oppose violent death; to death through human violence; death resulting from human, institutional or political actions; to death caused by systemic negligence on the part of states or by patriarchal social ways. However, if we only recognize certain lives as having the right to aspire to a livable life; If we only cry when these are the lives that disappear due to violence, then we must ask ourselves why we mourn these lives and not others. Part of what our pain says (if pain could talk), part of what that pain implies, is that the lives that were lost should have had the opportunity to live, to aspire to a life that was not one of continual suffering and displacement, but a livable life, a life that allowed a person to love the life they were given to live. Machismo kills! And feminism is increasingly necessary! It is urgent to implement public policies for women, prevention, debate machismo and gender in schools, fight against prejudice and all racial and sexual oppression to prevent gender-based violence and prevent opportunistic and misogynistic politicians from taking advantage of this social wave of frustration in instrumentalizing hatred on social media, in which machismo, racism and prejudice are fanned by populist and conservative discourses. None Less! In a fight between husband and wife, he gets involved! And may it be eternal while it lasts – as long as the respect and realization of the right to life of all women lasts!