8th of March: brother, sister, you are welcomed
Today’s Women International Day, and to me is not a day to party, have fun or receive flowers, but a day of memory.
I remember and honor all the women lived before me, who fought for my right to vote and to be free, and the men who helped them, who I call the Allies.
Call me weird, if you’d like, but I don’t consider humanity divided in females and males: where someone sees genres, once again I see people.
Every person is different: sometimes we meet kind and generous people.
Sometimes, we meet individualistic, egoistic, or violent people.
I’ve been exposed, as everyone with a smartphone, to a feminism I don’t recognize as mine: it tells me men are always privileged creatures.
Don’t take me wrong, being a woman is not easy. In some country, in some environment, that’s clear and shiny as the sun. Something bad happened to me too.
Despite it, in my life I also met men who listened, empowered, and helped me being who I am.
About women?
Well, I met someone who bullied me in middle school, because I was poorer than them, or because I didn’t have a top model body.
As a single childless woman adult, apparently, I have no right to say I’m tired.
I understand mums, don’t take me wrong. Still, this is not what I expect from a “sister”.
You can ask to every adult woman who’s not a mum her opinion about it. After you receive an answer, please, let me know.
Once again, I find myself in the minority.
About men privileges?
Looking at Ukraine, these days, I see how men are forced to fight and can’t escape war like women and children are trying to do. I don’t know about you, but I don’t call this privilege.
Indeed, patriarchal system is something that hits both the sexes, equally.
That’s why I honor every woman behaving like a sister and every man behaving like an ally.
If you’re a man, please go on and read my words.
Dear man,
you’re not your money, your value doesn’t depend on how much you earn, but on how much you show kindness and love to other human beings.
Dear man,
you are entitled of your emotions: it hurts me to know you don’t feel the right to cry, to ask for help, and the fact that you’ve been told that you must be strong as steel. You don’t have to.
Dear man,
step up and fight for your right to be a dad. Fight to have the same right women have, to stay home if your child is sick. Fight to see your kid growing, because those days pass by and you won’t have them back.
Dear man,
once upon a time, in Russia again, there was the zar. It was 1917, women there weren’t allowed to vote. All around the world Suffragettes begun to fight for it, but in Russia the story is even more interesting. Back in time, in fact, both men and women realized that privilege was held by rich people. As today.
So, they joined their forces and soon the Suffragettes manifestation became the October Revolution, after which the zar fell for good; and if you look at the news today you can see how women and men are marching together for peace, are being arrested together, are hit by the consequences of the choices one single powerful and rich man took, helped by the olygarchs.
In my opinion our system is broken, unsustainable. There’s not only the war in Europe: we have too many wars going on, the climate crisis, inequality, racism, debts problems all around the world.
So, the world needs once again a good spin and to change for good before is too late.
Always remember that Revolutions are made by NUMBERS. Not men nor women, NUMBERS.
I have a dream, a utopic one: let’s fight together.
Happy Women’s International Day to everyone. To all the minorities out there, like the LGBTQIA+ here in Italy, which I support fully because I am heterosexual therefore privileged, and this privilege sucks, is not fair, and I hope things will change as soon as they can.
As a writer I carefully choose every word I type, so when I write all the minorities, I mean exactly ALL.
Women weren’t allowed to vote, everywhere.
That changed.
Here in Italy, the first-time women were allowed to vote monarchy fell. It was June, the 2nd 1946. Who knows what we could achieve today, fighting together?
Open your eyes and then open the eyes of those around you.
Fight against those who harass, abuse, beat or rape us.
Fight against prejudices, stereotypes, misconceptions.
Fight against everyone who holds power in their hand and, instead of using it for doing good, use it to maintain their privilege intact.
Fight.
Happy Women’s International Day, everyone, again.
