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My job, after all, is that of a cultural agitator: I dismantle algorithms and power structures to understand how human relationships work. But when theory collides with fanaticism, the structure collapses, leaving only a grotesque theatrical spectacle.

A few days ago, I invited someone to discuss some differences of opinion “out of the spotlight,” in a private chat. A simple gesture. What ensued was one of the most surreal, comical, and simultaneously ferocious exchanges I’ve read recently.

My interlocutor, a self-proclaimed high priestess of separatist feminism, issued her unappealable sentence. My crime? Heterosexuality and motherhood.

The verbatim verdict was this: “You jump on dicks, you brought two natural-born rapists into the world [...] a real feminist cannot simultaneously be penetrated and reproduce males.” (To avoid further toxifying this space, I won’t publish the rest here. But for those with the curiosity to read the full chat, I’ve put the screenshots in my Instagram Stories).

Let’s analyze the anatomy of this delusion, because there is much to learn about the cages we build with our own hands.

The “Dick” Inquisition and the Vegan Comparison

The opening is a free fall from the academic pedestal to a Neanderthal club. After attempting to stitch together a dissertation on the nature of the patriarchy, the argument collapsed onto the prosaic “jump on dicks.” It is fascinating to note how, in the attempt to fight male chauvinism, one ends up using the exact same degrading and reductive vocabulary they wish to dismantle.

The rhetorical gem, however, arrives with the parallelism: “Just as vegans don’t eat animals, and anti-vaxxers don’t get vaccinated, a real feminist cannot simultaneously be penetrated.”

This is where the ideology derails: comparing sexual orientation and the power of choice over one’s own body to a diet or a healthcare choice. In this vision, the heterosexual woman is a passive container, a terracotta vase emptied of all desire and will, who “accepts” being used for the thankless task of replicating the dominant male. It is a total reversal: in order to liberate women, they are stripped of all self-determination.

For those curious to read the entire chat, [I have published the screenshots in my Instagram Stories].

Biological Determinism: A Patriarchal Own Goal

But the pinnacle of conceptual horror is reached with the definition of male children: “natural-born rapists.”

Let’s face reality. Maintaining that men are intrinsically and biologically predators means playing the patriarchy’s dirtiest game. It is dangerous.

If male violence is a natural and inescapable destiny, then why do we fight? Why do we educate? If rape is coded into our DNA, all individual responsibility falls away, along with any possibility of cultural change. The monster isn’t guilty, he was just “born that way.” Ironically, this separatist feminism ends up absolving the very rapists it claims to hate.

Architects of Complexity

Navigating this world requires daily training to dismantle old models. It requires getting your hands dirty. Abandoning the field, retreating into a sterile purity, and spitting verdicts at those trying to change things from the inside is not a revolutionary act; it is an unconditional surrender.

The world seen through women’s eyes is a world that stands outside the lines, but it must, obstinately, remain grounded in reality. There is no “real feminist” license to show at the tollbooth of ideology. This obsession with gatekeeping¹ belongs only to those who have preferred their own rigid rules over real life.

I Am a “Bad Feminist” Like Roxane Gay

In her famous essay Bad Feminist, writer Roxane Gay dismantles the idea that a perfect and unassailable “Essential Feminism” exists. She herself self-identifies as a “bad feminist” because she is full of contradictions: she listens to rap music with terribly sexist lyrics because she likes the beat, she loves the color pink, she watches trashy reality TV. Yet she reclaims her status as a feminist because she firmly believes in and fights for systemic equality. Her thesis is liberating: I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

Her message is groundbreaking: feminism shouldn’t be a pedestal you climb on to judge other women. It is a political movement made up of human beings, and human beings are chaotic, contradictory, and imperfect. Acknowledging these imperfections does not invalidate the fight for equal pay or reproductive rights.

I thanked my interlocutor for her judgment, closed the chat, and took Nico out for a walk. Breathing the open air, I felt a certain tenderness for someone who has chosen to live in a fortress so impregnable that they have forgotten how to let the light in.

¹ In sociological, cultural, and activist terminology, it refers to the practice where a person or group claims the right to decide who can be part of a community and who cannot, who has the right to speak on a certain topic, or who possesses a legitimate identity. Those who gatekeep act as a kind of ideological “bouncer,” establishing entry rules that are often arbitrary and extreme to filter people.

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The renewed strategy stems from an important acknowledgment: that women’s pain has been systematically underestimated by medicine. It therefore introduces concrete tools for change, from a single point of access to funding tied to how well patients feel they’ve been heard.

But two months after its launch, the gap between the announcement and how it’s actually being perceived remains wide: low public awareness, still extremely long waiting lists, and dedicated resources that appear modest compared to the scale of the problem. The next phases of implementation will reveal whether this turns out to be the promised turning point, or just another ambitious document that struggles to translate into real change. Let’s take a closer look.

The stories behind “medical misogyny”

Behind this label are real lives. There’s the woman who, suffering from excruciating pelvic pain, is passed from one doctor to another for years — the average diagnosis of endometriosis takes around eight years — until she loses her job because of the consequences of a condition that wasn’t treated in time (a case also cited by an employment tribunal, which ruled the dismissal unlawful). There’s the woman who arrives at the emergency room with chest pain and is sent home with a diagnosis of anxiety, while actually having a heart attack — female cardiac symptoms have historically been less recognised than male ones. There’s the teenager who is told that her debilitating periods are “normal,” with no referral to any specialist pathway. And there’s the woman who undergoes painful procedures, such as having a contraceptive coil fitted, without adequate anaesthesia, because for decades that kind of pain was considered “tolerable” by a medical system designed mostly around male bodies.

