Women with Guns: Rome's New Feminism

Saudi Arabia has just labeled feminism, along with homosexuality and something else I can't recall, an "extremism."  Having survived the American 1970s as a male, I can see their point. I was forced to learn to cook!

But that was almost 50 years ago, and I wasn't prepared for the hostile, militant feminism I found on the walls of Rome in the Spring of 2019.  I should qualify the "walls of Rome" reference in the last sentence.  Most of the aggressive feminist images and slogans I found were not in "Rome," as if they were everywhere in Rome, but in certain areas of the city--especially Pigneto, but a few other places as well.

Here we go.

You may have seen this one; it's been on the RST Facebook site.  "Monogamy is the New Fascism." It's in English, so maybe it doesn't count.

This one's a stencil.  While the message seems aggressive, it's also sensible:  "Neither forced maternity nor imposed sterility."

The next one's more obviously aggressive, yet it's also vague about what it's advocating:  "We're multiplying the feminist rage."  Followed by the standard feminist symbol - in triplicate.

"Addio al patriarcato"--a reasonable translation would be "Goodbye Patriarchy."  Who could disagree with that?  The symbol here combines feminism with anarchy.  Anarcho-Feminism.

Below: "Complicit with the women who resist and kill the aggressors." That's strong.

Now we're into visuals.  Many of these fall into the "women with..." category.

As in, below, "Woman with a Drill" (and small wrench).  One could think of this as something like Rosie the Riveter, or....?    From Ostiense.

Below, a piece of wall art.  I tried to translate "Tommy gani [or cani?] sciorti" and could not.  This is "woman with dagger as hand":

Then there's "woman with dynamite" (upper poster):

And "women with guns."  Four of the figures in the poster below are women, and three of them have guns. The rally of the New Resistances was to take place in Casal Bertone--a community just north of Pigneto.

The following poster invokes the Partisans of the 1940s, and in that sense the woman with a gun is justified.  But it also says "oggi antifascisti" (today [we are] antifascists]), and it's not so clear that anti-fascism requires women (or anyone) carrying weapons:

This poster announces a "sciopero globale transfeminista"--"a global strike of transfeminists," I guess.  The woman is masked and ready for street combat.

Two more.  The first one, below, was found in Pigneto and starts with "Gender violence also involves (or concerns) you." "La Casa delle Donne Lucha y Siesta" ("Women's House - Fight and Nap") is a self-run women's organization fighting violence against women, located in the Tuscolano quartiere. Again, the image has a Rosie-the- Riveter quality, but it's more aggressive than welcoming.

And finally, from Ostiense. Here, less aggressive than anxious? (For more on the F word in Rome, see here.)

Bill
Author of "Patty's Got a Gun: Patricia Hearst in 1970s America."

The Walls of Rome: 4 Hours in the Life of a Poster

Not all posters dealing with immigration are negative.  This one, found
in the immigrant-heavy (mostly Bangladeshi) suburb of Torpignattara, is critical of the
local government for its failure to make documents available to immigrants.

It's no secret that many Italians are concerned about immigration; under EU rules, the country where an immigrant first makes land must make provision for that immigrant.  There is no plan for dividing up immigrants equally.  This is a particular problem for Italy, which has a long and vulnerable coastline and is a short (but often deadly) boat ride from troubled Tunisia. As elsewhere in Europe, there are those in Italy who identify immigration with terrorism--and, those who don't.

These issues were brought home forcefully on the day we "landed" in Monteverde Vecchio, an upper-middle-class neighborhood on the hill above what is commonly thought of as Trastevere.  Here's the poster we found:

Stop Terrorism, Stop Immigration..  Not sure what "Fdl" is.
 There is an anti-immigration Facebook group known as Patria e Liberta

Four hours later, when we passed that way again, the poster looked like this:

  In the weeks that followed, we found other posters dealing with immigration:

This political poster was part of the 2016 mayoral election.  "Let's Stop
the Alien Invasion" 

CasaPound's poster, in Casal Bertone: Defend Rome/Enough Immigration, Enough "Welcoming"

Bar Names, Part I: Il Mio Bar and....

