In my not so quite humble opinion, all religions are sworn enemies of women’s freedom, emancipation and rights. Dark and gloomy repositories of phony beliefs, relying upon and prospering on the sense of guilt, or rather the sex of guilt as the fil rouge of all monotheistic religions is sex-phobia. Women are constantly made feel guilty about their desires and they are denigrated for even wanting sexual pleasures. Ecclesiastical hierarchies are all in the hands of man’s excessive power. Also within the catholic church (deliberately written in small letter) dealing with family/female issues is a bunch of clergymen, some of whom definitely not very pious. That pisses me off royally. Even in debauchery, clergymen have the upper hand while nuns restrain from delving into pleasures. If I could reincarnate, I would definitely wish to be reborn as a Vatican archbishop with their purple and scarlet red attire, their indulgence towards the sins of the flesh and their insane amount of luxury and lust. We women have been condemned for centuries to satisfy the church’s impositions, rules and orders. Their rituals are anachronistic, their principles hypocritical, their demands shameful. I live in a secular state on paper but grotesquely religious in practice. I am ashamed to live in a so-called civilized country where in 2015 there are no legal rights for civil partnerships, whether made up of a man and a woman, two men or two women. I am not in a civil partnership; therefore I couldn’t care less about its regulation. I don’t want to have kids. I don’t want to get married (and not for lack of suitors, I swear!). I don’t want to be two. I like my being one. Yet, I strongly believe these are fundamental rights that should be met and respected. But in Italy, the country of mama, pasta and Madonna (alas, not the singer), basic rights are ignored due to the predominant presence of the Vatican state. I am ashamed to live in a land of hypocritical, violent man-whores, who still believe in the dichotomy Madonna/whore, thanks to the religious bigotry we were raised in. In Italy nowadays we still don’t have a law concerning hate crimes, meaning that if I beat the shit out of you because you are a fucking faggot/dirty lesbian, the homophobia inherent to the crime is not regarded as an aggravation. I personally find this quite appalling and outrageous in a country, which, on the other hand, brashly professes to be moral and catholic. Where’s the compassion? Where’s God’s mercy? Unfortunately we shouldn’t be surprised about it in this ridiculous country, where even sexual assault until 1996 was considered a crime against patrimony and not against the person. WTF??? So, basically that meant that if some bastard raped me, he would commit an offence against public morality and not against me. As far as the law was concerned, I would be a witness not a victim and my vagina was the property of the Italian state. Well, I don’t think so. The vagina is mine. Anyway, I find this following and deliberately ironic and super religiously incorrect video by the American comedian Louis CK about what the catholic church is about quite funny and revelatory. Check it out!