Talk about gender-based violence with young people

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to give a class to high school students from the Saint-Joseph high school of Périgueux. A class centered around my current research project.

My former Spanish teacher, Jocelyne Guerra, introduced me to Mexico almost 9 years ago. It is thanks to her that I have now left for this fabulous country to conduct my research. And this same teacher asked me to present my committed project to her class. I immediately accepted because I love teaching, and also for the beautiful symbol of coming back to teach in the class of the professor who inspired me to this path of life.

Enough feelings! Let's talk about this class. I must admit that I didn't prepare it during a long time: I only practiced by producing a few slides to get the students' attention. I could have presented the same slides in front of 40 year olds, 90 year olds, or in front of these teenagers. I didn't think about this particularity of my audience. It was not an inhibiting factor, since the class was very attentive and very curious in their questions.

However, I felt a gap with my speech on several occasions. It seemed to me that several students (mostly boys) did not fully grasp the magnitude and seriousness of the problem I had come to talk to them about: gender-based violence. However, I took the time to remind them of the terrible statistics, the 11 feminicides per day, I even gave these figures adapted to France to avoid taking a step back "this is not our country, we are not really concerned". And yet! When I showed them two music videos to collect their thoughts, their answers were very light, very funny, as if I was asking them if they preferred reggaeton or pop. And I realized that my question had indeed been badly formulated.

I showed them a clip of Maluma, Mala mía, which I have already mentioned for its extreme objectification of women, and then the clip of Renee Goust and her Cumbia feminazi. I asked them which music and video clip they liked best. Loud laugh immediately followed, and boys exclaimed that Maluma's song was much better, without hesitation. One girl did speak up to talk about the topic of the songs, but the loud laugh continued in the background.

I then felt completely out of step with these teenagers, who are only 5 years younger than me. That's what I thought when I built this course: the transmission will be easy, we are the same age. Then, faced with this laughter and this detachment, I remembered my place, on the middle row, in this same classroom, 5 years earlier. I remembered my affirmed feminism, from the beginning, but my ignorance of gender-based violence, and more than ignorance, detachment, recklessness. I remembered that at that age, we don't talk about gender violence. We're not really aware of it, or even remotely aware of it.

How do we talk about gender-based violence as we approach adulthood? And during adolescence, childhood? Should we talk about it?

Yes, most certainly, we need to talk about it. The subject is so taboo today, or at least denied to the youngest in order to preserve their innocence, that the shock with reality is always more violent. When I talk about gender-based violence, I include the most "subtle" marks of sexism (jokes, remarks about the physical appearance of young girls at a very early age), wage inequalities, sexual violence and everything that relates to gender inequality. It is necessary to talk about it. It is necessary to tell young girls and boys that society is still very unequal on this subject, and that a lot of gender-based violence results from it.

It is undeniably difficult to find the right way to approach such a sensitive subject, that's for sure. Especially when you are not a teacher and you don't always know how to find the right words to mix pedagogy and sensitization. During a chat with Victoria Equihua, a wonderful Mexican poetess who is used to dealing with these subjects with children, several ideas were discussed. By adopting the following principles, young people could be given the tools that would allow them to become aware of this problem earlier, and to include them in its resolution :

1. The construction of an environment of trust, where all the children can chat without risking those loud laugh that can so quickly discredit a word. This requires the establishment of rules understood by the children, for example the passing of a talking stick, which implies not only the speaking of a pupil, but also the active and respectful listening of others.

2. The sharing of experiences from the facilitator and the children. What does everyone think is gender-based violence? What should not happen? Awareness is achieved by verbalizing condemnable behaviors. In particular, it is important to make each child understand the notion of consent from a very young age.

3. Understanding for children that everyone can take active action against gender-based violence by paying attention to very small things such as the way they express themselves with their peers according to their gender, games in the playground, etc.

4. Writing. Qualifying behaviors, trauma can be more natural in writing. Crude words, more personal words, can come out. Let's encourage children to write to express their feelings around these topics.

5. Passing through more playful channels, including committed music. I sincerely think that this form of denunciation, or awareness raising, is very relevant for children if it is well presented and if the content is adapted to the age of the children (avoid showing the Maluma clip to 5 year olds!).

And what about you, would you have liked to have been told about gender-based violence when you were a child? Would you like us to do it with today's children? How would you go about it? Feel free to share your point of view on the subject.