The journalist and writer Cristina Fallarás explained this Wednesday that her new book Don’t publish my name It is a collective memory of sexist violence that “does not seek to accuse” anyone nor does it have a “punitive spirit or judicial complaint.” Therefore, it has recognized that “I did not expect nor was there any intention for Sumar’s former parliamentary spokesperson, Íñigo Errejón, to resign.
This is what Fallarás stated in the presentation of his work, from the publishing house Siglo Veintiuno, in which he publishes some 1,500 testimonies from anonymous women. “It is about creating a common archive of sexist violence, whether punishable or not.. The book does not have names or surnames, they are denunciations of how sexual violence is constructed,” and that is its success, he added.
“Collective memory does not seek the identification of one person or another, although it may happen, it is clear that it has happened. I would never expect that, suddenly, an Íñigo Errejón would resign. Great, the mechanisms worked, but there was no intention in that accounthe explained in relation to his Instagram profile.
In that sense, he explained that the book is a compilation of testimonies of sexual violence against womennot a book of complaints, a distinction that he considers “key.” “It is sexist violence narrated one by one, what we consider to be sexist violence,” the journalist added.
Fallarás has explained that it was in August 2022 when it launched the #SeAcabó campaign on networks to give a voice to victims of sexual violence. Thousands of women responded to that call and decided to tell their experience, but with only one request: do not publish the name. And it was that request that gave the book its title, and it was so faithful to the campaign that Fallarás has chosen to share the stories in screenshot format, respecting the anonymity requested by the victims.
Thus, he explained the process: “I get the message, I capture it and remove the identity, so that It is not traceable and the aggressor will never know what you were talking about. It is essential to eliminate traceability.” “And since it is a capture, another advantage is that it does not cover the words (pussy, vagina…) what the woman says is published in her own words,” he specified.
Another advantage, he pointed out, is that this file generates identification mechanisms -“that happened to me too”- and offers a space to report. In short, the result, he said, is an “effective and irrefutable” text that should go to academies and serve as a manual in master’s degrees in gender violence.
The book only includes 5% of the complaints received
Fallarás has indicated that the vast majority of sexual assaults suffered by women happen in the family environment, followed by the doctor, and 70% occurs in childhood. This calculation was made after studying the testimonies collected in the text, and which is far from the official figures from the Gender Violence Observatory that place sexual assault on girls at 40%. The cultural environment, he added, is not where most things happen.
“When I collected testimonies in which women gave their identity, the figures for episodes of sexual violence in childhood coincide with the data given by Spanish institutions. But in “When the identity of the victim disappears, that figure has gone from 25% to more than 70%.”explained by indicating that we must consider that the figures on sexual violence are not real.
In addition to the family environment and childhood, The rural world is another area where these attacks occur, “the great forgotten of these cases.” The writer has acknowledged that there are many testimonies that have impressed her but, above all, she has highlighted that of a girl who denounces “a sexual assault by the boys of her town.” “They locked her in a garage, they put a motorcycle case on her so they wouldn’t see her face, they considered her ugly and they raped her.”
“Hence the importance of creating parallel memories that are collective (…) Almost all the singers and women of music that I know, almost all of them, have sent me a testimony. “I don’t know of anyone who has reported in court,” he explained, and then reiterated that he continues working on the analysis of the testimonies to be able to provide more information.
Fallarás has stated that the bookwhose benefits will be used to create spaces and programs that give women a voice against sexual violence, collects less than 5% of the complaints received and recalled that in 2018 when a first #Cuéntalo campaign was launched, three million actions were collected in the first two weeks.
Seven months after launching the 2022 campaign on Instagram, the social network closed the account. Fearing losing the accumulated material, Fallarás decided to collect it and publish it in a book that would serve as a collective memory of women and girls who suffered sexual assault to “break their silence, fear and shame.”
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