labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/ 2016- junho 2017 /juillet 2016-juin 2017

 

 

The spectre of “gender”

 Roots, traits and outcomes of a transnational crusade

Emanuela Abbatecola

 

Abstract

The Regional Council of Liguria, Italy, following the example of the Lombardy Region, has recently passed a motion in which it undertakes to set up an office to be understood, quoting the words of the official document, as “a pro family moment for listening, defending the educational freedom held by the family, going to curb the phenomenon of ideological indoctrination known as gender ideology”. What are we referring to when we speak of the Gender Ideology? When was this term coined? By whom? With what objectives?

Local events related to the Liguria Region become here the pretext to reconstruct the history, the traits and the outcomes of a reactionary and avowedly anti-feminist transnational movement, and ponder the reflections of the obscurantist discursive practices of this “no-gender crusade” on the well-being and ego-harmony of the subjectivities that cross the conventionally constructed boundaries of “normality” and the norm.

Key-words: Gender Ideology, norm, family

1. The spectre of gender

A spectre is haunting Europe. But also North America, Russia, Australia and Latin America. The spectre of Gender. Of the ideology - sometimes called theory - of Gender. A spectre which frightens, threatens, produces defensive (offensive?) actions, books, debates and demonstrations on the streets.

Before the early years of the twenty-first century, very few people knew of its existence. Until that time, gender studies in Italy had experienced decades of intense scientific production, which was not rewarded with visibility and recognition. Thus we wrote only in 2012, in the editorial of the number zero of the then new-born journal AG-AboutGender:

“The delay [of Italian universities in relation to Gender Studies] certainly does not concern scientific production, includable in the plenums both for the quantity of papers and for the quality and level of reflections, but rather the visibility of the debate – poorly institutionalised and hardly accessible to young scholars not inserted in the appropriate networks (Abbatecola, Fanlo Cortes, Stagi, 2012, p.II)”.

The delay [of Italian universities in relation to Gender Studies] certainly does not concern scientific production, includable in the plenums both for the quantity of papers and for the quality and level of reflections, but rather the visibility of the debate – poorly institutionalised and hardly accessible to young scholars not inserted in the appropriate networks (Abbatecola, Fanlo Cortes, Stagi, 2012, p.  ).

Gender studies represented a poorly institutionalised “periphery” (Di Cori, 2013; Garbagnoli, 2017), in which (many) female scholars and (few) male scholars often operated in isolation, but in a climate that, in hindsight, we could define of “serene indifference”. Outside of a few non-academic areas of reflection, promoted in particular by the representatives of Equal Opportunities spread all over the national territory, gender studies were little known and reductively associated with women's studies, and did not seem to scare.

Starting from 2013, however, something changed in Italy. Parliament began a discussion of the draft Scalfarotto Law[1] against crimes with a homophobic and transphobic background, considered mild by LGBT movements and as liberticidal by the more conservative and uncompromising Catholic world. On the streets of many cities Sentinelle in piedi (Standing Sentinels) appeared, a silent presence in the style of the French Veilleurs debout (Garbagnoli, 2017), which choose to describe themselves as follows:

"Sentinelle in Piedi (Standing Sentinels) is a resistance formed by people who watch over what is happening in society, denouncing every occasion in which one tries to destroy mankind and civilisation. Sentinels keep watch in the streets to awaken consciences (that are) numb and passive when faced with a single thought. Standing, silent and still we watch over freedom of expression and the protection of the natural family based on the union between man and woman. Ours is a non-partisan and non-denominational network because freedom of expression has no religion or political affiliation, ours is not a movement, it is not an association, but a method, a style, a form of witness…"(www.sentinelleinpiedi.it, visited on 10.03.17).

Sentinelle in piedi, come from all over Italy by organised coaches, and always stage the same, silent and yet eloquent, ritual: they stand in neat rows, a few metres away from each other, holding a book symbolising the need for lifelong learning, and read (or pretend to read) books for an hour, always in strict silence. Sometimes they place candles on the ground, also very tidily, and are not authorised to speak to strangers, except through an official spokesperson.

