When an analysis is unassailable but it must be discredited in every
way, one tries to empty the meaning of the word behind the reasoning andrelegate it to something that is now obsolete and outdated, which in
short may have been valid at one time but certainly no longer has
anything to do with today's reality, thus managing to empty that word of
its intrinsic meaning. A similar attack, in this linguistic struggle,
had also been attempted for the term "antifascism" and the consequent
ridiculous attempt to ennoble "afascism" as a more current and impartial
definition. ---- Thus in recent years we find politicians or prominent
figures who speak of patriarchy as something outdated. His death, it is
said, had already been decreed with the reform of family law in 1975, so
it no longer makes sense to talk about fighting patriarchy, but we must
focus, at most, on fighting the chauvinist and macho culture. Let's try
to play with the same cards as this gentleman to see if their thesis
holds up.
On May 19, 1975, with the sole abstention of the Movimento Sociale,
parliament approved law 151. The changes made to family law are
considered a major step forward in the legal development of the country,
as it recognizes women as having a condition of complete equality with
men within the "founding nucleus" of all social action. The previous
legislation dated back to the Civil Code of 1942, which had designed a
family based on a rigid hierarchical structure, at the top of which was
the pater familias, with the children and the wife in a subordinate
position; furthermore, the inheritance was exclusively to the advantage
of male children. That this step was not so obvious and easy can be seen
from the fact that only in 1948 were Articles 29, 30 and 31 inserted, in
which equal rights and duties between spouses were also introduced into
the Constitution. Law 151 was the final point of other acts that had
occurred years before; between 1968 and 1969 the Constitutional Court
had declared Article 559 of the Criminal Code, which only punished
adultery by the wife, to be unconstitutional; while in 1970 the law on
divorce had been approved, reaffirmed in 1974 with the victory of the
"no" in the abrogative referendum.
But did all this really have a decisive and incisive impact on the
culture and customs rooted in the country? Did it really lead to the
decline of the patriarchal family and the affirmation of new legal
institutions and family models? The answer is a clear and unequivocal
no; just think that, always on a legal level, it was necessary to wait
until 1996 for the establishment of the crime of sexual violence (or
rape) as a crime against the person and not against morality, and the
consequent provision of a penalty against anyone who forces someone to
perform or undergo sexual acts.
In the first Penal Code (Zanardelli Code), issued in 1889 in the newly
created unitary State, sexual crimes were distinguished between rape and
violent acts of lust. To decide the type of crime, a real analysis of
the act was carried out, forcing the victim to a detailed reconstruction
of the facts and with detailed questions, it was often the woman who
appeared as the one who had unleashed the man's sexual appetite. Both
crimes remained in the sphere of public morality and family order; the
woman was considered merely for her social function or for the role
that, willingly or unwillingly, she had within the family and society.
The crimes were seen as crimes against procreation and against the
family authority of the husband or father; in short, what had to be
protected were the values of the family and the sacredness of the woman
not as a sentient and autonomous being but as a mother, wife and
daughter. On 1 July 1930, in the midst of the fascist regime, the
infamous Rocco Code came into force; here the crimes of rape and acts of
lust were placed in the categories designed to safeguard "public
morality and good manners". Once again, the woman was erased from the
scene and rape was conceived as an attack on the honorability of the
family and the irreproachability of the conduct of all its members. Even
the penalties were conceived according to the status of the woman; in
fact, if she had been single or, even worse, a prostitute, the penalties
were actually reduced. Another interesting fact, sexual freedom was not
considered a personal right.
