For a little over a week, a good chunk of the public and online discourse in Italy has focused on a ruling by the Tribunal of Rome, which acquitted a sixty-year-old high school caretaker after a teenage student accused him of having groped her.
The incident took place when school was still in session back in April of 2022—note that given the speed at which the Italian justice takes to move, a year is actually not that long—and was indeed proven to have happened during the trial phase.
Still, as reported by the Italian digital newspaper Open, the Roman judges have established that what happened “can’t be considered a crime” but should rather be seen as a joke—one in bad taste, the judges conceded, but a joke nonetheless. The victim’s lawyer did pointedly remark that “jokes usually happen between two people, while the caretaker did it all by himself.”
The judges’ ruling hinges on the fact that while the act of groping someone’s buttocks could indeed be considered sexual violence, the context in which it happened—in broad daylight and in public with other people around—somewhat lessens its gravity and supports the “joke” argument. The duration of the groping is also relevant since it lasted less than ten seconds, which apparently, according to the judges’ sentence, makes the whole thing a lighthearted affair.
As is to be expected, the ruling has sent massive shockwaves through Italian discourse since it was issued on July 8. While Italy as a country still has considerable issues when it comes to misogyny and violence of any kind against women and femme-presenting people—this ruling makes that extremely clear—there’s a good number of its citizens that do understand that groping is groping, no matter where it happens and how long it lasts.
In particular, the detail about the groping not being considered a crime in part because it lasted less than ten seconds has struck a chord with people, who have taken to the Internet to post how absurd this ruling is. They’ve done so by filming themselves as they self-grope with a timer running on the screen, to show just how long ten seconds are when someone else’s unwanted hands are on your body.
The first videos, as reported by the news outlet Sky TG24, were posted by actor Paolo Camilli—who appeared in the smash hit The White Lotus—and by influencer Francesco Cicconetti, known on the Internet as @mehths. But by now hundreds of videos have sprung up online doing the same.
It’s also important to notice that while this online protest undoubtedly helps to bring visibility—both domestic and international—to an issue that is very much a pressing one in Italy, where sexual harassment and violence are still widely underestimated, the fact that the self-groping video has somewhat turned into a trend comes with its own set of problems.
As reported by the online feminist news outlet thePeriod, which collected the sentiment of several people within the intersectional feminism sphere on Italian social media, it could be a good idea to repost and share the original video, because the message is indeed an important one meant to show how absurd the ruling is.
But social media trends come with inherent risks. If everyone starts posting their own version of the video, or short-form sketches about it, then it’s impossible not to wonder where one does draw the line between wanting to help and wanting to cash in on the hot topic du jour. As thePeriod’s Instagram post puts it: “Did one person do it and it’s useful to spread the idea? Alright. If we want, let’s share that. If everyone does it then one has to think about how everyone always rides the day’s new to grow their engagement and this thing is kind of s*itty, especially when we’re talking about violence.”
(featured image: Paolo Camilli via Instagram)
