A M A I R

This a weird article for me to write: from the title you would think that I’m a religious person trying to give a catechism lesson, but that’s not who I am and that’s not what I’m doing.

I’m just an Italian woman who likes to write and is really fucking tired of the hypocrisy.

So, let’s start with a little bit of context.

At the moment in my country, the Parliament is trying to pass the “DDL Zan”, which is supposed to be a law against discriminations, transphobia, homophobia, ableism and in general giving all those different groups further protection against physical and other kinds of attacks, introducing new criminally prosecutable behaviours.

It also provides the institution of a day to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and condemn discrimination.

Which is nice, right?

Well, not in Italy.

The DDL Zan was systematically blocked from approval in Parliament because the right-wing parties (and also some of the leftists) don’t want the project to become a law.

They tried everything, every possible excuse: “there’s no need for it, there’s no discrimination!”; “it would limit our freedom of speech!”; “you can not impose gender education!”; “what about the traditional families?”; “WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?”.

I’m not joking. Actual political figures (Mr Matteo Salvini, the most recent friend of Hungary’s President Orban) went on tv and social networks saying all that.

But the good is yet to come.

The Vatican also came into the game.

In Italy, we have a kind of special international agreement with the Vatican. They are called the “Patti Lateranensi”, which were written by Mussolini’s Cabinet (are we surprised?) and were revised in 1984. I don’t want to give the readers a law lesson, but basically in those agreements Mussolini and the Pope decided to be more than friends, stating that even if Italy is supposed to be laic… the Vatican is still watching us VERY closely.

And when the gays came into the conversation and a law was trying to give them the basic human right of not getting killed in the streets, with a heart full of Christian values the Vatican decided to say no to that.

They claimed that because there are Christian schools in Italy, the national day against homophobia and other discrimination would actually be a limitation of their freedom of speech and thought.

So, yeah representatives from a state that in 2021 has as a form of government the absolute monarchy were trying to give a Republic a lesson about freedom.

And it's also fun to notice that no one of those right-wing patriotic politicians are saying anything about this: when the European Union gives us money and opinion they are ready to claim that Italian sovereignty is not respected, but now that another State is actively trying to prevent the Parliament to pass laws they are on board with it?

Basically this is the situation we are living in right now in Italy, this is the hot debate: are gays going to make the traditional family an endangered species? Is there really the need to protect these people or not? Are we a country that still discriminates against people?

Of course, for the last two questions the answer is yes. For the first one, I answer with another question: are there any historical examples in which the protection of minority caused actual discrimination of the majority? No. It’s logically impossible. The majority can not be discriminated by definition: the majority is the one that creates the system, the system can not be against them.

In a country in which the laws were written by white, cishet, catholic people you can be sure that the white catholic people are the safe ones. Was I clear enough?

It is also very obvious that this is not the real fear. It is not the freedoms that are at risk. Of course, the thing that is at risk is the established power. Is the idea that now these people could be seen, protected, have recognised voices that scares.

But then, why the title? Why putting Jesus in the conversation? Because this is what the politicians and the Vatican are doing. They know that this is what will get the public opinion on their side: the traditional family with a mom, a dad and kids consecrated by holy matrimony is something a lot of people have and claiming that all of that is at risk really resonates.

So, now I have something to say on Jesus too: if we are using Him to validate our claims, it is only fair to the other side to do the same.

We are talking about a Man who actively went against the traditional values, a Man who wasn’t scared to challenge power because He was on the side of the weak.

He went to the temples, that resemble so much the Vatican, and said that God wasn’t there, that they were too rich and too powerful.

He was with leprous people and prostitutes, Mary Magdalene was there even when his closest apostles weren’t. He would rather be with those that the world forgot rather than with rulers.

He took the side that today the people that pray Him are not willing to take.

I think that if He was here today, He would approve a national holiday to celebrate love and acceptance.

These are my two cents on the matter.

I just think that the Vatican and some politicians should have the intellectual honesty and the dignity to not use the name of a person that is not here to say His opinion, that’s all.

Revenge porn, femicide, rape, physical and psychological harassment: we’ve been hearing those expressions for years in the news and on social media. While it seems that feminism is growing stronger in many different directions, it also seems that an opposite, brutal and ancient force is also spreading.

