[San Candido, Italy; December 22. Image via Getty.]

INNICHEN/SAN CANDIDO, ITALY - DECEMBER 22: (FRANCE OUT) Anna Holmlund of Sweden takes 1st place during the FIS Freestyle World Cup Women's Ski Cross on December 22, 2009 in Innichen/San Candido, Italy. (Photo by Alexis Boichard/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

Knox is reportedly on suicide watch, and one of her lawyers has announced that he'll appeal her conviction, focusing on the fact that none of her DNA was found at the crime scene. Meanwhile, some Americans supposedly "vowed to boycott Italian holidays, wine and food," at least according to The Sun. And Sen. Maria Cantwell, of Knox's home state of Washington, says, "I think what happened [Friday] is we had a decision in which it seems the overall impression of Amanda Knox by the press in Italy and the overwhelming amount of attention given this case may have prejudiced the jury." She continues, "I think it's important for both of our countries to make sure that justice is served and that there is a rule of law and a standard that people believe in." Cantwell plans to ask the EU to put pressure on Italy, and she will request a meeting with Hillary Clinton regarding Knox. Says Clinton, "Of course, I'll meet with Sen. Cantwell or anyone who has a concern but I can't offer any opinion about that at this time."

Knox's family members swear she's innocent, and are preparing to begin the arduous appeal process — it could be a whole year before her appeal even goes to trial. Meanwhile, her defenders continue to question the objectivity of the Italian court. Time writer Nina Burleigh tells ABC,

People here in this town [Perugia] have been reading these stories ... 'Sex Game Gone Wrong,' 'Drug Fueled Sex Game. They believe that scenario is real, that it's true. [...] A lot of people think that this verdict has a lot to do with the power of the prosecutor, the power of the police in this town and the fact that once this train started to roll ... the jury and the judge in this case were very leery of stopping it.

Not everyone is so supportive. Says the murder victim's brother, Lyle Kercher, "We're pleased that we got the decision but it's not a time for celebration." According to Libby Purves of the London Times, it's a time for an indictment of "fling culture." Here's her version of the crime:

We live in a transitional age where sexual licence is concerned: those who embrace it enthusiastically (bragging of having strangers on trains, like Knox) remain uneasily aware of old taboos. They can become shrilly angry if anyone seems to disapprove, possibly because deep down they are not sure they wholly approve of themselves. It is not hard to see how hostile Amanda Knox could become to her sober flatmate; and how, assisted by drink, drugs and admiring men, it could lead her into a vicious folie à trois. And thence, confused, to a drunken, clumsy cover-up and a chilling flippancy (even turning cartwheels) at the police station.

Purves says it's inaccurate to portray Knox as "sexually adventurous," and that "these people" (people who have casual sex? People who get accused of brutal throat-slittings? Are they one and the same?) are simply "randy and needy, and afraid or incapable of love." Purves continues,

What is really sad though - see, even I jib at saying "wrong" - is the idea of "adventurousness": sex made "zipless", gourmet, divorced from affection, understanding, wonder or hope. You clock a hot piece, pull, mate and discard with hardly a name-check. It rounds off the evening but blunts your humanity. Many grow out of it and find faithful partnerships. Some find later life haunted by it. Some misunderstand the other party's intentions and are devastated, or become stalkers.

At worst, a few confuse the general tolerance with permission to bully and coerce.

That's right, ladies. Better keep your pants zipped — or you might end up murdering your roommate and spending your life in an Italian jail. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Amanda Knox: U.S. Backlash Grows As Hillary Clinton Is Called In Over Jailing [Daily Mail]
Clinton In Knox Vow [Sun]
Fantasy World Fuelled By Sex, Drink And Drugs [TimesOnline]
Foxy Knoxy On 'Suicide Watch' [New York Post]
Knox "Completely Surprised" By Verdict, Parents Say [MSNBC]

The jury is expected to issue a verdict on Knox in the next few days. Unfortunately, as several recent articles point out, Knox has already been tried in the court of public opinion - and lost. Anyone following the trial of Amanda Knox by now probably knows not only the basic story—in brief: Knox is accused of murdering her roommate Meredith Kercher while on a semester abroad in Italy—but also the intimate details of Knox's life, from her toilet-flushing habits to her sex toy of choice. The trial has painted over Knox again and again, casting her first as a sex-crazed sadist, and then as a sweet, overgrown child. It's come to the point where Amanda Knox, the 22-year-old from Seattle, has been completely lost behind all the lurid layers. Her "angelic" face has provided the perfect canvas onto which both prosecution and defense have projected discordant images, each supposedly grounded in analysis of Knox's behavior.

