The inauguration of the president of the United States, with its rituals
endlessly multiplied by the mass media around the world, is one of themost important in American politics: it serves to fuel the mythology of
central power and characterize the politics of the years to come,
exploiting the enthusiasm of the victorious electoral campaign. And the
current president, who even more than his predecessors thrives on image
manipulation, has not missed the opportunity to exploit the moment to
the fullest. During the very first phases of his new office he has
issued dozens of executive orders, that is, acts of presidential
prerogative and immediately executive. Usually issued in small numbers,
it is already clear that this presidency could beat all previous
records. The executive orders we are talking about have been used to
legislate across the board on a series of key issues of the electoral
campaign and to immediately implement the themes dear to the
ultra-conservative lobbies that supported the electoral campaign. But
not only that: this strong ideological imprint is already being
reflected in the private sector, authorizing many companies to review in
an anti-feminist and reactionary direction the little "inclusive"
policies they adopted.
The executive orders range from granting pardons to those involved in
the events of January 6, 2021, to the strengthening of the death
penalty, from the acceleration of hydrocarbon extraction, to the
increase in the powers of the army to several other matters. Some
directly concern gender issues. The order entitled "Defending Women from
the Extremism of Gender Ideology and Restoring Biological Truth in the
Federal Government" revokes the recognition of trans people: already
during his inauguration speech Trump had declared that "From today it
shall be official government policy ... that there are only two genders:
male and female". It is not surprising that the title of this act tries
to disguise it as a paternalistic defense of women (obviously only
cis-hetero women, presumably). As in many other measures, the legal and
moral levels are completely confused, with the use of terms such as
"common sense" and "nature", without any regard for the material
situation in the country, where millions of people live their lives on
the basis of a legal system that, however deficient, nevertheless
granted certain rights, now thrown into chaos. But creating a situation
of regulatory vagueness will already allow the exercise of police
arbitrariness, as is already happening to many migrants or
non-Americans. It is worth remembering that in addition to "common
sense" and "nature", the constant references to a generic "God", which
is that of the evangelicals, are among the main sources of the ideology
behind these rules.
A group of three executive orders instead deals with rescinding the
so-called "DEI" (diversity equity and inclusion) policies, that is, a
set of "active discrimination" policies aimed at trying to compensate
for the underrepresentation of traditionally discriminated groups in
some careers or institutions. This practice is defined as "immoral", as
well as illegal and inefficient, (Trump had also tried to attribute a
recent plane crash to "politically correct hiring") and fuels the myth
of the hordes of profiteers who steal the jobs of honest Americans, that
is, those who conform to the right-wing propaganda image. The teaching
of equality in primary and secondary schools is also banned. The measure
is currently partially blocked in court for an appeal.
The warm reception of this vindictive measure by Republican voters makes
one suspect that these people do not realize how the revocation of these
benefits will directly involve them, in the illusion of being part of a
mythical "us" in perpetual struggle against a "them" on which all
traditional disvalues are projected, and giving approval to classist
policies whose results will be to increase the already incredible gap
between rich and poor in American society. On the other hand, Trump's
"evilness" is a demagogic posture exclusively calibrated to create
consensus on the part of a voting base that must be distracted in any
way from the real situation of the economy, and at the same time to ice
the opposition on an extremely unpopular issue. Let us remember that the
legal basis for free and safe abortion in the United States has already
been revoked, and that the Biden administration has refused or has not
been able to legislate to guarantee it definitively.
The ruling was issued by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in the
context of a proceeding brought by "For Women Scotland", a group for the
"protection of women's rights", which curiously uses as its symbol a
mirror of Venus with two "Xs", just one of the chromosomal combinations
that can lead to a female body "from birth". The well-known successful
author JK Rowling publicly contributed to sponsoring this legal case,
which cost £250,000, and equally publicly rejoiced at the outcome by
publishing a photo on board her yacht. At the moment, this decision is
pending an appeal at the European Court of Human Rights, brought by the
first openly trans judge in England.
The group that brought this case to the Supreme Court sought to repeal a
law that reserved 50% of public committee seats for women, because it
included trans women. The ruling makes a literalist interpretation,
whereby "woman" means biological woman, and therefore excludes trans
women from the class of "woman" in terms of the benefits provided by
anti-discrimination laws. The result is that these benefits will be
limited to cisgender women and - paradoxically but consistently - trans
men. Some government guidelines from the Equality and Human Rights
Commission (EHRC) have wasted no time in complying with this decision,
extending its effects even beyond the scope intended by the court,
generating great chaos and uncertainty for both individuals and many
institutions. The debate is centered on bathrooms, changing rooms and
other private spaces, but the exclusion of trans women from women's
sport has already come into force.
The application of these new rules involves invasive and embarrassing
checks not only for trans people, who already see their freedom to move
in public spaces severely limited, but reinforces the imposition for all
"female" subjectivities, however understood, to carefully feminize
themselves to withstand the patriarchal normative gaze. It is known that
hair, voice, muscles, body shapes are extremely variable in different
subjects and at different ages and that the material data alone is an
extremely illusory foundation for the attribution of genders.
