In one of his most famous songs Alanis Morissette he sang of the irony of certain situations that happen to people. Sometimes, when diametrically opposite things happen, as in Ironic, the absurdity is so obvious that it makes us smile. Occasionally, however, that contrast of events only underlines the bitterness of the world in which we live.
November 25 has just passed, the media talked about the International Day for the Eradication of Violence Against Women in a variety of ways, sometimes staying on the surface of the problem and in others going deeper. In the last piece of Area Marina I tried to highlight how much journalism has a big problem in reporting gender-based violence, because it does not capture its cultural matrix. And it’s ironic to think that just a few days later we have clear proof.
On November 27, after the Empoli-Fiorentina match, the journalist Greta Beccaglia, who was in connection from the Castellani stadium, was harassed by a fan while doing his job.
I think it is very indicative that the first reaction of the journalist in the studio, Giorgio Micheletti, was to minimize what happened, that “do not get angry”Which is, net of all subsequent excuses, in any case a justification, a“ pass it on ”because in the end boys will be boys, what can you do.
The idea that those who harass are part of a separate “category” is still very rooted, Micheletti himself defines “being” the man in question. It is essential to understand that men who harass, abuse and even kill women, do not have something biologically wrong, they are not sick or unbalanced, they are – as the slogans of Non Una di Meno say – healthy children of patriarchy. Understanding that there is a clear responsibility of those who commit these acts is the first step to quitting to put the burden of harassment on women, is the starting point for starting to act on education and culture.
Episodes like the one that happened to Beccaglia happen every day with the cameras off, remaining indifferent to most, and are the result of millennia of objectification of the female body. If the public account continually defines us as “mother of”, “wife of”, “sister of”; if our body, whatever it is, always comes before what we are, our abilities, our wholeness; if reproductive rights are still under discussion; it shouldn’t be surprising that there are men who think they can dispose of women’s bodies as they please.
And if on the one hand some things are changing, on the other what it is perhaps most difficult to achieve is a different dialogue within men’s meeting places, an awareness that starts from those environments where it is more difficult to dismantle sexist thinking. It is no coincidence that the harassment suffered by Beccaglia took place inside a stadium, the football environment has always been the most resistant to change, which we will certainly not see in the short term. But I want to try to be optimistic about the future, as Lorenzo Gasparrini explains in the book Why feminism is also useful for men, published by Eris Edizioni: “It will not be an immediate change, it will not be a short struggle. Social changes don’t happen quickly […]. These are slow stratifications which then erupt as visible phenomena, but continually hindered by what already exists. […] The important thing is that every single step is in the right direction, slow and inexorable”.
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