Today Knox revealed that she is "scared of having the mask of an assassin forced onto me." She reportedly appeared in tears, trying desperately to convince the jury of her innocence. She said she has been trying to remain calm even though she is "disappointed, sad and frustrated" after spending two years behind bars. She also says she remains "confident and certain in what I know."

But it may prove difficult for the jurors to separate fact from fiction. And there has been a lot of fiction in the trial. In closing arguments, the prosecution described Knox as a "Luciferina," a "dirty-minded she-devil." One prosecutor, in what seems like an attempt to create a real-life version of one of those sepia-toned flashback scenes from CSI, stood in front of the jury and asked them to imagine what Knox could have said to her roommate before raping and murdering her:

You are always behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you. Now we will make you have sex.

Of course, there is no evidence Knox ever said this. There is also no evidence that she was even in the room. But they're not even saying she said this, just that she might have. Timothy Egan for the New York Times' Opinonator asks:

What century is this? Didn't Joan of Arc, the Inquisition and our own American Salem witch trials teach civilized nations a thing or two about contrived sexual hysteria with a devil twist?

Answer: apparently not.

Amanda Knox Revisited [Opionator]
Amanda Knox Has Lost The Battle For Public Opinion [Newsweek]
US Suspect Knox Urges Italain Court To Free Her [AP]

The Times of London has published a series of excerpts from the book (scheduled for release tomorrow), some of which are pretty hilarious. For example, on the Prime Minister's choice of sleepwear:

He was dressed all in white and I took him for a ghost. White silk pyjamas and a white silk dressing gown.

And, describing his behavior at a party with twenty women, where he was the only "man with copulation rights:'

He caressed them all. The Prime Minister needs cuddles.

More serious, however, are her claims that she was attacked after releasing tape recordings of her encounters with Berlusconi. D'Addario says another car tried to ram hers on the road near her hometown, and that she received frightening phone calls, including one threatening to rape her daughter. She says that she also suffered an attempted rape, and that an assailant punched her mother in the face.

But according to John Hooper of the Guardian, one of the book's biggest revelations is that lesbians attended Berlusconi's bacchanals. Hooper writes,

D'Addario claims to have visited Berlusconi's private residence in Rome twice last year. On the first occasion, she said, the other guests at the dinner included two lesbians. They "must be at home," D'Addario writes. "They kiss and stroke one another and address the prime minister in a very familiar way."

This has political significance. Many conservative Italians ready to forgive, if not endorse, heterosexual promiscuity will be disconcerted by a claim that their leader's private life extends to lesbianism.

Given that women were allegedly paid to attend Berlusconi's parties, it's possible that these so-called lesbians were in fact performing for Berlusconi's benefit. And Hooper's claim that "Patrizia D'Addario adds a lesbian dimension to the allegations surrounding Italy's billionaire leader" is rather oddly worded. Still, if his analysis of conservative Italian mores is correct, it's more than a little depressing — apparently Italians can tolerate Berlusconi's corruption and his bizarre public statements (he repeatedly referred to the Obamas as "tanned"), but two girls kissing is a bridge too far.

Call Girl In Silvio Berlusconi Sex Scandal Claims Series Of Attacks And Threats [Guardian]
In Bed With Silvio Berlusconi: 'The Room Was Dark. He Likes The Dark' [TimesOnline]

The story of twelve-year-old "Luca" would be extreme in any country. According to Jeff Israely of Time, his parents divorced soon after he was born, and his dad wasn't allowed to see him for nine years. His mother and grandparents seem to have kept him essentially on lockdown, letting him leave the house for school but not to play with friends, do sports, or even go to church. They sent him to school with snacks precut in bite-size pieces, and apparently did so much for him that he was "physically and psychologically stunted." His lawyer, Andrew Marzola, says, "He didn't know how to run. He had the motor skills of a 3-year-old child."

