Oh, Give It A Rest!

My queer friends in Italy are so worn down by discrimination, they don’t notice it. Here’s why.  I was chatting online the other day with a female friend who is undergoing IVF in Italy to have a child with her girlfriend. IVF for lesbian couples is not approved by law in Italy; instead, doctors have the power to decide whether to approve the treatment on a case-by-case basis. My friend was enthusiastic about her gynaecologist, because, as she told me, “despite being utterly against same-sex parenting, she is helping us do it without objecting”.

So, it's not all doom and gloom? Well, Viola Di Grado isn't convinced:

That conversation left me with a bitter taste and, above all, confirmed how desensitised queer Italians have become to the daily discrimination they face. As an Italian who has spent most of my adult life abroad, I feel I have the privilege of being able to examine from afar LGBTQ+ Italians’ perceptions of homophobic mistreatment in their own country. From this vantage point, I can see that the hardships they experience have made it difficult for them to detect when they are being unfairly treated.

The woman literally just told you that she wasn't unfairly treated! Why do you feel entitled to 'correct' her?  

I asked my friend if she was aware that “objecting” – even if it was acceptable to “object” to equality, which it isn’t – should never be expressed in a medical setting if the service provided is being approved and paid for. She sounded confused by my question, not because she didn’t share my concern, but because, as she later explained, she feels it would be “too much” to complain.

You begin to see just how much these single-issue loons must get on their more reasonable friends' nerves as well as everyone elses. 

Of course, the OffenceFinder General isn't going to leave it there...

Around 10 years ago, when I was in my 20s, I moved into a new house with my girlfriend and a straight Italian couple we had just met. One of the first things my girlfriend said to the couple was “Viola and I are dating”. In response, the guy in the couple replied: “No worries, it’s fine for us.”

The basta...No wait. He's fine with it? Well, I guess no-one could object to that, surely? 

This answer falls into the same category as the mostly sympathetic gynaecologist. Both express an acceptance of a same-sex partnership, but the problem is that neither take it as a given, but as something they choose to accept out of an act of kindness.

Oh, FFS!  

A few years later, a guy I was dating asked me if I was bisexual because of some trauma, implying that otherwise I would be 100% straight. Again, he too reassured me that he had “nothing against same-sex couples”. When I told my friends about both instances, they were mostly unimpressed. They didn’t see why it was such a “big deal”.

Maybe they are right, and you're being overly sensitive? 

It doesn’t help that there are still very few examples in Italy of visible public figures, such as singers and actors, who are “out and proud”. That, more than anything else, would help to build a counter-narrative in the fight for equality. Instead, there are still celebrities promoting so-called traditional family values, such as popular singer Carmen Consoli, who, despite having undergone IVF abroad as a single mother, declares she believes the “traditional family” is better than any other kind.

Well, one's been in use for hundreds of years. So...maybe it is? And if she thinks that, who are you to try to tell her she's wrong? 

Oh, Here We Go…

...Tolkein's in the 'racism' spotlight again:

Over the years, Italy’s ultra-conservative prime minister has quoted passages in interviews, shared photos of herself reading the novel and even posed with a statue of the wizard Gandalf as part of a campaign. In her autobiography-slash-manifesto, she dedicates several pages to her “favourite book”, which she refers to at one point as being a “sacred” text. When I read the news this week that Italy’s culture ministry is spending €250,000 to organise a Tolkien show at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and that Meloni will attend the opening, I couldn’t help wondering: why? What is this government trying to achieve by stamping its mark so aggressively on one of the world’s most loved fantasy sagas?

Maybe just to watch you get your Y-fronts in a bunch, Jamie?

When The Lord of the Rings first hit Italian shelves in the 1970s, the academic Elémire Zolla wrote a short introduction in which he interpreted the book as an allegory about “pure” ethnic groups defending themselves against contamination from foreign invaders. Fascist sympathisers in the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) quickly jumped on the provocation. Meloni, an MSI youth wing member, developed her political consciousness in that environment. As a teenager she even attended a “Hobbit Camp”, a summer retreat organised by the MSI in which participants dressed up in cosplay outfits, sang along to folk ballads and discussed how Tolkienian mythologies could help the post-fascist right find credibility in a new era.

At this point, my eyes were rolling so much they nearly fell out of my head... 

Obviously, we’re talking about a fringe movement here. But it’s worth recognising that, with a little imagination, the sagas of Middle-earth do fit pretty neatly into the logic of contemporary rightwing populism.

Paging Dr Freud... 

 

I Can Explain, Signor Ortelli...

Sergio Ortelli, the mayor of Giglio, said “This is a legitimate project. I don’t get why there is all this pantomime,” he said.

“The animals are not indigenous to Giglio and they can be legally hunted, like wild boar.”

It's because they aren't animal lovers at all, they are people haters. We have them here, too, sadly. 

And this is a good example of the level of intelligence they possess:

Just who does he think is scenting, then? The horse? The riders...?