On one side women are holding more important roles in various fields and are finally starting to conquer economic independence (even if there’s so much more to do). At the same time and not very far from those emancipated realities, there’s still a well radicate medieval conception of women’s role.

It will always be shocking to see how victim-blaming, sexualization of young girls, slut-shaming are an everyday reality on the internet. Just recently in Italy a huge scandal exploded about some Telegrams group chats in which men exchanged photos of their naked ex-girlfriends and some fathers even sent their own daughters pictures so that other men could masturbate. It was disgusting. And nothing was done, the groups are very much still there because at the end of the day "boys will be boys" is an unwritten law.

But where to research the root of these behaviours? Is there a growth in misogyny and if there’s, what’s the reason? Here are my two cents on it.

There’s a book that is considered a classic in the USA, while in Italy I couldn’t find even a single copy, called “ The Feminine Mystique” written by Betty Friedan. It’s kind of outdated and lacks in intersectionality but points out “the problem that has no name”: the existential crisis that women in the 50s and 60s lived through because of the roles in which society had trapped them. Because they married so young and their only purpose was to be wives and mothers, renouncing career and personal growth, they became addicted to alcohol and antidepressants. They destroyed themselves because of what society wanted them to be.

Since the publication of this book a lot has changed: 70s feminism, political and economical changes, all the liberation movements. Society has a very different face. At this moment patriarchy is like a wounded beast: it’s going towards its death but still is trying to fight and extremely dangerous. Let’s put ourselves in the white, straight, cis, men’s shoes: a society that was based on his needs, all the values and all the thing he believed he could have without asking are now starting to leave him. Like the women that Friedan described, they too have “a problem that has no name”: they too feel like they no longer fit in the roles that society is giving them. However, the two cases have differences: for women, it was the society that needed a change while in men’s situation, they are the ones that need to evolve. Also, the effects are very different: women’s discomfort brought them into self-destructive behaviours while men’s reaction is destructive towards others.

And on this point I reconnect with my premise: can revenge porn, femicide, rape, physical and psychological harassment be interpreted as symptoms of the crisis of men’s traditional values, the ones they grew up with? Do they feel like endangered species? Could men’s misogyny and aggressiveness be the backfire to feminism triumph?

From what I see, we are kind of living the end of an era and we are paying the price of change: it’s a war and we are slowly winning some battles, but there are many others to fight. Patriarchy is fighting back and won't go easily. The only way we can win is to understand that divisions and discriminations are damaging for society as a whole and that traditional concepts are destined to stay in the past. This is why I believe in intersectionality: starting to understand how all different discriminations coexist and interact between them and how they all came from the same root, hate and fear, is genuinely the only way out of this society.

As a non-US citizen, I’ve grown up with the “America is the greatest country of the world” narrative. The United States always tried to be perceived by the rest of the world as the land of freedom and democracy, the land that has so much of those things they even wanted to export and teach the rest of the world how it’s done. But when the Trump administration arrived, well…it kind of showed us what was really going on: a very capitalistic society with no regulation that uses freedom to justify the fact that the government doesn’t guarantee basic rights, such as public healthcare, housing, minimum-wage salary and all is completed with a very racist society and a “let’s give everyone guns” policy.

After those four years of craziness, the whole world stopped believing in the “American dream” fairytale and started to point out everything wrong with the United States and its people. But as I didn’t like the “America’s the best country of the planet” narrative, I also cannot stand the “The U.S. sucks, we are very much better” attitude. We all have the same issues, sometimes they hide or have a different appearance, but they exist everywhere. That’s the reason why I’ll analyse my country’s issues so that my U.S. readers will feel a little bit better and less alone. Italy is a country with a very rich culture and an amazing history. Our constitution is one of the most advanced in the world with a high level of rights protection. It’s really something to be proud of. We are also a very catholic country, we have the Pope in our peninsula, which is something that would make you believe that we all have good Christian values and big hearts.

