In recent weeks, we have seen an escalation of brutality. Femicides have reached record levels since the law criminalizing this crime came into force. Every six hours, a woman is murdered because she is a woman – in increasingly public ways, with bodies dragged through the streets of the country’s largest capital.
The institutional response – bills, specialized police stations, protective measures – is non-negotiable. But not enough. We are faced with a conflict of imaginations. And civil society has already shown the way: the “Living Women” uprising, on the 7th of this month, brought life to the forefront, not as a proprietary agenda, but as a political project capable of overcoming ideological differences.
It is in the field of stories that the dispute takes place. The violence that kills women is the endpoint of a historic cultural movement, but one that is gaining strength and organization: the idea that “women have gone too far.” That their bodies and identities must “return to where they naturally belong” – under the control, command and subjugation of men. This story circulates without complexes on social networks, podcasts, pulpits and parliaments. And this produces the effects that we see.
The imagination is the greatest contested asset because it operates in the deepest layers of social life. Unsurprisingly, this is where ultra-conservative forces have chosen to invest, defining social roles under the guise of being “natural.” But women are breaking with this logic. Not only because they continue to occupy public space, but because they directly challenge the model of power which oppresses, which is violent, which separates.
In the unprecedented research “Imaginary of Brazilian Women’s Power”, conducted by the Clarice Institute, we listened in depth to women in positions of influence from all regions of Brazil, respecting the racial composition of Brazilian society: 44% black women, 44% white women, 10% indigenous women and 2% yellow women.
Businesswomen, scientists, artists, political, religious and community leaders – none described power as a position, title or ability to command. They all described it as a verb: the possibility of transforming, of circulating, of lasting. A power which is distributed, which listens, which is not measured by the solitude of the summit, but by the quality of the links it creates and the non-negotiable value of the protection of life.
This imagery is particularly present in the discourse of black and indigenous women leaders, who have always faced gender violence and racial violence as inseparable pairs. As Sueli Carneiro explained, the vanguard is usually occupied by those who are left behind. It is from there that not only political knowledge is produced, but also practices and imaginations essential to any emancipatory project, not only for racialized women, but for all women.
This progress, however, provokes a reaction. While women are expanding their public presence and proposing other ways of organizing society, some men respond with resentment. The violence we are witnessing is not an irrational explosion: it is an attempt to reestablish an order that seems threatened. And this finds its validation in discourses which naturalize female submission as a destiny, and not as a historical construction.
This is where imagination comes into play as a political force. It is not enough to change structures, we must design alternatives. For centuries, we have naturalized a single version of power until it seemed inevitable. And we also naturalize the place of women as a territory to occupy.
This is why we affirm: the formulation of new social imaginaries is the structural antidote that is missing to confront the epidemic of femicide. It is not enough to protect women from violence: we must dismantle the symbolic architecture that authorizes it. This requires a deliberate investment in cultural movements, public narratives, and symbolic production that broaden horizons about women’s roles and denaturalize the association between femininity, submission, and domestic space.
Fighting violence saves lives now; transforming imagination saves future generations. Women create other languages, other links, other ways of existing. They are rewriting, in their bodies and in their lives, what it means to be a woman in this country. Our job is to ensure that there is no going back after this rewrite.
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