Chemical submission: a new threat to women's rights

"Suddenly I don't remember anything, just some flashes in a park with other friends.""As they tell me I ended up lying on a portal. Until a girl called someone to come to look for me.""From there the next thing I remember is that I woke up at this boy's house, without remembering absolutely nothing that had happened."They are fragments of a series of complaints published in the heat of the #Denunciatubar campaign.All begin in a nightlife store and end up under the suspicion of sexual assault.In the middle, lagoons, forgetfulness, shame, and the shadow of chemical submission.That is, stories of sexual violence in which men use drugs to violate women in nightlife contexts.

This time the wave of complaints began in Brussels under the hashtag #balancetonbar.The trigger was in the 17 complaints of rape filed against the same waiter in a university leisure area."The boss's reaction was not expelled to the waiter, but to transfer him to another bar," said Anna Toumazoff, a member of the Autonomous Intersctional Feminist Union, which was founded a few days later.Once again, the feminist movement used social networks encouraging to report similar aggressions.In a few days, the testimonies were counted by dozens exceeding the limits of Belgian geography to replicate in France.Women from Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Nantes and Lyon took the witness.And now also in Spain.

The mobilization reminds the organized under slogs that have impacted collective consciousness in recent years.We talk about · #metoo and #yositecreo, examples of cyberactivism that have revealed the potential of social networks to communicate issues related to women's rights and gender equality, favoring that local issues that seemed individual pains becameIn global and, as the Italian political scientist says in social movements, Donatella Della Porta, "charge prominence as active agents of the democratization processes."Facilitating, more than ever, the feeling of relocated community and the organization of feminism as an international movement.

Thanks to their influence, the echo of these campaigns also overflows the digital world.Last weekend thousands of women got together in a concentration of protest in the Plaza de L'Albertine in Brussels."We shared a drink and less than half an hour later, we had a fainting. My friend had a car accident and I was raped."They are the words of a Belgian young woman but they are the same words that a young woman repeats in Vigo, another in Madrid and another in Alicante."We do not remember absolutely anything, we don't even have flash of what happened, my friend had the thong and broken stockings, and I brunette in the wrist and side."Another of the assaulted women denounces, while she shares some photos on Twitter.And they will be more.

Following these testimonies, he came into contact with any of the complainants.His words are practically the same."It's what I said on Instagram. I don't remember anything, but the next morning I knew something had happened. A certain discomfort in the vagina, when they fuck you, you know it."Of course, what they did to Ana (fictional name) in what should have been a night of party in Vigo, was not fucking, was a rape and it must be said.

La sumisión química: una nueva amenaza a los derechos de las mujeres

Fear is a constant in the lives of women, a strategy of sexual discipline that instills us from girls, focusing on the responsibility of potential victims to protect themselves from sexist danger, present anywhere.Many of the young women who are denouncing today to have been raped and drugged, grew with the abstract warning that they were "careful with what they throw in the glass."Today it turns out, that the glass was indeed in danger, but not only.To the drug administration involuntarily orally, injections are added by syringes.There are already complaints of sexual aggressions accompanied by punctures on the skin.The alarm jumped in the United Kingdom where the authorities are already investigating.

Medical protocol in Galicia

According to Pablo Antolín, a hospital emergency doctor in the Emergency Department of the University Hospital Complex of Ourense, given the increase of this type of aggressions in our surrounding countries, work began to work in a specific protocol for the Galician Health Service thatIt has been signed a couple of months ago.The problem that is to stop, he tells us, is the very high diagnostic complexity of this type of aggressions.When they reach the emergency room, and always in the event that they arrive, "the victims usually refer confusion after the intake of a cup, periods of amnesia, disinhibition, awakening in places and with unknown people, disproportionate hangers, paralysis and losses of knowledge, hallucinations, alterations in speech, dizziness, excessive drowsiness or confusion. "

They are the consequences of the administration for criminal purposes, especially sexual, of sadly famous substances such as the Burundanga, used by the violators of the pack and a long payroll of substances that, by prudence, we prefer not to name here.To the patent products, dangerous design drugs are added quite widespread in nightlife contexts and, also, the supply of ethyl alcohol.Everything is valid to dominate the victims and do not remember the abuses, the more accessible, cheap and difficult to track the substance, the better.

They are not isolated cases, according to the National Institute of Toxicology in recent years, an increase in this type of aggressions has been detected.Thus, international organism estimates around 17% -20% the percentage of violations mediated by chemical submission.

Pablo Antolín himself acknowledges having already had a couple of cases in Ourense and the record of two in Vigo, "given the suspicion of chemical submission, the search for atypical drugs is requested that are not included in the most common analyzes. When there areThe slightest doubt is requested gynecological review to enter the protocol of sexual aggression.According to his experience, coordination between the different levels involved in monitoring this type of cases, that is, health, forensic, social care forces and bodies of the State and administration of justice, has improved a lot in recent years.

However, neither all health services have activated protocols, nor much less all professionals have specific training in gender and sexist violence that would be necessary.This is confirmed by any of the testimonies collected these days.One of the complainants in Madrid, referred a bad attention by the Madrid health system where she felt unprotected and humiliated.And that despite being one of the services that has a specific protocol since 2018. The same as Cantabria, in 2017. or in Andalusia in 2020. The existence of good protocols as well as a correct training in gender and violenceSexual by the professions involved in the attention to this type of events, it is fundamental.So are the laws, a point where, thanks to the enormous recent feminist mobilization, important steps have been taken.

The Project of Organic Law of Integral Guarantee of Sexual Freedom approved on July 6 in the Council of Ministers of Spain expressly introduces as a form of commission of sexual aggression the soThe will of the victim.Likewise, and in line with the forecasts of the Istanbul Convention, the specific aggravating circumstance of gender is introduced in these crimes.Although much of feminism asserts that punitivism is not the solution, but many times the criminal masking of a social problem of deep roots, one more reflection of the patriarchal culture in which we move, criminal law has a symbolic power that is convenientuse.Especially in a context like ours, in which a violation is denounced every eight hours and increase the legal guarantees of the victims remains necessary.

Sexual education deficit

But also, and above all, advance in public policies transforming social conditions that make possible sexist and sexual violence.Thus it is possible to understand the demands around the need to meet comprehensive sex education.On this we chat with Chis Oliveira, professor of philosophy at the Alexandre vault of Vigo Institute, a doctor for the USC with a thesis focused on affective-sexual education in adolescence, an unavoidable reference in the field of sexual education with a gender perspective.

According to the expert, the problem of the violations of the deficit sexual education that we have received and continues to receive youth cannot be unlinked. "Today, sex education is practically non -existent, focused on risk prevention and resting on the voluntarism of teachers who decide to do so by going from everything," she says. As she did, "using ethics classes to apply ethics to the field of sex education." According to his opinion, it is urgent to offer a sex education based on empathy, respect for diversity and human rights, that rests in the concept of desire and not in the submission teaches by the macho porn industry and its dissemination and its dissemination and its dissemination and Standardization of the culture of rape. She in that sense cautiously assesses the proposal of the ministry to introduce this subject in regulated education: "It is positive but you have to do it with specific training in this regard." That she ensures the rigor of the contents and protects this matter of possible conservative intrusions that would not improve the situation. "Imagine that the religion professors began to give this," she adds.

And of course, experience has already shown us how incompatible the paths of faith and rights are sometimes.The rights of women to be alive, to be free and have fun where, how and when they want.Because the bars, like the streets, are also ours.