Palermo, 28 giugno 2009
REPORT
Summary report of Event 5.
European Festival of Diversities and Antidiscrimination – Palermo, Italy – 26-28 June 2009
- Presentation of the Festival & public conference
On Friday, 26 June 2009 the European Festival of Diversities and Anti-Discrimination landed in Palermo, a very special city located at the very South of the European Union and characterised by a Creole culture and by acute socio-cultural and economic issues.
In the morning all project partners met to discuss the difficulty of organising debates and events on the role of diversities and anti-discrimination. This, in fact, has proven both problematic and extremely necessary. On the one hand, the discussion highlighted how the local environment is still permeated by a rather pronounced macho culture and by a lack of political initiative and action, which hampers the development of inclusive policies and diversity management at all levels. On the other hand, it emerged that local groups and networks working in this difficult situation have not only a real thirst for information, training, and exchange, but also a lively production of ideas, experiences and relations which deserve to be kept alive despite their isolation and the attempts to silence them. The project partners met with the organisers of the very militant Catania LGBT pride, which took place the day after in Catania, and exchanged views on what it means to fight for the visibility of women and LGBT people in Sicilian towns and cities.
The afternoon of the 26th of June a public conference took place at the Town Hall, titled “The geography of prejudice: genders, sexes and cultures in the global South”. The conference saw the participation of several expert speakers who addressed the issue of gender, sexuality, and Roma culture from the perspective of a Southern European region.
Cathy La Torre, of MIT, introduced the project to the audience, recalled its previous stages and described the participating organisations. She also addressed the audience with a speech on discrimination, stereotypes and prejudice. She recalled the several definitions of discrimination, the characters of the protected grounds, the forms of discrimination in several areas such as employment, health, education, etc., as well as the importance of multiple discrimination. Next, Giuseppe Burgio, researcher at the University of Palermo, illustrated its 5-year long research on gay adolescents in Sicily. His basic contention was that Sicily is a border territory with strong peculiarities, which in turn affect the way LGBT adolescents grow up and become socialised in a Mediterranean, yet global, environment. From his research it emerged how there are at least two models for one’s sexuality: the ‘modern homosexual’, and the ‘Mediterranean homosexual’. While the former is a completely globalised profile which benefits from the pros and cons of the global LGBT movement, politics, and recreational styles, the latter is characterised by a strong rigidity of sex roles, a strong hierarchy between active and passive men, and engages mostly youth from lower classes. Gay adolescents from the South are in a way faced with the need to choose between the two models, and this implies additional difficulties for them, because the peculiar configuration of the ‘masculine’ in Sicily produces a conundrum in the construction of a gay male identity. Burgio recalled how during criminal proceedings for mafia one of the indicted argued his defense in terms of him being gay, a situation deemed to be totally incompatible with the mafia culture which sees homosexuality as a degradation of masculinity. In this context, the male identity is not a gender issue, but a power and a domination issue. This cultural environment makes the growth of gay male adolescents more difficult. Burgio also highlighted the ‘educational gap’ which strikes these adolescents, which are forced to face hard conditions in their family, at school and in society at large, which is unable to produce positive models. Gay adolescents have only their peers as their main source of information and education. There is no generational transmission of the homosexual experience, therefore each generation must restart from scratch. In this context, Burgio’s claim is that adults have a clear responsibility of not abandoning these youth, which also demonstrated a great potential of originality and creativity. Regrettably, however, the Italian and the Sicilian political agenda do not encompass LGBT issues, despite the fact that there are grassroots movements and individual experiences which, through coming out in schools, put into question and problematise the hetero-homosexual dichotomy.
The next speaker, Porpora Marcasciano from MIT, tackled the issue of transphobia in Italy. She set out by recalling that Italy has the negative record of murders of transsexuals, a record based on data which must be considered lower than the real ones because often the identity documents of the victims do not reveal their transsexuality. This aggressiveness against transsexuals has certainly cultural roots, which she describes as the ‘pathology’ and the ‘de-generation’. The former was born with the medicalisation of gender identity, when the category of gender disphoria was created. What happens with this model is that the focus is on the individual and his or her ‘internal drama’ (‘born in a wrong body’), an approach which ignores a critical analysis of the external context, which often produces awful phenomena of exclusion and marginalisation. The latter model, that of ‘degeneration’, recalls the idea that the transsexual experience is something ‘outside the genders’, something which deconstructs gender identity. Especially for male-to-female transsexuals, this experience questions one’s male identity, which is the central point from which everything else originates. From this point of view Italy has become extremely excluding, with a campaign criminalising prostitution. In reality, many transsexuals are in search of a job, but have to face an extremely hostile environment; however, no more than 20% is in prostitution. This situation generates a phenomenon of migration, which is a journey in search not only of friendlier environments, but also of a body closer to one’s perception. MIT in Bologna, in fact, receives numerous calls and requests for support from transsexuals from Sicily.
Maria Laura Scardina, an officer of the Ministry of Justice, addressed the issue of Romanophobia by recalling her experience with Roma camps which dates back some 20 years. At that time Roma families coming from Kosovo, temporarily hosted in the Zen 2 camp, were basically deported to the Favorita camp in a forced way which destroyed their relations and way of living among them and with locals. Nowadays history is repeating itself in Palermo, because the City has decided to move again the whole camp without any effort to hear their voices. It entrusted an unknown and inexperienced architect to create a ‘temporary’ place for those Roma families on the assumption that they are nomad. In reality, the experience shows that these families are not nomad, and the very idea of a ‘nomad camp’ can be considered a modern form of apartheid which kills every form of Roma culture because no single culture can survive when isolated from the rest of the world, if it does not come into contact and contamination with the outside world. The history of Roma people is a history of persecutions, motivated by an exclusion of their diversity. Even the most common stereotypes on Roma people (that they are robbers, dirty, liars, etc.) concern behaviour which is often put in place as a mechanism of reaction or survival vis a vis a hostile environment.
