Buondì.
I got told off for the subject line of Friday’s emailed article, which was “Le donne a Parigi non portano le mutande!” (“Women in Paris don’t wear panties!”)
It was sexist, apparently, and reflected poorly, both on me personally, and on the club. The article in question was promoting the newly-published Episodio 3 of our FREE Summer Series of Italian texts with audio – I protagonisti dell’unità d’Italia (XIX secolo) – which was about the new Italian state’s young-ish monarch and his royal enthusiams for hunting, making war, and chasing women.
Keep your knickers on, I replied to the upset club member, or unsubscribe. I’m not sexist!
Joking aside, the Summer Series was written by a woman, and anyone actually taking the time to read it will understand that she doesn’t have the highest opinion of re Vittorio Emanuele II di Savoia.
Eighty-five years before the establishment of the Italian state, Americans declared independence from the British monarchy and organised constitutional government (albeit one in which slaves and women had no voice – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose…)
Seventy-two years earlier, Europe had been further convulsed by the French revolution and the subsequent continent-wide war. So naturally, Italians, in organising their new country in 1861, opted to have it run by a horny young king.
How did that work out?
A bit of a curate’s egg, apparently. Vittorio’s basic plan was to play to his strengths, so tax the poor, then go to war – against the neighboring Austro-Hungarian Empire over real estate to add to the new Italian kingdom.,
Unfortunately, the poorest of new Italy’s citizens were to be found in the south, in the areas triumphantly won from the Spanish kings by poncho-wearing hero Garabaldi, only to be immediately handed over to yet another distant monarch…
With predicable results: poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition, sky-high levels of child mortality, lawlessness, and the first waves of emigration.
I admit, I’d expected this period of Italian history to be rather self-celebratory and tedious. Actually, it’s fascinating and explains a lot of what followed. Take a look for yourself:
Episodio 4. Il nuovo e complicato Regno d’Italia
N.b. Those who haven’t (yet) read/listened to Episodes 1-3 will find them our History page. SCROLL DOWN to find them, as this year’s Summer Series is right at the bottom.
Scan down and you can also see what’s coming, this week and over the next eight weeks of summer.
History page | Episodio 4. Il nuovo e complicato Regno d’Italia
A mercoledì.
P.S. 
Don’t forget to read/listen to Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, which, like our Summer Series, is FREE.
Why not subscribe? That’s also FREE. Subscribers are emailed each thrice-weekly bulletin, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.
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Jackie Sears says
Hi Daniel,
You’re quite right in saying it’s not sexist to say “Women in Paris don’t wear panties”! Generalist perhaps, attention grabbing yes, but definitely not sexist. Because I find the lazy-minded bandying about of that term so intensely irritating, I thought I would quote the definition of the word here, for the erudition of your (unnecessarily) offended reader, in the hope she might suffer less outrage in the future – I know it’s fashionable these days, but hardly pleasant….”Sexist language is language which excludes one sex or the other, or which suggests that one sex is superior to the other.”
Daniel says
I am supposing that the person was more concerned with the sexist assumptions (that Paris in the nineteenh century is some of sexual wonderland) rather than the actual language. But anyway, it was clear to anyone actually reading the article what the purpose of the quote was (if indeed it was a real quote).
All in all, I’m not against calling people out for discriminatory language or behavior, if it is indeed discriminatory. The world today is in many ways a much nicer place that it was when I was growing up in the nineteen-seventies, and long may that continue!