Luca's mother and grandfather have already been convicted of child abuse, and his grandmother is still facing charges. It's a complicated case, given that the family is charged not with neglect but with overinvolvement, with harming a child by trying to help him. Is it really child abuse if your parenting techniques damage a child's ability to live in the world? Don't many parents unintentionally end up doing this?

These questions may have larger implications for Italy, which is facing an epidemic of mammone, or mama's boys. A number of factors contribute to this supposed problem. Ethno-clinical psychologist Henriette Felici-Bach claims that, "In Germany, children are educated from early on to [execute] a task on their own from beginning to end. In southern [European] countries, children are dependent on what people tell them to do." And Italian culture and history may encourage an especially strong bond between mother and children because of Catholicism, economic insecurity, and a long string of weak governments that forced people to rely only on their families for support. 37% of Italian men between 30 and 34 still live with their mothers, and economist Enrico Moretti says, "Italians, unlike parents from most other countries, like living with their grown children."

The case of Luca — and of older mammone, if they are in fact rampant — seems to illustrate the pitfalls of the kind of closeness with parents we discussed yesterday. But why are men more likely to be affected? Israely doesn't really discuss this, other than to point out that Italian women are "statistically less susceptible" to being "hyper-coddled." Maybe that's because daughters are less favored in Italy than sons, or because, as we see in American commercials, it's less acceptable to be childlike and incompetent as a woman than as a man. While women in America are certainly expected to look like teenagers forever, and sometimes to behave in ways that are cute or juvenile, it's not really considered that charming for us to fail to pick up after ourselves. In America as in Italy, men may get more of a pass in this area.

So could Luca's case go to trial in America? Israely makes the obligatory gesture toward American "helicopter parents," saying, "modern society is producing ever more overinformed, overanxious and overprotective parents, blamed for causing or exacerbating all sorts of problems in their children, from learning disabilities to teenage anorexia." But being blamed for these problems isn't the same as actually causing them, and it seems much harder to prove that an overprotective parent actually hurt a child than that an abusive one did. And where would we draw the line between merely ill-advised parenting tactics and actual abuse? Helicopter parenting may not give kids anorexia (I'm especially skeptical on this point), but as Felici-Bach says, "If you don't let your child discover the world, it can do real harm." However, the solution to this problem, at least in America, probably isn't in the courts.

In Italy, A Mamma Accused Of Doting Too Much [Time]

[Lodz, October, 4. Image via Getty]

Italian players celebrate their victory against the Netherlands after the final match of European Women Volleyball Championships on October 4, 2009 in Lodz. Italy won the gold medal. AFP PHOTO / JANEK SKARZYNSKI (Photo credit should read JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Venice, September 7. Image via Getty]

VENICE, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 07: A woman with a painted face in the crowd attends the '36 Vues Du Pic Saint Loup' premiere at the Sala Grande during the 66th Venice Film Festival on September 7, 2009 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

[Venice, September 1. Image via Getty]

VENICE, ITALY - SEPTEMBER 01: A woman makes Venitian masks during the 66th Venice Film Festival on September 1, 2009 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A newly revised biography, Veronica's Way, details the relationship between Berlusconi and Veronica Lario from its beginning in 1980 to its current unhappy end. Lario says that when her husband attended the birthday party of an 18-year-old (and bought her an $8,500 birthday gift), he told her he was at a conference. She tells biographer Maria Latella,

It was the umpteenth lie. Better to finally respect myself, better to divorce. [...] I cannot condemn myself to be his wetnurse and I cannot stop him from making himself ridiculous before the world.

