Gender equality: everyone must free themselves from roles, female and male

Stand many of us had not read On the side of the girls by Elena Gianini Belotti, a small essay that explained to us word for word the influence of social conditioning in the formation of “girls”as they were once called, perhaps today they would not be the same.

Fifty years after the publication of this precious book, I invite mothers, daughters, fathers, sons and anyone from any nucleus who belongs to the large queer family of which we are all part (and which only the government persists in not seeing), in short, I invite you , to re-read it, why inside is everything we need to try to escape from gender stereotypes which unfortunately still afflict our growth and above all that of the new generations.

The book, which comes out of Feltrinelli in a new edition with an illuminating preface by Concita De Gregoriois always current, and dialogues with a present that is even more problematic than at the time, because we navigate on sight, with little and often wrong security, in a society that, despite the multiplication of possibilities and the hoped-for freedoms, has not yet come to terms with the fundamentals.

AND never as in this moment of dangerous returns to obscurantism are the fundamentals important. The world divided into pink and light blue always present in toy shops is once again a temptation, and new social princesses and charming princes appear on the horizon of the imaginary.

To help us through this obstacle course by opening up new viewpoints, another one has come to the rescue interesting little essay by Giusi Marchetta, Princesses. Heroines of the past, feminists of todayfor Add editions.

Starting from the historical narratives, the book draws an identikit of classic heroines to get to those of the present who are tracing alternative paths, indicating unprecedented perspectives that can allow girls and boys of the future to choose personal and unconventional ways to experience the world.

And the males?

If you’ll allow me, they need it badly, especially the boys who, in the midst of so many new welcome “rebellious girls” need a narrative “on the side of the children” to free themselves from a rolecertainly socially advantageous, but no less oppressive.

As Toni Morrison recalls, quoted in the finale by Marchetta: «You are moving in the direction of freedom, and the function of freedom is to make others free». Only in this way will we be able to conclude with a nice “… and they lived happily ever after”.

All articles by Serena Dandini

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