[100 Challenge] Roberta Gattel_81

Gender and Nation, Nira Yuval-Davis, 1997

“Now they are talking about removing the words “father” and “mother” from documents. Because family is an enemy, national identity is an enemy; gender identity is an enemy. For them, everything that defines us is an enemy. [...] It's their game. They want us to be Parent 1, Parent 2, LGBT gender, and Citizen X codes. But we are not codes; we are people who will defend our identity. I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian. You will not take it away from me!” (Giorgia Meloni, 2024)

On October 19, 2019, the then leader of FdI (acronym of Fratelli d'Italia, “Brothers of Italy”) Giorgia Meloni, invited to the “Italian Pride” demonstration, organized in Rome by the far-right party Lega, said the phrase, which later became a slogan: “I am Giorgia: I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian” (2024). FdI, the party she founded, is characterized by typical elements of the far right, including nativism (Ruzza, 2018: 508). This ideology wants states to be inhabited only by members of a “native group, " which considers non-native people and ideas dangerous for the state (Agius et al., 2021: 434). Nativism emerges clearly from Giorgia Meloni's words: in her speech, she defends what defines people as such, namely their gender, their biological role, their nationality, and their religion. “Today, what defines us,” she says, “is under attack” (Corriere della Sera, 2023).

The gender that “defines us” (“I am a woman”), to use the words of Giorgia Meloni, now Italian Prime Minister, is for nationalistic ideology, a static concept, that follows the presumed binary biology of the sexes and which structures the political, economic and cultural life of people around their gendered roles, assumed as “facts” (Lugones, 2010: 756). Nationalism thus appropriates the socio-cultural construction that constitutes gender (Butler, 2007: 8) but treats it as something natural, innate, or native, which has always characterized people according to a single binary model.

In this framework, the woman, only apparently placed on the same level as the man (Enloe, 2014:87), plays a fundamental role: she represents a biological and cultural reproducer of the nation (Yuval, 1997: 37). When Giorgia Meloni identifies herself as “mother” she is presenting herself as someone who has fulfilled her biological function as a woman, which also coincides with her duty as a citizen (“I am Italian”): that of giving birth to native Italian children/citizens (Peterson, 1999: 44). The need for citizens, particularly for male citizens, responds to various nationalistic purposes, both civil and military (Yuval, 1997: 29). At the basis of the vision of the woman as a biological reproducer of the nation, fundamental in nationalistic practice and policies, there is therefore a heterosexist assumption that institutionalizes - and “naturalizes” - sexual binarism and heterosexuality as everyday sexual practices and social relations (Peterson, 1999: 39). The woman as cultural reproducer of the nation is the consequence of this assumption. She, as “mother” of the nation, must transmit to her children, for whom she is primarily responsible, the culture that she embodies: language, religion, and traditions; that is all that builds – and defines – “home” (Yuval, 1997: 67,116), the native soil. Giorgia Meloni’s “I am a Christian,” tells of the role of guardian of the cultural border that the Prime Minister, as an Italian mother, has covered and continues to cover. In this way, Christianity becomes not only a giant container of history and values that define Italianness but also, above all, a bulwark against the “danger of the caliphate” (The Indipendent, 2019), which reveals the Islamophobic traits in mainstream European nationalistic politics (Niroomand, 2020: 57).

This nationalistic vision of women as heterosexual mothers, “principal vehicles for transmitting the whole nation's values from one generation to the next” and “bearers of the community's future generations” (Enloe, 2014: 108), does not correspond to an actual agency within the community. Although, on the one hand, she is part of the community like men, on the other hand, there are specific rules that regulate her life as a woman (Yuval, 1997: 37). Despite the great responsibility of her roles, she remains confined within an aura of vulnerability: precisely because she is considered “valuable” for the nativist interests of the State, it is necessary to supervise her “sexual purity” (Yuval, 1997: 67), controlling her behavior (Yuval and Anthias, 1989) and protecting her from the external “selfish aggressor” (Young, 2003: 4).

