Feminism 2.0
I was recently interviewed by the Italian InYourEyesEzine regarding my new music video and not only; among many well-though questions that find no easy answers there was the following one: You are a woman and a singer-songwriter, what are your thoughts on the current condition of women?
This topic sometimes rings an alarm bell in my head, as I often get exchanged for a feminist on stage, due to songs like "Shut up and Fuck me" and "You Go Down That Hole"/"La Canzone del Cazzo" (a mystery I still can't explain to myself, especially the latter one).
The truth is, as I often state on stage: I don't hate women and everything labeled as "female" enough to be a feminist - or at least, an old-school feminist.
I am very grateful to be born in this part of history, as female condition is light years away from where it was just a hundred years ago - which is exactly why the good old fight that has brought about this major change cries for an upgrade.
I am even more grateful to be born in a family where men and women were always equal: one of my grandmas worked as Analytical Chemistry Professor at the University back in the '60s already (despite coming from a poor village family), the other grandma was a military factory worker, my Mom is taking her third university degree now (as a hobby!), and she has more often than not out-earned my Dad and any other family member, too.
The person who taught me what real equity is, though, is my father. During my entire lifetime, he has never told me that I CAN NOT do something BECAUSE I am a GIRL - from travelling all on my own, to fixing our Renault 19 on a parking lot with him all afternoon long when I was twelve years old. I have never head him say "I wish I had a son" when something broke and he needed a hand - he always called me, rather than relying to a neighbour.
The only time he threatened to forbid karate trainings three times a week was when my little sister and I showed off our fighting skills by using each other as sparing partners, while breaking every single rule of fair sports fight in the meantime.
He never backed away from cooking, cleaning, doing laundry or changing diapers, either.
More of THIS, ladies and gentlemen, is what we need for our society to truly progress.
Working on the laws is necessary, yes, and there is unfortunately still much to be bettered in that sense, too (for example, how the aftermath of becoming parents differently impacts professional careers of new moms compared to new dads), but it is simply not enough. Female-only galleries that discriminate male artists just because they own an Y chromosome won't do it, you know, for they are committing the very same crime they are accusing their enemies of. Same goes for a lovely coffee place nearby Hackescher Markt in Berlin that forbids the entry to male customers - had it been the other way around, it would have caused a scandal.
It is time to end the "male" vs. "female" conflict, together with all the appendage bullshit claiming physical differences between sexes do not exist nor they count - it is time to move on to the society that acknowledges and celebrates those differences, and uses the best of them for the common good. For yes, WE ARE DIFFERENT, and yes this Planet THRIVES on diversity.
Since criticising without offering a true alternative is what populist politicians do, here is a more constructive approach:
You want a sensitive husband that shows his emotions? Then don't tell your son not to be a cry-baby, as crying is only for girls and cowards. You want your daughter to become an astrophysicist - or a genetic engineer in my case - well, offer her something else than Barbies, the Wix and the play-kitchen, and for gods sake, please please don't ever tell her that she will be raped, mugged and beaten up at every corner if she dares to travel alone. With 20+ years of solo traveller career, I can assure you this world is a much safer, kinder, welcoming place than the press wants it to be. The infinite acts of human kindness are there on daily basics, they just do not find space on the headlines.
I live for the day where words like "female rights", "gay rights", "children rights", "immigrant rights", etc. cease to exist, as there will only be HUMAN rights and no need to fight for any of those.
Moreover, as long as we need to focus on the rights of a specific group of humans, it means that yes, we can specifically improve the laws that need improving - which is great and desperately necessary for oh so many issues still - but it also causes the nasty backfire of subtly classifying all those groups as something slightly less than "human" - and this is unacceptable and needs to be overcome, if we really want those laws we implement to be effective, and those rights we strive for to respected in the every day life.
