In a springtime, crooked Palermo, amidst exuberant roadworks that hurt without truly healing, a mother-we'll call her Vita-is summoned to the Juvenile Court. She's not the first, and she won't be the last, but her heart is pounding, and her stammer makes her answers to the judge's questions almost laughable, evidence of a deceitful attitude.
In recent years, Vita has been experiencing the typical difficulties of women and mothers left alone after their husbands' imprisonment. For a brief period, she had hoped that things were smoothing out with her partner's house arrest, but he had scuppered them by returning to crime and returned to prison after a handful of months, unable to prevent the consequences this time being paid by the entire family.Vita has three sons: the eldest, eighteen, will soon give birth to a daughter, the second is in middle school, and the third is finishing elementary school. Some in the family can barely read and write, while others, even though they're still in school, can't. No one has a diagnosis, and Vita doesn't know what it means, but she always provides the entire family with the care she knows how to provide: food, clothing, toys, personal hygiene, respect for the family rules, and presence. The judge, adamant, plays on her shortcomings and her difficulty expressing herself to reassure her that she's a terrible mother and that the two minors will likely soon be removed from their family. A brand-new charge hangs over Vita's head, one that's announced to her in no uncertain terms: complicity with her husband, who, while under house arrest, was found in possession of a considerable quantity of hashish.
The tip-off came one morning when he was the only one at home; Vita was cleaning for her clients, and the minors were with relatives. When the police raided the house, they found the drugs in the refrigerator, and the man's attempts to claim they were for personal use and that no one in the house knew anything about them were in vain. He was returned to prison, and Vita found herself alone once again, angry with her husband, overwhelmed by shame over this new stain on her family's image.
Now that she has been summoned to the Juvenile Court, Vita has urgent homework: she must prove in every way possible that she was innocent of the crimes, that she is a caring and attentive mother, and that she deserves to exercise parental responsibility. The problem is that she can do so by proving herself innocent in the criminal proceedings in which she and her husband are involved, but in the meantime, the Juvenile Court's timeline, as is standard practice, could be much shorter than the outcome of the criminal proceedings, threatening the removal of the children still under her care.
This suspended and painful story, one among many similar ones, provides us with interesting insights for a gender analysis and demands that we do so with the urgency conveyed by these family histories, in which women and children too often experience unexamined and dysfunctional existential patterns imposed on them. Beyond the highly complex reflection on the forced removal of children from their family contexts, which forces them into communities devoid of any emotional dimension and where it is impossible to see their uniqueness valued, the most obvious gender insight is that linked to the dynamics between women and men within family systems in the context of the underclass, amidst delinquency and markedly patriarchal cultural traditions.
Moving away from the risk of discussing justice and legality, I feel the urgency of giving voice to all those women who, caught between socio-cultural disadvantage and a perception of femininity still entirely subordinate to masculinity, spend their entire lives at the mercy of others' will, be it that of their father and brothers, then of their husband, and whoever in his absence assumes "control of the family." Because for every woman fighting to break down patriarchal dynamics, there are still too many who ignore the possibility of an alternative to the gender subordination to which they are forced.
Women who concretely embody a true example of emancipation, finding themselves shouldering everything while being forced to resist the violent winds of institutional rule, yet who meanwhile lack the freedom to stand up to husbands who sell drugs at home, putting the entire family at risk; to fathers who forced them into prostitution; to brothers who beat them when they don't adhere to family norms destined to never change; to all those male figures who pass on the baton of imprisonment, too quickly involving the younger members of the family, who, as men, are destined to suffer the same fate. Women who, in all this degrading chaos, have no right to resist, don't even try; and who must collaborate, endure trials, lose children and grandchildren, reunite in tiny homes with other single women, dividing their time between menial and undeclared jobs, inconsistent schooling for children, demanding care for the elderly, public defenders, and criminal records regardless of their actual criminal record.
The use of the domestic context by men for their business, the violation of that place that is everyone's property but perceived as the property of those in command, corresponds to a cowardly division of blame and to an overexposure of the little ones to contents, practices and testimonies that in fact poison their lives.
The problem is that very rarely is anything resolved by placing those lives in communities, torn from their caregivers, just as nothing is resolved by blaming women for witnessing crimes, because we continue to address the symptom and not the problem, destroying life paths and impoverishing opportunities.
Because, in my opinion, the real problem lies in the lack of alternatives for those women and children.
For many who commit crimes voluntarily, others are unjustly implicated, and the result of a society that gropes its way forward, attempting to apportion blame and inflict punishment is before our eyes, beyond judgment. As long as the family is supported by patriarchal logic, it will be too easy to transform it into a hostile and inimical place, the first and harshest prison, followed by others like pale retorts. In the hope that Vita and all women in her situation can find respite and relief, if not profound change in the years to come, the cry "All free" and the outstretched hand of transfeminist anarchism rise from here.
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Désirée Carruba Toscano
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/wp-content/uploads/giugno2026_compressed-1.pdf
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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