WOMEN´S MOMENTS OF DEFIANCE

Yesterday was the 8th of march, women´s day. i am not usually attached to this date, to the flowers, the sickly rethoric, the tokenistic attitide around it.

this year though is different. the constant attacks on women´s rights have been shocking and extremely violent in the last 12 months. the church, the pope, the politicians, the newspapers, the judges, all have felt legitimated to destroy, culturally and legally, the relative freedom that has been fought for in the last 100 or so years by women.

the last two news items around this topic have both been about court rulings against rapists. Both times, the rapists (charged with rape in court), have been granted a reduced prison sentence:

the first one because the girl he raped, his thirteen year old stepdaughter, had already has sexual relations "with numerous men" at the time she was attacked by him, and "having grow up in a harsh environment she was more prepared (than a "normal" thirteen year old girl) to deal with such an event".

the second man, because the experiences he has had in Iraq (he is an American soldier), the violence he has seen (and probably peretuated?) there, have shocked him and left him unable to understand what is acceptable and what is not. He kidnapped, tied, brutally beat and raped a Nigerian woman.

These are only two examples of the social, cultural and political climate in Italy at this moment in time . i could write many more pages, there is the refusal to introduce the "abortion pill" RU486 because "it would make abortion too easy and too painless", the proposal to have anti abortion volunteers in family planning clinics and in hospitals "to help women make the right choice"....and so on and so forth.

So we thought that it was important to show that there are women around that are not going to take it, and stood around in a freezing square in the centre of town with an amp playing music, with a foto exibition of a women´s march in milan earlier in the year ( i will post my favourite pic soon!), with leaflets and information.

it wasn´t revolution but a tiny moment of defiance.