Sentinelle in piedi, while calling themselves apolitical, actually refer to the conservative movement Alleanza Cattolica, and represent the local front stage of an articulated transnational movement (Garbagnoli, 2017) whose main players, again at the national level, are the Vatican and anti-abortion associations (Paternotte, 2015; Garbagnoli, 2016, 2017).

The transnational nature of the no-gender crusade is also confirmed in the widespread presence of similar rituals. In Slovenia, for example, we find a group named Stražarji, a Slovenian term for Sentinels, who stage a ritual similar to that of “our” Sentinels, by whom they were inspired (Kuhar and Paternotte, 2017). The Italian Sentinels, in turn, take their inspiration from the French Veilleurs Debout. These, unlike their Italian and Slovenian colleagues, are used to singing songs and reading aloud, and lately they have changed their name to Sentinelles, precisely, also with the goal of becoming recognised as a transnational movement (Garbagnoli 2016 and 2017; Kuhar and Paternotte, 2017).

Beyond local specificities, which may relate to the rituals or the emphasis on locally relevant political issues, no-gender movements in the world share rhetorical discourses, practices and methods, and maintain close relations that transcend borders (Paternotte 2015; Hodžić and Bijelić 2014; Kuhar and Paternotte, 2017).

The scheme, wherever, includes: the identification of an enemy, more precisely Gender; standardised rituals always identical with attention to details; the invention of new words, such as the Gender Ideology and, in the Italian case, as an example, the concept of omosessualismo (homosexualism); the obsessive repetition of slogans such as natural family, brainwashed and gay lobby.

The goal is to restore the natural order (pre-feminist and pre-rainbow movements), trying to stop the advance of new rights and bring women back within the traditional confines. How? Spreading fear and moral panic (Lavizzari and Prearo, 2016; Garbagnoli, 2017). Gender thus becomes a dangerous, liberticidal ideology, which comes into schools under the pretext of combating violence and bullying in order to brainwash our children.

Eloquent, in this sense, are the words of Pope Francis:

"Why do “I say ideological colonisation?" Because again the Pope has said, “they come into a people with an idea that has nothing to do with people and colonise the people with an idea that will change or want to change a mindset or a structure by means of children. But this is nothing new. The same was done by the dictatorships of the last century. They entered with a doctrine. Think of the balillas [Italian political group created by Mussolini], the Hitler Youth. They colonised a people, they wanted to do it. But how much suffering. Peoples should not lose their freedom”. (Pope Francis, on his return from Manila, 01.22.2015, Famiglia Cristiana. Author’s bold).

Specifically, there are two main objectives assigned to Gender: cancel out the differences between male and female and spread omosessualismo (homosexualism), thus putting the natural family, founded on a marriage between a man and a woman, in serious jeopardy.

Since 2013, therefore, Gender Studies from the “happy” periphery have become the Enemy, finding themselves at the centre of a hostile media campaign, whose roots are located, however, much earlier in time.

2. Brief history of the construction of an enemy

The literature available (Buss, 1998 and 2004; Garbagnoli, 2014; 2016; 2017; Paternotte, 2014; Bernini, 2016) seems to agree in identifying the two UN conferences of 1994 in Cairo on Population and Development, and of 1995, in Beijing on Women, as a watershed, as they mark the birth of anti-gender rhetorical discourses. In these two international meetings, indeed, the discourse was introduced on sexual and reproductive rights and, above all, the notion of gender became central (Paternotte, 2014).

Already as part of the 1995 conference, Dale O'Leary, a journalist close to the Pro-Life Movements, circulated a paper entitled Gender. The deconstruction of Women, and two years later the same journalist published The Gender Agenda. Redefining Equality. It was not until the early 2000s that there was the invention of the syntagma of Gender Ideology (Garbagnoli, 2014), but the no-gender discursive strategy had been set, and Gender looks out over the scene as a dangerous enemy seeming harmless. The Gender Agenda opens as follows:

“Without fanfare or debate, the word gender has been substituted for the word sex. […] It certainly seems innocent enough. Sex has a secondary meaning – sexual intercourse or sexual activity. Gender sounds more delicate and refined. But if you think the change signals a renaissance of neo-Victorian sensitivity, you could not be more wrong. This change, and a number of other things you may not have taken much notice of, are all parts of the Gender Agenda” (O’ Leary, 1997, p. 11; cit. in Paternotte, 2014, p. 136).

