My measurements are: 13,000 girls suffer sexual abuse in our country
October 31, 2017 2:14 PM   Subscribe

On Sunday, Miss Peru 2018 contestants declined to give their measurements during the introductions and instead each shared a statistic on violence against women and girls in their country. Pageant organizers prominently displayed newspaper clippings of cases murdered and assaulted women behind the catwalk, and the final segment featured contestants answering questions on what laws they would change to combat gender-based violence.

#NiUnaMenos (Not One Woman Less) is a feminist movement that began in Argentina and has spread through Latin America.

Of the 25 countries with the highest rates of murder and violence against women, more than half are in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Geneva Convention report of 2011.
posted by chaoticgood (15 comments total) 63 users marked this as a favorite
 
Pretty great.
posted by Keith Talent at 2:35 PM on October 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


Holy shit that is amazing <3
posted by supercrayon at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2017 [9 favorites]


Just want to say that 13,000 is unfortunately an impossibly low number in a country of 32 million. Possibly leaving out the timescale which has the effect of diminishing the number significantly.
posted by forgettable at 2:47 PM on October 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


The phrasing may have implied, 13,000 women are being abused right now, but the translator didn't bring the connotations into English.

I agree that an "every day" (or whatever is accurate) would've made it more clear, but it's possible that native speakers understood a time context.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:09 PM on October 31, 2017


Brilliant!
posted by Malingering Hector at 3:30 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


> it's possible that native speakers understood a time context
Her exact words are unclear - they are reported differently by different sources, e.g. "13,000 niñas sufren abuso sexual en nuestro país", "13 mil niñas son abusadas sexualmente en nuestro país" or "13 mil niñas son víctimas de abuso sexual en el país." None of these seem to me to have subtleties other than already expressed in the translation, though it's possible that Chilean Spanish carries something unusal in this respect that I'm not familiar with. OTOH a brief review of Google results for the subject suggests that a commonly reported figure for cases of sexual abuse in Chile is 34 per day, which does come to about 13000 per year (e.g. [here] but the number excludes an additional 17 rapes?!). That does, sadly, seem impossibly low although it is talking about cases handled by prosecutors which will, of course, be a minute percentage of the actual total. So I'd say there's an error somewhere but it's not in translation.

Details aside though, this seems like a great thing to do if you've really got to have this sort of event.
posted by merlynkline at 4:16 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


>Just want to say that 13,000 is unfortunately an impossibly low number in a country of 32 million. Possibly leaving out the timescale which has the effect of diminishing the number significantly.

Pick a country or island on the face of the earth and this number of victims is crazy low.
posted by spock at 5:00 PM on October 31, 2017


This is so great and amazing.

What does it say, though, that my first thought was, if this happened in the Miss America contest, the women would probably be thoroughly trashed by talk radio, Fox News, etc.?
posted by Thorzdad at 5:02 PM on October 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


What does it say, though, that my first thought was, if this happened in the Miss America contest, the women would probably be thoroughly trashed by talk radio, Fox News, etc.?

It would not happen in the USA, certainly not when Trump owned it. More specifically, it would not be aired, and certainly pageant organizers wouldn't be supporting the effort with graphics that talked about what the women just said.

Kudos to these women, and the pageant organizers who supported this effort.
posted by el io at 5:40 PM on October 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


I applaud this effort. Thanks for posting.
posted by vignettist at 5:56 PM on October 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


That this happened at a "beauty pageant" is the very definition of ironic.
posted by she's not there at 6:05 PM on October 31, 2017 [2 favorites]


THANK YOU OP! I am so worn down; so many of us are so worn down. I am so grateful to you, chaotic good, for posting this.
posted by Bella Donna at 6:28 PM on October 31, 2017 [7 favorites]


What a great thing!
posted by Oyéah at 8:53 PM on October 31, 2017


Sweet.
posted by SLC Mom at 10:47 PM on October 31, 2017


This is especially cool because I think women reciting their physical measurements is humiliating, so turning it into something more relevant is impressive.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 6:55 AM on November 1, 2017 [5 favorites]


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