On top of this come the racial biases in pain management, strongly highlighted by the parliamentary report, and a huge economic cost: around 60,000 women in England are out of work or on long-term sick leave due to severe menopause symptoms, at an estimated cost of £1.5 billion a year.

What it promises to change

The strategy introduces concrete measures: guaranteed pain relief for invasive procedures, a “single point of access” that avoids being bounced between departments, redesigned clinical pathways to speed up diagnoses, an educational programme on menstrual health in schools, renewed support for recurrent pregnancy loss, and — perhaps the most innovative measure — a mechanism that ties part of hospital funding to patient feedback on how well they felt listened to.

· Early difficulties. About two months after the launch, however, several critical issues have emerged.

· Weak communication. A survey from late May revealed that 63% of the British population had never heard of the strategy, and half of all women (64% among 18-24 year-olds) still feel unheard. The very organisations that conducted the survey summed up the problem like this: “the intention is there, but execution and communication are lagging behind.” A parliamentary report had already criticised the government for not making sufficient use of NHS websites and social media to spread information about women’s health — and this despite the fact that a quarter of young women, no longer trusting the traditional healthcare system, now get their information from influencers.

· A very difficult starting point. At the start of 2026, nearly 750,000 women were still on gynaecology waiting lists, with inequalities on the rise. One patient, still waiting for the right care more than a year after surgery, said she had to become “the specialist in her own case” just to keep track between one appointment and the next.

· Funding modest compared to the scale of the problem. The “headline” figure used in communications — £26 billion for the NHS — is actually the general budget tied to the ten-year health plan, not a sum dedicated to women’s health. The truly specific funds are much smaller:

£1.5 million for a “FemTech” fund,

£1 million for menstrual education in schools,

£2.6 million for new osteoporosis scanners,

£9 million for spaces dedicated to perinatal bereavement.

These are figures in the range of a few tens of millions overall, against a problem affecting millions of women. The government is mainly betting on a “low-cost” reorganisation — shifting services from hospitals to community care within 3 years — but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough.

· Possibly overambitious targets. The strategy aims to raise healthy life expectancy in the poorest areas to a minimum of 61 years. Today it stands at 48.2 years (compared to 68.5 in wealthier areas), and the recent trend is one of decline: an independent analysis describes the target as “an exceptional ask” in this context.

And what about the rest of the world?

When it comes to comparing this with other Western countries, the picture is quite uneven. France, along with Australia, is cited as one of the few countries in the world with a genuine national action plan specifically dedicated to endometriosis, launched back in 2022, with investment in research, staff training and structured care pathways. Italy has included endometriosis in its national health plan, one of the very few countries to have done so, although actual implementation on the ground remains patchy, with major regional differences in access to specialist centres. Germany, despite having a highly advanced healthcare system, has diagnostic delays for endometriosis comparable to the UK’s (over ten years on average), without a national strategy dedicated to women’s health comparable to those of the UK or France.

The United States, on the other hand, is moving against this “positive” trend: while Europe debates how to expand women’s health rights, the Trump administration has introduced policies that restrict healthcare coverage even in cases involving danger to health or rape, and the courts are still debating access to mifepristone (the abortion pill) via telemedicine. This is creating a growing gap between the European approach, which tends toward a broader recognition of the “gender health gap,” and the American one, where the debate focuses mainly on reproductive rights and their rollback.

Globally, of the 194 WHO member states, nearly half have no national policy or guidelines on endometriosis at all, and only 8 countries (including France, Italy and Finland) mention it in their national health plans. The UK’s move thus fits into a still-minority but growing movement that aims to formally acknowledge the problem of gender disparity in medicine — even though enormous gaps remain between political announcements and what women actually experience in doctors’ offices.

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There is one photograph by Nan Goldin you never forget.

It’s called Nan one month after being battered, 1984. A self-portrait. She stares straight into the lens, left eye bloodshot, lips swollen, mascara streaked down her face. She doesn’t hide. She doesn’t look away. She holds your gaze as if to say: look. Really look.

Nan Goldin never separated eros from the wound. For her, the body — desiring, loved, beaten, drugged, dying — has always been the most honest territory there is. And the camera her way of inhabiting it without lying.

A Life Lived on the Skin

Born in 1953 in Washington D.C., Nan ran away from home at sixteen and found refuge in the queer communities of Boston and then New York. Drag queens, sex workers, couples who love each other and hurt each other, bodies searching for pleasure and relief in whatever form they could find. She didn’t photograph them as exotic subjects. She photographed them because they were her family, because she was inside those stories, not outside them.

Her camera was never an instrument of distance. It was an act of love. Or of desire. Often both at once.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency: Eros in Its Purest Form

The title comes from a song in Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. And like Brecht’s work, what looks like entertainment is really a knife.

The Ballad of Sexual Dependency was born as a slideshow projected in New York clubs in the early Eighties, four hundred images set to a soundtrack mixing the Velvet Underground, Édith Piaf, and James Brown. In 1986 it became a book, published by Aperture. It changed the history of photography.

What do you see? Bodies. So many bodies. Men kissing with a hunger that asks no one’s permission. Women naked on a bed, not posed but abandoned, real. Heterosexual and queer couples caught in the rawest intimacy, after sex, mid-argument, in that strange and beautiful moment when you don’t yet know whether you’ll love each other or break each other.

Nan photographs eros the way she actually knows it: not as polished beauty, not as calculated provocation, but as a force that overwhelms you and leaves you vulnerable. Desire in her images always has two faces — it gives life and takes away control. That is exactly why it frightens people. And exactly why it needs to be seen.

