The international day against violence against women and gender violence
once again fills the squares, in Rome as in many cities. There is agreat need to give visibility to the fight against violence, which in
our country is a massacre. At the time of writing, the data on
feminicides provided by the Ministry of the Interior refers to 80 women
since the beginning of the year, the National Observatory on
feminicides, lesbian crimes, transcides, whorecides of Non Una Di Meno
(website osservatorionazionale.nonunadimeno.net) instead reports 104
people on whom gender violence has raged to the point of determining
their death; countless those on whom a brutal daily reality of
harassment, mistreatment, abuse, in the family, in the workplace, but
also in police stations where they perhaps go to file a complaint, in
schools, in hospitals, in courts. Because violence is systemic, as we
have said and shouted many times.
The femicide of Giulia Cecchettin last year, just in these days, brought
thousands of people to take to the streets: a case that is remembered,
among the many that are swallowed up by the news. We know that it is not
right to make a ranking of more or less notable feminicides of memory,
but certainly in the case of Giulia Cecchettin it was not only the media
echo that weighed, but the words of her sister Elena and her father
Gino, who managed not to remain closed in their pain and in their public
statements referred to the patriarchy to indicate the person
responsible, a person responsible other than the material perpetrator;
they pointed the finger at a system, at a country and the culture it
expresses, clearly identifying the crux of gender violence in the
interconnections of hierarchy, power, domination.
Driven by the tide that took to the streets, at the time the
institutions had hastily promised to establish courses in relationship
education. A promise that never came true and certainly not to be
regretted, given the substance of the Plan "educate for relationships"
that was promoted by the Minister of Education and Merit Valditara, by
the Minister of the Family Roccella and by the then Minister of Culture
Sangiuliano (yes, him!) with the fundamental support of a nun,
influencers and footballers.
But it was not only that unpresentable plan that ran aground in this
last year.
Funds against violence continue to be scarce and anti-violence centers
are increasingly in difficulty. Part of the meager funding is diverted
specifically to the rehabilitation programs of abusive males, who, if
they join these projects, obtain significant reductions in sentences and
restrictive measures: funds diverted from the real needs of protection
of women and abused subjects, funds dedicated to the violent individual
that do not affect the culture of violence and rape at the basis of
their actions. In any case, insufficient funds.
And yet the money is there: 520 million euros will be spent on the
military base in San Piero a Grado (new identification compared to
Coltano), as denounced by the Nobase movement. On the occasion of
November 4, in Rome, at the Circus Maximus, the "defense village" was
set up for a few days, with various military units to propagate
especially to children and school kids the beauty of weapons and the
culture of violence, hierarchy and machismo. A military amusement park
whose temporary installation cost 600,000 euros, in a context of general
increase in military spending that for next year will reach 32 billion.
We know well how significant the phenomenon of the presence of the
military in schools is, often denounced also by these pages and against
which fortunately a firm opposition is developing. And there is a clear
relationship between all this and violence, especially gender violence.
There must be no room in school for the army, the armed forces and their
violent and warlike message. In schools, as in society, there is a need
to break down the habit of violence, certainly not to encourage it.
This urgent need is signaled every day by episodes of gender violence,
by suicides among young people who express the difficulty of living
their life and their sexual orientation, by the worrying increase in
people who do not understand the concept of consent; it is signaled by
the violence that is exercised in relationships, within the family, the
place where over 80% of femicides occur, because "the murderer, the
violent person, has the keys to the house".
Even the narrative of gender violence is often violent. And we are
referring not only to the representation of violence in the news and in
the headlines of newspapers and media, which we have often pointed the
finger at, but to the statistics and data collection relating to
violence, data collection that is not neutral, but rather reproduces a
culture that has internalized the normality of violence and reserves the
recognition of gender violence only to some cases. For this reason, in
2019 a self-managed tool was created that tracks and analyzes news from
a transfeminist perspective.
From January 1 to November 8, 2024, the National Observatory on
feminicides, lesbianicides, transcides, puttanocides of Non Una Di Meno,
which is updated monthly every eighth day of the month, has recorded 87
feminicides, 5 suicides of cis women, 1 suicide of a trans man, 1
suicide of a cis man, and 10 cases are being investigated. These are
deaths caused by gender-based and hetero-cis-patriarchal violence. In
addition, there are at least 44 other attempted femicides reported in
the online news of national and local media.
The media and institutional sources treat the data according to a
rigorously binary approach and a hierarchy of values that responds to
the ideology of the patriarchal system, radically different from the
approach of the Observatory, which also gives visibility to violence
against trans people, sex workers, intersex, so-called disabled people
or in any form considered "out of the norm".
The media narrative of femicides and gender-based violence depends on
the attention that "the case" manages to capture, which is even higher
if it involves young white hetero-cis women, better if very young or
mothers or pregnant; cases in which the death is preceded by
disappearance and related "mysteries" also receive great attention, with
elements of spectacularization deeply consistent with the capitalist,
commodified and patriarchal society of which this violence is an
expression. The official and institutional narrative treats other cases
differently: non-Italian or even just non-white women are killed for
"cultural issues"; elderly and perhaps sick women are killed by the
"charitable pity" of spouses or children; poor women by "depression
related to financial issues" or even just stress; mothers who do not
consent to their children's requests are killed because of "lack of
care"; the killings of sex workers are finally listed as "accidents at
work". The description of the violent person often represents him as a
fragile, immature being, or attached to traditional values and incapable
of accepting the woman's independence, however, despite the reprobation,
he is understood. Other times the violent person is represented as the
incarnation of the monster; in this representation, a decisive role is
played by narratives that insist on truculent or voyeuristic details,
which contribute to the monstrosity of the violent, reassuring the
reader/listener about the uniqueness of the person, about his
exceptional brutality, to which other "healthy and reassuring"
manifestations of romantic love, such as possession, jealousy, the
desire for control, are foreign. And the isolated monster, as such, must
be locked up and punished. Here then promptly arrive the institutional
responses made of punitive justice, increased sentences, electronic
bracelets, chemical castrations, or... rehabilitative paths mentioned above.
We know well that the repressive response does not provide solutions and
does not discourage the violence of those who feel they are the masters
of a woman's body, it does not break that macho and sexist vision that
is constantly confirmed by patriarchal stereotypes, today more than ever
reinforced by a fascist government.
Violence is generated by this sexist and patriarchal society, the one
that discriminates, that supports machismo, that encourages and
justifies violent behavior, that cultivates the culture of rape in
schools, in barracks, in the workplace, in institutions.
They suffocate us, they stab us, they shoot us, they rape us, they do
what they want with our bodies and our lives and those of those who remain.
We are cannon fodder for the patriarchal hand that imposes its violent
power without knowing how to deal with a refusal, a no, a care
assignment, without knowing how to deal with the self-determination of
women and free subjectivities.
We are meat for the media that scrutinizes our lives in search of a why.
It is certainly important to multiply all the activities of
deconstruction of sexist stereotypes, but this is not enough to defeat
the patriarchy that constantly gives rise to oppression and violence. It
is necessary that the work of collectives, mutual aid networks,
denunciation and counter-information are welded in a non-gregarious but
intersectional way with the more general anti-capitalist, anti-sexist,
anti-patriarchal, anti-abilist struggle. Breaking patriarchal chains and
the violence they cause means destroying totalitarian institutions,
starting with churches, states, armies, all the "security forces" and
their prisons, to lay the foundations of a free world, without
hierarchies and without discrimination, without dogmas and without
borders, without violence.
Claudine
https://umanitanova.org/in-piazza-contro-la-violenza-di-genere/
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