{"id":26985,"date":"2016-02-22T09:05:34","date_gmt":"2016-02-22T12:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=26985"},"modified":"2016-02-22T13:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-02-22T16:21:27","slug":"mulheres-rodadas-carnival-bloco-protests-for-womens-rights-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=26985","title":{"rendered":"Mulheres Rodadas Carnival Bloco Protests for Women’s Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday February 10, the last official day of Carnival<\/a>, a diverse group of around 2,500 people gathered in the Largo do Machado square\u00a0in South Zone<\/a>\u00a0for a different kind of Carnival party<\/a>. The street parade, or bloco<\/em>, was Mulheres Rodadas<\/a>, or \u2018women who get around,\u2019 and it is now on its second year. As journalist Renata Rodrigues, co-founder of the bloco<\/em> tells it, Mulheres Rodadas was inspired in December 2014 by a viral Facebook photo<\/a> of a young man holding a sign saying, \u201cI don\u2019t want\u00a0a woman who gets around.\u201d The post elicited outrage among thousands of women, who responded with the hashtag #SomosTodasRodadas<\/a> (#WeAllGetAround).<\/p>\n

Protest by way of party<\/h3>\n

Rodrigues and her co-organizers were inspired to organize an event to continue conversations about sexism, and to build on creative feminist responses<\/a>. Rodrigues highlighted that taking on political and cultural issues is part of the very fabric of Carnival, although it might not be clear to visiting tourists.<\/p>\n

She explained that adding the feminist discussion to that tradition of addressing society\u2019s most pressing political issues through the imagery and platform of Carnival reaches a new kind of audience:\u00a0\u201cWhen you bring art and\u00a0music you can reach people. You touch people in another way [with] a positive agenda… We speak to other people through this, people that perhaps traditionally aren\u2019t inside [activist circles] and\u00a0aren\u2019t thinking about these issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"16<\/a><\/p>\n

Carnival without harassment<\/h3>\n

Not only does Carnival\u00a0allow for a different kind of protest<\/a>, but it’s an important time to address sexism, as blocos<\/em> are sites of much sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is a problem in Brazil any time of year–a study by Think Olga<\/a> showed that of almost 8,000 respondents, 98% of them had suffered harassment. However, the problem is at its worst during the party atmosphere of Carnival, and the campaign #CarnavalSemAss\u00e9dio<\/a>\u00a0(#CarnivalWithoutHarassment), which Mulheres Rodadas partners on, has garnered much public support.<\/p>\n

The Mulheres Rodadas bloco <\/em>brought together\u00a0teenage girls new to activism and older\u00a0women long in the fight for women\u2019s rights all\u00a0in creative costumes. Unfortunately\u00a0women of all ages had stories to tell of harassment during Carnival.<\/p>\n

Arlanza Rebello from the Rio de Janeiro Public Defenders<\/a>\u2019 Nucleus for the Defense of Women\u2019s Rights explained that her department\u2019s partnership with the bloco<\/em> began with a call from its organizers. They told\u00a0her that, at another Carnival event, \u201ca man saw the Mulheres Rodadas shirt, became insulted, and threatened that he would rape her, that he could because she was an easy woman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebello explained that the bloco<\/em> \u201cbrings women\u2019s agency to Carnival, not as objects of sexist\u00a0music and Carnival chants, not as objects of men\u2019s pleasure. It\u00a0shows that we want autonomy, we want to play, and we want to be respected.”<\/p>\n

16 year-old Sofia Feitoso echoed this sentiment from her experience at her first Carnival celebrating independently with friends: \u201cFor me, this was the biggest demonstration that we really need to fight a lot. Because I have suffered a lot of harassment already during\u00a0Carnival. It seems it has already become a \u2018normal thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Political change<\/h3>\n

Mulheres Rodadas participants called for\u00a0political change at both the local and national level, as well as cultural change, creatively blending the two. Many participants sported \u201cFora Cunha<\/a>,\u201d or \u201cget out Cunha,\u201d referencing the president of the Chamber of Deputies of Brazil. The women from the public defenders\u2019 office talked about Cunha as \u201cenemy number one\u201d of women\u2019s rights, highlighting his attempts to ban legal abortion in the case of rape, and the possibility that he would challenge\u00a0the 2006 Maria da Penha Law<\/a>, which supports domestic violence victims through differentiated reporting systems and penalties.<\/p>\n

\"Domestic<\/a><\/p>\n

Of this group, lawyer Georgia Bello talked about how she had considered dressing as the wife of Rio de Janeiro mayoral candidate Pedro Paulo because of Paulo\u2019s known history of domestic violence<\/a>. She explained, such a statement \u201cis not trivializing violence, it\u2019s another form of giving it visibility, of calling the attention of women to not forget that we will soon have an election\u2026 and a man could become mayor who beats his wife.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beyond Carnival<\/h3>\n

Mulheres Rodadas’ activities are set to continue beyond the bloco<\/em>. After the first bloco<\/em> in 2015, Mulheres Rodadas partnered not only with the #CarnavalSemAss\u00e9dio campaign, but also with UN Women and the Public Defenders\u2019 Unit of Defense of Women\u2019s Rights, with the intention of continuing actions throughout the year.<\/p>\n

As the band began to play for the second annual Bloco das Mulheres Rodadas, Rodrigues talked of actions planned for International Women\u2019s Day on March 8 and beyond: \u201c2016 is a promising year\u2026 we have a lot of people engaged with us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday February 10, the last official day of Carnival, a diverse group of around 2,500 people gathered in the Largo do Machado square\u00a0in South Zone\u00a0for a different kind of Carnival party. The street parade, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":26969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1290,1333,336,1329],"tags":[910,456,459,436,25,354,455,1292,69,420,156],"writer":[1946,1304],"translator":[],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-26985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-civilsociety","8":"category-event-reports","9":"category-violations","10":"category-by-international-observers","11":"tag-creative-organizing","12":"tag-domestic-violence","13":"tag-feminism","14":"tag-gender","15":"tag-human-rights","16":"tag-law","17":"tag-lei-maria-da-penha","18":"tag-organizing","19":"tag-public-defenders","20":"tag-carnival","21":"tag-south-zone","22":"writer-anna-cash","23":"writer-meg-healy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=26985"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=26985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}