Dear Hermione

it came to my notice that recently you had a speech at the UN, under the flag of UN Women, to call men and boys to support women.

It might be a surprise for you but we, men, already do it, and have done it for a long, long time. Of course, few of us are mighty as Harry Potter, and we can’t fix everything, actually we have issues in fixing our own issues. We are just human, as strange as it may seem to some people.

At first glance, I wondered: “Is she presenting a new movie?” Then I realized you were just appointed as a “goodwill ambassador” by UN. What a great achievement for such a young woman. Did you take the fast lane? However, I understand you are used to red carpets.

Beside you, the comforting presence of Ban Ki Moon, chair of UN, whose profession is to justify the bombings of democracy in countries that, while do not seem to fit our superior values, do seem to comply nicely with our energy and natural resources demands. Welcome in the “real politics”.

The occasion was to launch a new enlightened campaing, in your own words:

Today we are launching a campaign called ‘HeForShe’. I am reaching out to you because I need your help. We want to end gender inequality – and to do that we need everyone to participate. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN: we want to try and galvanize as many men and boys as possible to be advocates for change. And we don’t just want to talk about it, but make sure it is tangible.

“He for she”, it does not sound new to me. You are still young and you may not be completely aware of history, but some of us, many of our fathers, and many, many of our grandfathers, millions of them, have also embraced arms to fulfil crusades and “honourable” missions, sometimes with courage, sometimes to avoid the shame of the “white ribbon” of cowardice.

One century ago, some of them decided to stay “safe” in a sinking ship just to secure that their “women and children” had a chance of surviving. Is Titanic your next coming movie?

There has been already a time of He For She, it has always been like that. The reward for those men? The myths of “toxic masculinity” and “male oppression”. Not a great deal, in retrospective.

The more I have talked to about feminism the more I’ve realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with manhating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.

Dear Hermione, have you investigated why?

For the record – Feminism by definition is: “The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes”

No, you have not investigated.

For the record, what do you mean with “this has to stop?” It reminds me the advocacy of censorship by Feminist groups and the lobbying to make “antifeminism” illegal. Yes, really, have you ever heard of it? I mean for real, they did it. Have you ever heard of a primary human right, the right to free opinion and expression? It is also wrtitten in the UN chart, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When at 8 I was confused at being called ‘bossy’

Really Hermione? How did you survive?

When at 18 my male friends were unable to express their feelings. I decided I was a feminist and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to identify as feminist.

YOU assume your male counterparts were NOT ABLE to express their feelings? Doesn’t it sound sexist? And bossy? Maybe this lapsus reveals why reasonable people despise feminism. It is just a tip…

I am from Britain and think it is right that as a woman I am paid the same as my male counterparts.

I’m from Italy and I believe I’m a better actor than you, can we share our bank accounts?

I think it is right that I should be able to make decisions about my own body.

I do, as well. And please take full moral and financial responsibility of the outcome.

I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.

That’s not the issue, Hermione. This is how feminists want to see the problem. Men see it from another perspective. We’ve seen millions of men deprived of their children, house and money, and sent in jail, brought to the edge of selfdestrucion. By a family court system that has been built on feminist dogmas and propaganda, and by women that have had no issue in the last four decades in destroying human lives, because not only of absence of ripercussions, but because there was a social incentive to do it. Millions, baybe. For men the problem of dignity is over. Now it is about survival.

I’ve seen a young man suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make him less of a man – in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success.

Oh, oh. nice try Hermione. The toxic masculinity card hidden behind the empathy. Good try.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes

No, men are imprisoned too often, full stop.

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we just are – we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom. I want men to take up this mantle. So their daughters, sisters and mothers can be free from prejudice but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too – reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned and in doing so be a more true and complete version of themselves.

Did I get it correctly? Men and boys are not yet human as they are today? Are they incomplete? By the way Hermione, regarding the mantles … well … we got rid of them along with the armours and horses.

You might be thinking who is this Harry Potter girl? And what is she speaking at the UN. It’s a good question and I’ve been asking myself the same thing. I don’t know if I’m the right person to be speaking.

No dear Hermione, do not worry. You are not worse than many others that preceded you. We got the message loud and clear, already. Actually we have being earing it for 50 years.

Dear Hermione, I could spend pages and pages in explaining how much a better place our society has become thanks to feminism, and how much what we achieved fits the “equality” mission. However, I won’t. It will be sufficient for you, to have a look at the UN initiatives and organizations and verify with your own eyes how much the “equality” agenda is pursued and how humanitarian are their actions when it comes to men and boys.

I’ll leave you now with a gift, with three secrets. No, they are not the Fatima’s secrets, nevertheless, I feel that in the long run they will help you in understanding how you fit in the “gender equality” picture.

First secret. Gender Equality does not exist, and will not exist. It cannot exist because everyone is different. It is not even an unachievable dream, but just a utopian and megalomaniac mission that can only be pursued by mean of oppression and the systematic repression of freedom. Until its inner nature will appear clear: a psychotic nightmare.

Second secret, and this is about you. You are not an ambassador; you are a marketing testimonial used to lable poison as sugar. A puppet playing a plot written by those, at the UN, who 20 years ago launched a global agenda, called Gender Mainstreaming, based on radical feminist beliefs, which aims to the breakdown of family union and to the reduction of men and women to empty shells without identity.

Third Secret, and this is about us, men. The time for He for She is over, now it is time for Us for Us. Together we stand, divided we fall.

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post scriptum

I apologize for my lack of proficiency in English. Hermione, the time we will be all equal is not far. That day, we’ll all be speaking the same language, where “bossy” and masculinity will be eventually considered hate speech.