Maria Giubettini

We are already in 2024 and we come from a world dotted with continuous acts of violence against everything, against the feminine, against the human, against culture, against science, against the planet itself.

It occurred to me to talk to you about something different, or at least apparently different. An almost bucolic and delicate theme but one that always makes me think.

I would like to explore the relationship between the world of men and the world of animals.

We receive news, images and proclamations from Israel and Palestine and we find ourselves facing a situation that is becoming increasingly complex. And it becomes more and more violent. The world seems split into two different positions more than at any time I can remember. If we observe the alliances and surprising positions that unite countries that are in conflict on other fronts, the situation appears increasingly confused. It all boils down to “if you stay with him who is my enemy, you become my enemy too. But if you who were my enemy are now with my friend, what will you become?”

Once again this year, in the midst of summer, under the pleasant and cool shade of a tree, my mind leads me to gaze and contemplate, taking the proper distance of a summer break, at the world that stands in the background and awaits us on the threshold of autumn. I have often followed the news of politics and culture in these heated hours because so many things have happened, so many words have been spoken, so many thoughts have been normalized, and there have been so many improper reactions that ignoring all this was simply not possible.

I am in the middle of the school year and working at the Listening Desk, affectionately called CIC.

Every year, everything changes in this job.

“How old are your children?” “Fourteen and sixteen!” “Oh my God, poor you… terrible years await you… then it will get better”

I hear people talk this way all the time, almost like automatic speech.

These teenagers are just obnoxious to everyone apparently. I wonder what this terrible thing is that younger people embody and that worries, fatigues, wears out the older ones.

The young people asked us….

A group of young people, a listening desk, a box. These are the ingredients of a small experiment carried out in a school. As managers of the listening desk we wanted to do something different, something that sometimes seems impossible for both adults and young people. Ask and receive an answer.

A class of teenagers asked to talk about sexuality. How to do that? How to actually talk about what they wanted to know? We thought we’d get the questions on paper cards and collect them anonymously and freely in a box.

Here are some of their questions… Here are some of our answers…

Today we see many female protagonists in public life, in political, scientific, artistic, sporting and cultural fields. We can talk about women in power, about equal rights. Even in Italy, we have “finally” a female premier. Who knows, maybe the next president of the United States will also be a woman.

It’s a beautiful world to live in, isn’t it?

In recent months I was struck by the reaction to the article written by Sara Lazzaro about boys and the choice of their future (THE FREEDOM TO CHOOSE YOUR OWN TIME).

I just work with high school students and I see them worrying about what awaits them, sometimes afraid of not being up to something that they have not yet become but that already overwhelms them. Then there are also the guys who with great certainty and rigor already know what they will do and will be without the slightest doubt. They don’t necessarily get better… The jump from high school to the future is uncertain by definition, it is completely free, it is a fact more exploratory than a priori certainties. It’s not just meeting these guys that I’m interested in.

Another year at the listening desk has passed.

I have been doing it for four years now at a high school. It is an experience that makes you rediscover the teenager in you because it is the only way to talk to the youngest, to make yourself understood and to understand them.