The rights of men and boys are under attack in Italy: media is running a violent defamatory anti-male press campaign with the goal of passing new feminist laws (such as the Istanbul Convention[1]) and 85 million € in public funds for those feminist organizations that attack men by pretending to protect women from what they call “gender violence.” Sound familiar?
Media keeps on repeating that the so-called “male violence is the first cause of death for women”. The truth is that all violence is that the rate of female deaths is only 0.056% (that is 0.56 per 100,000 inhabitants) and women represent only 23% of the Italians who get killed. Long story short, both men and women mostly kill men[2].
The Media keeps repeating that 7 millions of Italian women are victims of male violence. This false claim is based on a phone survey, where Italian women receive questions such as “does your partner criticize your dressing?” Women who answered “yes” have been counted as a victim, without even knowing it. The statistical fraud became evident when the researchers asked the same questions to men, getting the same rate of “yes” answers. Do the Italian feminists care about inconvenient things like facts? Of course not.
Media then goes on and repeats endlessly that Italy is the country of “femicide” and lobby for a “femicide” law. They want that killing a woman be considered a more serious crime than killing a man. The truth is that almost 50% of these acts are committed by desperate men who follow their actions with suicide. Even so, Italy is one of the safest countries in the world for women: 5 women killed per million inhabitants each year[2].
This “femicide” thing is not a new one. The global feminist lobby succeeded in passing this in Argentina[3] – where murdering a woman (but only if the perpetrator is male) carries a life sentence, whilst any other murder (woman versus man or man versus man) carries a sentence of 8 up to 25 years of imprisonment. Basically, the law literally states that a man’s life is less relevant for the society.
The Italian media also ignores much bigger problems, such as the suicide rate among separated fathers which is 284 per year per million. The suicide rate gets 4 times higher with separation, when men and children have to deal with a sexist judiciary system and with false accusations[4].
How can things be so bad, given that sexist laws which are more explicit in various European countries, do not exist in Italy because Article 3 of the Constitution has so far been successful in blocking them? The article in questions reads that all citizens are equal in front of the law without any distinction of sex, race, language, religion….[5]
Italy is a strange country where what you see is not what you get.
Feminism never got popular among Italians. However, it has become politically powerful. Indeed, the main feminist organizations, like UDI (Union of Italian Women), were founded by PCI (The Italian Communist Party) and still have a strong power, mainly in left-leaning parties. Through politics, Italian feminism got a strong artificial influence on the media and in the State. Still doesn’t sound familiar?
Almost all Italian newspapers are funded by the State and host a feminist blog. For example, the communist journal “il Manifesto” (The Manifest) hosts the blog caked “women and female children first” with similar ones being in the main Italian newspapers. Comments from readers are often censored, and even those that get past the censorship are still mostly negative. Anyhow, almost nobody in Italy believes in the official media, and the Internet allows free information to flow. Men’s rights, attract interest among real people: for example hundreds of thousands of people follow a Facebook group that speaks for the rights of everybody. There is one father who managed to get into the official media. He opened a fake feminist web-site, publishing extreme versions of the usual anti-male rants, with the goal of exposing them. Journalists believed that it was real feminism, so now “she” is on the official media (for the moment “her” name is a secret).
Political power, however, is the bigger problem. Italians can vote for parties, but not for politicians. Once elected, politicians can do whatever they want. One government decided that the State should give money to employers who hire women. Meanwhile, 400 unemployed men commit suicide every year. That government then fell as they got only 10% of the votes in the new elections. But the situation got worse: politicians have decided to put in the third most important position in the state a feminist from an extreme left party that got only 3% of the votes. One should also remember that up until recently, Italy was led by the Mario Monti government, a government that has been literally imposed by the bully-boys from Brussels (that is the EU) who went on to sack the previous government and placed a puppet for which nobody voted.
Like all countries, Italian men work and earn more because many women prefer the traditional female role rather than becoming workers.
Unfortunately, or should we say – not so surprisingly – there is one moment when many Italian women go on and accept feminism and the institutionalized misandry: That is the moment of divorce.
Under this demand, Italian feminism became a sort of “mummy-ism” which goes against even the international feminism. This shows once again that feminism is strictly about political power and that they will throw ideological consistency they might have had out the window if that brings them closer to more political power.
For example, Swedish feminists support child-care for working mothers, support joint custody such that women can pursue careers (or at least they claim to and try to maintain certain appearances). Italian feminism, however, does exactly the opposite and is the enemy of fathers who take care of children: they argue that children must stay with the mother until they are 3 or 6 (… or 18) years old. The rationale behind this is clear from the words of a feminist lawyer:
The situation is not so bad until the woman has the “cover” of children; when they grow, the women lose the family house, lose the alimony…
Basically, we have an exaggerated (but very real) form of the tender years doctrine.
When the Parliament approved a joint custody law in 2006, feminism took the only possible road in a country where laws are good but respecting them is optional: Illegality.
False accusations are very effective in the country with one of the slowest judiciary system of Europe.
The results of these criminal acts have been described by many judges. Judge Carmen Pugliese said[5]
“Only 2 out of 10 accusations of violence are true. The others are used as blackmail against husbands in divorces”.
Gian Ettore Gassani, president of AMI (one of the main lawyer associations) says:
“It is an emergency, the judges of Rome established that 75% of accusations against ex-spouses are false, done with the purpose of getting advantages”.