A first work of systematisation of no-gender rhetorical discourse we find in the Lexicon. Termini ambigui e discussi su famiglia, vita e questioni etiche (Lexicon. Ambiguous and discussed terms on family, life and ethical questions), published in Italy in 2003 under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for the Family, in France in 2005 and later translated into eight languages, including Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, German and Spanish (Garbagnoli, 2014).

The Lexicon is an encyclopaedia composed of 78 items drawn up by 70 authors including 15 Italians. Among these, three ultra-conservative cardinals, Carlo Caffara, Angelo Scola and Elio Sgreccia, president of the union of Catholic legal experts Francesco D'Agostino, and the founder of the Movement for Life Carlo Casino (Garbagnoli, 2017).

In the introduction, edited by Cardinal Trujillo, one reads: “One of the most troubling symptoms of moral obfuscation is the confusion of terms “(p. 6)

The stated objective, then, is to “clarify” terms at the centre of the contemporary political struggle around the themes of family and sexual and reproductive rights, the assumption of an alleged pervasiveness of the manipulative use of language, to which an ad hoc item is dedicated (p. 529). In this regard, at the lemma “verbal engineering”, one reads:

"Contemporary ideology is characterised by the manipulative use of language as a resource. Words are used for things that are extraneous to their natural meaning. Semantic transfers are made and use is made of antiphrasis. Thus they build perverse discourses about life, family, development, again in order to colonise public opinion. One is dealing with depriving individuals of their capacity to judge and with free decision making ".(p. 493).

As Dianin (2005) emphasised, in denouncing the liberticide construction of perverse discourses in order to colonise public opinion, however, the authors chose a strongly apologetic and evaluative mode of communication far from the style of classical encyclopaedias. For example, Cardinal Trjillo writes, still in the introduction, of a “[…] disturbing spread of the massacre of abortion” (p. 7), and the “traditional family” item is described as “an expression used in contexts where they want to bring in various forms of union”. (p. 405).

The end of the millennium therefore marked the beginning of a new heated debate that rarely resulte in confrontation, at whose centre is located an unknown enemy in the short century: Gender.

3. Why do gender studies frighten?

Already prior to the above motion on the establishment of an anti-gender office, the Liguria Region had voted and approved by majority vote, in 2015, two other motions very similar to one another, against the so-called "Theory of Gender" in schools. In the press release one reads:


“[...] The motion has been approved [...] with which the council is committed so that in schools of every level and kind in the Liguria region the “Gender Theory” is not introduced and the role of the family is respected in education to affectivity and sexuality, recognising its priority right and so that efforts are made to recognise the value of sexual difference and of biological functional, psychological and social complementarity. [...] On the same subject a second motion was also approved [...] with which the council is committed in schools of all levels, present in the Liguria region, so that the so-called "theory of gender" or equivalent theories are in no way introduced, thus respecting the provisions of the Constitution, the Declaration of Human Rights and all other norms that recognise and safeguard the differences and the complementarity between men and women and the value of the family as a natural society based on marriage” (Press release no. 187/2015, author’s bold).

In these brief passages certain key concepts of the no-gender discursive rhetoric are found - sexual difference, biological complementarity and natural family – from which one infers the vision of society that drives the crusade or, to put it using a rollover and re-signification strategy that, in this case, distances itself from the label re-applying it to its creators, their Ideology of Gender: a traditional society based on marriage between a man and a woman, in which homosexuality and transsexuality can neither be stated nor lived openly, and where the woman is “married and subdued” as the title of the book by Constanza Miriano recites, “Married and be submissive” [2], to be precise, where we read at the start:

"A man must embody guidance, rule and authority. A woman must leave the logic of emancipation and joyfully embrace the role of receptivity and service. It is up to women, it is written in them, to embrace life and continue to do so every day" (Miriano, 2011:1).