But according to Daniel Flynn of Reuters, neither the 18-year-old nor Berlusconi's alleged party with a high-priced call girl have soured Italy on him. Flynn writes, "While the 'sexgate' scandal has excited the foreign press, opinion polls show many Italians consider it a private matter and it has done little to dent Berlusconi's high popularity, despite the worst economic downturn since World War II." In a Times editorial, Italian professor Chiara Volpato has a different take. She says,

Many outside Italy seem to assume that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gets away with his sexist behavior because Italian men condone it and the women at least tolerate it. But this is no longer true. Today there are two Italys: one Italy has soaked up Mr. Berlusconi's ideology either out of self-interest or an inability to resist his enormous powers of persuasion; the other is fighting back.

After a discussion of Italy's gender gap (example: fewer than half of Italian women have jobs, but Italian men still have 80 minutes more free time per day), Volpato describes the ways Italian women are fighting back against sexism in general and Berlusconi specifically. She mentions a documentary about female objectification called Il Corpo delle Donne, a recent first ladies' boycott of the G8 summit in Italy, and Berlusconi's dropping approval ratings among women. Still, she says, Italians must do more to combat Berlusconi and the anti-woman culture he represents. She writes,

An important step is to make dissent known, a difficult task considering that true free speech is largely limited to only a few independent newspapers and, importantly, the Internet. We need to start working on a systematic documentation of incidents of discrimination against women.

Michael Wolff's recent Vanity Fair article illustrates why this may, indeed, be very difficult — through his TV empire, Berlusconi has made both himself and the object vacation of women key facets of Italian pop culture. Wolff writes that Berlusconi's rise to control Italy's three private TV networks (as prime minister, he now controls the three public TV networks as well) can be traced to his replacement of "heavyset" male talking heads with "big-bosomed girls" called veline. These veline are now at the center of Italian culture — varying soccer stars and dictating fashion trends — and of political life as well. Berlusconi has appointed many of them to government positions, and one former velina, now Italy's equal-opportunity minister even hosted the very G8 summit the first ladies boycotted.

It sounds a little like packing Parliament with Playboy bunnies — but there's a reason Italian women haven't yet risen up against Berlusconi's velinocracy. The veline are popular. According to Volpato, becoming one of them is now the most popular career goal among Italian teenage girls. Volpato chalks this up to the fact that in Italy, "young women and girls are consistently taught that their bodies, rather than their abilities and their knowledge, are the key to success."

But maybe Veronica Lario can change that. In her biography, she says, "I think that I have no choice but to separate...He would tell me another lie and this time I could not stand it," and "I've reached the end of the road. Ten years ago I was not ready but now I can say: I am leaving this man." Lario herself is a former velina, who took up with Berlusconi when she was 23 and he was 43 and married. Perhaps her very public rage at him will provide an antidote to his advice to a female student — to get ahead, marry a rich man. Veronica's Way could serve as a lesson that neither being a velina nor marrying up necessarily brings an Italian woman happiness — and as an impetus for other women to demand more real power.

Italian Women Rise Up [NYT]
Berlusconi Wife: He Is Ridiculous Before The World [Reuters]
All Broads Lead To Rome [Vanity Fair]

Earlier: Wine, Women, & Santa Costumes Have Italian Leader In Loads Of Trouble

[New York, August 9. Image via Getty]

NEW YORK - AUGUST 09: Italian-Americans gather during the 'The Dance of the Giglio' at the Giglio di Sant� Antonio Feast in East Harlem August 9, 2009 in New York City. The festival originated in the town of Brusciano, Italy and honors Saint Antonio. East Harlem once held the largest population of Italians in New York. The giglio is a tall wooden structure built to honor patron saints in Italian towns and is carried on the shoulders of men in a ritual that dates back hundred of years. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

[Rome, July 29. Image via Getty]

Italy's Federica Pellegrini celebrates after the women's 200m freestyle final on July 29, 2009 at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome. Pellegrini won gold and set a new world record with 1:52.98. AFP PHOTO / MARTIN BUREAU (Photo credit should read MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images)

(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about gayness, gay porn, and Italian cuisine and fashion. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. Or to Twitter. If we remember to check it, we'll answer those, too.