Queer Skin

Nan’s connection to the LGBTQ+ community is not ideological. It is carnal, in the most literal sense. She lived, slept, cried, and photographed alongside queer people for decades. Her most beloved subjects were gay men and drag queens whom 1980s America was quietly letting die of AIDS.

She photographed them dancing, getting dressed, making love, lying sick in hospital beds. She refused to make their bodies invisible — in life or in death. She insisted that queer desire deserved to be seen, documented, celebrated, mourned.

There is a photograph called Greer and Robert on the Bed, NYC, 1982. Greer is a trans woman. She is lying with Robert, her partner. They look at each other with a tenderness so private you almost feel guilty for watching. But Nan wants you to watch. She wants you to understand that this tenderness exists, that it is real, that it is equal to any other.

At a time when queer bodies were described as aberrant or tragic, Nan photographed them as desirable. In 1982, that was a revolutionary act.

Eros and Death: Two Sides of the Same Coin

In her photographs, the Eighties smell of life and death at the same time. The AIDS epidemic was decimating her circle. Friends, lovers, beloved people disappeared one after another while the American government looked the other way.

Nan photographed all of it. Sick bodies with the same care she brought to bodies in celebration. Funerals with the same attention she gave to kisses. Because for her, eros and death are not opposites — they are the two ends of the same thread. To love someone means knowing you can lose them. To desire means being alive, and therefore mortal.

This awareness runs through every one of her photographs. It is what gives them weight. You are not looking at bodies posing. You are looking at bodies that know they exist in time, and choose to desire anyway.

Activism: When the Body Becomes a Battlefield

Nan herself fell into addiction — to OxyContin, an opioid prescribed like candy and produced by the Sackler family, billionaire patrons of museums around the world. She got clean. And then she fought back.

She founded P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) and staged spectacular protests inside the world’s most prestigious museums — the Louvre, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim — raining thousands of fake prescriptions from the balconies above. Many museums removed the Sackler name from their walls. The family paid out billions.

A photographer who had spent her life documenting vulnerable bodies used that same vulnerability as a weapon. Because someone who has looked long enough at human fragility is no longer afraid of power.

What It Means to Look at Nan Goldin Today

Looking at Nan Goldin’s photographs is a physical experience. It enters your body before it reaches your mind.

It reminds you that desire is never clean or simple. That authentic eros has nothing to do with lingerie advertisements or disposable porn — it has to do with the reality of bodies, their imperfections, their hunger.

It reminds you that being seen — in desire, in vulnerability, in love — is a fundamental human need. And that for some people, for decades, that need was denied.

This June, as we march with our rainbow flags, it is worth stopping in front of one of her photographs and remembering where all of this comes from. From bodies that chose not to hide. From a desire that refused to be made invisible.

Unashamed, indeed.

Note: If you're in Paris before June 21, get yourself to the Grand Palais — "This Will Not End Well", a major Nan Goldin retrospective, closes exactly at the end of Pride Month. Hard to imagine a more fitting coincidence.

Link:

Gagosian gagosian.com/artists/nan-goldin

Artsy artsy.net/artist/nan-goldin

Artnet artnet.com/artists/nan-goldin

In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General explicitly defined the loneliness epidemic as a public health emergency, declaring it as deadly as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day. Today, statistics keep telling us we are living through a full-blown “friendship recession.” We haven’t suddenly all become antisocial or incapable of relating to others; we have simply executed the instructions of a system that rewards hyper-individualism and penalizes community. We traded interdependence for independence. And now, we are paying the price.

The Numbers Behind the Relational Collapse

The most cynical (and logical) objection to this thesis is: “Of course adults have less time, we’re not in high school or college anymore.” But the gravity of the numbers lies in historical proportions, not demographic ones. That 12% of Americans who now openly state they don’t have a single close friend might seem like a marginal figure, until you discover that in 1990, the percentage was stuck at 3%. It literally quadrupled in three decades.

And when large-scale research like the American Time Use Survey certifies that time spent physically with friends has plummeted, they aren’t measuring people aging. They are comparing eras: a thirty-year-old today spends less than half the time with peers compared to a thirty-year-old in the early 2000s. We are not talking about the natural shrinking of social circles that happens in maturity, but a structural collapse of our safety nets. And before dismissing it as an American quirk, let’s take a look at our own planners: we are importing the exact same model of high-performance isolation.

The Privatization of Space and Time

It is no coincidence that this crisis aligns perfectly with the death of Third Places. If we exclude our homes and workplaces, the physical spaces where people can simply “exist” together without swiping a credit card are rapidly vanishing.

When every single interaction outside your front door requires a budget or a calendar invite sent three weeks in advance, spontaneity dies. And with it, the chance to build adult relationships outside the nuclear family dies too. We have internalized the toxic notion that, past a certain age, actively seeking new friendships or spending “unproductive” time with peers is a sign of weakness. Or worse, a personal failure.

The View from the Piazza (That We Are Losing)

Writing from an island in the heart of the Mediterranean—Sicily—I get to observe a fascinating short-circuit. The Anglo-Saxon world loves to romanticize our Dolce Vita, picturing us perpetually sitting at the local bar or chatting away in the town square. The piazza was the original Third Place: free, chaotic, and completely intergenerational.

But the harsh truth is that isolation is a highly successful global export. Even here, the push toward nuclearization and the myth of “being enough for oneself” is eroding the social fabric. The only difference is that we still have the physical infrastructure—the narrow alleys, the stone walls, the neighborhood cafes—reminding us daily that we were designed to bump into each other, not to live in sterile, optimized silos.

