Warning: This is a ranting e-mail. if you dont have time, I will not be offended. I dont mean to windge, but i have just come across some things that have thrown me for a loop. I am still loving being here, but have some things to share...
You know that "myth" about all Italians having one woman for a wife (mia donna) and one for a whore (the one woman he cheats with)? My god, it is so true! Very few men do not have a mistress around here. "My man" told me the other night that he is so glad I told him we cant call each other boyfriend and girlfriend. My reasoning is I am leaving in January. His is that he would have to tell me lies and would never be able to be open with me. We are in a monogamous relationship - that is not it - he just has be taught that you don't share your innermost feelings an emotions with the one you love. That is for the woman he has sex with! That’s what the mistresses are for! So that the men can: a, have sex. b, have someone who doesn’t judge them. the wives are to beat them and coddle their sons so this pattern of not trusting their wives, who are supposed to emulate their own mothers, is repeated!
it is a cultural thing that is not looked down upon. it is accepted.
along with this, sleeping with people of any age. He has 25 year old friends who fuck 15 year old (who have already fucked multiple people) and no one bats an eye. and when I suggest that this could cause psychological damage to the 15 year old, who is just thinking how cool she is for sleeping with a guy so old, everyone, including the women, think I am nuts! All I can think is that the 25 year old is really that pathetic that he cant get someone his own age!
i just had a huge fight with "my man" about this two nights ago and I haven’t be able to come to peace with it. Actually, it was one of those fights where I get silent. We all know that is when it is the worst and I am utterly disgusted.. I want to believe I am tolerant and am ok with all cultural constructs! I can accept sexual "deviants" such as people who are into S&M or orgies. If people want to do that, as long as it is consensual, I think it is fine by me, but I feel like this lack of respect for age and for the child being able to grow up at their own pace, is a kind of an unfair assault or a type of preying on those weaker, or less knowledgeable. 45 year old men sleep with 15 year olds!
Hmmmm... I feel that in a place more "foreign" to me (a third world country perhapse), I would not have been so side blinded by this. I think I would have known what to tolerate, and what not to fight, but the fact that I am regarded as so in the wrong on this argument, well... if has kinda baffled me.
I am very happy to have come across this, as that’s why I live in different countries. To learn the good and the bad of their societies.
Also, the housekeeper at our hostel. She is from the Ukraine. She was arrested and beaten in jail a few nights ago. We just took her to the hospital because she can no longer walk without weeping. And this is acceptable. My boss, when he went to see her in jail, she was insane - screaming and banging her face against the cemement wall. She had drunk a bottle of vodka and taken pills but she was arrested for "shoplifting" but she had a receipt and was not, as my roommate was with her and told me she wasnt shoplift. she was not lucid, they say, and screaming at the police, so they went in a beat her. in the middle of the store. and if she screamed more, they beat her more. I cant even finish describing it.
And the whole town is talking about her. I was blocks away and I heard people talking openly about her and my boss. People I had never seen before. It is such a small town.
Some say it is because she is Ukranian, that she was treated that way. Some say it was because she was trying to attack the cops, but they got carried away, trying to stop her and shut her up. Emanuele gets hit on by his boss constantly. she has tried to make moves on him. there are no sexual harassment laws. there are no laws if your boss "forgets to pay you" as happened with simone.
I do love it here, for now. and I am happy I am learning these things. A country I thought was so like mine... well... none of them are.
I am not upset. please do not think that. but when you want to say how terrible America is... well, I am kinda thankful for the excess of laws and the puritanical views and the social constructs sometimes.
well, that is my random enlightenment of the day. had to get that off my chest.
thought you might be interested.