Let's compare the situation with the Italian one.
In Italy, the line adopted by the Meloni government is the one already
seen of the reconstruction of neo-fascists as responsible administrators
and of Meloni as a reliable "statesman" through superficially reassuring
statements, while there is no shortage of repressive measures on gender
issues, such as the circular from the Ministry of the Interior which in
March 2023 asked municipalities to stop recognizing and registering
children of homosexual couples, the institution of GPA as a universal
crime, an old right-wing hobbyhorse, and others. as if the government
did not find it strategic to engage directly on these fronts at this
stage, preferring to criminalize all dissent with an unprecedented
tightening of criminal laws. Italy thus remains formally in the field of
the Europe of civil rights, perhaps so as not to resemble too much that
Putin who until a few years ago was one of the political references of
the parties of the current majority. But the current government seems to
prefer to move on the administrative level and the silent denial of
services, rather than openly legislate against rights: just think of the
cases of triptorelin and the attacks on the Careggi hospital, the same
circular directed at the registry offices mentioned above, acts that are
difficult to amend with the administrative judiciary. In Friuli Venezia
Giulia alone, in the past considered an excellence in gender
reassignment surgery, operations have been suspended since before the
pandemic. On the other hand, in Italy, Catholic-fascist institutions and
associations are in excellent health and are very willing to continue
the field of reaction. Among these, Arcilesbica nazionale has
tenaciously maintained an anti-trans and queerphobic position for
several years now (it defines transsexuality as "a dream, an illusion,
etc..."), and while claiming an anti-patriarchal and anti-clerical
political identity, it has publicly agreed with Giorgia Meloni's
positions on the issue, also attracting the curious interest of "la
nuova Bussola Quotidiana" and Pro Vita e Famiglia. The concrete requests
of Arcilesbica nazionale, in addition to rights for lesbians, are above
all aimed at asking for more stringent guidelines in the protocols for
transition and other anti-trans norms. It is therefore not surprising
that the British Supreme Court has been rejoicing over its ruling,
evidently considering the dismay of many trans people (including many
lesbians) and many others as justice finally rendered against dangerous
fringes and a victory for "real" women.
But is it really true that "one is born a woman"?
Many of the rights against which the authoritarian international is
moving today had been granted in previous phases thanks also to
grassroots struggles, and although they have concretely improved the
lives and safety of LGBT people, they were based on the capitalist
exploitation of differences. Like all granted rights, they are subject
to revocation when the political wind changes, and even the numerous
"inclusion" initiatives within companies seem to have their days
numbered since big capital has no advantage in not conforming to the new
climate. It is foreseeable that we could soon witness a reversal of the
restrictive trend in corporate pinkwashing.
We are therefore faced with the erosion of a series of rights that in
any case were granted by an apparently benevolent but in reality
unreliable and opportunistic power. The new conservatives, while
boasting of starting from very concrete and obvious data - "biology",
"common sense" - invoke the magical-constitutive power of the normative
word and must necessarily resort to normative prescription to produce
the patriarchal system, denying an already existing reality in which as
non-cishetero subjectivities we practice our few rights. If gender
binarism were so obvious and self-evident, these megalithic normative
devices would not be needed to continuously reproduce it. Far from being
technical, neutral, apolitical statements, they constitute a very
precise plan for the affirmation of heterosexuality as the norm, with
all due respect to the lesbian activists who participated in this
transphobic campaign, evidently deluded into thinking they could
domesticate state power under the cover of paternalistic protection of
women as solely passive subjects and victims. Let us not forget the
intersex people who undermine every claim of an irrevocably biological
foundation of gender, and still suffer some of the most brutal medical
violence.
It is always sad to see groups that in the name of defending the female
body invoke state repression precisely on sexual bodies, with the
spectre of phantom situations of danger that in reality never arise
(cisgender men are still statistically by far the greatest threat to
security), even at the cost of creating real, concrete and frequent
situations of danger and discomfort for trans people, who - despite
magistrates, clergy and exclusionary activities - exist. And it is sad
to see the exultation for a sentence reached also thanks to the
sponsorship of a billionaire who has made the TERF speech her personal
obsession, and who fully manifests the instrumental division of capital
to distract from the patriarchal appropriation of work and of the very
identity of people.
The governments' relentlessness towards non-compliant people, dressed up
in scandalous tones and passed off as a moral cleansing operation, is
functional to distracting from the generalized impoverishment of the
subaltern classes, from the theft of resources and from the arms race.
Beyond the rhetoric and inefficiency of governments, there is a
demonstrated correlation between the erosion or even just the
questioning of the protection of minorities and an increased physical
threat to people, the increase in suicides, the worsening of
employability and quality of life and access to services. Let us commit
ourselves to offering welcome, visibility and complicity to people who
are at risk of losing their rights in a perspective of class solidarity
and let us continue to point the finger at the false alternative between
freedom and economic well-being.
If the cruelty elected as a system is their legality, we will always
have on our side the multifaceted ungovernable unpredictable reality of
gender and life.
Julissa
https://umanitanova.org/lo-stato-da-lo-stato-toglie-la-risacca-dei-diritti-civili/
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