Dear Men

DEAR MEN

Dear Men,

I think the time has come to write you a few lines. I do not know whether the time is for you or for me. For me, certainly.

For quite a few years now, I have increasingly found myself talking about ‘men’ as something that does not resemble me. It happens to me in the face of news reports, of behaviours, of the words of my online acquaintances (much less so in those I meet in person), in the face of people I see on the street, in clubs, around.

And this is something that confuses me on one hand, and on the other makes me proud. Because the image of men I see around me, I don’t like at all.

I am not just talking about the violent men, the rapists, those who kill or scar their women. Of course we have doubts about those men. No, I am talking about normal men, who go about their normal lives, think normal thoughts, have normal relationships.

And it is precisely within this ‘normality’ that lurks what I do not like, and which, precisely because it is normal, dear men, you are no longer able to see (or perhaps have never seen).

It is now evident, dear men, that what I am talking about is your relationship with the opposite sex (but also with sex in general, on closer inspection), with women.

‘Women: good luck figuring them out’ goes an old saying. In its silliness, it speaks a general truth: to understand people (in this case, women) you have to be good. Good in the sense that a glance is not enough to understand someone who is different from us: one must be committed, must question oneself, must be prepared to listen, have respect. You have to be good, come on, you understand very well what I am talking about.

And instead, you, normal men, are not good at all. Maybe it is not even all your fault, it is not easy to be a man among men, I know that. But that is why you have to work hard, otherwise we would all be born good.

I say it is not easy to be men among men. It is not from the very beginning, from when you are a child. Even as a kid you already have to show strength, you have to know how to defend yourself, to be part of the pack. It is nature, you will say, like animals. Yes, of course, but we are human beings, not animals. We are made of nature, but also of culture.

While you are there training your hormones and banging your heads like young mouflons, young girls are growing up before you. What a rip-off. One minute they are there playing with dolls and the next they are women. And you are still children. This is a trauma, I know. Suddenly women become objects of desire, but they are almost unattainable. Then, as you grow up, this shock passes, but not completely, obviously. In your head it remains as a paradigm interpretation of the world that, in order to get a woman, you will always have to work like hell. That women are being coy and that they should stop showing off like this.

So, dear men, let me let you in on a shocking secret: women who don’t want to be with you just don’t want you. Ugly to hear, isn’t it? And yet it is indeed so. So the question you should ask yourself is: why doesn’t she want to be with me? And you should ask yourself this question in front of the mirror as you listen to your own words spoken during a date, a meeting with a woman, written in a message, in an email. The answer may not be so obvious to you, but I assure you that it is all there, in front of you.

The truth is that women want to be with those who understand them, and in order to begin to understand women it is necessary to do a mental and cultural, even linguistic, cleansing operation. It is necessary to learn to recognise macho attitudes, to understand if and when you happen to use them, perhaps out of habit, by mistake, when not, and this is more serious, out of conviction.

To understand women, you just have to listen to what they have to say. But really listen to them. Don’t talk about yourself all the time. Be quiet for once. Listen to what the woman in front of you has to say. And take her seriously. And act accordingly.

Respect is paramount: women must be respected. But not because they are women. Because they are individuals. Respect ‘no’, for example.

If a woman no longer loves you, she no longer loves you. Maybe she cheated on you and is now with someone else. It happens. But maybe not. She’s just tired of you. And if she no longer loves you, she no longer loves you. Not much to do. Get over it. It is not a good reason to take her life.

In short, dear men, you still have a long way to go to become good, as far as I can see and read around. But you could start with an easy one. Especially you, young men. When you go out in the evening with your girlfriend (but, just in case, also when you go out and you don’t have a girlfriend), don’t go out as if you were dressed in clothes taken from the dump. Your girlfriend has washed, cleaned, put on make-up, spent time deciding what to wear to be pretty for you, perfumed herself, walked in heels because she wants to be elegant and to please you: return the same courtesy and make yourself pretty for her.