This article is published in issue 13 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 26 March 2024.
Last Friday, in a club in Nolo, Milan, I attended a very interesting evening entitled «Degenere». Writers, journalists and stand up comedians participated, from Giorgia Fumo to Matteo B. Bianchi, who addressed issues of gender and sexual orientation in a very brilliant, in some cases hilarious, way. It struck me that the two most memorable interventions had the same object: public toilets. The first was that of Samuele Appignanesi, a young Bocconi student who said he had enrolled at the University immediately after coming out as a trans person and that he had felt – they had made him feel – uncomfortable both in the girls' bathrooms than in those of boys.
After some hesitation he spoke about it to the Institute, which immediately opened a gender free bathroom, which became very popular (it seems to be even cleaner than the others).
Less edifying – despite the fact that some young people at Bocconi made sexist jokes about the gender-free bathroom which cost them a brief suspension – the story of the writer Raffaella Silvestri.
Silvestri is a very clear and passionate intellectual who graduated in gender studies long before it became fashionable. Someone who really knows about these issues. She gave a very effective feminist monologue starting from the time that at the Venice Film Festival she was in urgent need of a bathroom and, seeing that the queue for the women's one was hopeless, she went to the men's one, from where she was was brutally kicked out.
These two interventions, of different but equally incisive nature, made me reflect on how every relevant topic always starts from our body.
From his freedom and his rights.
As for the bathrooms: on trains and planes they have always been gender free and it has never been a problem. Stopping separating them could get us used to paying less attention to gender and more attention to respect for each other's bodies.
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Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
