Femicides, a march and an Icelandic strike. This is why social media is turning red

A red square without any writing is coloring social media, starting with Instagram. Red like the benches, like the shoes, like the red mustaches on the cheeks at the parades, symbols of the fight against male violence against women.

A square that is going viral in these hours, just as the poetry of the Peruvian writer and activist was viral before Cristina Torres Cáceres “If I don’t come back tomorrow, destroy everything.”

What is it about? The red square is now the social symbol that calls for the mobilization called in Italy for eight years by the transfeminist movement Non Una di Meno, and not only. The text that accompanies it online and bounces from one bulletin board to another is in fact always the same and reads as follows: “105 women killed by a man since the beginning of 2023. 22 years of Giulia Cecchettin. Our anger at the immobility of the institutions demands a hearing. Our anger is in motion.”

Hence the call for mobilization next Saturday: a march and a strike. “On November 25 – we read – we will take to the streets against violence against women with Non Una di Meno but it is the female condition that we must start dealing with again, putting it back at the center of the political agenda and debate. Let’s all mobilize on the model of the Icelandic strike, both from work and from care. Only by becoming a problem do we raise the problem.”

But what is the Icelandic strike? A historic mobilization against gender inequality which took place on 24 October and involved around 40 associations who called the protest. The prime minister also stopped Katrín Jakobsdóttir and thousands of Icelandic women took to the streets, especially in the capital Reykjavik, with their arms crossed for a day, from morning to evening, interrupting paid work and unpaid work, such as domestic work.

The post continues, and the poetry that comes from Peru returns again, also taken and cited by Elena Cecchettin, Giulia’s sister, who is becoming the spokesperson for a battle of women (and men) after her sister’s femicide: “If tomorrow it’s me, if I don’t come back tomorrow, my sister, destroy everyone.” “And then – concludes the viral post – let’s rebuild together”.