For things to change, at least in part, real events will be needed that
are so serious (but aren't they all?) that they will deeply shake public
opinion. In 1965, Franca Viola, after being kidnapped and violently
raped by Filippo Melodia, not only avoided the marriage of reparation
(it was in fact possible to acquit the abuser of the crime of rape if he
then married the raped woman) but she continued the complaint until the
trial. Ten years later, in 1975, I think everyone remembers the events
involving two girls, Rosaria (murdered) and Donatella, brutally beaten
and sexually abused for two days by three boys from the "good Rome"
Angelo Izzo, Gianni Guido and Andrea Ghira. The "Circeo massacre" had
wide resonance and, for the first time, pushed thousands of women and
feminist movements to come together and give life to protests and large
demonstrations in the streets to highlight the problem of male violence
against women, often justified starting from the habits, sexual or
otherwise, of the woman herself. Another case that sparked public
indignation was that of Fiorella, 18, who in 1978 reported rape by four
men, including Rocco Vallone, an acquaintance of hers. Fiorella declared
that Vallone had invited her to a villa in Nettuno to discuss a job
offer as a secretary at a newly established company, and that she had
been kidnapped and raped for an entire afternoon by Vallone himself and
three other men. These events and feminist demonstrations brought to the
fore the urgency of a comprehensive change in Italian society and
generated the necessary push to begin the difficult legislative process
towards amending the Penal Code to finally recognize rape crimes as
"crimes against the person." However, a law would have to wait until
1996, when for the first time, in law 66, there was talk of protection
and respect for the will and free self-determination of women as persons
in their sexual sphere. A significant aspect of Law 66 is also given by
the unification into a single category, sexual violence, of rape and
violent acts of lust. The unification was born from the desire to
protect the victim and avoid the further humiliation of rummaging
through the private and intimate sphere to distinguish the two
categories (investigations that often induced the victim not to report).
Despite this, the representatives of justice are still led (but look at
that!) to have to distinguish the most serious hypotheses from mere
lustful behavior. That is, the judge is given the task of "grading", so
that questions are often asked to the victims to delve deeper into the
dynamics of the fact, the context in which the violence took place, the
relationship between the offender and the victim, etc. Even today,
despite the "death of patriarchy", too often, both in courtrooms and on
mainstream TV and in print, rape cases are analyzed and treated by
placing the emphasis on the victim, on the circumstances in which the
facts took place, whether she asked for help or made her dissent clear,
even inviting women not to wear skirts or not to drink too much, running
the risk of attracting unwanted sexual attention: this is what is called
victim blaming or victim blaming.
All this leads to the question of whether we should intervene again on
the law, eliminating references to "violence" and "threat" and
preferring the definition "against the will" or "against the consent of
the victim". In this way, it would be possible to include more
immediately in the crime of sexual violence also the particular cases of
violence by the spouse or in any case by the partner, where the sexual
act is not always imposed with violence or threat.
On the other hand, the slowness of legal adaptation is linked to a
cultural, social and political delay that in this country, and on these
issues in particular, is very strong. It was only in 1978 that women
were recognized the right to abortion (L.194/1978). While in 1981, with
law no. 442 of 5 August 1981, the criminal relevance of the cause of
honor was repealed: only from 1981 would a crime committed to safeguard
one's own honor and that of one's family (art. 587 c.p.) no longer be
sanctioned with attenuated penalties, thus erasing the assumption that
the offense to honor caused by "dishonorable" conduct constituted a very
serious provocation so as to justify the reaction of the "offended".
Therefore, even following only the case law, it certainly cannot be said
that the patriarchal system has disappeared with the new family law. But
let's continue to follow the reasoning of these right-thinking square
heads according to which today everything should be traced back to male
chauvinism (a cultural and social attitude based on the presumed
superiority of men over women) or machismo (the attitude of a man who
flaunts a flashy virility by assuming behaviors that express strength,
aggression). Here too we cannot agree. Using these terms would relegate
the problem to a purely male attitude or in any case to an exclusively
individual responsibility, limiting in fact the possibility of acting
for a true social transformation. Talking about patriarchy instead means
fighting a culture whose change is a collective responsibility, in which
everyone is involved. It is clear that the patriarchal system has not
been weakened by the new family law, indeed it has led many men to use
even more violence and every other means to claim those rights that were
previously "by law". Only by considering patriarchy as structural to
social organization can we understand why many women not only cannot
free themselves from the role and imposed canons, but are indignant
against those who want to undermine and subvert these roles by not
considering them "natural".
But there is more. Claiming equality between men and women does not mean
being able to do the same things that men do, as the feminine visions of
the Melonian model would like. Becoming a company manager or a
professional politician does not mean breaking the machinery of
exploitation and creating solid foundations for equality. Being part of
the armed forces will not make the Ministry of Defense pinker but
feminism more leaden gray.
Fighting patriarchy means wanting to overturn the hierarchical system
for a life of sharing among equals. It means fighting every form of
oppression and violence, whether physical or economic. The transfeminist
movement is not a war but a lively and alive revolution that must be
implemented not only on March 8th but every day, until we can truly
think of patriarchy as a dark but finally past historical era.
Cristina
https://umanitanova.org/il-patriarcato-e-morto-e-gode-di-ottima-salute/
_________________________________________
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