Dear man

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Dear man,

I read your heartfelt appeal for a constructive dialogue between the sexes with care, interest, and delicacy.

There is much that is good and wise in what you write; your reasoning is sound, calm, and impeccable. But it's precisely this reasonableness that holds its greatest flaw, that faintly irritating quality that makes one want to scream and say: to hell with reason, let the fire take the lead because that's precisely what's missing here: passion. Too much head, not enough gut. Low tones, analytical, gentle, timid in places.

Ready to take a step back at the first sign of aggression, the first rejection, the slightest rise in tone.

I get you a little. You're a young man in the thick of a long, exhausting process of deconstructing and rebuilding. You move uncertainly between old and new paradigms, between ancient prejudices half-buried under the ashes but ready to catch fire again, and new mental frameworks not yet fully absorbed, constantly threatened by a daily reality that's often far removed from the enlightened, modern image we like to project of our society.

It's different for me. I'm a grown woman born and raised at a time when patriarchy didn't just live in the minds of men (and many women) but ruled in the legal codes and the institutional, political, and corporate practices of our Republic.

I'm one of those who, coming from a relatively open and forward-thinking family, believed for a long time that being a woman wasn't an obstacle but a privilege and that gender equality existed by nature simply because it should exist. With time and with age, I've learned the hard way that little or nothing of what I took for granted and naturally acquired was.

I discovered I was born in years when women were barred from entering the judiciary based on a 1919 law that forbade the female sex from holding any public office of a judicial nature. The ban was justified by the belief that women were not suited to roles requiring authority and firmness and were not structurally prepared to bear the weight of responsibilities inherent in the role of magistrate. The law in question, however, violated Article 51 of the Constitution — the one that guarantees equality between the sexes — and was repealed only in 1963. It wasn't until 1965 that women were finally admitted to the magistrate's exam.

Admitted, yes, but with reservation, suspicion, paternalistic benevolence, and a few too many laughs at the uncontrollable emotionality ready to explode" on those days."

I became a teenager, dear young man. Those were years when the family code, until 1975, established the male's superior hierarchy over the female and the lesser's obligation to obey the head of the family, relegating her to a perpetual infantile state, as comfortable as it was cursed. At the time I was discovering my sexuality, it was hoped that a woman would arrive at marriage a virgin; contraceptives had only recently — in 1971 — been legalized; it was not shameful to claim that "man is a hunter and has needs that cannot be repressed"; abortion was a crime and for girls who, through ignorance, neglect, or simply bad luck, became pregnant, the only option was clandestinity and the risk of dying from septicemia or internal bleeding.

I grew up in Italy, where it was normal to talk about "rehabilitating marriage" and where the criminal code included the "crime of honor," which was only loudly abolished in 1981. A crime that implied a sentence from 2 to 7 years (yes, two to seven, you read that right) for the spouse, father, or brother who decided to remedy the offense inflicted on the family's family's good name with a murder. An offense that generally consisted of having sexual relations with a woman of that family.

And what about rape? It was common, routine stuff. It wasn't a crime against the person — because, deep down, a woman was not considered a whole, complete person — it was a crime against morality. Morality and honor are the two magic words of the patriarchal world until recently. Because rape, dear well-intentioned man, remained a crime against morality until 1996 when Berlusconi had already launched his disastrous revolution of morals, his "Italian miracle," when the First Republic had already shattered, swept away by the clinking of handcuffs and a whirlwind of bribes.

In the world I knew in my youth, a woman was raped twice: the first time when she was violated — possibly by a gang or even within the family; the second time in court — if she dared to report it — by the defendants' lawyers and the insinuations of the press: after all, you asked for it, you provoked him, you were too lenient, you didn't rebel enough, you wanted to be free, and you paid the price.

And then, little by little, came the rest: Tina Anselmi, the first woman minister in 1976; Antonella Celletti, the first female airline pilot and commander in 1989; Fernanda Contri, the first female constitutional judge in 1996; Debora Corbi, the first woman admitted into the army in 2000.

But while all this was happening, while Italy was changing, we young and not so young banged our heads every day against that damned glass ceiling that prevented us from growing, from emerging, from reaching where we wanted and had the right to be, surrounded by a strange illusion of equality behind which men hid to feel safe, at peace with their conscience, continuing to enjoy their privilege, their rights acquired at birth, their status as blessed by fate and anatomy.

And while we chewed on injustices, swallowed harassment and frustrations, there we were: women free and liberated, yet oppressed by our guilt for not being able to fully fulfill our role as guardian angels, devoted vestals of the hearth, sacred handmaidens of care.

What man would be able to endure so much every day of his life? How much silent heroism does it take not to give up, not to lose awareness of who you are, and not to accumulate anger, resentment, and suspicion? How many men would accept being constantly tested as if everything always needed proving, with the slightest misstep ready to make you fall to the foot of the mountain, never able to reach the summit, in a perpetual repetition of the myth of Sisyphus?

And for one, ten, a hundred who make it, how many, too many, are left behind? How many give up, and how many resign themselves? You say we shouldn't get angry?

Do you think asking us to smile and welcome it is right? Do you believe it's easy to celebrate your commendable efforts, your little progress, when ours have often been ignored, mocked, or worse, punished?

Do you now understand why things with us are sometimes so difficult? Can you put yourself, just for a moment, in the shoes of someone who has made frustration a daily exercise? Not those of some dangerous feminist, but an ordinary woman like me. One who was born convinced she had the world in her hands and grew old knowing that the work had only just begun, that we hold nothing firmly, that every achievement must be defended with nails and teeth because nothing lasts forever, that the struggle of being a woman in a world—alas—still ruled by men is immense and beyond words.