#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #ITALY #MILANO #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Italy, #MILANO - F.A.I.: Interview with our queer transfeminist table (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 An interview with the transfemic queer table of the Libertarian University of

Milan  to learn about the anarchist approach to the battles against
heterocispatriarchy, some institutional contexts of oppression and the dynamics
of the movement. ---- Request. When and with what urgencies was the table born?
---- Reply. The transfeminist queer table within the Libertarian University of
Milan was born about a year ago to respond to the need to bring the sexual and
gender issue into anarchist spaces and, at the same time, to promote anarchism in
the queer and transfeminist galaxy. ---- Some militants of the Libertarian
University had already been involved for some time in the struggle against the
hetero-cis-patriarchy; therefore, during one of our weekly assemblies, we asked
ourselves about the possibility of creating a thematic table that was
specifically dedicated to this type of battles, facing them from a libertarian
and not a neoliberal point of view.

Furthermore, the emergence of antagonistic queer squares in Milan over the last
2-3 years has certainly stimulated us in this direction.

Q. How does a queer anarchist transfeminist collective differ from movements
seeking institutional dialogue? As an anarchic * do you welcome any state laws to
protect the lgbtqi community?
A. An aspect that undoubtedly distinguishes us from mainstream gay associations
is the choice to organize ourselves from below in a horizontal, self-managing and
hostile way to any attempt at rainbow-washing. We start from the assumption that
if we are the oppressed, ours must be the struggle. We don't want to be financed
by private entities or by rainbow brands that market our claims or worse our lives.

A queer transfeminist anarchism is a political perspective that sees the state
more as a source of oppression than a guarantor of rights. We find ourselves in
the definition of the state as a system of man's domination over the living and
we realize that up to now institutions have represented more of a problem than a
solution to our needs. Think of the Church, the army, the police, prisons, health
institutions or the Constitution itself, which defines the family as a natural
society founded on heterosexual marriage.

Even the Senate, which presents itself as one of the most authoritative
instruments of representation of citizenship, was recently the scene of ovations
and celebrations for the death of DDL Zan, a legislative initiative that,
although it did not recognize even the minimum wage for LGBTQi people, it could
have been a starting point at least for a cultural change. If the part of the
bill aimed at combating homolesbobitransphobic violence through criminal justice
is not shared by us, we consider the introduction of special training
opportunities within schools as a certainly valid tool.

Q. How do you respond to those who say that LGBTQI rights only serve to increase
hatred and categorization towards the people themselves?
A. In recent years, the debate on LGBTQIA + issues has been perceived by an
important slice of the population as a challenge to what are the "moral" pillars
of society. We are often told in a provocative way that "if gay pride exists then
hetero pride must also exist". What people don't understand is that without
visibility there can be no access to the public and political arena, so any
instance cannot be pushed forward. Pride, far from being a moment of folklore or
ghettoization, is a situation of struggle and political recognition.

It also happens that our claims are belittled and ridiculed by those who think
that the priorities are other, such as addressing issues related to the dimension
of work. We reply that civil rights are social rights; indeed, we reject this
dichotomy. Lgbtqi people are citizens just like the others, they live the same
social conditions as others, but in addition they suffer the discomforts deriving
from the stigma. Therefore, it is evident that our interest cannot be one-way and
that those who make this type of accusation are in bad faith.

Q. As an anarcho-feminist table have you addressed the issue of the right to a
free and accessible abortion, of conscientious objection and also of the support
of a free and self-determined feminist motherhood?
Some comrades of our table actively participate in the transfeminist movement Non
Una Di Meno  and issues such as the right to a free, safe and free abortion and
women's self-determination are still today considered central by  the anarchist
movement.. Despite the road made by feminist and transfeminist struggles on a
global and territorial level, we still find ourselves dealing with a patriarchal
and capitalist system that if, on the one hand, claims to have become a "friend
of women" (just as we write this has arrived the news that in Italy we will have
the first female premier of the far right), on the other hand it continues to
threaten our freedom of choice and our lives through expulsions and internments
of migrant women, limitations on access to the IVG, impoverishment, femicides,
environmental destruction and exploitation, dismantling of counseling centers and
public health, criminalization of sex workers and women who do not fall within
the canons of the good wife, mother and angel of the hearth.