Decentralizing Romantic Love

Climbing our way out of this epidemic requires a profound act of rebellion against the very structure that isolated us from the start. It means we have to stop treating romantic and marital love as the only valid emotional investment of our adult lives.

Elevating friendship to a primary bond—especially for women who flat-out refuse to slide quietly into invisibility—is not a Plan B for those without a traditional family. It is a survival infrastructure. Stepping back outside, taking up space without asking for permission, and reclaiming our right to be deeply, messily interdependent is the only way to cure a loneliness that was never our fault to begin with.

At the end of the day, there’s a hilarious short-circuit in our system: why do supermarkets keep selling us “family size” packs if, socially and politically, they want us lonely and perfectly controllable? If the peak of contemporary success is growing old isolated in a fully automated smart home, which reminds us to drink water while scrolling through the feeds of equally disconnected strangers, I’ll gladly give up my spot. I prefer the risk of going out, commandeering a café table, and growing old in a decidedly more boisterous and obnoxious way. We might not be optimized for Silicon Valley metrics or the manuals of the perfect individualist, but at least, when we decide to tell the system to go to hell, we’ll have someone sitting across from us to buy a drink for.

Sources

Office of the U.S. Surgeon General (May 2023). “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community”.

Survey Center on American Life / General Social Survey (GSS). Dati comparativi sul calo delle amicizie strette e sull’aumento delle persone con “zero amici intimi” (dal 3% del 1990 al 12% del 2021).

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics - American Time Use Survey (ATUS). I dati storici mostrano il dimezzamento delle ore settimanali spese in socializzazione dal 2003 a oggi, depurato dagli effetti anagrafici.

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The thesis

The cause of all wars lies in one word: man. Intended as male and not as human race.

I asked myself if past wars and those underway at this moment, all triggered and protracted by the male human race and by the desire for possession typical of the average male in my opinion, are due precisely to testosterone or if they would have existed anyway if women were in command.

Empirical data for a real comparison we do not have, since women in government have been there, few, only in recent decades. Therefore, lacking data, I can only do some mind-fucking and make hypotheses.

In the meantime, I hope not to be contradicted by our Prime Minister Meloni who invents a war right while I am writing, thus throwing off my deductions.

Let’s begin.

About 80 women have held the role of head of government in the world from 1940 to today. Before then, don’t even talk about it, zero.

But let’s compare this datum with the male gender. How many men have governed the various states and nations of the world from 1940 to today? I asked Claude, he is not a real friend who loves statistics, but the artificial intelligence that, yet, has not bowed down to trump (lowercase as he is). The answer? Here it is.

“This request goes far beyond what I can handle accurately and comprehensively. The number is enormously high. From 1940 to today, considering about 200 countries (many of which became independent over time), with an average of about 8-10 leaders per country, we are talking about roughly 2,200-2,500 men heads of government from 1940 to today in the world. By comparison, women in the same period are about 80, confirming that they historically represent less than 3% of all heads of government.”

I repeat: total estimate: about 2,200-2,500 men heads of government from 1940 to today in the world, women 80.

How many of the about 80 women heads of government from 1940 to today have triggered wars or actively participated in them? Claude gives me a list of 7 names, less than 9%.

To the request to create a similar list dedicated to the male gender, Claude goes blank: too long, it cannot be done. Then I redraw the parameters and ask how many female heads of government of G20 countries have triggered, promoted, participated in conflicts, and then the same thing for Men at the head of governments within the G20.

Consider that the G20 was born in 1999.

WOMEN

0 (zero)

MEN

15

• George W. Bush

• Bill Clinton (Iraq 1998)

• Vladimir Putin

• Tony Blair

• David Cameron

• Jacques Chirac

• Nicolas Sarkozy

• François Hollande

• Atal Bihari Vajpayee

• Narendra Modi

• King Abdullah

• King Salman / MBS

• Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

• John Howard

• Silvio Berlusconi

I try to ask the extended question again: “If instead I wanted the global datum, 2500 male heads of government and 80 female heads of government, you cannot make me a percentage estimate of how many have triggered or actively participated in wars, right?”

Claude: “I can try to make a reasoned estimate, even with all the limitations of the case: MEN (~2,500 heads of government from 1940 to today)

It is practically impossible to find a country that from 1940 (therefore from before the G20) to today has not experienced at least one armed conflict, civil war, invasion, or military operation under some government. Estimating is difficult but:

· World wars, Cold War, decolonization, regional conflicts, War on Terror cover practically the entire period

· A conservative estimate says that at least 70-75% of male leaders have presided over or initiated an armed conflict of some kind

· Therefore about 1,750-1,900 men out of 2,500

WOMEN (~80 heads of government from 1940 to today)

From our verified data:

· About 7 out of 80 = ~9%”

I could close the article here and it would already be a lot of stuff, right? And instead, I wanted to see where the word Man arrived to understand if from that origin arrived also other troubles.

How many times do we hear it said? “Come on, the word Man is universal, it includes everyone, don’t do your usual stuff!”

And no! In light of the facts, I claim that the word Donna (Woman) is well distinct from the word Uomo (Man).

If we dig beneath the surface of the dictionary we discover that language is not neutral: it is an occupied territory, militarily. And that this linguistic occupation is the exact root of why, still today, the world is divided between those who press the buttons and those who, stubbornly, try to keep the shack standing.

Man made of mud

There was a time when saying “Uomo” did not evoke muscles, ties, or decision-making power. Everything begins with a very ancient and guttural Indo-European root: dhghem, which meant simply Earth. From there derives the Latin Humus (soil), and from Humus, Homo.

