A girl’s fear, a boy’s fear – 03/20/2023 – Vera Iaconelli

You step into a time machine and are catapulted into the past. Arriving there, he discovers that he has no right to attend school, he cannot work and his marriage will be arranged. Question: did you get there as a man or as a woman?

Another question: the year is 2023 and you are traveling to an unknown destination, when you disembark, you find the very same circumstance described above. What country did you arrive in? In the first case you are a woman, obviously, in the second case you arrived in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime (but it could be Yemen, Syria…).

We don’t know if or when we will bring these girls from the Middle Ages to the 21st century, so, depending on the point of departure and arrival, the migrant does not move only in space, but, mainly, in time.

The antidote to controlling the human rage of submitting one gender to another involves the creation and surveillance of a new social pact, but you can call it feminism.

Feminist collectives, the ones that inspire me at least, have this aspiration: to unite women (and men) in defense of people oppressed by their gender, considering racial and class differences.

It is the permanent struggle to prevent half of humanity from subjecting the other to its desires.

Here men are divided. On the one hand, there are those who, aware of their place in this destructive gear, decide to understand it and consciously stop reproducing it, establishing much more complex and rewarding relationships with femininity.

It takes work, but the advantage is that the energy spent to maintain the macho facade, which so weakens and makes men dumb, can be spent taking care of yourself and the other. That is, it can be spent loving and being loved.

Some men create spaces for reflection to talk about masculinity issues. The theme deserves to be debated so that they can rethink who they have become in the bread line based on the women’s struggle. If the definition of masculinity came at the expense of being the opposite of women and having power over them, now it is up to them to discover who they are without resorting to anachronism.

But, as in any struggle for power, space is not given away easily. Many men have bet on the resurgence of gender stereotypes. It is at this time that we do not use the word masculinity, but machismo, as it refers to considering gender differences as differences in value.

These are men who are terrified and paranoid at the possibility of receiving the same treatment from women that they are offered: commanding, betraying, coercing, abusing. This without going into the area of ​​criminal acts that result from this discourse: raping, torturing and killing.

To justify power over the other, it is absolutely necessary that he be demonized. To women, since Adam and Eve, everything that human sexuality generates anguish because we do not know or control it is imputed.

They are said to be underhanded, fickle, manipulative. Hence, young people —beginners in discovering their own sexual desire, their own body, how to approach the other— are more susceptible to discourses that promise to compensate for their insecurities. For this reason, they become an easy target for those who earn their living by fomenting male paranoia and insecurity, which results in violence that leaves fathers and mothers of girls sleepless.

I suggest the beautiful Dutch film “Close”, in which one sees the shadow that is cast over the virility of boys when they cultivate an intimate and warm friendship -commonly associated with the relationship between girls.

Far away from Afghanistan, right here, a woman suffers violence every 2 minutes, is raped every half hour and is a victim of femicide every 6 hours.

Aware of this, what is your biggest fear about your children?

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