Do I Have To Change My Tampon Every Time I Pee? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

[Rome, July 21. Image via Getty]

This underwater image shows Italy's Beatrice Adelizzi and Giulia Lapi competing during the synchronised technical duet final on July 21, 2009 at the FINA World Swimming Championships in Rome. Russians Anastasia Davydova and Svetlana Romashina claimed gold while Spain's Andrea Fuentes and Gemma Mengual won silver and China's Jiang Tingting and Jiang Wenwen took bronze. AFP PHOTO / FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT ATTN EDITORS: PICTURE TAKEN WITH AN UNDERWATER CAMERA (Photo credit should read FRANCOIS XAVIER MARIT/AFP/Getty Images)

[Rome, July 8. Image via Getty]

US First Lady Michelle Obama walks past a statue during her visit to the Capitoline museum on July 8, 2009 in Rome. The visit, attended by several First Ladies was organized on the sidelines of a G8 summit in L'Aquila. AFP PHOTO / ALBERTO PIZZOLI (Photo credit should read ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images)

Related: Hercules of the Forum Boarium [Wikipedia]

Berlusconi's wife Veronica Lario filed for divorce in April, accusing him of "frequenting underage females." One of the females he allegedly frequented was 18-year-old Noemi Letizia — he gave her a diamond necklace at her birthday party. Now he is also accused of allowing a local businessman to pay for women to attend lavish parties at Berlusconi's country estate. One guest at these parties was Patrizia D'Addario, who said she was paid thousands of dollars to attend, and who, fishily, Berlusconi's party backed as a candidate in local elections. D'Addario's friend Barbara Montereale says D'Addario is a prostitute who was paid to sleep with Berlusconi. Montereale says she also attended another party of Berlusconi's, in which several young Eastern European women dressed up as Santa Claus.

In response to these allegations, and to separate concerns that he habitually helped unqualified women establish political careers, three female social scientists have asked the first ladies of the G8 nations to boycott an upcoming summit in Italy. They write, "We are profoundly indignant, as women employed in the world of universities and culture, at the way in which the Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi treats women both in public and in private." They also say his "sexist speeches [...] systematically undermine the female presence on the social and institutional scene" and his behavior "gravely undermines the dignity of women on a moral, civil and cultural level."

Sarah Vine, writing for the Times of London, takes a slightly different view. She uses Berlusconi's scandals as opportunity to examine what she views as Italy's quiet feminism. She argues that rather than applauding Berlusconi, many Italians think of him as a fool (though others see Lario as the fool), and some suspect he is impotent. She also says that while men may appear to be favored in Italian society, women actually have a lot of power:

Unlike Britain, which traditionally was a genuinely patriarchal society, Italy has always been far more comfortable with the idea of the strong female. Not necessarily in public, of course - but in private, boy, does she exist. In small family firms it will often be the mothers and daughters who take the big decisions while the sons drive the fast cars and swagger around in sharp suits. [...]

Think of these women, if you will, as lionesses: fiercely protective, eminently capable, terrifying when provoked but, for some ancient reason, quite happy to let their feckless males lie around in the sun all day long, flicking their tails at the occasional passing antelope and generally looking magnificent.

The women-wielding-private-power argument has been made in other circumstances, though, and private power never seems quite as much fun as it's cracked up to be. Don't Italian women want to be the lion from time to time?

Whatever the case, Vine writes that Berlusconi is in trouble because, "there is one thing that Italians cannot abide. Already all the Italian newspapers are talking about it, and it will become increasingly inescapable as the G8 summit in L'Aquila approaches next month: humiliation in the foreign media." Time's Jeff Israely is more measured in his predictions. He writes, "in Italy, the only thing more difficult than trying to imagine how [Berlusconi] can avoid disappearing, is imagining what public life would be without him."

Berlusconi's Italy Shows A Strange Type Of Feminism [TimesOnline]
Silvio Berlusconi's Parties: Italian Prosecutors To Question 30 Women [Telegraph]
Academic Women Fight Back Against 'Sexist' Silvio Berlusconi [Times Online]
Berlusconi In Crisis After Allegation He Slept With 'Escort' [Time]
Veronica Lario, Accidental Feminist [Salon]