Dominio femminile, oppressione maschile: un nuovo secondo sesso?
by Elena Dalla Torre
This essay constitutes a short critical reflection on the anti-feminist position of Fabrizio Marchi, founder of the movement “Uomini Beta,” whose “philosophy” of masculism is articulated in response to the consolidated tradition of Italian Feminism, which often ignored the masculine condition. In such philosophy, which we could ironically call of a new second sex, the oppressed male—the victim of a socio-economic model based on success and financial wealth—stands in opposition to the dominant woman, product of a neo-liberal media culture, neo-feminist and post-’68. In this contribution, she aims at summarizing Marchi’s position and fill the gaps inherent in his argument about 1970s feminist thought, while also highlighting the debt that the same thought has vis-à-vis masculinity. In particular, she proposes to reevaluate one of the forgotten principles of Carla Lonzi’s feminism, whose critique of the “culture of penis,” based on the dissociation between penis (symbol of masculinity) and phallus (symbol of domination and power), could work as a key to interpret oppressed masculinity. Another useful insight can come from the theory of “educastrazione” elaborated by the activist Mario Mieli in the 1970s as a sexual-political metaphor of the complex relationship between “oppressors” and “oppressed.”