Resistenza femminista ha partecipato alla marcia Million Women Rise organizzata da Sabrina Qureshi http://www.millionwomenrise.com/.
Abbiamo parlato davanti ad 11.000 donne che incitavano, applaudivano. Abbiamo presentato il gruppo, chiesto appoggio contro le proposte di zoning a Roma e la “Spilabotte” e una nostra compagna ha spiegato la realtà della prostituzione. Questo è il nostro discorso:
[ITALIAN AND ENGLISH VERSION ON THIS PAGE]
– CIAO DONNE!!!!! Hi Women!!!! It is so moving for us to be here, we are so excited to be surrounded by so many amazing women, feminist activists and survivors. We thank from the bottom of our hearts all the amazing feminists who organized this wonderful march to give us the possibility of telling you something about the italian situation. We are part of a feminist activist group called Resistenza Femminista. We would like to tell you something about what we are doing as a group.
We have chosen to focus our political action on the fight against trafficking, the system of prostitution and the sex industry because we believe that as feminists we cannot understand gender imbalances and discrimination if we do not consider prostitution as the first root of our oppression.
Prostitution does not happen by chance. It happened and it is still happening in a world where women are economically vulnerable and dependent on their families and often abusive partners, where women are silenced, raped and exposed to traumatic experiences, which can lead to the exploitation of pimps (which are often the partners themselves) and where globalisation is depriving people from their fundamental rights such as the right for an education, job and health assistance leading to the feminization of poverty.
Sexual violence and economic violence combined are the grounds on which prostitution flourishes. As a group of women living in a globalized world, experiencing economic difficulties due to precarious work conditions, we want to stand up for our sisters worldwide in solidarity, sharing the same fate of survivors of violence and discrimination fighting for a better world.
Our political agenda is rooted in the recognition of the importance of the interconnection between gender, race and class. Trafficked women are women taken by force from their poor lands to serve the rich colonialist men. The patriarchal language of neoliberalism is using the expression “migrant sex workers” to describe poor women forced into an inhumane system of exploitation. We refuse this insulting language and we strongly support survivor’s voices which are silenced by mainstream media and politicians who perpetuate myths and stereotypes to defend the status quo.
We are here today because we need international support against two horribly inhuman law proposals: the opening of a red light district in the city of Rome and the recent “Spilabotte” law proposal to legalise prostitution. One of our politicians Andrea Santoro (PD, Democratic Party) developed a local ordinance to open a Red Light District in the City of Rome. Our politicians are treating prostituted women like rubbish, helping pimps, traffickers and mafia to exploit women and girls far from the eyes of the respectable citizens. We say NO to this unbearable violation of human rights. NO to the hypocrisy of our politicians who are protecting their rights to buy women’s bodies. We stand up for the rights of all the sexually exploited women and girls to be helped to exit prostitution (job, education, health care and the possibility of living in our country if they are immigrant women) instead of being trapped in a ghetto as second class women who can be beaten, raped and killed without any consequences for pimps and johns. Prostitution is not something to be tolerant with, it is not a question of decency (“decoro” in Italian, a key word of the law proposal) it is a patriarchal system of exploitation, it is violence against women. Please help us to fight against these two law proposals. We need as much signatures as possible.
To sign it, please send an email with your name (and organization) to: resistenzafemminista@inventati.org
My sister, who is a survivor of prostitution, today is going to tell you the truth about what prostitution is. You need to be brave to stand up against men violence. Please support her!!
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– I bordelli sono come le macellerie. Il cliente entra e sceglie il taglio di carne che più gli stuzzica l’appetito. Le prostitute stanno lì, quasi fossero carcasse di animali, e scelte fingono di scodinzolare.
L’idea è quella di tanti animali marchiati, con il prezzo attaccato all’orecchio. Un numero, un’età, un corpo e non ciò che siamo davvero: un cervello, un cuore e un’anima. Siamo madri, figlie, sorelle ed è proprio nella sorellanza che bisogna credere. Perché se cominciamo a capire che valiamo di più di una banconota, che se gli do fuoco brucia, che valgo di più di quanto gli uomini vogliono farmi credere, allora il patriarcato cadrà e sopravviverà solo la specie più ricettiva ai cambiamenti, cioè noi.
Tutte le donne insieme possono fermare la violenza maschile!!
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– Brothels are like butchery. The punter comes in and chooses the meat cut that whets his appetite. Prostituted women stay there in front of him as they were carcasses, when they are chosen they fake to wag their tail.
They are like a huge amount of marked animals with price ear tags. Numbers, ages, bodies but it is not how we truly are: brains, hearts, souls. We are mothers, daughers, sisters. And it is just in the sisterhood that we need to believe! Because only if we understand that our value is more than a note – if you set fire to it, it burns -, that my value, our value is more than what men want us to believe, the patriarcal system will fall. Only the species more receptive to change will survive and that’s us.
All women together we will end male violence!
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[in arrivo un report completo e le foto della manifestazione!]