The micropolitics of choice in Italy: How the law affects lesbian and bisexual women’s daily life

Abstract

This article stems from three years of fieldwork (2015–2017) in the context of a five-year-long, European-Research-Council-funded research project called INTIMATE—Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe, a comparative qualitative study that involves three countries (Italy, Portugal, and Spain) and studies intimate citizenship and the micropolitics of daily life of LGBTQ people. The article focuses specifically on the Italian case and shows how non-heterosexual women deal with the scarce legislative protection Italy grants. Our aim is to reflect upon the reciprocal influence of different axes from public and private spaces and on how they impact the micropolitics and the daily choices of our lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual participants. More specifically, considering the lack of legal and social recognition of lesbian experiences in Italy, we will focus on the different strategies of reaction, assimilation, and resistance employed by participants in their private and public life. The three-year-long fieldwork covered the period between the proposal of the bill on same-sex civil unions and the first year after Act 76/2016 came into force. This allows us to sketch a brief diachronic analysis of its functioning, in particular from the perspective of the very subjects it impacts.

Keywords:

• Intimate citizenship
• lesbian invisibilization
• partnership
• parenting
• friendship
• Italian law

Notes

1 INTIMATE is funded by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement no. 338452.

2 The term mononormativity was coined by Pieper and Bauer (2005) to refer to the forms of power which help establish the monogamous couple bond as an idealized and normative model.

3 This is part-time work where one works full-time only on some days of the week, month, or year. A synonym is “full-day part-time.”

4 In everyday life, the experience of stigmatization is related to being part of a minority group. “Minority stress can be distinguished into several dimensions, such as actual negative experiences, expectations of rejection and discrimination, and internalized homophobia.” (Bos, van Balen, van den Boom, & Sandfort, 2004, p. 292). For references on homosexual parenting in the Italian context, please see Bosisio & Ronfani (2015).

5 The most representative research on Italian gay and lesbian people (Barbagli & Colombo, 2001) pointed out that the desire of motherhood is inversely proportional to age.

6 The Waldensian Church is an Italian branch of the Evangelical and Methodist Church, which explicitly supports and celebrates same-sex marriages.

7 With regard to same-sex couples involving trans* people who concluded the procedure for the so-called “rectification of sex attribution” (Act 164/1982) and want to have children, they will have to resort to assisted reproductive technologies. Indeed, the procedure of rectification necessarily requires destructive surgery of the internal and external reproductive organs and, as a consequence, sterilization (or at least sterilization, even without surgery), according to the vast majority of jurisprudence. In 2017, the Constitutional Court, with decision no. 180, confirmed that surgery is not mandatory, but it did not explicitly exclude the necessity of sterilization.

8 Out of 1391 LGBTQ families interviewed between 2016 and 2017, 28.6% (16% of whom are single) have at least one child; out of these 394, 75% are women, 7% had children through auto-insemination, 41% through ARTs (Centro Risorse LGBTI Famiglie Arcobaleno & Rete Genitori Rainbow, 2017).

9 “Because the Italian judicial system is based on Civil Law, within the framework of late Roman law […] judicial decisions by the Supreme Court […] do not constitute the base for judicial precedent for other future cases. […] However, on a more practical level, the decisions of the Supreme Court usually provide a very robust reference point of constant jurisprudence” (Lorenzetti & Viggiani, 2015, p. 120).

10 With its decision no.14329, of 6 June 2013, the Court of Cassation raised a question of constitutional legitimacy about such provision. The Constitutional Court, with decision 170/2004, ruled that art. 2 and 4 of Act 164/1982 (“Rules Concerning the Rectification of Sex-Attribution”) are unconstitutional, inasmuch as they do not give the couple the freedom to keep on having a legal partnership. As Italian law does not provide any other legal partnership besides heterosexual marriage, the Court in such decision gave the legislator the task of providing legal alternatives to guarantee same-sex couples’ rights.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beatrice Gusmano is a feminist sociologist interested in LGBTQ relationships; lesbian motherhood through ARTs; LGB friendship and cohabitation; LGBT local and national public policies; and bullying and gender education. She is currently working on the project “DomEQUAL: A Global Approach to Paid Domestic Work and Global Inequalities” based at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice (Italy).

Tatiana Motterle worked on the ERC-funded project "INTIMATE—Citizenship, Care and Choice: The Micropolitics of Intimacy in Southern Europe" (2014–2019). She also took part in national and international research projects about homophobia in Europe, Female Genital Modifications, and social care and work-care balance. She is a transfeminist and anti-speciesist activist.