Sunday, March 8, 2009

THE INTERNATIONAL DAY OF THE WOMAN


VIVA LE DONNE. MUCHA FUERZA A LA MUJER.

In years past, the celebrations throughout Europe for the International Day of the Woman used to be memorable events. Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, I led thousands of women in song and in dance on Piazza della Signoria in Florence, directly facing Palazzo Vecchio where Cosimo de Medici Dux, Pater Patriae - Father of his country ran his financial, trading, banking and political empires.

When I moved to Palazzo del Drago in Via della Quattro Fontane in Rome which is just around the corner from the Quirinale, the Presidential Palace, Sandro Pertini, Italy's President joined the march for several blocks and hugged and kissed many of us. At the time Pertini and I had been involved in a playful and flirtatious relationship devoid of sex.

As a woman I called the shots.Even in permissive and sophisticated Europe any relationship that reeked of sexual hanky panky with a man like Pertini who was a sort of latter day Diogenes would have been a dumb move on my part.He also had a feminist wife a la Hillary. True to form she had him watched and her jealous scenes were foaming at the mouth ones. They reminded me of the stuff of wanna be Greek tragedies.

Today there was no one on the streets of the Italian Riviera with sprigs yet alone masses of mimosa to share with other women.Sometimes men bought huge branches of mimosa to gift the women in his family. That too has changed with global warming or is it cooling?

Many women were just too knackered to participate or even organize a joyous march. Lest we forget, the world is going through a terrifying Depression. It hasn't hit the Riviera badly but people and especially women can feel its trickle down effects from other areas of Italy such as Rome and from countries like England, where thousands of young Italians owned small businesses or worked in the City of London that was, or are still employed as engineers and skilled workers in refineries.

As usual, the brunt of the economic blow has fallen on the seemingly frail but steely shoulders of Italian, German, Belgian,Dutch and all the rest of the valiant women around our poor planet.

In Italy, the men have been laid off. Their salaries cost more than the women's ever did. One important point the so called wacko - fanatico - lesbo fringe of the Feminist movement lost ignominiously. Equal pay for both sexes. Never did happen. Now? Quien Sabe? Who knows?

The hapless hubbies stay at home and watch Sky, play Lotto or watch porno babes on the boob tube. Their worn-out women are under paid and over-worked in the work place as well as in the home. They know it, we are all aware of it; the corporations and the government. Mum's the word. I know a woman whose son happens to be a genius. Her husband is a drunkard and can't hold a job or a piece of string together. She works as a cleaning woman in a High rise corporate building from 10:00 to 1:00 in the morning. She has a day job as a cleaner/minder from 9:00 to 7:00 in the evening. In her North African country she was a successful lawyer. She married a handsome Italian who had a good paying position with a shipping company. And then Disaster struck. The Italian government did not recognize her legal and juridical deegree. She was taking special classes to change that status. The shipping company has pirates in the Horn of Africa to fight, plus the Depression which has reduced Commerce. Hence, middle level individuals had to go. Guess who does the groceries, cooks, cleans, washes and irons in that household?

In the meantime lesbian radicals are fighting for the right to have lesbian sex explained to 7 year olds in public schools. That is really the worst timing I have witnessed so far this 2009.

"Hey man haters, at this moment we have more urgent issues on the plate to take care of. Let's talk food, decent housing and jobs."

Rapes committed on adolescent girls and boys are increasing exponentially all over the E. U.
I will not discuss America, Africa, Asia and in particular East Asia as that will form part of another blog I am creating. Desperate parents are selling children as slaves. Adoption agencies close both their eyes and wealthy would be parents tell themselves they would make better parents because they have more money and can provide better education, health care, love and attention.

The number of fouled up rich families are legion, I know many of them well." Never mind. here's the money give me the honey." ( the children)

Chalk that up to more failures on the part of the feminists.

Let's look at relationships and marriages. In my clan in the Philippines, the men looked after their women, they cherished them. Those who wished a career in Music, Law or Medicine were free to pursue their dreams. The money they earned was theirs to do with as they pleased. The man was the breadwinner and the Provider. The woman was the Loving center of his and his family's universe.Most marriages proved to be imperfect. The men and women thrashed out a modus vivendi as cordially and as warmly as possible. Sometimes they yelled and ranted and raved. They didn't have to make sense. They were Austro-Hungarian Italians and Castilians with Chinese and Filipino blood thrown in! They made it work. Their extended families made sure of that.

Where have all the extended families gone? Batty Auntie Betty has been packed off to the nursing home. Feeble -minded Uncle Freddie idem. Wise grandparents, great - uncles, aunts, cousins, have all but disappeared. At Happy Holiday time, in some countries you are not allowed to utter the word Christmas, these abandoned, shunted, neglected, mostly forgotten relatives find their homes, apartments, trailers, and rooms Hallmarked to the ceiling with Happy Holiday paper.

One talented and creative oldster Ranieri, makes decoupage out of all the Hallmark cards he receives. He earns about 20,000 Euros a year for his designs. Add to that his 24,00o Euro state pension as a former engineering mechanic. He lives in a sort of solitary yet splendid ambience with two royal Burmese cats and a Siberian Husky. He is a volunteer teacher for a non-profit vocational school which gives him an enormous satisfaction.

His daughters migrated to Switzerland to do their feminist thing ( hairdressing). They have several abortions and two live children between them. He does not plan on leaving a single cent to what used to be his family long ago.

On this day of the Woman I must say with sadness and regret that the Feminist Movement hindered and devastated women culturally,morally, spiritually and emotionally. Betty Friedan was no Rosa Luxembourg. Rosa died fighting for the true empowerment of women - to vote, to receive equal pay in the workplace, to be individuals not objects of sexual desire - unless a woman chose to become one, to work in a safe environment. to obtain a divorce from physically or emotionally abusive spouses.

