I often talk about other countries, but now, unfortunately, it’s my country’s turn (Italy).

In an absurd contradiction, a bill aimed at making legal language gender-neutral (in Italian, there is the “masculine-over-inclusive” form, where the masculine refers to both genders) paradoxically seeks to change neutral terms like “gender-based violence” from being neutral to “male violence against women.”

I quote:

DDL S. 1752

“Provisions Regarding Non-Discriminatory Language in Legal and Administrative Contexts”

Let’s read:

“It cannot be underestimated how processes of stereotyping, marginalization, and erasure systematically affect women. Even the expression ‘gender-based violence,’ in its apparent neutrality, has ended up obscuring men’s responsibility for violence against women—whether as wives, partners, girlfriends, lovers, or as women considered the property of a man. In this case, it is necessary to speak and write about male violence against women and not simply about ‘gender-based violence,’ since this is not a generic form of violence but rather the result of a patriarchal culture of possession of women, domination, control, and subjugation of women and their freedom of self-determination.”

In Article 1:

  1. In current legislative provisions, the words “gender-based violence,” wherever they appear, when referring to acts committed by a man against a woman, are replaced by the following: “male violence against women.”

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Similarly, instead of extending pregnancy care to trans men (FtM), this bill seeks to render them invisible. This exclusion may deprive trans men—who are legally recognized as men—of their rights to access care and support during pregnancy.

Similarly, instead of extending protections related to female genital mutilation to cases of ritual, non-consensual, or underage circumcision—or any circumcision not performed for medical necessity—the bill seeks to further restrict the law to apply only to women. Similarly, a biologically female person who has begun a transition process and holds documents identifying them as a man risks no longer being protected by the law if they are a victim of female genital mutilation:

“Equally telling is Article 61, paragraph 1, subparagraph 11-quinquies, of the Penal Code is also emblematic, as it refers to a ‘person’ who is pregnant, avoiding the use of the term 'woman.' One must wonder why the legislature shows so little regard for women, referring to them in the masculine form even when the law specifically concerns them, as is also the case in Article 583-bis of the Penal Code, titled ‘Practices of Female Genital Mutilation,’ in which the woman is referred to as an ‘Italian or foreign citizen.’”

https://www.senato.it/leggi-e-documenti/disegni-di-legge/scheda-ddl?tab=datiGenerali&did=59801