At the dawn of language, the human being did not define themselves by what they had between their legs, but by where they placed their feet.

Homo meant The Earthling.

It was a poetic definition born by subtraction: up there were the immortal gods, down here were we, creatures made of mud and destined to return to it. We were all “human” because all mortal. (Not by chance, from the same root is born the word Humility).

In the most archaic societies, those of matrifocal Old Europe studied by Marija Gimbutas1 and by Johann Jakob Bachofen before her, grammar ignored our current gender obsessions. There existed the Animate (that which breathes) and the Inanimate (stones). Males and females swam in the same linguistic river, where the driving center was the woman (from which Materia [Matter], Madre [Mother], Matrice [Matrix]), while the male was a contour figure, a protector (the original Pater was a guardian, not a master).

There are evidences that many European Neolithic societies were matrilineal and matrilocal. Studies on ancient DNA show that in European Neolithic communities it was often the women who remained in their place of birth, while the men moved, a typical matrilocal pattern; lineage and property were passed down through the maternal line. Let’s not forget that the cult of the female figure was central.

The communities were organized around stable female family nuclei. Matriarchal in the most correct and anthropological sense means a society organized around the female line of descent (matrilineal). The family and identity are passed down through the mother, not the father, and the residence after marriage is at the wife’s family (matrilocal). Furthermore, women have a central role in social, religious, and economic life. This happened until 3000 BCE.

Matriarchal vs Patriarchal

Then, around 3000 BCE, something breaks.

The peoples of the steppes arrive (Yamnaya). They bring horses, weapons, and a new, disastrous invention: Patriarchy.

They brought not only political patriarchy, but precisely the structural overturning, the patrilinearità (patrilineality) which is exactly what characterizes all subsequent Indo-European cultures. The burials show men with weapons and elevated status, while before patriarchy burials had equal dignity. Ancient DNA shows that it was Yamnaya men who moved and reproduced with local women (consensual?), not the contrary. They brought a pantheon of male warrior gods (from which then Zeus, Jupiter, Indra, Odin...). At the head of the social structure were male warrior chiefs.

Society becomes hierarchical and words begin to build fences. The need is born to define the dominant male as an absolute power figure. The Latins coin the term Vir (from which Virilità [Virility], Virtù [Virtue], Forza [Force]). The Vir is the warrior, the armed hero, he who possesses, conquers, and destroys to assert himself.

And it is here that the perfect semantic theft is consumed. With the passing of centuries, patriarchal culture took that beautiful and neutral word, Homo (the earthling made of mud), and pasted it by force over the figure of the Vir (the male warrior).

The man-male arrogated to himself the right to represent the entire species. “The Earthling” became “The Man with the club”, and woman was demoted to a category apart, a biological exception.

Why does it interest us today?

Because words create reality. This linguistic theft perfectly explains contemporary geopolitics.

The Vir, to exist and define himself as such, needs conflict. He needs an enemy to subdue, a land (that humus from which we all come) to fence off, possess, and for which to blow himself up. The history of humanity written in the masculine is an uninterrupted sequence of wars generated by a fragile ego that mistakes destruction for strength.

Let’s look at the global map right today, March 4, 2026.

The legacy of the Vir is a daily bulletin in which the mud is wetted with blood to defend borders, pride, and power:

The flare-up in the Middle East: On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched massive coordinated attacks against Iran, hitting missile sites, air defenses, and military leadership. The Iranian response was immediate, with the launch of missiles and drones toward Israel and American bases in various Gulf countries. It is the umpteenth test of virility that risks widening a conflict to a regional level.

The quagmire in Ukraine: The war has entered its fifth year. Russia continues its exhausting offensive and long-range bombardments, in a conflict consumed solely to move an imaginary line on the earth, risking transforming Ukraine into a nation of widows and orphans.

The disaster in Sudan: The internal conflict proceeds without pause, fueled by rival military factions (the regular army SAF and the rapid support forces RSF) that continue to strike indiscriminately with drones and artillery also in this beginning of 2026. This fight for power has generated the largest crisis of displaced people at a global level.

The grip on Gaza: As if the rubble were not enough, right in these days of early March 2026, following the escalation with Iran, the crossings for Gaza have been closed. This has unleashed panic among civilians and has forced humanitarian organizations to ration vital fuel for hospitals and desalination plants.

It is the pure geopolitics of possession. Males provoke destruction to plant the flag, to claim authority, or not to lose face. And guess whose turn it is, systematically, to pick up the pieces?

Women, relegated outside the definition of “Universal Humanity”, had to develop a different competence: the saving attitude.

Not because we are mystical Red Cross nurses by nature, but out of pure, fucking pragmatism.

While the Vir destroys to plant a flag in the mud, we work to avoid that the house collapses. Our power does not lie in the annihilation of the other, but in the stubborn maintenance of life.

Remembering that “Uomo” means only “made of earth” is our act of disobedience.

The next time a male explains to you how the world goes with the arrogance of one who holds the monopoly of humanity, smile. He is only admitting, without his knowledge, to be made of mud. Just like all of us. Only that he, with mud, still makes war.

Five thousand years of patriarchy, 15 heads of state men promoters or active in war in G20 countries alone, zero women involved.

The Vir has had all the time to demonstrate what he can do with power.

The verdict is in the daily war bulletins. Maybe it is the moment to pass the ball to someone else.

Personally, I got the idea that if man (male) had called himself “meadow flower” or “rose campion” not much would have changed in facts: a rose is a rose even if you change its name.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” Shakespeare.

