A-Infos (en) Italy, FAI, Umanita Nova #18-25 - We want to live3. Putting an end to the domination of bodies (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Martina Carbonaro was fourteen years old, she was stoned to death by the 
man the media continued to call her boyfriend, insisting on highlighting 
the very bond that Martina had wanted to break. The boy who was a little 
older than her who killed her, covered her with garbage and threw her 
under a wardrobe when she was still dying, was just someone who claimed 
to be the master of a body and a life. ---- On the same day that 
Martina's body was found, a 61-year-old woman was killed by her husband, 
in Grugliasco, near Turin. Her name was Fernanda Di Nuzzo and she was a 
teacher in a municipal nursery school. Very little was said about her, 
she was only mentioned in a brief passage in the news, her name does not 
resonate in our heads and ears like Martina's, she is one of many, those 
who do not seem to deserve minutes of silence, banners, talk show 
episodes. In the following days, other women were killed. It would be 
grotesquely out of place to argue about such an atrocious record, but a 
reflection must be made, because the hierarchical narrative of 
feminicides put into action by the media is unbearable, as if some lives 
mattered more and others less.

When the one killed is a good girl, a model student, or an 
irreproachable mother, the case has an enormous resonance. If it is a 
slightly wayward girl, a lesbian, a woman free in her relationships, or 
even a sex worker, there is an opposite resonance, full of disapproval, 
almost as if feminicide were an inconvenience to be taken into account. 
If it is then about the many, many, who do not fall into these 
"categories", interest is not even activated, their name is mentioned 
once and quickly forgotten.

The media narrative criterion is that of spectacularization, which 
grants more visibility to some cases than others, somehow favoring the 
ordinary and normalized perception, for example, of feminicides in an 
"ordinary" family context, which represent the majority of cases.

For some years now, the Observatory against lesbian and 
trans-feminicides (FLT) of NonUnaDiMeno has been active, a very 
important tool, managed by a working group that is carrying out the 
census of deaths independently and according to criteria other than the 
official ones. The data is updated every 8th of the month and the count 
is not aligned with that provided by Istat and the Ministry of the 
Interior. The official censuses often lack, for example, data relating 
to sex workers, frequently classified as deaths at work, or to 
homosexual, trans or intersex people, often ascribed to crime news and 
disrespectfully identified with the anagraphic names that do not 
represent their history and paths. The Observatory's work is not just a 
different calculation criterion, which includes all deaths induced by 
gender-based and heterocispatriarchal violence (feminicides, lesbian 
murders, transcides, induced suicides and, in specific sections, 
assassination attempts and cases still being investigated). The 
Observatory's work expresses first and foremost the desire to occupy a 
space and a role in measuring a phenomenon, moving away from commentary 
on the individual event and the single case to address an issue that has 
clear systemic characteristics. Data collection is accompanied by a 
questioning of the media narrative frequently based on a romanticization 
of the facts and on the victimization of the murderer, by the breaking 
of the census scheme rigorously set on gender binarism, by the rejection 
of the spectacular criterion that grants more visibility to some 
feminicides than others. The survey carried out by the FLT Observatory 
certainly does not follow the hierarchical criteria that condition 
official news and narratives.

However, Martina Carbonaro has certainly been talked about a lot, for 
the inevitable emotional involvement due to her very young age, but not 
only. Martina's case is also convenient for those who want to focus the 
spotlight exclusively on young people, on what is defined as their 
inability to manage emotions, relationships, affectivity, sexuality. As 
if violence only concerned them. Among the perpetrators of the 
forty-eight femicides that occurred from the beginning of 2025 to the 
time of writing, we have only a 22-year-old and a 23-year-old, the 
others are older. Femicides occur mainly in the domestic environment, in 
the cohabitation relationship that concerns a very specific age group, 
statistically identified around fifty, in that violent context that is 
the patriarchal family. Then there is the disturbing phenomenon of the 
increase in killings of elderly women by sons or husbands who are 
clearly incapable of assuming a caring role considered natural for a 
woman but not for a man. It is clear that gender violence is not a youth 
phenomenon. No one denies the evidence of a news story that shows 
attacks, fights, settling of scores, etc., in which young people, 
especially in social places, are often involved. But it is not just 
about young people. And it is not just about individual brutality. 
Without taking anything away from individual responsibility, let us look 
around and try to understand what it is that nourishes us, that is 
transmitted to us. Everything around us is violence, domination, 
oppression, both in the dimension of concrete reality and in the 
cultural one. From wars, to the aggressive policies exercised by various 
governments, to the aggressiveness of the languages and styles used in 
ordinary communication, even institutional ones, to the brutality of 
repression and social exclusion: we live immersed in a general culture 
of violence and in a specific culture of rape, but this seems not to be 
relevant, the problem seems to be only of the young.

