A-Infos (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #26-25 - The Long Trail of Patriarchy. Reflections on Oppression (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Slavery, Marriage, "Bride Price" - Since the formation of governments - 
in other words, since the political power of a few to impose their will 
on everyone else - some human beings have fallen under the control of 
the will of others, in the general forms of domination that Hegel 
famously analyzed in his pages on Lordship and Bondage. Beyond class 
domination, one of these forms of human hierarchy has been the dominance 
of men over women and often also over those with minority sexual 
interests. These forms of hierarchical domination have almost always 
intertwined; the classic example is the connection between slavery and 
male domination over women. A trace of this can be found in the 
etymology of the term matrimonio ("marriage"), as authoritatively 
defined by the Accademia della Crusca:

"The Italian word matrimonio continues the Latin matrimonium, formed 
from the genitive singular of mater (that is, matris) combined with the 
suffix -monium, transparently connected to the noun munus meaning 'duty, 
task'."

Already expressed in these terms, it becomes clear how marriage was 
conceived since ancient history as an imposition of maternity - the 
obligation to bear children for the man. Beyond the strict etymological 
meaning, it is interesting to note that the noun munus has a notable 
similarity and resonance with the Latin term moneta (money), which leads 
us to the mechanism of the dowry: the "bride price" that the woman's 
family would give, in various forms, to the groom and/or his family. In 
practice, it was an additional gift that the bride's family - recognized 
as the owner of the reproductive factor and the sole decision-maker over 
its fate - gave to the groom's family, usually to build and/or 
strengthen inter-family alliances.

In short, the original link between slavery and the marriage of women is 
evident and lasted for millennia: we must not forget - though many do - 
that the free choice of women, the "marriage for love," is an extremely 
recent phenomenon, as is the rejection of pedophilia and the 
non-repression of "nonconforming" sexualities. These phenomena are not 
only very recent but not even universally widespread across the planet 
and have gradually developed since the radical Enlightenment and, above 
all, with the spread of the workers' and socialist movement and its 
specifically egalitarian culture. We will return to this later.

Honorable Crimes
The relationship between slavery and marriage is also evident in the 
long-standing legal legitimization - lasting millennia and disappearing 
only very recently - of the killing of slaves and wives who "escaped" in 
various ways. The logic of such legislation is obvious: slaves and/or 
wives were property of someone else, who had the right to life or death 
over them. This right was exercised when the owner felt "offended" in 
their right to command: by killing those who fled their obligations, the 
killer redeemed their lost honor in front of other dominant owners.

This form of legalized killing lasted for millennia: owners of slaves 
and "dishonored" families or individuals had the unquestioned right to 
regain their lost honor through murder. This practice gradually 
disappeared, beginning with the Enlightenment and especially with the 
workers' and socialist movement: first reduced to an "extenuating 
circumstance" - the so-called "honor killing" - and eventually abolished 
altogether; in Italy this happened in 1981. In some countries of the 
world, it still exists today.

In practice, the so-called modern "femicide" can be read, on one hand, 
as nostalgia for a bygone world and, on the other, as the persistence of 
the sense of ownership over those considered to be one's own wife or 
fiancée. Militant masculinists (see 
https://pasionaria.it/maschilisti-web-maschilismo-sessismo) often point 
to the relatively low number of femicides in Italy to deny that the 
phenomenon represents a "social emergency." The problem, however, is 
that even one femicide per century would be too many - not because we 
pursue the impossible goal of zero killings, but because this type of 
murder indicates the persistence of a mentality which, if allowed to 
develop, would take us back to social relations that, over millennia, 
have produced enormous suffering of which femicide is only the tip of 
the iceberg.

Another thing militant masculinists often highlight is that there are 
not only cases where a man kills a woman for the classic reasons 
associated with femicide, but also reverse cases - where a woman kills a 
man, a woman kills a woman, or a man kills a man for similar reasons - 
and that these cases receive little media coverage. Of course, this is 
true in itself; the problem, apart from the proportions of the 
phenomenon, is that all these other cases are variations of femicide, 
where the patriarchal sense of male ownership over the female has 
manifested in an inverted way or has infiltrated homosexual relationships.

