gender/sexuality/italy is an online annual, peer-reviewed journal that publishes research on gendered identities and the ways they intersect with and produce Italian politics, culture, and society.
Journal Editorial by Ombretta Frau (Guest Editor), Juliet Guzzetta (Guest Editor), Paola Bonifazio (Invited Perspectives Editor), Nicoletta Marini-Maio (General Editor)
The editorial includes the Editors’ and Guest Editors’ introductions to their respective areas.
by Ombretta Frau and Juliet Guzzetta
The Guest Editors use a feminist lens to introduce and deconstruct the theme of “Donne di destra / Women of the Right” in the sociopolitical and cultural context of contemporary Italy.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15781/kf73-6c95
by Cristina Gragnani
Il romanzo Avanti il divorzio (1902) di Anna Franchi, emblematico dell’attivismo della scrittrice per i diritti delle donne nel contesto del Partito Socialista Italiano, è una pietra miliare nella letteratura femminista italiana del Novecento. Il romanzo è conosciuto nell’ambito degli studi di genere italiani per il coraggio e l’onestà con cui denuncia, ancor prima del noto Una donna di Sibilla Aleramo (1906), gli abusi del patriarcato sull’esistenza individuale,
by Erin Larkin
When looking for literary and cultural genealogies for Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister and co-founder of the ultraconservative Fratelli d’Italia, the women of Italian Futurism offer a revealing perspective. The historical avant-garde provides examples of the rhetoric of exceptionalism that continues to mark conservative feminism, particularly in the work of Benedetta Cappa. Meloni’s refrain—“Io sono Giorgia, sono una donna, sono una madre, sono italiana, sono cristiana”—reflects the same themes of nation,
by Veronica Frigeni
Eugenia Maria Roccella was appointed Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the government headed by Giorgia Meloni on October 22, 2022. The article engages Roccella’s idiosyncratic post-feminism, examining its conservative, populist and maternalist stance and assessing how it positions itself in relation to existing paradigms of sexual difference and queer feminism. In particular, reading the Minister’s theoretical and literary texts alongside her parliamentary speeches and interviews, the article interrogates Roccella’s discursive construction of motherhood from a pro-life,
by Jordi Valentini
Seeking to counteract left-wing youth movements in the shared terrain of alternative publishing, right-wing youth in the 1970s discovered and appropriated Tolkien’s work, partly due to the general disdain or indifference towards him from the Italian left-leaning public and intellectuals. Tolkien’s anti-modern and traditionalist world became a refuge for a disillusioned generation critical of the Italian Social Movement (Movimento Sociale Italiano), the main conservative party, for its outdated structure and its unwillingness to give younger people a voice.
by Diletta Pasetti and Nicoletta Marini-Maio
This article undertakes a critical examination of Giorgia Meloni’s self-narrative of professional success and motherhood, situating it in dialogue with the symbolic and theological constructs associated with the Virgin Mary. By drawing on Mariological discourse, the study interrogates how Meloni’s articulation of her personal and political identity leverages iconic representations of femininity to reinforce or subvert established paradigms of gender and authority. It explores how Meloni draws on Mariology to shape her views on female agency and women’s roles in society,
by Amanda Minervini
Gender neutrality has recently entered the discourse on and within Italian language and culture while the war among genders is still unresolved. Teaching genderneutral/nonbinary Italian is a form of activism, and a way to teach inclusively while responding actively to changes occurring in both US and Italian culture. In this context, which shows how a portion of Italian speakers wants to move towards inclusion and modernity, the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni,
by Silvia Rodeschini
This article outlines the history of the idea of obscenity in Italian law and media governance provisions. Starting from the formulation of the articles concerning obscenity of the Italian penal code of the thirties, the analysis follows the shift in the meaning of modesty in the subsequent transformations of the rules governing the distribution of obscene material until the 2000s. This reconstruction tries to make explicit the idea of sexual pleasure and its dangers implicit in some juridical texts and to outline how norms try to situate adult content in specific spaces of consumption.
by Sofia Torre
This essay aims to read the relationship between pornographic obscenity and political communication strategies by investigating the cases of Ilona Staller, elected among the ranks of the Radical Party in 1987, and Moana Pozzi, who joined the Party of Love in 1992. Secondly, the essay’s purpose is to analyze the contemporary anti-feminist activism of Valentina Nappi on social networks.The analysis, carried out through the methodological criteria of political communication and media studies,
