A Rapist in Your Path: The Viral Chant Taking on the Streets that Has Become a Feminist Anthem

       A bold and impactful chant is getting viral all over Latin America and starting to cross cultural borders to countries around the world. It is called “A Rapist in Your Path” and started a few weeks after the month long protests in Chile against neoliberal measures decades long that have impoverished the people’s quality of live.

        The protests started when the government of right wing president, Sebastian Piñera, announced the raise of a few cents in the main public transport in Chile. But soon the protests moved to cities other than Santiago, the capital and they quickly got more violent when the president not only refused to stop the raise but declared literally `war’ on his citizens. He sent out the military and the police to crack down on protesters that were met with pellets and tear gas that left several dead people (including minors) and more than 200 people blind or with severe eye injuries.

        Among the denouncing that protestors where making was the violent treatment to women by the police. At least one known artist and activist was found dead after being arrested by the police and several other reported they had either been sexually abused or tortured by the police.

         This is when a group of scholars and artists that called themselves “Las Tesis” (The Theses’), that had been working on a larger performance about gender violence in Chile, decided their larger performance couldn’t wait and they had to manifest themselves, with their bodies and their chant. After they did that in Chile, and the video went viral, thousands of women all over the world started taking on the streets of their countries, main plazas, and places to perform the same chant and only adapting the lyrics in the parts where there were somewhat local.

        For instance, the Chilean women use sarcasm in part of their lyrics quoting the national police anthem that tells a little girl to sleep with no worries because they are looking out for their sweet dreams. There is also a part of the performance where the women while chanting are doing squats because this is what many women protestors said the Chilean police will make them do naked – among other things- as punishment when they arrested them for protesting.

       In other parts of the lyrics, the women talk about the patriarchal system being the rapist, the government, the judges, the police and this part has been repeated by most all women who are chanting this anthem around the world, as well as the part where they talk about something also common for every women, when they get blamed for being raped. The lyrics there go like this: And I was no to blame, not what I was wearing, nor where I was (x3), the rapist is YOU! And this part is performed sort of like a dance, as they were being festive and there is nothing to be ashamed or be blamed for even if they are, to justify a rapist.

                                    The chant went viral and is now a Feminist Anthem.

        During the performance in Chile, the women will use a black cloths to cover their eyes, as well have done other women in the world while singing: This is the violence you don’t see; this is the violence you now see. They will also wear green bandanas which in Latin America are a symbol of rights over the women's bodies (pro-abortion). One interesting thing about the creators, three women "The Theses¨ who got together to work on a project of disseminating scholarly feminists concepts to the people through art.

                                    Here a bit of story on The Theses Colectivo Feminista

        What I find so very interesting after having read all of the literature we have read in class, I understand now how the body, the women’s bodies are places that can create meaning, places of resistance, and places where the intimate and the public, the social, the symbolic and the material gets together. Our “geography closest in” (Johnston, Lynda & Robin, 2010), how in the most literal way, in this protests, gender is performed (Butler) and impacts on the experience of social justice; how we can show resistance by intervening public spaces and act as a collective body protesting and demanding justice for a rape culture that has women in latin America (femicides) and all over the world, sharing their stories and their pains, their body scars and their strengths. Women performing boldly, sometimes even breast naked, confronting the fear and the violence (Koskela,1997). 

       One last thing to mention is that these performances and their dissemination on the media has generated the expected backlash from men and some women who dismiss it, laugh about it or condemns it. 

A Rapist in Your Path (lyrics)

The patriarchy is a judge
that judges us for being born

and our punishment
is the violence you don’t see.

The patriarchy is a judge
that judges us for being born
and our punishment
is the violence that you now see.

It’s femicide.
Impunity for the killer.
It’s disappearance.
It’s rape.

And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed
And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed
And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed
And the fault wasn’t mine, not where I was, not how I dressed

The rapist is you.
The rapist is you.

It’s the cops,
The judges,
The state,
The president.

The oppressive state is a sexist rapist.
The oppressive state is a sexist rapist.

The rapist is you
The rapist is you

“Sleep calmly, innocent girl
Without worrying about the bandit,
Over your dreams smiling and sweet,
watches your loving cop.”

The rapist is you
The rapist is you
The rapist is you
The rapist is you

References

McDowell, Linda. 1999. "In and Out of Place: Bodies and Embodiment."  Chapter 2 in Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 

Koskela, Hille. 1997. “‘Bold Walk and Breakings:’ Women’s spatial confidence versus fear of violence.” Gender, Place, and Culture 4(3): 301-320.

          Johnston, Lynda and Robyn Longhurst. 2010. Space, Place, and Sex. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Chapter 1.