Gains and Backsliding
Another argument militant masculinists use is that in Western countries 
the phenomenon not only of femicide but also of sexist discrimination 
against women and homosexuals has virtually disappeared, and that 
feminists should instead focus on the condition of women and homosexuals 
in nations where it still truly persists. While we gladly embrace the 
call for international solidarity among the exploited and the oppressed, 
we note that the achievements of the exploited and the oppressed in the 
liberal West were not the creation of its values but of rebellion 
against them: Judeo-Christian roots fully belong to the nefarious 
tradition we have described above - the idea that Christianity opposed 
slavery and the subordination of women and nonconforming people is a 
myth, spread only very recently (for many centuries it boasted the 
opposite). As for liberal thought - to which these gentlemen often refer 
- it was founded by a slave trader...

The victories of workers and people of all genders were therefore not 
achieved thanks to "Western values" but against them. Liberal Western 
society - not to mention its authoritarian drifts - responded to demands 
for greater equality and civil rights with cannon fire, prisons, 
torture, and the deaths of millions. Those who fought these battles and 
endured repression were people of all genders, driven by anti-Western 
ideologies: first the Enlightenment, especially in its most radical 
branches, and later, above all, the workers' and socialist movement in 
its most advanced components.

Since the end of the various Resistance movements, hundreds of millions 
of people have filled the streets and minds of the world, bringing 
numerous advances in political and social equality as well as individual 
freedoms. Unfortunately, since the mid-1970s the strength of these 
movements has waned, and consequently all these achievements have been 
gradually eroded.

We said that femicide should not be read only in quantitative terms 
because it signals yet another attempt to return to the past: a possible 
next step in the hierarchical restoration could be the reintroduction - 
legally or de facto - of honor killings. This is, unfortunately, not an 
exaggerated hyperbole: if we look back only a few decades, we see a huge 
number of rights once considered inalienable vanish into nothingness and 
be replaced by norms thought long buried. To remain with the 
intertwining of class domination and patriarchy, the abolition of 
Article 18 of the Workers' Statute - something few have noticed - also 
meant the reintroduction of the possibility of sexual blackmail by 
bosses toward subordinates.

What Is to Be Done
Political and social hierarchy - the domination of some human beings 
over others - has never voluntarily surrendered its existence. As Errico 
Malatesta said:

"Jealous of their present and immediate interests, corroded by the 
spirit of domination, fearful of the future, they, the privileged, are, 
generally speaking, incapable of a generous impulse, incapable even of a 
broader conception of their own interests. And it would be madness to 
hope that they will voluntarily renounce property and power, and adapt 
to being equals of those whom they now keep in subjection. Leaving aside 
historical experience (which shows that no privileged class has ever 
voluntarily stripped itself of its privileges, and no government has 
ever abandoned power unless forced by violence or the fear of violence), 
contemporary facts alone are enough to convince anyone that the 
bourgeoisie and governments intend to use material force to defend 
themselves - not only against total expropriation but even against the 
smallest popular demands - and are always ready for the most atrocious 
persecutions, the bloodiest massacres. The people who want to emancipate 
themselves have no other path than to oppose force with force."
(The Communist Anarchist Program).

The gains achieved by the majority of humanity - now increasingly eroded 
- were the result of the struggle of hundreds of millions of people who 
refused to remain victims and struck back directly, without trusting 
institutions. We should remember how Italy abolished honor killing and, 
more generally, many patriarchal structures: the movements did not 
appeal to institutions, they did not victimize themselves, they 
organized direct actions such as feminist night patrols to guarantee 
freedom of life and desire for women and nonconforming people, and they 
constantly confronted - verbally and sometimes not only verbally - any 
hint of patriarchal logic in public spaces, workplaces, schools, and 
universities.

These struggles gradually pushed patriarchal mentality into a corner and 
largely prevented it from expressing itself. One forgotten fact is that 
in the 1960s and 1970s, rapes and/or femicides were almost exclusively 
committed by men of the far right - consider the notorious Circeo murder 
- or their sympathizers, who viewed their actions, consciously or not, 
as a form of militant anti-communism. Today, as their ideas have spread 
and now hold ideological dominance in society, rapes and femicides have 
once again become widespread even beyond neo-fascist militants and 
sympathizers.

Once it was said, "socialism or barbarism," and indeed it is so. Our 
renewed courage and the regaining of ideological hegemony are the only 
viable path against femicide - and not only against it. For a society of 
truly free and equal people.

Enrico Voccia

https://umanitanova.org/la-lunga-scia-del-patriarcato-riflessioni-sulle-oppressioni/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en