The one who places himself in the position of offering protection, playing an active role in defense of women and therefore, of the entire community, is the man who, by taking on the role of defender, also embodies the masculine qualities of power and action that characterize his gender (Enloe, 2014: 60). The fact that the man occupies an active position of defense automatically implies putting those who must be defended (women and children) in a passive position of vulnerability: a subordinate position because it is characterized by dependence and obedience Young (2003: 2). Nationalistic male performance is thus characterized by “macho leadership” (the man-defender), rejection of others' masculinity (the selfish aggressor), and the reference and use of patriarchal rules (control of women's behavior) (Eksi and Wood, 2019: 737). If, on the one hand, the sociocultural constructions of “masculinity” and “femininity,” deriving from a rigid and binary vision of gender, precede nationalistic ideological constructions, on the other hand, they constitute a fundamental element of the “nation-building enterprise” (Nagel, 2003: 159) laying the foundations for a gendered division of labor, in the civil, military and war fields (Yuval, 1997: 93) which is, however, calibrated on an exclusively male vision of life. As Cynthia Enloe recalls: “Nationalism has typically sprung from masculinized memory, masculinized humiliation, and masculinized hope” (2014: 44). Nationalism, therefore, feeds on the bipartition of genders, using it as a scheme for reproducing the State and itself; this is why gender identity is so aggressively - and offensively - contested by Giorgia Meloni (“LGBT gender”). But the vision that this bipartition supports is not only exclusively heterosexual, it is also exclusively male. The sacrifices of nationalistic women, their roles of responsibility as mothers and educators, are predicated on a collectivity designed by men for men:

 “If women are confined to playing the nationalistic wife, nurse, porter, girlfriend, or mother—albeit making crucial contributions to a successful nationalistic campaign—they are unlikely to have either the political skills or the communal prestige presumed to be requisites for exercising community-wide authority at a later time. The notion of what “the nation” was in its finest hour when it was most unified, most altruistic—will be of a community in which women sacrificed their desires for the sake of the male-led collective” (Enloe, 2014: 121).

The division of public and private spheres follows and reinforces gender roles because it reflects the diversity of the sexes as a "natural condition," also implying a different—and just as natural—political condition (Pateman, 1988: 11).

Since women must be defended and men must fight external threats, women are culturally linked to the sphere of peace and men to that of war (Yuval, 1997: 94). The private sphere thus becomes the realm of women, a place of peace, where future citizens can grow and be educated, and the values of the homeland are transmitted, protected by patriarchal State institutions such as marriage, family, army; while the sphere outside the home, the public one – or “civil liberty” as Carol Pateman calls it (1988: 3) – becomes the space of men and political struggle.

It is important to note how institutions that, in nationalistic rhetoric, should represent a safe place for vulnerable women instead represent the fruit of a gendered social system that often contributes to making women even more dependent on men and exposed to their abuses (Okin, 1989: 135). This dichotomous vision - with women tied to pacifist virtues and relegated to the family and men in charge of the arts of war and not threatened by being outside - guarantees men more significant access to violence, making it difficult to see the threat of this same violence against women (Anderson and Umberson, 2001: 366).

The menace of “Citizen X” by Giorgia Meloni refers to the possibility of a State whose citizens have been deprived of their identity because they can no longer define themselves through their gender, their sexuality, their biological role, their family ties (the threat of “parent 1” and “parent 2” and non- patriarchal families). It is the “no” of nationalism to the renunciation of the dichotomy of roles, sexuality, and spheres, which supports the reproduction of nationalistic ideology and predetermines the value of people on a normative basis; that is, it determines their identity based on a function.

The implications of gendered nationalism are, therefore, varied: women are reduced to functionaries of the species and made to coincide with their biological function, an equivalence that leads, in the Italian case, too strong and dangerous oppositions on the subject of abortion (Donà, 2020: 162); the heterosexual mononuclear family becomes the most important institution because it legitimizes the union between man and woman within State and religious norms (patriarchal institutions), guaranteeing protection to women (vulnerable citizens) and a safe place to raise children (future citizens) to whom to transmit the values of the community (including the institution of the family itself) fueling this reproductive cycle. Considering the family as a private sphere and considering the man within it as a “defender,” political attention is kept away from its “private” dynamics, hiding the gender violence that often occurs within it. Having a heterosexist structure, gendered nationalism excludes from political discourse those who do not fit into binary sexuality, refusing to consider the problems related to the LGBTQ+ community and, in the Italian case, the LGBTQ+ community itself as deserving of recognition and humanity (162).

The two genders, pre-existing to the nationalistic ideology and exploited by it, were not socially created as equals and consequently do not occupy the same position even within the nation; and this confirms that both the idea of nation and the history of nationalism are linked only to man and his history. Women have had and continue to have a part in the nation's construction: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a woman. But, quoting Joane Nagel's words:

“[…] nationalistic scripts are written primarily by men, for men, and about men. In these national dramas, women are relegated to mainly supporting roles—as mothers of the nation, as vessels for reproducing the nation, as agents for inculcating national culture into new members, and as national housekeepers responsible for maintaining home and hearth for the nation’s men who are out and about on important official business—fighting wars, defending homelands, representing the nation abroad, manning the apparatus of the state. Thus, the real actors in nationalistic productions are men defending their freedom, honor, homeland, and women” (2003, 159). 

The party Giorgia Meloni created and then guided to power is indeed called "Brothers of Italy," not “People of Italy,” not “Siblings of Italy,” not “Sisters of Italy.”