UDI -  UNIONE DONNE IN ITALIA

The fact that we are offended by the commercial exposition of the female body should bring us to reflect on what violence, for us sexual violence, means today.

Today, violence is part of marketing because it is exciting and stimulates purchase even of a video game or a cinema ticket, today violence is also merchandise represented in a shameless way.

But violence has always been part of the story, rather, History is a story of violence.

During the centuries it has been codified in the use of arms which seemed even nobile and heroic: rape (ethnic or other) seemed only an incident.

We have to redefine this VIOLENCE.

It is brutality.

It is rape, for the pleasure of predation, possession and control.

It is being beaten, for the pleasure of submission.

It is also abuse in public and privately, for the pleasure of humiliating.

It is also a man who yells at you, for the pleasure of  frightening you.

It is everything that we know through statistics which tell us first of all to what extent we are beaten at home. Rarely elesewhere by foreigners or strangers, but always by men.

“FEMMINICIDE”  is the correct word: they want to kill us because we are females, regardless of  status. The motivations and the excuses could be infinite, but that is the right word. They want to kill us because they want to bring us back and make us stay in the only role they accept for us – the role of the female. They want to kill us to make themselves feel males, that is the truth.

Our duty is to  find the offender, to bring him to court and to get him condemned, without appeal,  otherwise we are collaborators.

To do this we need to know WHO we are.

We need to eliminate the barrier between us and other women, between our simulated certainties and the miseries of others.

First of all we have to say WE, we mustn’t think we  are not involved or privileged. We mustn’t be tempted by the destre to sensibilize the women we meet to make them conscious of the fact that they certainly suffer violence that we suffer violence.

We mustn’t pretend that “one woman alone” could do what “we all” are not capable of doing: make men stop using violence on us.

That woman, like us, if she has a job it is likely to be uncertain and less payed, at least in respect to a man with the same job status; if she is owner of her home  it is usually a joint ownership with a man and the children.

If that woman wants justice how could she trust institutions where decisione are taken, including the Parliament, where the number of women is irrelevant?

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But THAT woman is US.

We know that every nation, as a nation, is owned by the men but inhabited  by women , because we know very well that we are more than half of the population.

Therefore, there is a Nation of women that may seem invisibile and without a body but which we notice and recognize every day in every place in every moment queueing in an office, on the tram, in the tube.

Today WE recognize all the women in this little known, hidden and abused nation.

Nation: the Latins called it Natio, goddess of  Birth.

From whom do we come to life, men and women, if not from a woman?

We would like to identify ourselves as citizens, different in respect to territory, language, ethnic group and social status, and affirm our rights to equal citizenship everywhere in the world.

It is our civil duty to affirm and  carry out what seems obvious to us.

The men already identify themselves as citizens of a nation in which everything, really everything, is regulated to suit them, even the act of procreation.

Every woman knows who she is as a citizen, her rights and the way to affirm them. If a woman from another nation does not know, we ought to inform her.

The all important aim in this moment is to act culturally to stop femminicide because a high number of crimes gives the impression that it is the system in itself that is criminal.

For this reason we have exposed the problem to the “Public Prosecutor”  and with campaigns esp. concerning the language: the fact that we call violent deaths of women as a consequence of abuses and rapes sexual violence and femminicide has already modified the perception of these crimes. They are not considered general or vague crimes any more.

Words are significant spies to track down differences and to unmask the use of hackneyed phrases which define us according to a masculine model and design.

When we say “the oldest profession in the world” we all –virtually all- think of prostitution.

We forget that since antiquity the symbolic origin of  prostitution is found in rapes, in men’s obsession for the Amazons, in the rape of the Sabines, in ethnic rapes in Europe as well as in Africa and elesewhere.

This profession is sculptured in the flesh of the women and in the judgment of the men so much that we hide the fact that prior to prositution there are rapes, abuse and violence on the women who are forced to prostitute themselves.

The phenomenon of trafficked women tells us this in all its brutality: once they are reduced to mere objects of trade these women are put on the market where men take pleasure in the humiliation of a human being who has been domesticated through violence: that’s it - sexual violence.

In return they give money to that woman who gives it to the man who has reduced her to slavery: an exchange of favours!

The prostitutes serve as a warning to all of us: they are “the others” we could have been,  but if we start to say out that the oldest profession in the world is that of  the rapist, each gender will know in what to reflect himself.

For this reason we would like to meet other women, all women.

And we want to do it publicly.

For this reason UDI is going to start a “Relay of Women against Violence” which is to begin on Nov. 25, 2008, which is the international day against violence on women, and  end exactly one year later on Nov. 25.

Niscemi, where Lorena was assassinated, is going to be the starting point.

Brescia, where Hiina had her throat cut, is going to end the relay.

The symbol and the baton of the Relay of UDI is an amphora with two handles to be carried by two women which symbolize the importance of the relationship between us.

In every village or town where the relay passes the two women who have carried the baton are to hand it over publicly to two other women.

In every place where the Relay passes the women who participate will organize public meetings, debates, exhibitions, film projections, etc.

On the way any woman can put a message in the amphora, e.g. a written text, a picture, a complaint, personal thoughts.

Every woman, from UDI but not only, can take part in the relay. Those who want to participate have to write to udinazionale@gmail.com before Settembre 30, 2008 in order to create the itinerary.

The Relay is organized by women only or by women’s organisations – party representatives are excludes as well as local authorities and institutions - . It is meant to be a public event caracterized by the different participants who can choose the way they want to take part in the relay. No sponsors are admitted.

Our website – www.udinazionale.org - is going to follow the event step by step from Nov. 2008 onwards giving information about what has been done and what is going to happen.