In a recent interview with the Italian weekly women’s magazine Grazia, Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni warned European women against implementing, absorbing, or kowtowing to the theories of gender ideology, stating that the ideology’s increasing popularity in the public arena will be “to the detriment of women” who have become “its first victims.”
Meloni dismissed the notion promoted by the culturally dominant, socialist Left that gender is a social construct and non-binary in its nature. Instead, the premier maintained that it is an “incontrovertible fact” that masculinity and femininity are based on biological sex, the Milan-based newspaper Il Giornale reported.
“Today, the unilateral right to proclaim oneself a woman or a man is being asserted by any method — surgical, pharmacological, or even administrative,” Meloni began. “Male and female are rooted in the body, and this is an incontrovertible fact.”
Meloni also cautioned that if gender ideology ultimately becomes the norm, it will eventually be to the “detriment of women,” as it will undermine their rights and security.
“Today, to be a woman, one claims that it is enough to proclaim oneself as such; in the meantime, work is being done to erase a woman’s body, its essence, its difference. Women are the first victims of gender ideology. Many feminists think so too.”
Meloni made the observation that women often think “they cannot compete with men and end up competing with each other, convinced that there is a lower level to which to relegate their skills.” Moreover, Meloni voiced her stance that “women have a great autonomous strength that must be freed from the thousand obstacles that cage it, but also from the taboos of which women themselves often become victims.”
Unexpectedly, some prominent members of Italy’s LGBT community voiced support for Meloni’s statement. For instance, Cristina Gramolini, the president of the pro-lesbian and feminist association ArciLesbica, whose stated mission is to combat discrimination, boost the visibility of lesbians, and spread lesbian and feminist culture, is one such backer.
“I agree with Meloni on the point that giving a man the ability to declare himself a woman by way of any method — surgical, pharmacological, or administrative — is damaging to women,” Gramolini said.
“I agree with the fact that … one cannot disregard the sexual body, i.e., a woman cannot be a male by self-declaration alone, this would harm reality and women, for example in women’s sports or in equal opportunity policies,” she elaborated.
Nonetheless, Gramolini had a bone to pick with Meloni’s position on gender fluidity, asserting that “gender ideology is right when it asserts one can be a man or a woman in different ways over time” since “masculinity and femininity are not natural” unlike the female and male bodies. “The sexual roles are historical, bodies are natural,” she claimed.
Meanwhile, alarm bells over leftist gender ideologies in Europe have not been only limited to Italian politicians. Poland has witnessed government defenses of traditional gender distinctions as well.
On November 12 last year, Jarosław Kaczyński, the head of Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, called out the LGBT movement’s consequences on children in a speech given in Wadowice. “We do not want, ladies and gentlemen, a country in which twelve-year-old girls declare themselves lesbians, although unfortunately these things are already spreading in Poland,” lamented Kaczyński.
Moreover, Kaczyński slammed the transgender movement, to which his country has become more and more vulnerable. Polish universities, Kaczyński stated, were enforcing progressivist policies in which normative behavior and honest debate could be penalized. On college campuses in Poland, if a student, “a boy, two meters tall and 120 kilos in weight with a beard says he is Zosia [a female name], then the teacher has to call him that or be fired.”
“This is madness, ladies and gentlemen, and this madness must be fought. What is in the genes cannot be interpreted,” the party leader warned.
Kaczyński urged his audience to “prevent this in Poland” because “it destroys the family, destroys common sense.” “It cannot be that because part of the West has fallen into this state we have to do it too,” he asserted.
Additionally, Kaczyński argued that Christianity is “the only widely known ethical system” in Poland capable of fighting off these “woke” developments. He believed that gender ideology “destroys the family, destroys common sense.”
Kaczyński’s views have been echoed by other members of the PiS party. For example, Polish Minister of Education Przemysław Czarnek called for Poles to tackle the ruinous ideologies of the West, cautioning them that they “must be counter-revolutionaries” if they “do not want to be the West.”
“We must realize that we are on the front line of a culture war, a brutal revolution,” said Czarnek, adding that “everything related to Christianity, Catholicism, religion as such, is ridiculed and spat upon.”
On September 10 last year, during the 10th Pilgrimage of Men, Czarnek told participants that “Poland will either be Christian or it will not exist.” Also, Czarnek reportedly alluded widely to a sermon given by the late Pope John Paul II during a visit to Warsaw in 1979, in which the now-deceased pontiff highlighted Polish identity as inherently related to Christianity:
Who we are is the sum of who we were. We are the sum of all our Christian heritage, over a thousand years, and it is up to us today whether we will transfer this heritage to the future, for our future generations. This is our responsibility, our task, our duty to do so, and this is what we are doing today, dear gentlemen.
The MP quoted a segment from John Paul II’s sermon: “Man cannot be understood without Christ, and maybe more — man is unable to understand himself without Christ.” Czarnek elaborated that all misfortunes are a result of human error and of a false vision of man in the role of God, or as a falsely free person unbound by duties and responsibilities: “To be a believer means to be faithful to God and the Fatherland. It is a matter of submitting to all of His commands and prohibitions. Every misfortune in the world results from the fact that someone does not follow one or another of God’s commandments.”
Czarnek subsequently elaborated that if everyone followed the Ten Commandments, the world would not have the misfortunes it has been witnessing to this very day.
Referring again to the 1979 papal sermon, Czarnek pointed out that it is impossible to comprehend the history of Poland without Christ, saying that if Poles do not “understand the history of Poland, more than a thousand years of great heritage, we will not understand Poland and we will not understand Polishness.”
Notably, the minister decried those who “not only get rid of Christian values, but fight them, and try to forcefully throw away the key to understanding Polishness.” Those who are “faithful to the values of all their ancestors and are steadfast in bringing these values into the future” are “not selfish,” but “painfully altruistic.”
Czarnek singled out the necessity of a strong and Christian Poland, as “there is only room for a great, strong nation between Russia and Germany, and we are a nation of victors, because if it were not so, we would simply not be here.”
Besides, the education minister reiterated the need of “educating young generations” about the history of their ancestors, who were “great winners” and “bought this victory with a huge sacrifice.”