The bodies of women, people with wombs, LGBTQIA + people and their freedom of
choice are still battlegrounds, constantly endangered by neo-conservative
pressures and the false interests of the neoliberal left. Suffice it to say that
all over the world, even today, it is not possible to have a safe abortion and
this means the death of 50,000 people a year. Currently, in Italy, even if there
is the L.194 of 1978 which regulates the right to Voluntary Interruption of
Pregnancy, there are 31 structures (24 hospitals and 7 counseling centers) with
100% conscientious objectors. At the national level, conscientious objection
exceeds 70% among doctors, anesthetists and nurses and in some regions it is even
close to 90% of objectors.

As feministx and anarchichx we continue to say that abortion cannot be denied to
women, but only to make it less safe and dangerous. Historically, women have
always had abortions, even when it was forbidden and they had to resort to
homemade or highly risky methods for their health. Denying or preventing free
access to the right to abortion today means putting the lives of women at risk
and not, as is always said by the catto-conservative propaganda, "saving a life".
Even when the woman manages to overcome the obstacle course that the State,
ultra-conservative right, Church and pro-life associations impose on her
individual path for a free motherhood, she must suffer the cultural stigma,
criminalization, blame and psychological violence. and midwives for access to IVG.

Today, the organic materials of conception (embryos under the 27th week of
gestation) are buried in the so-called "fetal cemeteries" in about fifty Italian
municipalities by some Catholic associations in agreement with public hospitals
and local health authorities, without the consent of the woman (and at the
expense of the ASL of course, therefore with public money). Recently, the senator
of the Brothers of Italy  Luca de Carlo proposed to amend Law 194 to make this
barbaric practice of violence against women and their privacy legal and
widespread on a national level. What we fear is that, especially with the results
of the last national elections, there will be a revival of the triad "God,
country and family" declined in its most sexist, racist, homolesbobitransphobic
and habilitic forms, relegating women increasingly to the role of reproducers of
the white nation, patriarchal and heterosexual. This is why we will continue to
talk about it and to self-organize, we believe that rights are either for
everyone or they are called privileges.

Q. What is the cultural impact of religious institutions in Italy, compared to
other countries, on lgbtqi issues?
A. In "Boris, the film", one of the characters runs a collection of signatures to
transfer the Vatican abroad, "so that other countries can also benefit from all
those advantages that we have had for centuries". It is a funny gimmick, but at
the same time it expresses a frustration that we feel on our skin.

You ask us about the comparison with other countries. We don't have time for a
detailed comparison, but the Italian LGBTQIA + community is not the most
unfortunate. A few steps away from us is Africa, a continent in which
Christianity and Islam conspire at different levels with the institutions to
erase - by resorting to prison and even the death penalty - identities and
sexuality considered unnatural and blasphemous. This suffices to demonstrate how
short-sighted it is to focus only on neighboring countries: religiously motivated
queerphobia has tentacles that extend globally and it is our duty to be in
solidarity with the sufferings and struggles of our sisters and brothers from all
over the world.

But let's go back to Western Europe. First of all, it is evident that the further
south one proceeds, the more the influence of religious institutions becomes
overwhelming. They don't hang us on the gallows here, however there are so many
ways to turn us off.

In Italy, in the last 60 years, secularization has made great strides, yet a
substratum of Catholicism is omnipresent. It is an opportunistic religiosity,
useful to cover with a patina of sacredness ("male and female he created them")
those who are actually patriarchal, heteronormative and misogynistic devices of
power.

To reveal the vile camouflage, just look at our own right: political exponents
divorced or cohabiting, with offspring born outside sacramental marriage,
obsequiously declare themselves Christians, stand up in defense of the
father-mother-son-daughter family and shake the specter gender. It's the same old
trick: build a mask of respectability, invent an enemy, an agent of chaos with
monstrous features, and offer yourself as the solution. The important thing is to
distract the attention of the masses from the problems that the next government
does not want or cannot solve.