We "collect" bar names, and here we offer two: Il Mio Bar (My Bar) and Il Tuo Bar (Your Bar [singular, familiar]). We have yet to find Il Vostro Bar (Your Bar, plural) or Il Nostro Bar (Our Bar). If you spot one of these...or have a favorite bar name, let us know--and send photos.    Bill

Casal Bertone

Monte Verde Vecchio

Casal Bertone: Tantalizingly close, yet nearly Unreachable

Casal Bertone.  A stone's throw from bustling San Lorenzo. Closer to Stazione Termini than the Vatican or the tourist mecca of Trastevere.  But no one goes there, and hardly anyone (even Romans born and raised) knows about this quartiere, which is sometimes referred to as Portonaccio, after the wide street that spans the area's western flank.

Always start with coffee

So close to the heart of Rome, yet so isolated. Ringed on the west and south sides by multiple rail lines, the Verano cemetery, and an old freeway, the Tangenziale, from which the Autostrada plunges east/southeast, right under Casal Bertone.

So it's hard to get to, and had to get out of. You can access the place from via Prenestina, but it's a long walk.  Or--as we did one morning on the scooter--from via Tiburtina: south (right) on via di Portonaccio, right at the big fork onto via De Dominicis, where we found a fine coffee bar, equal to any in the more upscale neighborhood of Monteverde Vecchio, where we've living for the month of May.

Underneath, the Autostrada

Turning right (south) out of the bar, the first sight is a large roundabout--almost a piazza. Moving counterclockwise, a massive metal screen hiding the Autostrada entrance as it passes beneath the town.

The building in the distance is a prize - and has a "legend" to go with it.

The centerpiece of the piazza is a housing project on its south side, graced by two striking bronze deer on pedestals to each side of the main entrance. After some 70 years, it's a wonder they're still there. Glorious. The story goes that the deer once had horns, and that the people who live in the building, so the story goes, had been called "cornuti"--meaning you're being cheated on, by your spouse.  So, one day, one of the residents sawed the large horns off the deer.  And now, no one can call them - or the residents - cornuti.


Inside the project a young man was weeding the stones (an uncommon sight) around a fountain, guarded by two eye-catching, snarling wolves.  Down a ways, a large fir tree on one side, and, on the other, a Madonella giving thanks for the survival of the building's inhabitants during the allied bombing of 1944 that took over a thousand lives in nearby San Lorenzo--and the rest of the war (below).  Note, too, that the stairways to sections of the buildings are differentiated, marked with letters, creating interior communities.


We also should mention that the intellectual filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini set the most iconic of Rome films, Mamma Roma (1962) with Anna Magnani, in this housing project.

The Madonella

A bit further to the south, there was a lot going on along via Casal Bertone: a very old building, holding out against the future; the construction of a new public market (or so we thought); some interesting urban graffiti; a leftist poster (Se Non Ora Quando, left) enjoining youth to take action, as right-wing thugs toss a person off a building balcony--an event that actually happened many years ago, in another part of Rome.  YouTube has several videos on the confrontation between right- (Casa Pound) and left-wing groups in Casal Bertone.

Shades of Hadid!

And, near the eastern end of the street (above), a stunning modern housing development in the latter phases of construction, elements of it reminiscent of Zaha Hadid's MAXXI.  We were surprised to see it here, in Casal Bertone.

Baptismal by Ugolino da Belluno, 1995

East on via Casal Bertone is the Piazza Santa Maria Consolatrice.  A public park with large play areas for children fills the square, and across from it, a church, vintage 1940s.  The column-work inside is
worth seeing, as is a side chapel in mosaics accomplished in 1995 by church artist Ugolino da Belluno.  The apse mosaics, of 1960s vintage, are also interesting, as are the columns on each side, decorated with repeating phrases. In the left side aisle there's a bronze statue of Padre Pio, both his outstretched hands revealing stigmata.














Casal Bertone has some tree-lined shopping streets, on which we found clear signs that the community's soccer team is AS Roma, as well as evidence of the poster presence of the right-wing organization, Casa Pound (photo right).  Ghoulish stuff.  Makes one wonder what they have in mind.

On the southeast side of the quartiere, an industrial building--above, center--has been re-used as artists' studios.  You can go inside and poke around--even talk to the artists.

Just one morning in the "real" Rome--Rome the Second Time.

Bill