In Italy, MeToo more like ‘meh’
ROME — The women took their seats behind each of the more than 600 desks in Italy’s lower house of Parliament and listened to Laura Boldrini, the chamber’s president, talk about how the “Weinstein scandal” had set off a worldwide reckoning with sexual harassment and misconduct.
With one notable exception, that is.
“In Italy, it certainly hasn’t had the same effect. In our country, there are no harassers,” Ms. Boldrini said sarcastically, drawing chuckles throughout the hall.
In truth, Ms. Boldrini said, harassment was rife, but Italian women feared the repercussions of speaking up: “They know that in this country, there is a strong prejudice against them.”
By turning Montecitorio Palace into a womenonly institution on a recent Saturday, Ms. Boldrini hoped to emphasize how sexual harassment and abuse against women often are ignored by what she and many others consider a stubbornly patriarchal society.
Since the revelations about Harvey Weinstein’s abuse of women were exposed in October, politicians, actors and powerful media figures have resigned in disgrace in the United States, and women have flooded social media with their own stories of sexual harassment and assault, using the hashtag #MeToo.
In Italy, it’s mostly “meh.”
“This historic moment doesn’t mean much to Italy, sadly,” said Asia Argento, an Italian actress whose accusations of sexual harassment against Mr. Weinstein drew signs of solidarity abroad, but a good deal of eye-rolling and insults at home. “Nothing has changed.”
That apathy extends beyond the Italian entertainment industry. In Florence, defense lawyers for paramilitary police officers accused of raping two young American women sought to ask the accusers if they had been wearing underwear that night.
In Sicily, a court cleared a man of sexual harassment charges, determining that sophomoric humor, rather than sexual intent, had motivated his groping of colleagues.
And the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is staging a comeback six years after being forced out of power amid mass protests and trials examining his role in so-called Bunga Bunga bacchanals with underage women and prostitutes.
“For us, defending women is a priority and it always has been,” Mr. Berlusconi, who was cleared of soliciting underage prostitutes, but is still fighting charges that he bribed a witness, said in a recent television interview.
That is not to suggest that the 81-year-old, whose girlfriend is nearly 50 years his junior, has changed his ways.
In October, he told a crowd of supporters on the island of Ischia that he had introduced the bidet to Col. Moammar Gadhafi, the late leader of Libya, and in so doing “taught these lusty Africans that there’s also foreplay.” The audience applauded.
“It’s not shocking, because in the end, Italians think it’s normal,” Lorella Zanardo, a women’s rights advocate and filmmaker, said of the muted reaction to reports of sexual harassment in the country. Especially in high-profile fields such as film, politics and the media, she said.
Mr. Berlusconi himself has contributed to the country’s perception of women as decorative objects of desire, Ms. Zanardo said, by casting them as scantily clad adornments on his television channels.