Finally, Titti de Simone, a lesbian activist and former MP, passionately surveyed the many historical milestones of parts of the Italian LGBT movement and its Sicilian articulations. Her claim is that in the past 15 years little has been obtained, and that the fight ahead is likely to be even harder now that Europe is mostly ruled by right-wing parties. In 1993 Palermo hosted a seminar called “Where can we build a culture of differences?” which could be extremely useful still nowadays. It is very important to keep the memories of the past, and at the same time to inject some European dimension into Italian affairs and discussions, a new dimension in our discourses on citizenship and civic engagement. Regrettably, the Italian right is not a European right, because it is imbued by a mix of fascism, sexism, homophobia, etc. which makes them work as a plant of fear which accounts for a very preoccupying laboratory. De Simone wondered, what is going to happen to those experiences of the past, now that even the recent EP’s elections have seen the advancement of right-wing parties. The LGBT movement has produced a great contribution in civil and political terms, from which one must restart. Regrettably, today even left-wing parties are shy and ambiguous. It does very little for opening up a discussion on these themes and is unable to self-represent itself as a champion of civil rights. The European struggle is much more advanced since many more years, whereas in Italy there is still a gap with respect to asylum based on sexual orientation, an adequate regulation of sex change, same-sex marriage, and medically assisted procreation. At a time of darkness from the civil and democratic point of view, it is necessary to continue building a web of people and groups for reconstruction and change, something which will come true only if it will focus on a new concept of citizenship based on differences.
- Workshops and discussion
Building on the outcome of the Linz meeting, Saturday 27 June was dedicated to workshops and a discussion on the role of critical diversity and on the respective positioning of the various partner organisations. Marissa Loob of Maiz reiterated their status of women’s organisation with a strong emphasis on protagonism of migrant women, something which challenges the white and bourgeois feminism in order to try to combine together sexism and racism. The purpose of the discussion was to problematise the concept of diversity starting from the more advanced experiences of Maiz and MIT. The debate brought up a fruitful exchange of perspectives, especially on the role of peripheries and of outsiders in the deconstruction of a certain idea of normality and diversity. Maiz claims that a good combination of theory and practice is key to success; their methodology, for instance, is focused on ongoing process monitoring, on the visibility of individuals often kept at the fringes of most discourses on diversity, especially at the EU level. They claim that it is continuously necessary to problematise who are the beneficiaries of the articulations of most rhetoric on diversity and discrimination, which are the mechanisms which get hidden by such rhetoric which is unable to ensure true protagonism and subjectivity of the people concerned. Some criticism emerged as to the focus of the Palermo conference on cultural factors, because this approach is unable to expose the process of construction of normality inherent in institutional dynamics. Other participants acknowledged the experience of Maiz, but stressed the differences which characterise the Italian situation, and the Sicilian one in particular, which called for an approach contextualised in that particular cultural situation. Members of Lady Oscar Palermo mentioned how from Napoli to the North, LGBT associations can access some funding in order to produce projects and services, whereas in Sicily this has never happened, it is almost impossible to get heard by institutions, to access schools, etc. Again Marissa of Maiz criticised the ‘cultural approach’ if reduced to ‘local mentality’ because there are many aspects which need to be challenged, in particular the socio-economic ones. The discussion came then to a general agreement that discrimination is often a form of socio-cultural control which allows the reproduction of power dynamics, which are in fact based on a certain construction of the ‘other’. The cultural aspect is interesting but does not offer solutions, because discrimination has an economic basis. It was also emphasised that Italy has a peculiar cultural context given the presence of the Vatican, and that even the cultural discourse can be a form of resistance towards the ongoing overlapping between culture and nature propagated by religion-based rhetoric.
These discussions were also continued at the Catania LGBT pride, to which a delegation of the project participants took place. They met with the organisers of the pride march, who explained the climate of fear and hostility present in the city, as well as their strategies for resistance in a city where bigotry, hypocrisy and violence are everyday business for those living there as women, lesbians, and gays.
- Festival Event
On Sunday 28 June several activities took place. The morning was dedicated to a city tour, an enlightening experience for those who did not know the ancient and the recent history of Palermo. The tour was guided by members of Arcilesbica Palermo, who took the group not only to historical sights, but also to the more indigent areas still devastated by WWII and never reconstructed, explaining with many real life stories the very difficult situation of the city and showing the conditions which make it possible for mafia and criminality to reproduce themselves. The tour also touched some areas of recent redevelopment in order to show the participants the mix of poverty and of trendy bars and eating places which are by now living side by side in the city centre. The physical conformation of the city provided a very graphic picture of what it means to live in a context of exaggerated social control in the streets, often marked by decadence and sometimes by original renovations which testify to the constant struggle for transformation.
The afternoon was dedicated to extensive discussions around the next and final project event, and around the contents to be put into the publication. A draft agenda for the Venice meeting was prepared and several ideas were put on the table to be discussed at the closing meeting.
Finally, the day was closed with a film projection and a small but significant musical event. The film chosen, titled “Giorgio/a. Storia di una voce”, is a homage to a very special transsexual woman from Palermo who became a famous singer and artist. The event attracted a wide and diversified audience who had never had the chance to watch this documentary in Palermo, although it had attracted prizes from various film festivals elsewhere. After the showing, the musicians and artists from France joyfully ‘occupied’ the square S. Anna with their sounds and creativity, engaging the audience and the passers-by in a cheerful occasion to listen to gipsy music while dancing, sharing their experiences and strengthening their networks.