Commentary
Property and power: the origins of male domination of women
It is an act of complicity to continue to downplay male violence as a residual phenomenon now on the wane. The number of femicides shows no signs of decreasing.
Minister Valditara’s words at the official presentation of the foundation named after Giulia Cecchettin were tone deaf, inappropriate, unacceptable. We are not interested in following his approach, that of blaming “irregular migrants” for being allegedly responsible for violence against women, something that is, moreover, refuted by the data. Instead, we want to reiterate in a forceful and simple manner that this kind of violence is committed by men on women, and that it is unequivocally gender – not skin color or social and labor status – that is at the heart of the problem.
We are speaking out as scholars who in recent decades have produced a great quantity of rigorous and valuable research that pointed to the ancient (and European) ius corrigendi as one of the starting points of this story: abolished only in 1956, it consisted of a man's right to “educate and correct” his wife and children, including by the use of force, and represented one of the many sites of the construction of male domination.
Just as crucial is what we might call the “archetype of property,” in Carla Lonzi’s words: i.e. women's bodies as sexual objects and the exclusive possession of the pater familias. This is a type of property and a form of power which husbands have traditionally exercised over their wives, so profound and primordial that it has survived many revolutionary episodes – from the French one of 1789 to the Russian one of 1917 – as well as all contractualist philosophical theories that claimed to be able to establish civil and political rights, which, unsurprisingly, were recognized only for men for a long time.
These two pillars of a centuries-old social order have certainly been called into question and profoundly modified during a season of great change for which full credit is due to the feminist movement, which in Italy was a widespread mass movement at the local level, one which centered its thought, theoretical interest and main political claims precisely on the power/sexuality dynamic. It is clear, however, that the long series of legal reforms that ensued – although of undoubted importance – could never have changed the symbolic order linked to patriarchy.
It is, therefore, an act of complicity to continue to downplay male violence as a residual phenomenon now on the wane, as the crumbling legacy of a past that is physiologically destined to end. Not least because the number of femicides shows no signs of decreasing: another 120 women have been killed by their partners since the murder of Giulia Cecchettin, as her father Gino recalled.
The phenomenon poses a challenge and shines a spotlight on more recent social changes: in spite of an idea, unfortunately still influential, that sees history as an evolutionary line towards progress, the phenomenon is intensifying, tied to a systemic increase in violence that can be seen in the growth of armed conflicts, the violent aspects of a tremendously pervasive and anesthetizing visual culture, especially for the youngest, and a profound anthropological transformation that makes reality-based perspectives less and less distinguishable from the false ones based on a shared imaginary.
At the same time, correlated with all these most recent transformations, there is a strong resurgence of the ancient desire for a female model that would be the guardian of the social bond, the guarantor of a sovereignist national order, which has become essentially a silenced body amenable to subjugation. These complex and partly contradictory phenomena are a mark of current times.
We will continue to explore this topic, including from a new perspective: one that investigates the many strategies being used by subjects which are all-too-simplistically represented as victims, as defenseless prey, but which are instead protagonists of stories of resistance and self-defense, both at the level of the imaginary and that of knowledge.
Vinzia Fiorino is president of the Italian Society of Historians. The topic was further discussed at a summit on Nov. 23 at the International House of Women in Rome, in a debate that took as its starting point the new book edited by Simona Feci and Laura Schettini, L’autodifesa delle donne. Pratiche, diritto, immaginari nella storia (“Women's Self-Defense. Practices, Law, Imaginaries in History”).
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/proprieta-e-potere-alle-origini-del-dominio-maschile on 2024-11-24