Betty Friedan was a mentally disturbed woman albeit a genius, according to her family. The world is crawling with mad geniuses. I read her book"The Feminine Mystique" in the early 70's.
It frightened me because it was a dangerous book based on Marxist Leninist principles published in so called America, which was, I thought a Republic.Flawed but full of republican principles. I suspected she may have been a rabid Communist. The kind who would stick you in a gulag for offenses against the feminine mystique and let you rot there till you went bonkers or were suicided.

Rosa Luxembourg was a Socialist Marxist. She said so in all her political rallies. I consider her misguided but let's just say that her heart and intellect was in the right place. But Rosa was moved not only by the plight of women, she realized that men had to be liberated as well. Her agenda was not to destroy the family. She was passionately in love with her lover Klaus Knecht. He was brutally murdered along with her by thugs of the extreme right during the horrific German Depression brought on by the excessive demands and needless humiliations heaped upon Germany by the victors, America and Britain after World War l.

As I ponder on this portentous day which no one but the Catholic Church and some Christian Woman's groups and an association of prostitutes are commemorating, I can see Women are yet again receiving the sharp end of the bayonet in these hard times. Nothing new there. It has always been thus.

I had a series of talks with Simona X. Head of the Prostitutes Association of Genoa. She would like prostitution to be recognized as a profession. That is part and parcel of male hypocrisy to pretend it is some sort of evil calling. Like it or not, prostitution is a profession. That means that the women will pay taxes. That should be welcomed by the Janian( as in Janus the two-faced God of the Romans) Finanze - the equivalent of the IRS. The average salary of an independent woman who works on the streets is about 5 to 10,000 (ten thousand) Euros a month. I am using the word independent with deliberation. These women do NOT have pimps. They are on their feet and backs 6 to 8 hours a day. As Melina Mercouri in the famous motion picture "Never on Sunday," Sundays are a No, No, to these women too.

The housewives who engage in prostitution from their homes or from posh apartments near their homes make as much as 5,000 to 10,000 Euros a night. They too would like some form of taxation, protection and recognition, such as retirement benefits and Social Security. Many are married. Are their partners complicit? What do you think?

"Times are difficult. We have seen a reduction of our once-in-a-while-fuck-flings. Our regulars don't frequent us as often , but we still manage to make good money," Simona told me.

You must all be dying to know why I have engaged Simona the prostitute in a cordial dialogue. I have been requested by Simona to teach the girls and the women English.

'' We all need to consider other part time employment that will eventually turn into full time. In this manner we can retire and make way for the new wave of young prostitutes. Therefore English is a must."

By the way, they are the only Women's group that will hold a silent candlelight vigil on Via Maddalena, their street and place of employment, and enjoyment to countless men. It is the Montmarte of Italy.

It is clear to me that the New Man and Woman has much to learn and unlearn.

God bless Women. All Women. May they grow and endure.

To see my 3 posts from last year too ... just look at the labels on the left side of this post and select "International Women's Day".

4 comments:

  1. On the difference between professional prostitutes versus amateur ones, here's a relevant scene from "I Claudius":

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp1mk9bdsdM

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  2. A few more thoughts:

    Masculinity becomes perverted whenever men are isolated from women, and that does NOT only mean sexual contact. (And femininity becomes equally perverted in such circumstances.)

    While contemplating Isabel's words about the mysandrous (means "man-hating") "feminists", I remembered this scene from a little-known but ingenious play/movie, "Short Eyes" by the Puerto-Rican playwright Miguel Pinero. It's set in a New York prison, and all of the actors who performed in the movie were former prisoners.

    Well, in this scene, the prisoners do some "karaoke" of Curtis Mayfield's song, "Do-wap is strong in here." The African-American-dialect lyrics are a bit hard to translate into standard English, but basically the lyrics say,

    "Even though I'm in prison, surrounded by sodomy, I'm going to remain a heterosexual."

    But beyond that, I see a metaphor in this performance, for how ALL men are spiritually "imprisoned" whenever they're cut off from the companionship of women. And in such circumstances, men either become criminally insane at worst, or spiritually crippled at best.

    You'll see what I mean when you watch and listen to this:

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vl1y_curtis-mayfield-do-do-wap-is-strong_music

    In other words, separation of the sexes is spiritually identical with imprisonment.

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  3. When I was an ignorant little girl back in the now forgotten Soviet Union, I innocently believed the Eight of March to be the Really International Women’s Day, the day all women received flowers and obligatory annual gifts from their sometimes not so significant others. Having lived in the USA for a half-a-dozen years I know it not to be the case. Most, if not all, Americans have never heard of this day of days, much less thought of celebrating it, and do you know why? American women do not need a holiday that would make their husband bring those flowers; they prefer buying the said flowers for themselves or remind their tortured husbands in a not particularly gentle way to bring them a nicely decorated flower arraignment…
    The American emancipation in the USA has reached its ruinous climax! Poor young fellows at my school were afraid to open doors for women lest they would be accused of thinking women incapable of performing this simple act on their own! One girl I went to school with actually proposed marriage to her fiancĂ© who, apparently, preferred living with her in their co-rented apartment, why buy a cow, as they say…
    Feminism will be the death of romance of Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte, take my word for it! Mr. Darcy of “Pride and Prejudice” would have a heart-attack!

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  4. It is difficult to zero in on what problems remain for female emancipation today, given the state of the worldwide economy. But brava to Simona and the woman from North Africa married to a drunkard who cleans to keep her family lives together. These ladies are to be commended for their honest efforts to arrangiarsi bene.

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Isabel Van Fechtmann

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