The complementarity between man and woman derives from the biological foundation of the differences and a natural order that defines hierarchies, roles and direction of legitimate desire. Order which, because it is based on nature, can only be unique, undeniable, unchanging and fair.

Gender studies, conversely, even in the plurality of voices and perspectives, deconstruct the relations of domination - patriarchy as well as heteronormativity - making them visible and denouncing their social and historical character. Roles, hierarchies and power relations are, in this perspective, the result of complex processes of social construction, and therefore always potentially changeable and moving. Gender studies, therefore, saying that what seems natural, is not natural, make change conceivable. For this they frighten.

In addition, we can also hypothesise that gender studies have also been chosen as a dark and dangerous enemy because, as mentioned at the beginning, unknown to most, distant and abstract, and therefore more easily twistable and translatable into a “monster” harmless in appearance. The same use of the English term Gender, difficult to pronounce for anyone who does not know the language and often referred to in advertising flyers as an “English word that cannot be translated into Italian”, seems to respond to the desire to make the enemy appear to be foreign, and therefore, more fearsome, or as a symptom, as Garbagnoli (2016) writes, of an American cultural imperialism.

4. Let’s defend our children! Strategies and outcomes of the no-gender crusade

To stop the change in order to return to a conservative vision of order and society, it is perhaps easier to create new fears, rather than resorting to old rhetoric now perceived as outdated.

Hence Gender is described as a “dangerous movement of the cultural, anthropological, and sexual revolution”, - as stated in an information leaflet aimed at parents and teachers produced and distributed by the association Non si tocca la famiglia (Hands off the family) - which has as its priority objective “resetting sexual differences”, coming to us as a “clear indoctrination to homosexuality” and as a “powerful new attack on the natural family”.

The school becomes a privileged arena of confrontation, where LGBT associations enter with “Trojan horses”, “promoting seemingly innocuous projects” some of which would consider it “appropriate to set the child off to early masturbation”. “Let’s defend our children”, takes on the nature of a password to every no-gender event, both in Italy and in France.

As Thomas’s theorem, better known as the principle of self-fulfilling prophecy, well explains, all that is considered real will have real consequences. Thus, the rhetorical device of Gender Ideology, being disseminated has produced reactions whose results are tangible: books for a start, such as the case of the mayor of Venice who confiscated from the libraries of pre-schools, some books accused of spreading Gender Ideology (Bernini, 2016); censorship, as in the case of Padua mayor who refused permission for the presentation of the book by Michela Marzano “Mamma, papŕ e Gender (Mum, dad and Gender)” at a municipal hall (Bernini, 2016), or again, the Ministry of Education and the University that blocked the distribution of some brochures entitled “Educare alla diversitŕ a scuola (Educating for diversity at school)", approved by the previous government led by Mario Monti (Selmi, 2015); freephone numbers in defence of the family and anti-gender offices, also conceived as instruments of censorship.

Within a few years, plural, interdisciplinary and dialogue gender studies, have been brought under a single, monolithic and menacing ideology, and the comparison between different visions of society has quickly translated into a violent confrontation.

The discursive rhetoric of non-gender movements has therefore poisoned the climate of intimidation by introducing tools such as anti-gender offices and by producing fear and distrust of projects against gender violence, bullying, homo/transphobia and education for affectivity.

Under attack in recent years, is even the UN resolution for the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the world (2008), the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, and the aforementioned Scalfarotto law proposal concerning contrast of homophobia and transphobia (2013).

I will close, therefore, with a provocation: is it possible that no-gender movements, in the name of defence of tradition and the natural family, are willing to consider violence against women and subjectivity that go beyond the boundaries of the norm, as “collateral damage”?