We don’t. We are the people that are used to see immigrants die in our sea, we watch them drown on our news with zero empathy and still thinking they are all criminals. We don’t care that the ones that arrive here are mostly women and children, we don’t notice that those people represent the future and the hopes of their countries, and maybe they are sent here because they have no chance of a better life in their homeland. They would rather drown in the Mediterranean Sea than stay with their loved ones, and we Italians don’t even ask ourselves why or what they are escaping from.

And even if they make it safe during the journey, they come and find an extremely racist country, even if we never say it out loud. I think this is one of the big differences between Italy and the States. In the U.S. the legislative and jurisdictional system was designed during slavery time and was based on a very different society: a lot of laws were meant to be racist, they were “adapted” and changed only after, and in some things, you can still see their original purposes like for police or guns.

As said before, in Italy our Constitution was written after WWII, so we came from that traumatic experience and decided that nothing like it should never happen again. For this reason, our system is designed to think that people - in every form or aspect of life - must be protected before every other thing and shall never be discriminated against. This system of rights and values collides with something else: a very conservative, ignorant and hypocritical way of thinking in everyday life. We as Italians don’t see ourselves as racist, misogynist or homophobic people. We still like to live in the false myth of “good Italian people”: racism doesn’t exist, if you get offended by the n-word or black face it’s your problem; we are not homophobic but our law about gay marriage doesn’t really allow gay marriage… it’s something similar but not the same called “civil union”; we still think that a law against transphobia and homophobia is not necessary; we believe that the high rate of husbands killing their wives is just a coincidence and not the expression of a patriarchal culture. Also, nobody dares to discuss the fact that radical right-wing ideas and neofascist ideologies are spreading like a virus or that half of our politics have openly xenophobic, ultraconservative and anti-constitutional policies.

We see all but we don’t say. We hide shit under the carpet. And then, we want to look at George Floyd’s death and want to give America a lesson? I don’t think so.

In my opinion, half of our problems could be cured with an educational system reform: if we started to teach our constitutional values in schools, the real ones and not the dangerous and fake patriotism that is spreading, our honest history and if we started to teach students how to develop their own critical opinion and don’t believe what the politician of the moment is trying to brainwash them with, maybe we could move on into a better society. So, my U.S. friends don’t feel alone: all countries have their problems, all countries kind of suck!

Women need to support women about everything: whatever is their aesthetic or body type, the way they want to appear or which path of life they choose. I live by this, I believe in this. I also believe that feminism is for everyone who needs support and wants to be heard and seen. That’s what I stand for.

This is also the reason why I can’t support the Kardashian-Jenners. They stand on the opposite side of the sisterhood I support. And I’m not even referring to their talent or their shows: what really bothers me is the way they use their platform and the way they make money. They managed to make an empire out of women’s insecurities and this is just wrong. They are constantly selling us products and what do these products say? Kim’s products tell you that you need make up  even for your body, that your natural body shape is not okay so you’ll have to use her underwear. Kylie tells you to change your face with makeup, basically faking your natural features. Khloé wants you to get your “revenge body” (which is hugely problematic) and makes “inclusive clothes” that don’t seem that inclusive to me. Kourtney has basically a website that is the cheap version of Goop... which kind of speaks for itself.

This is not even the worst: they sell these products by hinting that that's the reason for their looks... when it's all surgeries and fillers. I want to be clear about this: I have nothing against plastic surgery, if you feel comfortable with a different appearance then so be it. But you have to be honest about it, especially when you have a large platform that can influence many young people. They know their power and know their impact: they know how much everyone desires to look like them... and they make money out of it. I never judged Kim's Playboy Cover, I'm not even gonna start on Kendall's modelling career or anything like that but this is where we, as women need to draw a line: other women monetizing out of our insecurities and making us feel wrong just to sell their shit.

They deny that their appearance is a mixture of photo retouching, professional help and surgeries even when it is obvious: Khloé should basically retake her ID photo because she doesn't even look like the same person but in her opinion, she just followed a diet!

We can't support people making money out of other women insecurities. We can't keep giving fame to people who perpetuate patriarchally defined standards for women. We can't let women's mental health be at risk every time they open a social media platform.

Am I the only one noticing that Casey Cadwallader is making the same pattern again and again? I get that designers have their distinctive look... but this is just a copy.

It's a shame because Mugler has a lot of potential, it's the very idea of haute couture and really knows how to do a show.