2023-11-24 20:00:41
Never stop repeating it. Many of us have been saying it for years, colliding with a wall of silence: violence against women is a male issue. I don’t know if this time the wall has really broken down, between writers, actors, intellectuals, artists who, in these hours, have joined our voice. Of course we expect to soon find traces of it in their public and private gestures.
I start from a (dramatic) premise. The word feminism has taken on, especially in recent years, a heavily negative meaning. If you define yourself as a feminist, the looks that are directed at you are always of judgment and skepticism, distrust, suspicion. I myself have experienced this first hand. If you are a feminist you can’t stand men, you are always angry, never kind, you have no sense of humor, you can’t tolerate compliments, in short you are a hysterical lunatic. Yet, if we had the ability to look inside and around ourselves, critically, we would easily understand that being a feminist has nothing to do with all this.
A few months ago, a dear friend of mine gave me a very small book Feminism for Everyone. At the center are power relations and their impact on emotional and couple relationships. Immersed in the concreteness of the daily life of each of us, the text raises current social reflections, including for example the rejection of a feminism that makes the West a model for the rest of the world, the need to rethink the relationship between women and I work in a society in crisis, the commitment to a feminist conversion of men. With the clarity that always distinguishes her, bell hooks presents feminism as that theory capable of freeing society from the violence of its hierarchies, of leading us towards a culture of reciprocity and justice. The author urges us to understand how this theory can touch and change our lives, to see that feminism is for everyone.
But then if being a feminist means all this, why is feminism so scary, especially today? The simple answer. We need to talk about patriarchy. But what is patriarchy? Once again, in these hours, the reflections have been used as a material for dividing consensus, trivialized in a tweet, thrown to the comments of those who are entrenched in their positions, without objectively recognizing that there is a disparity that needs to be remedied, to obtain justice, which is for the benefit of all, with many convinced, however, that patriarchy is an archaism characteristic only of Eastern autocracies and that we Western democrats no longer exist, forgetting however that in Western countries women continue to be massacred, not having power and when they gain that power to be even more deprived of their freedoms. then it is quite obvious that certain patriarchal structures resist, or are not eradicated by magic, even in the most advanced Western democracies.
What strikes me about the debate these days is precisely an uncontainable sense of confusion. There were even those who denied the existence of sexism, relegating it to feminist slogans, who explained to us how we should be in the world, what we should respond to. Everything, even the sum of small daily gestures that for too long many have trivialized or dismissed as a bitter pill to swallow, amidst the smiles of those around. Jokes, harassment, different treatment even at work. Videos and photos sent on WhatsApp, comments under posts, opinions thrown into the air. The ones that hurt like a blade.
Even today, women are asked to be nice, kind, but above all to be compliant with men, to never stay one step ahead but always behind because behind a great man there is a great woman. And if you are a strong woman who demands full emancipation you are not a resolute woman, if you claim your rights you are exaggerated, if you express disagreement with their opinions you don’t understand anything about them. This is the main difference, in everyday life, that a woman undergoes from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes back to sleep. And yes, it’s everyone’s responsibility. Of all the men who, even if they are not always guilty, are nevertheless co-responsible.
That men’s violence against women in Italy has long been culturally accepted and sometimes even justified by an imbalance of power evident in the history of our system. In Italy only sixty-seven years ago, a man, by ius corrigendi, had the right to educate and correct the behavior of his wife and children with the use of violence. Only sixty years ago, women would not have been able to become magistrates because men claimed that their ability to judge could be compromised by the hormonal changes of the menstrual cycle. Only forty-eight years ago, patria potest existed, the responsibility for children was not shared and the man was considered head of the family. Only forty-two years ago, the killing of women was considered by law to be murder in some way different from other murders: men who killed their wives, daughters or sisters to defend their own honor or that of their family were punished with lesser sentences because the The insult suffered was considered sufficiently serious to at least partially justify the crime. Only fourteen years ago the crime of stalking did not exist.
it is undeniable that something has changed, thanks to the sacrifice and commitment of many feminists, to whom we should be grateful every day. Our emancipation was not a gift but an achievement that was previously denied to us, a chosen achievement of self-determination, of appropriation of worlds and roles, of creation of new spaces and ways of relating. With men, but also regardless of men. An emancipation that many men struggle to recognize. And it is this emancipation that they must learn to accept. Giulia, for her murderer, was not supposed to get to the day of her engineering degree, because this would have meant a point of no return in the relationship with her ex-boyfriend. For this reason, the choice of the Rector of Padua to give Giulia her degree, even now that a man has taken everything from her, has an important value.
For Giulia and for all the women killed, on November 25th, more than ever, I too will take to the streets. And if that isn’t enough, we will be left with the 26th, then the 27th and the 28th. Because this battle must be waged until there is a real victory, until we have achieved a full liberation of women from male domination even in the intimate sphere.
And never stop repeating it. Feminicides are everyone’s tragedy but a men’s problem. What does it have to do with the definition of man’s role in contemporary societies. If the male correlative of feminicide does not exist, it must mean something.
The author President of the National Youth Council
November 24, 2023, 6:56 pm – edit November 24, 2023 | 6.56pm
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