It is a convenient solution, the patriarchal and sexist society that 
generates violence is not questioned. And the answer, as always, is the 
security one.

A bill was recently presented that increases the penalties for the 
perpetrators of feminicides by introducing life imprisonment in a 
generalized way. A measure that would follow others that have 
proliferated in recent years and have proven ineffective. Just think of 
the Red Code launched in 2019, then strengthened in 2023: a toughening 
of penalties in a framework that is still harassing for the victim, who 
must be heard within three days of the reported facts. Not to mention 
the various sanctioning initiatives implemented (the useless electronic 
bracelet) or dreamed of (chemical castration). All this while resources 
were being cut for anti-violence centers or diverted to institutions 
responsible for the re-education of abusive men who in this way obtained 
sentence reductions and access to probation. Now the bill approved by 
the Council of Ministers last March 7 - a date not coincidental for 
propaganda purposes - introduces life imprisonment for feminicides, 
effectively reintroducing what is already provided for by the current 
regulations for homicides, with a therefore useless provision. An 
initiative also criticized by many jurists for the fact that the fixed 
penalty of life imprisonment would not allow for consideration of 
mitigating or aggravating circumstances and would therefore be contrary 
to the very principles of criminal law. Therefore, the exclusively 
"populist" and symbolic intent of this provision and the lack of 
preventive initiatives are noted from many quarters.

However, the prevention around which the institutional political 
opposition reasons, as well as those sectors that occasionally proclaim 
themselves "civil society", but also large and varied layers of 
movement, always brings us back there: school, young people. An 
affective and sexual-affective education that educates in the culture of 
consent and respect from the first years of school. It is certainly a 
good thing, but are we sure that this is decisive in overthrowing the 
patriarchal and sexist culture that generates violence? And even before 
that, are we sure that it is possible?

Valditara is the minister who denied the existence of patriarchy, 
considering it an ideological whim of feminists; he is the one who 
directly linked sexual violence with "illegal immigration" when 94% of 
femicides are committed by Italians. Valditara is the minister who with 
the Sasso resolution blocked projects of education on differences and 
even against gender violence considering them vehicles of the dangerous 
gender ideology; is the one who defined gender violence as a "sad 
pathology", an isolated germ that unfortunately and casually strikes 
someone. Do we believe it is possible to move in a direction of rupture 
by ministerial order? And when Valditara leaves and perhaps the current 
government will do the same, are we sure that the overcoming of 
patriarchy will happen by possible revision of the ministerial programs 
of some more "progressive" government in a hierarchical structure like 
the school one? And who will be entrusted with this education? Being a 
teaching figure does not mean not being sexist, not having a patriarchal 
culture, not being homophobic, not being misogynistic. Other figures? 
Trained by whom? But above all: is it credible that a patriarchal and 
sexist society wants to give up being so or even simply wants to modify 
an important part like that of the school, in which that cultural system 
that allows it to perpetuate itself is reproduced?

One thing we are sure of: when things change, and we have seen that 
changes are possible, it is because the social ferment is powerful, 
because the push towards freedom has a strength, a capacity for 
elaboration and production of experiences that can subvert the existing, 
putting institutions in a corner, forced in some way, against their 
will, to accept the change.

We must fully exploit this potential, connect with the struggles aimed, 
in their objectives and methods, at a radical transformation, feed them, 
free ourselves from the waste and encrustations that also act on us, 
especially when we are on the slippery terrain of interpersonal 
relationships. We must put an end to the domination of bodies, truly 
free ourselves from violence.

P.C.

https://umanitanova.org/ci-vogliamo-viv3-mettere-fine-al-dominio-sui-corpi/
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