Mariella Gattini

The noise in the media is unbearable. The pitch is so high that it’s impairing people’s ability to see reality for what it is. The only ones benefiting from this noise are the ones making it. Everyone else goes to work like every other day, following the same path that, unbeknownst to them, has already been traced for them. You see, these people, the noise makers, need an audience, a captive one if possible, which, in a country of followers and believers like this one, is not difficult to find.

These out-loud hysterical assumptions of self-importance, this male angst out in the open in the national media and in the internet’s murky waters wants to make clear that those so-called alt-right movements and their intrinsic hatred against women are something new, as if they have sprung out of nothing, or worse—that they have a reason to be.

The reality is that they have a strong root in history—one that people seem to have forgotten—and in the instilled idea, in the heads of men and women alike, that women are, and always will be, by nature, inferior to men. The reality is that all revered institutions in the world, not only in the U.S., including religious, educational, commercial, and political entities, have women relegated to their ability to consume and to reproduce, period, or better said—full stop.

The advancement we have seen over the years in women has not come from these institutions, it has come from women themselves, the ones who, still today, have to overcome discrimination, sexual harassment, disrespect, work overload, abuse, mistreatment of every sort in the workplace, in the healthcare system, particularly with physicians, in society in general, and even in the most intimate minutes of their private lives.

In the worldwide patriarchal environment we live in what men seek in women are three main benefits: The ability to have a good time with women they define as disposable, the opportunity to project themselves in society at large because women are extraordinary networkers, and finally the chance to project themselves further in time and space through the reproduction of their own genes. In order to achieve this projection women have to be sanctified in their role of guardians of this precious nucleus called family for which women have to give everything, even their own identity.

When women are young they are not taken seriously because they are considered too sexy, too attractive. When they mature and have children they are not enough because they have to spend too much time taking care of their families, and when children grow out of their “nest” women’s moment, all of a sudden, has expired.

In a few words, nothing new under the sun. The good news is that there are millions of real men in the world, and by real men I mean heterosexual, gay, and transgender males. Real men recognize that women of all genders are extraordinary individuals able to juggle anything that is thrown at them. Women are able to carry real human beings inside of them for months and then nurture them for the rest of their lives. Real men do their part in the rearing of their offspring not as a favor, not as something they do because they are so kind, but because it’s their duty, their obligation, their own responsibility, and they then take on the role in the guidance of real human beings with a strong human perspective in life.

Real men see the pitfalls of their own “masculinity” so cherished and made cute in sitcoms and comedy features. Real men see what is going on in society right now and are appalled, horrified, and disgusted at their own mess out in the open for everyone to see. However, for many others, the answer is more noise, in the hopes of distracting people—women with fashion, cosmetics, and plastic surgery (deemed so necessary to attract male attention), and men with sports, sport events, and male-enhancement drugs to keep their youth forever so that they can project themselves forever and ever, in time and space.

A professor once said to me that all the problems we have in society today would disappear if women stayed at home and took care of their families. I laughed and said to him with a big smile: “You’re kidding, right?” He didn’t dare to contradict me.

What we do and say has an impact on society. Like scientists who study one small particle their entire lives, everything we put our heads on adds to the general knowledge of better informed, good listeners. I’m not talking about well-intended nonsense. It’s about the quality of what we say and do in our lives with those next to us. We don’t need to become pseudo-celebrities in order to reach out. We do not need to become puppets of any pseudo-movement in order to be someone in society. At the same time, we have the power of NO within us against any institution, business, healthcare provider, or politician wannabe who play dirty. Our NO has the power to transform the world that surrounds us, and it is a clear message to the scammers of our time. In this particular piece the NO I’m talking about is against getting lost because of the noise that surrounds us—our NO to noise is powerful.

Noise is irrelevant, noise is pollution of the mind, noise is garbage we need to get rid of. Winter is going away and Spring is upon us, this is the perfect time to clean our lives from noise and the irrelevant producers of it. In that way, we can focus on what is really pivotal—the understanding of the underpinning of things so that we are prepared to redirect all that hatred, small-minded rhetoric, and manipulative small talk back to their source.

Society is no longer lost and it becomes powerful when it recognizes the value in each one of its participants. It works in such a way that when someone feels the need to patronize or be condescending to a woman, or anyone he considers inferior, he has to think twice because his head might implode with the garbage of his own making.

Society gets lost and frays little by little until it crumbles when it is not longer the sum of the parts that sustain it, just because one of its parts does not see the value of others in the delicate balance of our societal infrastructure. This lack of vision sustained by greed and deception is the perfect storm for extinction. Everyone’s extinction.