In this case, however, it stinks of war and blood.

I willingly accept a coffee.

Sources

The data on women heads of government in the world are drawn from the Pew Research Center (”About a third of UN member states have ever had a woman leader”, October 2024) and from the Women’s Power Index of the Council on Foreign Relations, updated to 2024. The estimate on the number of men heads of government from 1940 to today (~2,200-2,500) is a reasoned elaboration produced by Claude (Anthropic), in the absence of a systematic global database on this datum. The list of 15 male leaders of G20 countries involved in armed conflicts was built through a cross-referenced research and verified with Claude, comparing public historical sources. The archaeological and genetic data on the Yamnaya and on European Neolithic societies are taken from Marija Gimbutas (The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991) and by David Reich (Who We Are and How We Got Here, 2018).

Leggére [To be light] is the goal: that “thoughtful lightness” that allows us to fly above the heaviness of reality without ignoring it. This transition is not merely linguistic, but political and neurological: it means moving from the cognitive overload of those who must constantly “read” threats and power structures (the “Adrenaline Tax”) to the freedom of the state of Flow2, where action becomes fluid, weightless, and finally free.

The Archaeology of the Gesture

Lèggere [To read] does not originate from books, but from the earth. Etymologically, it means “to gather” or “to choose” (from the Latin lĕgĕre). There is a profound link between the intellect and legumes: both require a manual harvest, grain by grain. Reading is, first and foremost, the act of putting the world in order so we can feed upon it.

The Perseus Strategy

Lightness is not superficiality, but a vital reaction to the weight of existence. Like the myth of Perseus3, who defeats Medusa by looking at her only as a reflection in his shield, we must learn to decode reality through the filter of poetry and precise language, so as not to be petrified by it.

The Adrenaline Tax

Not all accents carry the same weight. While for a man “reading” the environment is often a passive act, for a woman it is a continuous scan for danger (Spritz Protocol). This constant radar alertness consumes energy and prevents one from feeling leggére [light]. Lightness is often a privilege reserved for those who do not have to fear the space they traverse.

The Flow of Freedom

The definitive shift takes place in the brain. When the effort of neural decoding (cognitive load) finds a perfect balance with our skills, we enter the state of flow². In this moment, fatigue vanishes, time alters, and the act of lèggere [reading] becomes intrinsically leggére [light]: a perfect symbiosis where the weight of the world ceases to exist.

Connection as a Project

Navigating complexity means refusing to choose between being technical or creative, logical or emotional. The Diagonale manifesto emphasizes that there is no difference between building an algorithm in Grasshopper and constructing a character’s narrative arc: both require an understanding of the deep rules that govern chaos.

Life is material, but the mind travels into the future. Being digital with deep roots means using technology to make the world more livable, and humanistic sensitivity to make technology more ethical. Diagonale is the natural space for those who are not satisfied with pre-packaged answers and want to bring an oblique perspective to existence.

Feeling the difference between lèggere and leggére means consciously inhabiting the tension between order and flight. It means humbly gathering the data of reality (lèggere) only to then have the strength to transcend them with intelligence and grace (leggére).

In a world that reeks of war and blood due to the arrogance of those who believe themselves masters of all creation, the most lucid act of rebellion is to reclaim the accent: to stop enduring the weight of others’ definitions and start writing one’s own trajectory—oblique, radical, and finally free.

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They promised us a free, creative, and revolutionary web, and instead, we found ourselves held hostage by rage algorithms and Silicon Valley ‘Tech Bros.’ In short, what went wrong? I discussed this face-to-face with journalist and innovator Riccardo Luna, starting right from the pages of his latest book.

I am taking you with me to IsolaCatania to listen to our conversation about how we stopped being creators to become followers, and the heavy price the world has paid for the absence of a female perspective at the top of the digital industry.

And since we are talking about technology, this episode features a special format: leading the way and wrapping things up will be two exceptional AI-generated hosts. A bit as a paradox, a bit as a method.

Carmen: In the days of the Digital Champions, we were all pervaded by a contagious optimism. In your latest book, Qualcosa è andato storto (Something Went Wrong), you come to terms precisely with the end of this illusion. Is there a specific point when you realized the dream was shattering?

Riccardo: I still think that the internet and the web are extraordinary resources, but social media has taken a toxic turn. Around the mid-2010s, to maximize profit, the platforms modified their algorithms by leveraging our most fragile emotions: anger, fear, insecurity. While they were reassuring us, they knew they were damaging democracy and teenagers. The internal documents that have emerged today prove that their engineers had warned them, but they chose to move forward anyway.

Carmen: And yet, we lived through the early days of the web. It was a window opening up, breaking down walls, a space not yet colonized.

Riccardo: The world before, with the arrival of the web, had changed for the better. We had access to all global knowledge with a click. Even in the early days of Facebook, you simply saw what your friends were doing. The “rage algorithms” arrived later, designed specifically to keep us there longer.

Carmen: I found a piece of information that many are unaware of: in the 90s, long before digital technology, you were writing about and investigating the mysteries of Cheops and the Sphinx.

Riccardo: Actually, I was a friend of Roberto Giacobbo at the beginning of his career. He asked me for a hand with a program about mysteries for La7, and, passionate about it, we went to Egypt. Two books were born from that, which coincidentally became best-sellers, because that type of mysterious and unscientific literature always works very well. But the curiosity from back then is the same one I apply today.

Carmen: Another memory is the Maker Faire. Today, however, I have the feeling that the desire to “get our hands dirty,” typical of makers, is no longer there.

