On Mondays We Wear Purple

Written by Diana Isabel Torres Goñi

Illustration by Lourdes Maria Torres Goñi

As I write this, I am shaking with pure rage, disgust, fear. I wish I could go on social media and forget that the real world exists, look at makeup tutorials and silly memes, and simply avoid reality. Still, reality has found its way into social media. As I scroll through my feed, I can see every 3 out of 5 posts are practically the same thing; a woman was abused, degraded, killed, or hurt in some way for the crime of being born a woman.

This may be just another article about the same thing, but, unfortunately, no matter how many times we write, we protest, we scream, the situation hasn’t changed. Women around the world are living in fear, myself included. Will we get back home today? Can I drink this? Is someone following me?

This fear is not unfounded; a look at the news will tell you that much. I’m not just talking about the famous Weinstein trial, or the Percy crime, I am referring to this one, and this one, and this other one, and so many more. Why am I writing this now, though? If you watch the news, you might’ve heard about these, they happened in Mexico and shook all of us to the core. In an instant, all the women I know in Mexico felt afraid, outraged, trapped in a country whose government cares more about shifting blame than doing something to solve the problem— I felt it too.

Outrage over the government’s lack of response has fueled a call to action, following International Women’s Day (March 8th), the female population in Mexico will band together in protest on March 9th. That Monday, women all around the country will go on strike to protest against gender violence and femicide; posts on social media read “If [we] women are worthless for Mexico, let Mexico be without all we produce and consume”. Under the official hashtag #UnDiaSinNosotras (A day without us (fem.)), women are prepared to do nothing for one day to show the nation our worth. On March 9th, purple will be the colour of the fight for equality— for freedom.

This is not a fight limited to a few countries, it’s something affecting the lives of women worldwide. Today, if you look out the window you might see, right here on our campus, on our streets, on our quiet Haligonian reality the vibrant red of the dresses hanging on trees and windowsills. Those red dresses represent a fight in our home turf, a cry for help, a plead of recognition by the First Nation communities across Canada who have adopted Jaime Black’s installation as a symbol of the ongoing fight for justice for the many Indigenous girls and women who have disappeared or been killed. The Red Dress Project looks to make their absence visible, since the system has failed to see them, hiding behind age old misguided stereotypes and a tendency to blame the victims. It seems that pipelines are more important to the government than the lives of women, children, and two-spirited individuals that will be threatened by its construction and the surge of worker camps that have proven to increase violence against these groups.

Year after year it seems International Women’s Day (IWD) becomes more and more critical, as a sign of the support we have for one another, as a platform to showcase how far we’ve come and a reminder of how far we have yet to go. This IWD, join in the battle for equality so we may collectively be #eachforequal, and reflect on the past to build on the future with your peers at the Women’s Centre International Women’s Day Gala on March 8th.