San Fermín

I hadn't noticed until this year, but apparently it's a typical aspect of the "sanfermines" that women get drunk and flash their breasts in crowds.

This action leads to men (and perhaps women, but in the pictures I've mainly seen men) trying to grab those breasts exposed to the public. A blog post in El País (I'm afraid is in Spanish) says very simply that this is unacceptable behaviour, that just because a woman (being drunk or not) decides to show her breasts doesn't mean anyone has the right to grab her or touch her. I thought this was common sense. And then I went down to the comments section.

The internet has made it so that we can comment on anything, freely, without having to take responsibility for our words (see here for my thoughts on this). This means that a lot of the comments under the post were openly sexist: "if she shows her breasts off, she's clearly offering", "what did she expect if she does that?", etc. But what bothered me weren't these comments (well, they did, but it wasn't what most worried me), it was a few comments of the type "there are war and famine in the world, and we have to worry about this?". This type of comment chills me. It produces terror.

I believe that all great inequalities arise from a small act of ignorance (not ignorance as stupidity, but ignorance as the act of ignoring). We ignore problems for many reasons, usually because we don't recognise them as problems, but in many cases, we ignore problems because we deem them to be too small to tackle. This is ridiculous. When we are trying to solve a practical problem, we tend to divide it into its component parts, and solve those one by one. We tend to reduce the problem if we can, and tackle it by parts. The idea that solving small problems isn't worth it because "there are bigger problems out there" leads to small problems becoming big problems.

As an individual, I may not be able to do much more about a war than publicise that it is happening and perhaps (if I have the skills and the possibility) go to the area and try to help people get out or help people survive. In any case, as an individual I have little chance of stopping a war. Same thing with famine: I can contribute to charities, I can try to help, but as an individual without a support network there is little I can do. However, there is quite a bit I can do about sexism. I can start by writing about it, and saying that it is wrong. I can follow up by calling people up on it, especially if they don't realise that they are being sexist. I can continue by confronting those who will touch a woman without her consent because she decides to bear her breasts, especially if she is drunk.

This is a problem that is within our reach as individuals. It won't be solved unless many individuals try to solve it, but it doesn't require a previous infrastructure to be solved. There's nothing special needed (the agreement of governments, ridiculous money) to stop casual sexism like this. Especially because a lot of this casual sexism is simply unnoticed.

One more thing: I don't know what would have happened if instead of a few women showing their breasts, it had been a few men showing their penises. I don't think women would have gone for the grab, but I don't know. I suspect it is a statement on the sexism of society, that men don't feel the need to get naked to attract anyone else or to call attention to themselves, whereas some women do.