I'm not an expert in psychology, but I know that normalizing injustices and violence is a mechanism of individual protection. We can be left-wing and committed, however, we will have the “need” to normalize some violence. Gaza, Nicaragua, don't forget about Syria. The youth of Alsasua, Valtonic, La Manada, Helena Maleno, proactive Open Arms, Mame Mbaye, the workers collecting strawberries in Huelva. Mexican photographer María del Sol Cruz Jarquín has been murdered at her home in Mexico while she was reporting on the election campaign. In memory of Marielle Franco. Our heart cannot withstand so much anger and so much pain, mourn for all the dead and prisoners, get excited and worry.

In my brain, a phrase from writer Brigitte Vasallo is tattooed: “We are all ignorant, but indifference is a decision.” But it's hard not to fall into indifference to realities that we perceive farther away geographically or biographically. Another protection mechanism will be the hierarchization of violence: We say “it’s not so much”, even when we are victims of this violence.

In 2011, I received many insults and threats for the first time on the internet; in March, I was a spokesperson for SOS Racism and in December, I wrote on my blog about machismo every day. In 2012 they organized a campaign of persecution against Alicia Murillo, a collaborator of Pikara, on the Car Forum website, following a parody of the Ten Christian Commandments. These first circumstances protruded me, but for years the shell hardened. When in 2016 Brigitte Vasallo denounced in Pikara the xenophobic use of rape in Cologne, I was not impressed by the wave of insults and threats. I thought Brigitt’s heart would ease the effect of tweets “Let a Moor rape you!” At that time I lived in Central America. “European feminists do not know what is a real threat, a real danger,” he said. I hierarchized the violence and normalized the violence that I found sustainable.

Less bad than my colleague from Pikara, Andrea Momoitio, decided not to normalize harassment on social media and asked important questions: Who are those men who insult feminists? What do you treat women around you when you turn off your computer? Who are the dead women that appear in the pictures they send us to frighten us? The fear, outrage and helplessness that we feel when we get those tweets, even if they're protected, how do they accumulate in us and how do they limit our freedom of expression?

Irantzu Varela is probably the Basque feminist who currently suffers the most violence on social networks. When we upload their videos to Youtube and forget to disable comments, we witness their hatred against them. Irantzu parodies Shakira Loca, blind, deaf-mute “Sluts, ugly, mistreated” using the insults we receive. Proetarra and bollera are two other key words. He tweeted the video and received 140 comments, most of them insulting, on the same page. Irantzu has tried to bring this violence with humour and forcefulness, generating even more hatred, but those of us who are close to us have recognized the psychological damage of entering every morning on Twitter and finding hundreds of assaults. Irantzu has helped us understand the different forms of violence in his conferences, workshops and videos, including symbolic violence. What you're living is not virtual. Attempts to silence those of us who fight patriarchy are not virtual. Our responsibility is not virtual.