Ilaria: "Those photos spread without my consent, the catcalling, the harassment, the mocking comments on the street. Nothing was the same as before: I had become what they said I was ”.
The thirty year old Ilaria DiRoberto lives in Cori in the province of Latina and has been a victim of cyberbullying e revenge porn but also much more. Heard by our editorial staff, in a few minutes she highlighted what is wrong with our system in reference to gender-based violence, pointing out the fact that there is a slow and prejudicial bureaucracy (the woman who presents a complaint must not be the subject of an investigation) and that the problem it is also and above all of a socio-cultural level. Family homes would be needed for the violent and not for those who have suffered violence. We need, Ilaria argues, the tightening of laws and concrete and effective initiatives to carry out a correct education in gender equality in schools, in the workplace and within the same families where we still live in a patriarchal hierarchy and where violence against women and the weakest is often perpetrated unconsciously. Violence, Ilaria is keen to specify, is not only physical but also verbal and social violence (Ilaria recalls Margaret Lazarus who in 1975 already spoke of "turnips cultures”- culture of rape-): forms of non-physical violence and perhaps more dangerous because they slowly destroy you from within.
Ilaria contains the substance of her denunciation in a thought"It is not women who have to protect themselves or have to avoid but it is the man who does not have to perpetuate more violence to the detriment of a woman ".
All that I am
Victim of Cyberbullying and Revenge Porn and guest on several television programs Ilaria DiRoberto he faces the dramatic situation he experienced by putting it at the service not only of his rebirth, but of all those voices that are still crushed by the weight of these dramatic experiences and completely unheard. A message, the of him, which is not only "personal" but capable of involving everyone, indeed, which must do so, since only by seriously facing these situations it will be possible to get out of it and avoid that many others can suffer and remain devastated.
In "All that I am"Ilaria tells her story: from eating disorders, dysmorphophobia, violence and the legal battle, to psychotherapy, victim blaming and the enlightening discovery of feminism, alongside her relationship with writing and dancing, strokes of lightning lit as a child. Constructed in an original style - a mosaic of minimal haiku-like poems, reflections, autobiographical pages and emotionally impactful narratives - the book is a long unfiltered confidence.
Ilaria is a true voice and with courage and pride she lays bare her troubled path from former handmaid to free woman. The work is an autopsy of violence as well as a social denunciation that exudes intensity, moves, touches painful chords, sometimes in a wild and persuasive way. But it is not a heavy reading, far from it: the author often exercises sarcasm, joking on the eternal clash between males and females and having fun paving the complete sample of incel, misogynists with which every girl has to deal daily.
"All that I am”Is the attempt to elaborate a pain held inside for too long and at the same time the claim and the redemption of an identity defrauded, violated and annihilated by the brutality of a millenary patriarchal hegemony. It is the identity manifestation of every woman who has experienced on her own skin - directly or indirectly - the effluvium of a violence that leaves no traces or escape. It is the testimony of the indemonstrability of an invisible evil that has never been sufficiently gutted and most of the time kept at bay in the event of a possible (pre) judgment. It is the point of arrival, but also of departure, where everything dies, is born and is renewed. But above all it is the plausible demonstration that not all evil comes to harm and that often, such a great and invasive pain can take on a functional role if crossed, reworked and placed at the service of the community.
"All that I am”Is a beacon of light, but also a journey through one's shadow areas, within those thoughts that we do not tell anyone. It is a powerful scream - which makes its readers share in a devastating pain - and at the same time a slight whisper, not intended to diminish the author's vicissitudes, but as an expression of strength and courage in the iron will to re-affirm oneself - no longer as a victim, but as a woman / survivor - and to regain the freedom to live without chains, following one's dreams.
Published by Europe Editions, the book brings with it many good intentions, such as that of breaking down - together with social clichés and gender stereotypes - the script that is often applied to victims of violence. Media scripts that in their phallus-centric insolence not only delegate the responsibility for prevention to women, but demand that they remain confined to their own pain, far from any remote possibility of rebirth and revenge. Disappointing every expectation or social conditioning imposed on women, Ilaria Di Roberto tries to illustrate a different side of the victim, in a fight against the culture of rape and that of pain.
"All I knowno "is resilience, reactivity, rebellion. It is the explosive cry of those who survive, but do not stop their struggle. It is the desperate attempt to lay bare herself - metaphorically of course - in the presence of those whom the author friendly calls "sisters", certain that this time, the wounds inflicted on her will no longer hurt so much.
Not to the point of killing her.