Judge Barbara Bresci added:
“Very often accusations are used to obtain children and alimonies”.
Judge Jacqueline Monica Magi said:
“It might seem unbelievable that false accusations of sexual and child abuse are used … almost always done by women that try to remove the fathers”.
The psychologist Sara Pezzuolo says:
“False accusations of violence, sexual abuse build to eliminate the ex-partner range between 70% and 95%”.
Luca Steffenoni, expert of crime, computed in a book that accusations are used in 86% of the divorces. A research by Prof. Camerini et al. showed that in Italy 80% of persons accused of child abuse are fathers, and they turn out to be innocent in 92.4% of the cases.
Even when false allegations are not used, Italian fathers suffer hard times, as described by the New York Times[6]:
Even though a 2006 law made joint custody of children the norm when parents split, Italian courts continue to make mothers the primary caregivers while fathers bear the financial brunt of the separation. Critics say the law, as it is applied, favors women […]
When Umberto Vaghi, a sales manager in Milan who was divorced last year, split from his wife in 2004, for example, he was ordered to pay her 2,000 euros, or about $2,440, each month for upkeep on their home and support for their children, then 10 and 8. Each month, Mr. Vaghi was earning 2,200 euros, or about $2,680.
In Italy, charities say that a growing number of those using soup kitchens and dormitories of churches and other agencies are separated parents. “An uncomfortable reality but easy to believe, considering that 80 percent of separated fathers cannot live on what remains of their salary,” Ms. Saso, the researcher, wrote.
The Rev. Clemente Moriggi, who oversees the Brothers of St. Francis of Assisi, a Milanese Catholic charity, said that in the past year separated fathers, ages 28 to 60, occupied 80 of the 700 beds in the foundation’s dormitories, which do not house children. That is more than twice the number of just a few years ago. “These men earned average salaries that only left them tears to cry once they paid their alimony and mortgages,” Father Moriggi said.
The democratically voted joint custody law is not applied by judges: ADIANTUM (association for children rights) launched a class action against the Italian judiciary system, with an on-going collective proceeding at the European Court for Human Rights, a court that has already sanctioned Italy in many individual cases[7].
Meanwhile the judges do the contrary and sometimes apply a principle (that has never been democratically voted, mind you) adopted by Cassazione (the Italian Supreme Court). In order for them to quantify alimonies, they invented the “right to keep the life-style adopted during wedding”. The result has been described by the New York Times: men become slaves who work with a good salary, but still need to ask charities for a bedroom and for food.
Still doesn’t sound familiar?
Two recent rulings exemplify how judiciary system works. On March 8, 2013, the Cassazione ruled that children must be protected from the parental alienation syndrome (PAS): the alienator was a father. On March 20, 2013, basically in the same month, the Court ruled in a case where the alienator was a mother: the same Cassazione decided instead that PAS has not enough scientific support. So basically, according to the Italian Supreme Court, PAS exists only when the mother can benefit.
The President of Cassazione was in both cases Maria Gabriella Luccioli, already criticized in the past for other sentences. The main Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, wrote in 2008[8]:
She rewrote family law. Everything and always in favor of women.
The second main newspaper, la Repubblica, wrote in 1997[9]:
Somebody tells that Cassazione is becoming feminist.
Just as I am writing these lines, the Italian Parliament has unanimously ratified the Istanbul Convention[10]. I don’t want to sound grim but it’s almost game over. With the Istanbul Convention ratified, the Constitution is worth nothing if female interest are at stake.
Gentlemen of Italy, you are in a state of war with the State and with the gender ideology commonly known as feminism. The stake of this war is no longer just some legal rights, but your life, literally.
The European News Department passes special thanks to Pasquale Binelli in helping with this material.
References:
[1] http://www.avoiceformen.com/feminism/government-tyranny/the-great-danger-of-the-istambul-convention/
[2] http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/homicide.html – United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – Homicide Statistics (in English)
[3] http://www.gandul.info/magazin/crimele-impotriva-femeilor-vor-fi-pedepsite-cu-inchisoare-pe-viata-in-argentina-10328839 – Murders against women shall be punished with life imprisonment in Argentina (in Romanian)
[4] http://www.eures.it/upload/doc_1305878239.pdf – EURES report on suicide rates in Italy (in Italian)
[4] http://www.wipo.int/wipolex/en/text.jsp?file_id=230621 – Constitution of the Italian Republic (in English)
[5] http://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/commissioni/comm02/documenti_acquisiti/957%20FENBI%20-%20A.pdf – An expert report about the issue of false allegations in Italy (in Italian)
[7] http://www.avoiceformen.com/men/mens-issues/italy-condemned-by-echr/
[8] http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2008/luglio/11/giudice_che_cambia_diritto_famiglia_co_9_080711106.shtml (in Italian)
[9] http://www.repubblica.it/www1/sessi_stili/cassazione/intervista/intervista.html (in Italian)
[10] http://www.agi.it/flash-news/articles/201305281812-pol-ren1092-italian_parliament_ratifies_istanbul_convention (in English)
Associazione di Associazioni Nazionali Per la Tutela dei Minori (The National Association of Associations for custody of Children) has translated this article into Italian. The Italian version of this article can be found here.
