The Nino/Nina

The issue of climate change is usually accompanied to the debate on the need to transform our way of life, our way of production, our progressive vision which is day by day called into question by scientific data. Actually in this last decade one has witnessed a global warming that led to a complaint of this situation, but this spring, and summer as well, will be cold because there will be a "natural", cyclic, climatic condition which will increase cold by lowering temperatures, even for a while, and which will slow down global warming that start to grow again passed this period, breaking our vain illusions of a general better weather conditions.
This cooling phenomenon is qualified under the name of Nina which is the female equivalent of the Nino, climate phenomenon that brings warmth to planet earth and is best known.
So even in climatic appellations we can find the typical dichotomy of good/bad, dry/wet, heat/cold of that "natural" vision of woman that from the XX century has spread in the predominant culture. This vision has characterized woman as antithetic to man, a man starring qualifications of a highly, beneficial, positive value and a necessary contrary female value. This vision has dominated culture that has so influenced the status of women until considered them unable to testify because too emotional and therefore unreliable, or untill to call into question their membership or not to mankind.
And so here in XXIth century raises the old but clearly present dichotomy of the "natural" of good/bad applied to meteorology where is not a coincidence that we find the male phenomenon linked to the heat that benefits of a common wellness vision even if for our days is in reality degenerative while watching a cooling phenomenon which has generally a negative perception one has give a female designation which, beard to common view, is today a good thing because stops a negative one, in this case represented by the male phenomenon, so we are indeed facing a full representation of reality in which women are defined in negative irrespective of their social contribution, always and in general positive and essential compared instead of a positive male consideration which in practice is excessive and harmful and which is the guilty of the overheating and of the natural, that is, environmental decline.
Here is the overturned of the natural, sexist and climatic vision of the dichotomy represented by the Nino/Nina.

That is why we are still in nineteenth century

The US elections this time more than ever focus our attention as they refer us to a wellknown ancient "querelle".

In XIXth century, the condition of women was claimed as for the slaves, women were a political issue whom vastness and importance affects all the nation, becoming a fondamental issue for the entire US society as the slaves issue as well, this was for Mary Wollstonecraft, for Jhon Stuart Mill as for William Thompson.

Nowadays we are at the same point, we assist to an electoral match where there is a man who is a symbol of social redemption for those slaves mentioned in the past and who had progress and a woman symbol of other significances and fights.

The true is that we will attend to an epochal changing in the same way but as the black people issues were noted, disclosed and supported, from women themselves, more clearly from the beginning, the issue of women was dealt on a secondary level and overshadowed by the first one. As racism is still alive is already present a common, shared condemns of this phenomenon, otherwise the anti-feminism is still more hidden, sly and got more detrimental cultural features which concerns more people because if is true that many will be the moral beneficiaries seeing at the White House an ancestor of those slaves came without rights or dignity recognized, it is already true that a woman presence would gratified twice that person as well because black women are usually double affected, a time because they are black, twice because they are women.

If is it true that slaves came without rights or dignity, woman (also the white one) had suffered for centuries before that exclusion from human race which precluded her dignity, rationality and for consequence equal rights but not only civil, political or legal rights but human rights as well.

One started with a fight for civil acknowledgement of one part and then from this it has developped a new, different asserting also for the other part, they divided but only for meeting again two centuries after struggling for a power which will be a symbol of a compleate redemption. That is why after two centuries we are still in nineteenth century where from the slaves problem born the feminism mouvement for civil women rights and which are nowadays contending an important position for the redemption of both. Again after two centuries we are still in front of the two issues which see in their more important symbol of representation not an end but a further unknown propulsive beginning.

Not only Mimosa

For the women's day is coming out on cinemas a documentary by Alina Marazzi about the italian 60's and 70's feminist mouvement..

In Italy each day we hear about violence, frustration of women, every day one can find such a thing on newspapers or in tv. The violence against women is really spread out in Italy and becoming worrying day by day, in 2005 a murder every 4 happens at home, 70% of murdered are women. This movie is about our history because everyday life recalls us how difficult is to be a woman, as the director says: "In Italy, also on the street, one can't forget, even for a while, that you are a woman before be a person". In this documentary one can see the fight of that period for issues even nowadays on the italian agenda, we can see how the italian feminist mouvement has succeeded for all us but also how much is again to do.

"We want roses too" title due to the american workers of the XX century who stroke for bread but also for roses meaning a better quality of lifestyle for women and as the director says: "Maybe feminism has no urgency nowadays but there is again a lots of things to do, it happened a change in social costumes that we assume...maybe the necessary, the bread, is acquired but women fought also for a world in which there would be space for the poetry of roses and this is a current battle more than ever."

Tina Lagostena Bassi the lawyer of women

On 4th March is dead, after a long illness, Augusta (Tina) Lagostena Bassi, a great woman of law who had always fought for italian women's rights; she was born in Milan on 2th March 1926.

She started her career as a professor of penal Law at the University of Genoa, then moved to the University of Parma.

From 1973 to 1975 she worked for Reformation Bureau of the Italian Justice Minister and represented Italy at Praga's 1983 World Peace Meeting.

She started to defend women from stalking and sexual violence and first in Italy during her work has used cruel words, during processes, to describe violence trying to shocking the italian society from the late 70's which always was reticent to women violence, to breaking silence among this stuff.

She took the defence of the survivor Donatella Colasanti, from the Massacre of Circeo (1975) where three guys invited two adolescents girls, known only same days before in a pub, to a party in ones of thier house at Circeo, near Rome. But no party was there, the two girls were tortured, violented and massacred for one day and one night. One of the slavedriver during the fact came back to Rome for not miss his family lunch, then came back to Circeo to continue the massacre: the two girls were druged, beaten and then, belived dead, putted in the three boys' car who went to Rome in a pub to drink something, but only one girl survived and from the luggage of the car could complain and so some citizens could call the police.

During the process, that shocked Italy for his violence due not only to misogen but also to social racism, the two girls in fact were from a media social class instead of the three boys who were from an aristocratic social class, Tina Lagostena could be able to defend the survivor girl Donatella saying she represented all women and Justice would be necesary not for revenge but for Justice itself.

She broke the cliché of women who cause the violence and that one which represent good girls staying at house, so bad girls are those who just want fun and friendship, for the first time she used the word "rape" in an italian Court.

At the end of the process she could reach to have a sentence of condemnation which transform italian value refered to women, thanks to her and her new woman style of making lawyer in a men's place as a Court.

With other women, engaged for women's rights, based, on 1988, the Pink Phone (Telefono Rosa) an association which gives free services to women in difficulty as legal support or psychological services or medical visits, this association remains the most important association in Italy for violented women also nowadays.

She has been the President of the National Gender Opportunities Commission of the Consiglio dei Ministri (the institution which coordinates the italian government) and member of the UE Gender Commission.

She was the italian Chief of the delegation at the Pechino's UN Conference for women's rights, on 1994.

She wrote also the important italian law for the sexual violence against women of the 1996 which for the first time established the civil principle that sexual abuse is a crime against a person and no more against public moral as first 1996 again in Italy was.

In 2003 she was one of the promoter for the change of the italian constitutional article number 51 which now establishes the equality for men and women in society with equal opportunities for both sex in public and private market.

From her book named "The lawyer of women" , on 1997, the public italian television made a tv-movie with the same title and starring by the most important italian actress.

In this video we see Tina during a process, of the '70s, defending a girl named Fiorella raped by four men, she knew, and who were told guilty by the Italian law even if in a derisory way!.