Macho chants harm “all women and not just the young women of Santa Monica”

The macho chants of the students of the Elías Ahuja residence hall in which they called their Santa Mónica neighbors “whores, nymphomaniacs and rabbits” continue to make people talk, although, in legal terms, the ball is now in the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office that will decide “in brief” on the complaint filed by the Movement against Intolerance, chaired by Esteban Ibarra. The Prosecutor’s Office has not yet decided whether to initiate proceedings, and those proceedings, point out from the Public Ministry, can end with the filing of the complaint or its prosecution, in which case the Prosecutor’s Office could call the ringleader who started the macho shouting and that he has already been expelled from the college. “But that is running a lot,” they insist from the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office, “because they do not even initiate proceedings. Let’s see what happens, “they reiterate.

As a complainant in this case that has shaken Spanish society, Ibarra trusts that the Prosecutor’s Office will process the complaint “because there is a clear hate crime” established in article 510.2.A of the Penal Code, which contemplates sentences of one to four years those who “directly or indirectly encourage, promote or incite hatred, hostility, discrimination or violence” against a social group, whether due to racism, anti-Semitism or for reasons of discrimination based on sex, which could fit in this case. “We see that action perfectly incardinable in that article,” said Ibarra, very critical of the “banalizations that are being made,” especially by some young women from the Santa Mónica residence hall, who have downplayed the insults, and have circumscribed to a joke between boys and girls from neighboring halls of residence.

«They do not realize that this action harms all women, which goes far beyond their friendship with the young people of the other residence hall. The damage is done to all women. It is a damage to human dignity,” said the president of the Movement Against Intolerance, who also noted that “surely” there will be schoolgirls “who do not like being treated as whores and nymphomaniacs.”

hate crime

Esteban Ibarra recalled that they have filed the complaint so that the hate crimes section of the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office investigates the events. “Perhaps if it had been something spontaneous we would have cut ourselves off, but it is a synchronized and organized action as if they were soccer ultras” and he confessed that he is concerned that the matter is trivialized because “it reflects an ethical alienation.” “If that happens in all the halls of residence, it means that we have cancer.”

Asked if he believes that the complaint can be kept “alive” if the young women of Santa Mónica, as the majority maintain, do not feel attacked, Ibarra said he recalled that in cases of gender violence there are women who also downplay the aggression, and do not That’s why you have to stop complaining. “I may not feel attacked because I do not want to antagonize anyone, or I do not want reprisals or because my code of ethics is low, but we have fought hard to defend dignity and hate crime has to protect human dignity,” she concluded.