In an interview with women’s magazine Grazia that hits the newsstands today, Meloni said: “Today, the unilateral right to proclaim oneself a woman or a man is claimed beyond any path, surgical, pharmacological or even administrative. Masculine and feminine are rooted in bodies and it is an incontrovertible fact. Is this to the detriment of women? I believe so: today, to be a woman, it is claimed that it is enough to proclaim oneself as such, meanwhile work is being done to erase the body, the essence, the difference.”
Just in time for Il Giorno della Donna–March 8–the day when Italy honors women, Italy’s first female premier stressed that they “are the first victims of gender ideology” and said that “Many feminists think so too”.
In the interview she also tackles other issues related to women’s sexuality and reproduction.
When asked what she would say to a woman who is about to have an abortion: “I would say to try to give herself a chance, that she is not alone, that the state will give her the tools she needs not to deny herself the joy of raising her child, of bringing her child into the world in the best possible conditions,” said the premier, who also spoke about what she calls the uterus for rent–surrogacy.
“It is the Italian law that says that this practice is not lawful, not me,” she stressed. “I do not believe that commercializing the female body and turning motherhood into a business can be considered achievements of civilization. Surrogacy is the slavery of the third millennium, and I will never resign myself to the idea that it can be the outcome of centuries of struggle for women’s rights.”
Cristina Gramolini, the president of Arcilesbica, the organization founded in 1996 for lesbian women, concurs when asked to comment: “I agree with Meloni that giving a man the opportunity to declare himself a woman, beyond any surgical, pharmacological or administrative path, harms women. I agree with the fact that you cannot skip the sexed body, that is, you are not a woman being a man by mere self-declaration, this would harm reality and women , for example in women’s sports or equal opportunity policies.
“I also think that gender ideology is right,” Gramolini stressed, “right when it says that you are men and women over time in different ways, that masculinity and femininity is not natural, while female and male bodies are natural. Sex roles are historical, bodies are natural.”