And how does the Catholic Church react to this hypocrisy? He gladly rides it, as
she is aware that she has lost her moral grip on society. The clergy perceive
that with respect to some issues, for example the discrimination of queer people,
there are still ears ready to listen to him and on which he can exert pressure -
also by virtue of an economic subordination that we cannot investigate here.
Precisely for this reason he desperately clings to the crusade against civil
rights! Who knows if this is not a first step to regain ground ... The proven
proof of this desperation dates back to last year, when, for the first time in
republican history, the Holy See entered the Italian political debate with a
straight leg, handing over to the government a official letter against the
approval of the  Zan DDL. Here is the true face of the "revolutionary"  Pope
Francis , of the one who asked: "Who am I to judge a gay?" (NB: he was referring
to the scandal that had overwhelmed a prelate and his lover). To get an idea, it
would be enough to re-read his utterances on gender, on the dangers that the
natural family would run, on the stigmatization of marriage between persons of
the same sex - when he was a cardinal in Buenos Aires he called it a move of the
devil -.

In conclusion, we like to quote the title of a heated debate cycle that was held
in 2009 in Westminster, London: "Is the Catholic Church a Positive Force in the
World?" Our answer is no. The ecclesiastical institution and its lay groomers are
an enemy, an ancient rib of the heterocispatriarchy that would like
pathologization (think of the devastating and unscientific reparative theories),
denial, condemnation to loneliness and the social death of LGBTQIA +
subjectivities. We do not forget the blood they have stained, as principals and
accomplices, and we will take advantage of every opportunity to remind them.

To this violence we reply that we are not willing to bow to any religion, that we
spit laughing at their concept of nature and moral order, that "we are legion"
and that they cannot stop us.

We are not afraid. It is they who must tremble at our outrageous freedom.

Q. Are there still tensions within the lgbtqi community between the different
identities? Are these divisions an obstacle to the struggle for equality?
A. More than tensions between different identities, it makes sense to speak of
divergences with respect to the type of approach, which can be identity-based or not.

Queer politics was born precisely to overcome those identity claims that by their
very nature are destined to generate new exclusion. The  LGBT acronym  is the
result of years of hard work in which Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Trans people
have exposed themselves to gain political visibility and dignity. However, it was
immediately evident that this acronym could not include all those ways of
experiencing sexuality and gender that are placed in a different position than
the hetero-cis-patriarchal norm (think of intersex people or asexual ones).

In other words, fighting for power to recognize the inclusion of a new identity
is to risk condemning another to invisibility.

Queer politics intends to overcome this identity logic that seeks sexual
liberation through essentialism. Queer is the overcoming of identities,
categories and labels comfortable in power to absorb and normalize what was
previously deviance.

The term queer could therefore be used as an umbrella concept to include anything
that is different from the sexual and gender norm. For this reason, many
militants seek equality by preferring queerness to the affirmation of a new
specific identity among those that appear in the acronym lgbtqia +.

Political action also unfolds in different ways: subjectivity and associations
linked to identitarianism aim almost exclusively at the conquest of rights
(egalitarian marriage, anti-discrimination laws, homogenitoriality); queer
activism, on the other hand, while positively welcoming "civil" demands, proposes
much more, that is, a radical subversion of the existing, through intersectional,
collective, horizontal, self-managed, anti-system and libertarian practices of
struggle.

Although the two approaches proceed on separate and sometimes even conflicting
paths, there is no mutual harm. It is a dialectical relationship that can only do
good for the evolution of thought and battles.

Interview published on the website:
https://www.magozine.it/intervista-al-tavolo-queer-transfemminista-dellateneo-libertario/

https://federazione-anarchica-milanese-fai.noblogs.org/post/2022/10/11/intervista-al-nostro-tavolo-transfemminista-queer-dal-blog-il-mago-di-oz/
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