I was born in Venice, Italy. I am 38 years old
with two daughters, aged 15 and 19, who attend classical gymnasium. I work as a
psychologist and midwife. I am also a consultant to the Educational
Demographics Association of Italy (AIED) in Pordenone, and I am its regional
president.
My political activity began in Partito Radicale about 20 years ago. This is a coalition in the leftist sphere of Italian politics. Its goals are similar to those of the European Greens and supporters of anti-militarism and non-violence the world over.
Partito Radicale has 18 representatives in Parliament, who are in a position to do battle for the civil rights we know to be essential in this country. Our platform includes the right of conscientious objection to military service. Ecological action. The anti-nuclear option. Abortion rights, and the abolition of a fascist-era law which penalizes prostitutes, even to the point of taking their children away, in effect making them responsible for the women and failures of an unjust and bigoted society.
My cultural roots are secular but respectful of each individual's religious decision. I wholeheartedly agree with the motto of Amnesty International, penned by a great Italian thinker, A. Bauer: “I don't at all agree with what thay say but I will fight to the death for their right to say it.”
The battle for Naturism is for me part of a logical, larger and coherent choice to life. In fact I have always been a naturist. But I am constrained by having to choose between living it under the Italian penal code, or the more liberal (in this respect!) Yugoslav option, in choosing where to spend my summer vacation.
Who can say why a country –which considers itself a free society, adopted the most liberal constitution in Europe, and celebrated the beauty of the human body since the time of Michelangelo and Boccaccio –why it should pose obstacles to its citizens being able to sunbathe in the nude?
I will try to explain in part, perhaps the cause can be seen in constants which transcend the concepts of both law and state which make Italy similar to other countries. There is first a sociological paradox: The state, to suppress nudity, often refers to the “common sense of decency,” yet there is not a current publication or public performance which does not exploit the human body as a commodity –at least for publicity, or worse, as the object of violence.
The second paradox is an exquisitely Italian one, harmful in various aspects of civic life: The Italian penal code formulated in the fascist era is still in use today, 40 years after liberation. Most laws in Italy stem from the old regime, and opponents of freedom regularly appeal to them, based as they are on totalitarian ideology. Any magistrate can censor a Fellini film, for instance, if he feels the laws dating from 1925 can apply.
Did you know the penalty in Italy today for nude sunbathing is the same as applies to rape? Time marches on. But watch out, many laws may have become obsolete “de facto” but not yet “de jure”, and the nudity law is one such. Every summer, at some beach, no matter how isolated, the carabinieri arrive. Do they seek the drug smugglers? Terrorists? Mafiosi? No, instead of seeking out the tax evaders or the assassins who are ruining our country, they come to pick up the pacifist naturists and force them into their pants.
It's a farce. But behind every farce is a tragedy. Perhaps is a universal tragedy, for when people fear the human body of a joyous sexuality, they sooner or later reach for a gun. (See Freud!) It's relevant that when the body is seen as the object of violence, calculation and commerce, the body better be beautiful, young and productive (Nazism taught Jewish women that.)
The sexuality liberated human being is pure at heart, and needs fear neither Judeo-Christian excommunications nor the powerful, because their sanctions are not relevant. This person is less disposed to accept or suffer violence, war and unjust law.
That is why, during the Trieste elections, when I learned that two girls had been arrested for taking off their brassieres at an isolated beach populated only by goats. I held this nude meeting in protest. At this event, the only ones who felt “exposed” were the journalists for they told me so. Hundreds came out in the nude. The police, invited by registered mail, did not attend. The civil disobedience of unjust law was successfully affirmed.
I BELIEVE IT IS A FACT THAT ALL FORMS OF TOTALITARIANISM FEAR NOTHING MORE THAN THE LIBERATION OF THE BODY AND OF SEXUALITY and thus of “diversity,” as their laws demonstrate.
Dora Pezzilli
(The author came to public attention in 1983
while campaigning for political office on the nude beaches around Trieste.)
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