Today we are in the square as Cassero, as a trans* and gay association for TDOR as we are every year, carrying forward a cry of hope and anger: we want ourselves alive.
Our trans* bodies are being made political bodies by a trans-heteronormative society, and it is in moments like these that, in addition to remembering our sisters and brothers killed and committed suicide by systemic transphobic violence, it is important to come together to collectivize our personal experiences.
We are delighted with the trans* week that arose spontaneously in Bologna, at the first Rivolta Pride assembly. We were surprised by the turnout, with so many groups, associations, and individuals clearly demonstrating the need to promote initiatives, including yesterday's angry walk, the university events, and the fundraising evenings. And we are delighted with everyone here today. We know that Bologna has learned to politicize this date, beyond ritual, and has understood that trans* memory and anger concern all queer transfeminist movements and all their allies.
It's urgent to take to the streets in Italy today because the Meloni government is also engaging in fascist and repressive politics with our trans* and non-binary bodies. It has done so since the intimidation at Careggi Hospital and the downgrading of Sandrena Hospital last year, and has tightened this siege in recent months. The interministerial committee led by Schillaci and Roccella wants to make our gender affirmation programs increasingly psychiatric, and with this summer's bill, they want to attack trans* childhood and adolescence through a registration registry and the restriction of puberty blockers to hospital pharmacies only.
We are here in the square, once again, demanding free and accessible gender affirmation paths, both financially and bureaucratically, whereas the strategy of the Minister of Equal Opportunities, a notoriously trans-exclusionary pseudo-feminist, aims to dissuade by needlessly complicating the process. And we demand this, starting from childhood and adolescence, when trans* and gender-confusing people are not considered aware enough to choose for themselves, and would be safer within the cisheteronorm. But today, Trans Remembrance Day, we say it louder than ever: cisheteronorm is killing us, and this is state bullying.
We are also in the square to continue talking about Palestine, despite the ceasefire constantly broken by the colonial state of Israel, to remember that there is no self-determination of bodies without the self-determination of peoples. Against any form of rainbow-washing, we are always queers, never Zionists. We are also in the square to talk about evictions, in the most progressive city in Italy after the events on Via Michelino and after having participated in the self-recovery experience in Don Minzoni, right next to the Cassero, because housing is a primary need for a beautiful life and because so many trans* and non-binary people are kicked out of their homes or struggle to find dignified and welcoming accommodation because of their gender identity. We must demonstrate as we demonstrated against the Security Decree, against the new Eviction Decree that will soon be submitted to the Council of Ministers.
Returning to the topic of minors, the other frontier of this cultural crusade is school. The various Sasso, Amorese, and Valditara bills also bring needlessly bureaucratic complications to the classroom, tying it to certification of ongoing transition processes and effectively dragging back virtuous institutions that had already embraced self-determination. Above all, they ban sexual-emotional education in primary schools and require so-called "informed consent" in secondary schools, effectively guaranteeing families the ability to continue unhindered and replicate cis-heteronormative models and educate against patriarchal violence. This is yet another example of an authoritarian and Catholic-bigoted school system, the same one that claims only the West knows history and represses the dissent of those who occupy schools because of school conditions and demonstrate against oral exams.
Like Cassero, with the School and Training group, we are among those experts, consultants, and activists whom these bills seek to keep out of schools, hiding behind the timeless fear of gender in schools. But "gender" as the reactionary world understands it, in Italy or elsewhere, does not exist, even though they continue to bombard us with propaganda fearing deviance and indoctrination.
Instead, there are children who need to learn to know and experiment with themselves, students who need sexual-emotional education to learn to relate in a healthy way with others and with their own bodies, kids who feel in danger, are persecuted or decide to hurt themselves because they feel wrong and don't even have the words to understand themselves.
We want to teach freedom and self-determination, and if this scares those who govern us, it's because they're fascist pieces of shit.
And so a chorus that remembers a sister and makes us her daughters in the struggle, today more necessary than ever: Cloe's anger still burns, trans* revolution in every school.
