Every time they ask me to write about males, or if not every time, very often, it happens that coincidentally there is a horrible news story that concerns them (us); they don’t ask me to write for that news story, but then it happens that the things I want to write about are confronted with a chilling act. This time, in the story of Filippo Turetta and Giulia Cecchettin, there was, for many different reasons, a more visible, closer relationship with everyday life, with normality; I’m not sure whether because it was told almost immediately, or because it was a situation very similar to many others that happen around us (and our children); the fact is that we hoped that it would end well until the end, even when we had already understood that it would end badly.
FEMALE OBSERVATORY
Now, I don’t want to talk about brutality, but about the violence of men; which is not exactly the same thing — or rather, it is not just the extreme cases. Faced with all this, there are two paths: either the sense of extraneousness (I’m not like that), which very often the most terrible cases lead to supporting: I live a life in which what happened is inconceivable (and probably, it we know, it was inconceivable even for that boy); or taking charge; and that is: precisely because all I have felt in these days has been the recognition of a normal life (which is why we thought the worst might not happen), then there is a hook that unites our daily behaviors and extreme facts. And that hook is: how men are made, that is: how we are made. Since a man writes.
The message from Filippo Turetta’s father to Giulia Cecchettin’s father: “Forgiveness. My son will have to pay.” The crime changes: now it is kidnapping and aggravated voluntary homicide
by our correspondent Rosario Di Raimondo
November 20, 2023
We always say: we trust in the new generations. But if we think about the extremes, about news events like this one – it concerns the new generations; and if we think about daily life, my daughter, for example, has already found dozens of male peers who explain things to her, who explain everything to her.
I don’t want to save myself at all. We don’t have to save ourselves at all. In this story, there are no progressive, modern, revolutionary men. I repeat: there can be progressive, modern, revolutionary people. But if these people are men, as men they are no longer men.
At least once (and even more) in our lives we were the one who shouted above, who didn’t let anyone speak, who had to speak first; the one that explained how one should behave, or how to do something, or even how one should live; the one who tried to impose his role on him, the one who got more angry because he knew he was wrong; what he didn’t accept that she loved another man (he didn’t accept is little). The one who remembers that he was right even two months later, and calls, and says: did you see that I was right? The one who, when he speaks at a meeting, addresses other men. The one who forgets his colleague’s name. The one who sends ambiguous messages throughout his life. The one who on the train feels compelled to speak to a woman sitting in front just because she is pretty, and she wouldn’t be able to go home without doing so. The one who takes possession of other people’s ideas, casually. Etc., etc., etc.
And there is another thing that concerns us, and that concerns me, in these years in which this problem has been meticulously dealt with. We men are already impatient with all this. I for one am very impatient. We’re already tired. We say: okay, I understand. We try to behave, but we snort, because they’ve already busted our balls. That’s what we say. Indeed, this is what we think, but we don’t always say it (especially if we are progressive): okay, we understand, now don’t bother any more.
So, to sum up, the state of things is this: the rules have changed, but it takes a lot of time to change men. And yet, in the meantime, almost immediately, men have already become bored with these rules.
There is still something — there is still a lot — that doesn’t work.