Riccardo: When I brought the Maker Faire to Italy in 2013, we thought that giving a kid a computer or an Arduino could change the world. Instead of becoming makers, they all became followers. Social media spread the idea of being an influencer to make money easily. And they reward extremism: if you are calm, you have no followers. You have to yell or exaggerate for the algorithm to reward you.

Carmen: Technology’s “golden boys” often end up replicating old power dynamics. How heavily did the absence of a female perspective weigh at the top of this development?

Riccardo: Alessandro Baricco, reading my book, told me: “It was obvious that something was going to go wrong. They were young, white, male, American, engineers. It was obvious they would focus only on profit.” This is the profile of those who built the digital world: when they saw the collateral damage, they decided it didn’t matter.

Carmen: We should remember that they won’t take all this money to the grave. Thank you, Riccardo.

Riccardo: Thank you, Carmen, it was a pleasure.

The Ethical Software No One Updates

Today is Easter. We know this because our society’s operating system triggered the usual pre-installed reminder. But if we look past the icing on the traditional colomba cake and the shiny foil wrappers of chocolate eggs, we realize that this holiday is the greatest case of Spiritual Bloatware1 in history: useless software that takes up memory, slows down the critical performance of our civic duty, and that no one has the courage to uninstall.

This is the paradox of the Ethical Default: we feel relieved by a sense of reflected “goodness” simply because it is Easter Sunday, while outside our domestic borders, the geopolitics of possession continue to grind bodies and land. It is a “wish hollowed out of all political meaning,” a low-cost reassurance that doesn’t shift the status quo by a single millimeter.

Ethical Debugging: The Gap Between Code and Execution

Let’s contrast the inertia of the “default Christian” with the subversive action of Christ.

KPI Analysis: Why Salvation Is Bankrupt

If we were to analyze Christ’s mission using the parameters of a modern social project—the so-called KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)—the quarterly report after two thousand years would be merciless.

• Recidivism Rate: The “Salvation” project aimed to amend humanity from evil. Yet, looking at the war reports of March 2026, from the borders of Iran to Ukraine and Sudan, the verdict is clear: evil has not been eradicated; it has merely changed its flag [cite: Description: Below is a summary of the user based on the user’s Google activity. This summary provides key details about the user, including demographic information, relationships, established interests, and consistent activities. Profile statements are more likely to be accurate if they have more sources., User Correction Ledger].

• System Failure: In any corporate board of directors, a consultant proposing a solution that fails to fix the problem for twenty centuries would be fired on the spot. We, instead, continue to celebrate its “success” with a dinner out and a coupon for inner wellness.

The truth is that human history, written by anyone who trades their comfort for righteousness today, has never been saved by a vertical miracle. Waiting for a salvation that drops from above is the perfect alibi for those who profess faith but have no intention of changing the horizontal dynamics of their daily lives. The miracle remains an abstraction as long as it only serves to wash the conscience of those who, in the real world, choose not to lift a finger.

The Anesthesia of the Resurrection

The true philosophical damage of Easter does not lie in the dogma, but in the delegation. The Resurrection has convinced billions of people that the dirty work has already been done by someone else. It is the apotheosis of disengagement: if salvation is a guaranteed historical event and “the man with the club” already has a reserved seat in paradise, why bother repairing the world here and now?

This narrative has rendered us harmless and passive. It has taught us to look upward, waiting for a miraculous return, making us forget that we are creatures made of mud and that our sole responsibility is toward this earth.

A Diagonal Choice

Perhaps the true rebellion today is refusing to be confined to a 24-hour ethical sandbox2 —an isolated environment where we are allowed to simulate a peace that does not exist in the real world. The true resurrection would mean stopping being Christians by inertia and starting to be human by choice.

We must accept the raw, rough reality: there is no Respawn3 button. If we continue to destroy our common home to plant flags of pride and power, no empty tomb will be able to restore what we have lost.

I speak as a baptized non-Christian, and I have no intention of selling you an alternative faith, nor of steering you away from yours. I am not here to teach ex cathedra, but to open conversations about what remains invisible beneath the surface of our habits. Mine is not an invitation to apostasy4, but a call for consistency: if you truly chose to believe in a man who overturned the tables of power and healed the wounds of the world with his own hands, then actually do it. Apply it for real, step out of the sandbox, and get dirty with the very mud we are all made of.

Because between a faith on display and a life lived out, the difference lies entirely in the depth of the scratches we are willing to carry on ourselves. I prefer to stay right here, with my feet in the mud, trying to figure out how to stop it from becoming a mass grave.

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You see that. You see a friend who’s happy to be there. What you don’t see—or pretend not to see—are the 800 meters that came before it.

For a man, going out at night is an act of teleportation: I leave the house -> I arrive at the pub. In between, there is a void, or at most, a fleeting thought: “Did I turn off the gas?”

For us, the journey is not a commute. It is an operational mission.

Here is what happens backstage, behind that smile.

1. Tactical Equipment

While you’re putting on your shoes, checking for your keys, phone, and wallet, I am running a check on my arsenal.

It’s not paranoia; it’s logistics.

• The shoes? They must allow for a quick escape. If I’m wearing heels, I calculate exactly how fast they can be stripped off in case of a sprint.

• The phone? Battery must be above 20%, or I don’t leave the house. Live location sharing on WhatsApp: activated.

• The hand? My right hand is never free. Inside my pocket, or pressed tight against my hip, it grips a small black cylinder. Pepper spray. It’s not a fashion accessory; it’s my insurance policy.

You prepare for a night of leisure. We equip ourselves as if we were crossing a war zone just to get to happy hour.