Bibliography

.Abbatecola, Emanuela, Isabel Fanlo Cortés, Luisa Stagi (eds.). 2012, About Genders. Lgbtqi, Queer, Masculinities, Feminisms and Others Boundaries, AG-AboutGender, International Review on Gender Studies, Vol. 1, N.1: I-XVI, www.aboutgender.unige.it (access date, 05.03.2017).

.Bernini, Lorenzo.2016. La “Teoria del gender”, i negazionisti e la fine della differenza sessuale, AG-AboutGender, International Review on Gender Studies, Vol. 5, .10: 367-381 www.aboutgender.unige.it (access date, 13.03.2017).

.Buss, Doris.1998. Robes, Relicts and Rights: the Vatican and the Beijing Conference on Women, Social & Legal Studies, vol. 7, n. 3: 339-363.

.Buss, Doris.2004. Finding the Homosexual in Women’s Rights, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 6, n. 2: 257-284.

.Dianin, Giampaolo. 2005. Recensione Lexicon: termini ambigui e discussi su famiglia, vita e questioni etiche, www.libreriadelsanto.it/recensioni/9788810241097/lexicon-termini-ambigui-e-discussi-su-famiglia-vita-e-questioni-etiche-nuova-edizione-ampliata/641.html (access date, 10.03.2017).

.Di Cori, Paola. 2013. «Sotto mentite spoglie. Gender Studies in Italia». Cahiers d’etudes italiennes, n. 16:15–37.

.Garbagnoli, Sara. 2014. “L’ideologia del genere”: l’irresistibile ascesa di un’invenzione retorica vaticana contro la denaturalizzazione dell’ordine sessuale, AG-AboutGender, International Review on Gender Studies, Vol. 3, n.6: 250-263, www.aboutgender.unige.it (access date, 20.03.2017).

.Garbagnoli, Sara. 2016. “L’heresie des “feministes du genre”: genčse et enjeux de l’antifeminisme “antigenre” du Vatican.” In Les antifeminismes: Analyse d’un discours reactionnaire, Lamoureux, Diane et Francis Dupuis-Deri, Montreal: Editions du Remue-Ménage: 107–128.

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.Miriano, Costanza. 2011. Sposati e sii sottomessa. Firenze: Vallecchi..O’Leary, Dale .1997. The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality, Lafayette: Vital Issue Press.

.Paternotte, David. 2014. Paternotte, D. (2014), Christian Trouble: The Catholic Church and the Subversion of Gender, «Council for European Studies - Over the European Rainbow – Reviewand Critical Commentary», http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/christiantrouble-the-catholic-church-and-the-subversion-of-gender (consultato il 15.03.2017)2014).

.Paternotte, David. 2015. Blessing the Crowds. Catholic Mobilisations against Gender in Europe, in Hark, Sabine et Paula Irene Villa (eds.). Anti-Genderismus. Sexualitat und Geschlecht als Schauplatze aktueller politischer Auseinandersetzungen, Bielfeld: Transcript Verlag: 129–147.

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Biography

Emanuela Abbatecola
Phd. sociologist, she’s Associate Professor at Disfor, University of Genova, Italy, where she teaches Sociology of Labour and Introduction to Gender Studies.
She’s the Editor in Chief of AG–AboutGender, International Journal on Gender Studies (www.aboutgender.unige.it/ojs). She’s also co-founder and past secretary of the Gender Studies Research Network of the Italian Sociological Association.
She’s an active member of the Laboratory of Visual Sociology of the University of Genoa (www.laboratoriosociologiavisuale.it), where she’s been producing videos and socio-photographic projects.
Her main topics are gender studies, migration, sex trafficking, gender discrimination within the labour market, sexism and homophobia. On these topics she’s been working in different projects, National and European ones, and publishing books and papers.

  Notes:

[1] Approved by the chamber in September 2013, it is still in the Senate.

[2] Originally published in 2011 by Vallecchi, it was published again by Sonzogno in 2013 and translated into Spanish, Polish and French.

 

labrys, études féministes/ estudos feministas
julho/ 2016- junho 2017 /juillet 2016-juin 2017