Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
“NoPatriarchy doesn’t exist!” I heard a well-known politician thunder on one of the many evening talk shows and by shouting his opinion he had interrupted, covered and silenced the voice of another guest who was trying to argue a thought.
You’d have to laugh to keep from crying. This word has also become taboo, woe betide you in evoking the culture (call it what you want… sexist? chauvinist?) that we are all steeped ina kind of primordial soup that nourished our country and whose waste has survived and continues to influence ways of thinking and acting.
It is useless to remind these champions of patriarchal denialism that A few years have passed since honor killings and shotgun marriages were abolishedwhich only dated 1996 was the law that finally transformed sexual violence into a crime against the person and not against public morals etc etc.
Meanwhile, Italian women fought for their emancipationsometimes overcoming obstacles that seemed insurmountable, given that only after 1960 they managed to conquer careers such as that of prefect and magistrate which were considered “unsuitable” for the female gender too prone to emotions – especially in those days – or so he claimed the (male) majority of our Parliament is convinced.
Evolution is slow but relentlesswe ate with our hands and now we use forks, and little by little we will also be able to introduce sexual education in schools, a subject considered extremely dangerous by the usual suspects so much so that Italy remains the only nation (along with Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and Cyprus) for not having adopted it.
Yet it is precisely with education that we must start and if little girls are traveling at great speed on the bright road to their emancipation, we must not leave children behind who could become the weak link in this epochal change.
“Can boys be feminists?” by Lorenzo Gasparrini (Settenove).
To help families and children, a book by the philosopher has just been published Lorenzo Gasparrini Can boys be feminists? Everything men always wanted to know (but never dared to ask) published by Settenove, which I recommend keeping at home and reading with your children.
The volume illustrated by Cristina Portolano’s comics finally faces with grace and wisdom all the doubts and questions that torment many families in this moment of useless ideological controversy. Let’s all root for the men of tomorrow and only together with them will we be able to build that new world that we so hope for.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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