2. My Brain Has More Gigabytes Than Yours

The second my foot touches the asphalt, my operating system shifts.

The radar turns on.

You walk with music in your headphones, your gaze lost in space, thinking about your boss’s email. Lucky you.

I am processing terabytes of environmental data per second.

• That sound of footsteps behind me—is it constant, or is it accelerating?

• That shadow in the alleyway—is it a cat, or a man?

• If I cross the street now, do I have enough margin before that car arrives, or should I wait?

• Does that shop window reflect anyone behind my back?

It isn’t fear. Fear paralyzes. This is alertness. It is continuous probability calculus.

You enjoy the night walk because you have the privilege of turning off your radar. We never turn ours off. My brain is working twice as hard as yours, way before we even order a drink.

3. The Adrenaline Tax

And here is the point.

When I open the door to the pub, restaurant, or venue, when I hear the hum of voices, the clinking of glasses, your laughter... I am not just “walking in.”

I am landing.

That sigh you see in the video isn’t relaxation. It is decompression. It is the sound of a defense system shutting down: “Mission accomplished, I’m safe.”

There is a cost to all of this. I call it the Adrenaline Tax.

Arriving at the pub cost me an energy expenditure that for you is exactly zero. I burned through cortisol and cognitive focus just to cover the distance between the subway and the table.

So, if you see me smiling tonight and fiercely ordering a drink, it isn’t just thirst.

It’s that maybe you should be the one buying me that drink. Not out of chivalry, but as a reimbursement for the post-traumatic stress of the commute.

The space belongs to those who cross it, sure. But damn, the rent on those sidewalks costs us dearly.

Namaste (and pass the peanuts).

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Rome 2026 Final Highlights

There is a geometric calm in what he does, a total absence of drama that feels almost alien to anyone used to living at the mercy of notifications and deadlines.

This is why I have been observing him for a long time. Not merely as a fan, but as a student of behavior and methodology: I analyze his micro-movements, his body posture during crises, and the surgical coldness of his strategic choices.

Yesterday afternoon, watching him win the final in Rome on the clay of the Centrale at the Foro Italico for the Internazionali BNL d’Italia 2026, I saw the culmination of this journey. It wasn’t just an athlete lifting a trophy; it was the scientific demonstration of a method for governing complexity.

This morning, I woke up with that image in my head...

1. Clear Space for Stability (The Ski Effect)

Sinner glides across the court as if he were on snow. He reaches impossible balls by bending his legs just an inch from the ground, finding perfect balance where others would crash. The secret? Until he was thirteen, he competed in giant slalom. He took the skills of a completely different sport and planted them into tennis.

• My Shift: We often think that to excel at something we must be monomaniacal, hyper-specialized, and locked inside our own little fence. This morning, I did the exact opposite: I stopped viewing my past or my “lateral” passions as wasted time. I took the analytical rigidity of my more technical background and used it to structure my weekly schedule; I used psychological intuition to plan a tense business negotiation. Stability doesn’t come from doing one single thing, but from knowing how to use your whole body—and your whole history—to stay upright.

2. Fire Your Comfort Zone

By 2022, Sinner was already in the world’s top 10. He was making millions, winning matches, and was the golden boy of the coach who had raised him since childhood. Yet, he felt that specific system was blocking him. He had the courage to reset everything: he changed his team, brought in Simone Vagnozzi and Darren Cahill, and agreed to completely question his strokes. He risked public failure to pursue his evolution.

• My Shift: I looked at my projects for this week and asked myself: “What am I continuing to do just because it comes easy to me?” I identified that work routine that gives me security but is actually putting me to sleep. And I cut it off. A few days ago, I set up two new collaborations (one with Svergognata. and one with QdS.it) that are forcing me to study all over again, embracing the discomfort of feeling like an apprentice once more. If you want to become the best version of yourself, you must be ready to fire the habits that got you this far.

3. Remove Emotion from Mistakes

If Sinner misses a crucial shot, his expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t throw his racket, he doesn’t scream at the crowd, he doesn’t inflict physical penance on himself on court. To him, a forehand that lands an inch out is not a moral failure; it is simply a geometric data point. An error means the racket face was open three degrees too wide. You analyze the data, you correct the next shot. Period.

• My Shift: This is the most radical lesson to start the week. I decided to stop viewing setbacks—a rejection email, a slowing project, a conversation gone wrong—as a value judgment on my person. I removed the word “disaster” from my vocabulary. From now on, when something goes wrong, I isolate the error. What caused this hitch? What piece of information was I missing? I treat failure as technical feedback, not as an inner drama. And suddenly, I can breathe.

4. Choose Anticipatory Timing

Jannik’s most impressive physical gift is his timing: he hits the ball on the rise, taking away his opponent’s time and breathing room. He doesn’t wait for the ball to become comfortable; he meets it as it ascends.

• My Shift: I decided not to procrastinate on the uncomfortable decisions of this Monday while waiting for the “perfect moment,” which never comes. Waiting for situations to define themselves almost always means submitting to everyone else’s rhythm. Today, I hit problems early: that difficult phone call I was putting off, that sharp boundary I need to draw with an intrusive client, that pending financial choice. Meeting the problem while it’s on the rise strips power from the problem itself and gives you back control of the court.

In the end, Sinner’s true lesson has nothing to do with yesterday’s victory. It has everything to do with today’s presence. Staying inside reality—geometric and resolute—without letting yourself be distracted by the background noise.

The world outside can scream all it wants; as for us, in our single millimeter of the court, starting this Monday we play the ball on our own terms.