Another policy between women and men

The word of the day in this column—every now and then I force myself not to lose the intention of focusing on one term—could be “relationship.” A somewhat slippery expression regarding possible meanings. These two are “in a relationship.”

One immediately thinks of a love affair, perhaps even a casual one… the well-known “dangerous relationships.” Or the phrase “capitalist relation”. It has been used to define – I quote from an old Post article – “that the interrelationships, often opaque, between entrepreneurs, financiers, bankers, entrepreneurs, managers, publishers, journalists, members of institutions and politics have ruled, for decades, the fate of the Italian economy”. As if capitalism could really be the marvel of the abstract mind called “perfect competition”.

But the word – in itself, I would say, rather neutral – also takes on positive meanings at its core. For many years, with my feminist friends and with friends wanting to learn about women-initiated change, I have been discussing the “politics of relationships.”
Therefore, after this tired preamble, I have come to nominate Bianca Pomeranzi, who left us last Friday. leaving a huge void, and provoking an immediate and widespread reaction in those who knew her: Let us not lose her lesson. Fulvia Bandoli has written about it here with a passion and an accuracy that comes from a very long personal and political relationship.
Just add Bianca’s deep sense of gratitude.

I met her many times, almost always with her dear partner Maria Rosa Cotrovelli, about the opportunities of exchange proposed by the feminist world, and in particular the Wednesday group to which she belonged. But special gratitude is due to his being, for many years, in the group, which is predominantly male, which called itself the Society for the Renewal of the Left. Almost all of us, starting with founder Aldo Tortorella, are men of the left and interested in feminism—if I can put it that way. But the ability to truly understand and practice the relationship that exists between the “personal” and the “political,” realized in the quality, awareness, and strength of interpersonal relationships through which a critical inquiry upon oneself and the world, the production of ideas to transform and alter ourselves, the management of conflict, the recognition of the differences and power that pervades what we call politics, seems to me to be a still uncertain capacity still making its stride.

I’m talking about me first. And I can make partially similar observations of the experience I had for many years in the pluralistic masculine network, which also focused heavily on desires, motivations, political practices, and projects specifically around open change, also opened up for us, through female rebellion against patriarchy.

Bianca didn’t theorize too much about “relationship politics,” at least as far as I was able to listen. But he was present with his curiosity, patience, ability to listen, and his very rich knowledge and experience.

I would say that, without in any way denying the radical nature of her “historical feminism”, she embodied confidence in the possibility of a new way of living and doing politics between men and women.

I think we have, somewhat consciously, a great need for this mutual feeling.
The “possible other world” which is rightly mentioned again on these pages recalls the movement that expressed itself and was so brutally suppressed in 2001 in these July days in Genoa, it will either pass from here or I think it will never materialize.