VIOLENZA DI GENERE E NEOFEMMINISMI. DISCORSI E PRATICHE

In the last five years, gender violence has represented one of the main topics of the Italian public and political debate. Its importance is due to its mobilizing power, often related to the security emergency against strangers by the mass media and the institutional politics. At the same time, it has been exploited to impose a moral and social control on women's sexuality. In October 2007, the murder of Giovanna Reggiani in Rome by a man living in an illegal nomad camp, became the core of a political and media alarm that drifted towards racist instigation against the so-called “gipsy” communities and their camps. Several attacks to nomad camps also degenerated into pogroms. In this violent and moralistic background, a different discourse was elaborated by the Italian feminist movement which organized, a month later, a demonstration called “Not in my name” against gender violence and racism, for the anniversary of the UN global day against women violence. The demonstration denounced the preeminence of gender violence between intimates in Italy, highlighting the importance of a feminist perspective in order to understand and contrast gender violence. Indeed, the historical connection between feminist experience, practice and knowledge and the definition of gender violence as a social problem is definitely intrinsic. This study aims at analyzing the contemporary political feminist discourse about gender violence which involves, at the same time, the redefinition of concepts and cognitive tools such as gender, feminism, queer, sexuality, norm, equality and difference. The analysis of documents and interviews to feminist activists reveals a deep criticism towards the heteronormative speech of gender, seen as the context in which gender violence is produced and naturalized. In conclusion, gender violence can be defined as a social construction that changes with social and cultural transformations depending on the political and social processes of emancipation and self-determination undertaken by women in the last four decades.