Giulia Cecchettin, feminicide and the “good guy”: the questions to ask

But why did Giulia get into that car? Many of us have asked ourselves incessantly since she passed away on Saturday 11 November in Vigonovo (Venice). Could there have been a threat? Or could she have seen a man in difficulty and would she have decided to stay close to him? As her sister Elena explained, she had warned her about the morbid attachment of her ex-boyfriend, but “Giulia was too good.” In any case: Elena didn’t want to think that he would ever hurt her. However, Filippo Turetta’s parents couldn’t even imagine it. Even after the videos of Filippo’s attack on Giulia, even after the discovery of the body, the family’s lawyer, Emanuele Compagno, declared: «The parents cannot explain what was said because he has always been a very gentle, good and loving boy towards everyone, who has never given rise to any violence».

So the real question to ask is: can even a boy who we all consider “normal”, not raised in a disadvantaged, educated environment, do harm, that evil? Has a feminicide “because she shouldn’t have graduated and gone away”, as Giulia’s uncles insinuated, happened this time too? It’s time we understood this. Paola Cortellesi explained it very well in the cover interview: «The “boy from a good family” Giulio is the son of a father who may not be like Ivano, but from him he learned that, once a woman becomes a wife, she is his property. I wanted to talk about the question of possession.” It’s still: “It’s a story that repeats itself endlessly: there is always an ex who kills, because there is still a resistant pocket of possession culture. A poisoned and poisonous mentality, often described as a fit of madness, but it is not because, if the dynamics are identical, it is a cultural question. They tell us that “he was a quiet person”. “A good neighbor.” “A sweet dad.” But he says: “I’ll take everything away from you. I’ll kill your children too, you must have nothing left. It’s me or no one else, you’re either mine or no one’s anymore”. It’s an impressive thing, we should talk about it every day. Instead you hear it while you’re cutting the salad with the news playing underneath. She gets used to it.”

Once we admit and understand this, we must say that there is a problem, that the culture of possession is everywhere.

Elly Schlein and Giorgia Meloni accepted Paola Cortellesi’s invitation, made through Vanity Fair, to put away political distances, sit down, and do something for women. We ask, immediately: emotional and sexual education in schools. Because the problem is that we always ask ourselves why a victim got into a car, or, months ago, why another Giulia, the one killed by Impagnatiello in Senago, months ago, went to the clarifying meeting. The problem is we who always continue to watch what women do, and never ask ourselves how to stop the men who kill them.