HAPPINESS IS FREEDOM
An interview With Marco Pannella

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Cartoon from the review: "Effe", 1974

ABSTRACT: In replying to accusations that as a man he wants to exploit the battle for abortion, Marco Pannella declares that these "feminists" are an aristocracy completely cut off from the feelings of the millions of women committed to the civil rights struggle.
(Interview in "Amica" (1) - March 1975 from "Marco Pannella - Writings and Discourses - 1959-1980", Gammalibri publishers, January 1982)

Amica - Precisely what do you mean when you speak of "personal politics"?

Pannella - I say freedom and happiness not to indicate two similar things, but one and the same thing. I have always said that everything connected with the life of the conscience, with the daily problems of each of us, have precedence over all the others, have political precedence. This is the reason why we speak of love, of sexuality, of masturbation, divorce, abortion, as strictly political aspects of the individual.

A - Some feminists refuse to form alliances with men (or political parties) in the battle for abortion, because they say that once it is legalised abortion will only be one more "convenience" for men, whereas, on the contrary, it ought to put into question their aggressive and violent way of making love. What do you think of that?

P - This kind of feminists only number one hundred fifty at most. But it is not the quantity as much as the fact that if we, ten of us, speak of "divorce" or "abortion", we are the spokesmen of thirty four million people with a parliament that represents, more or less, 35% of them. These feminists are an aristocracy, and oligarchy, because their voice finds no echo, does not express the degree or quality of the maturity and conscience of the so-called common people, because I maintain that the common people are not mature. Women, on the other hand, are very mature, inasmuch as they have abortions. The act of aborting must certainly be considered among the most moral acts in this world.
I know that women who have abortions are not "the simple minded who do not understand because they are the victims of the male" as these feminists say: these women offer a concrete example, a great one that it behooves all of us to follow.

A - And the feminists of the MLD (2) (federated with the Radical Party), how do they find themselves mirrored in the policies of the Radical Party?

P - There is a macroscopic datum: when in 1965 we formed the league for divorce, after four months 70% of our militants were women. And this is no accident. Then there is our "Reichian" attitude on sexual liberation, our anti-clerical stance and thus our policy on chastity, innocence, virginity as oppression of women, all of which we articulated in 1962. Then there is non-violence, our criticism of the traditional male role, of violence in the name of strength, our criticism of the culture of aggression, of the hierarchy as an element of efficiency. We have turned all this upside down. We have always said that being disorderly is the maximum of efficiency because it blocks the formation of hierarchical roles, even in the family, among couples, in the love relationship.
A - Some feminists have attacked you in their review, calling you the anti-feminist of the month because you, as a man, assume the paternity of the women's struggle. What do you think of that?

P - That article is the most anti-feminist I have ever read. Because, in effect, it is not against me but against the silly little woman, unaware, who needs Gary Cooper, the myth, the hero, and finds him in the political sphere (who according to the feminists would be me). Hence the disdain for this "poor creature" and for all the minorities. It is anti-popular revolution against women as they are, against the workers as they are. She, this "superior" feminist, considers herself an independent woman and judges the others to be inept, poor little things. It is the queen bee looking down on the workers who are my comrades of the MLD taking their fight into the streets, the squares, the slums. They have been the worker bees for seven years. The aristocratic feminists are the Jacobins who, as in the french Revolution, are part of the most rigid club, not against the aristocrats who are on the outside, but against Marat, Danton, and then Robespierre...
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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1) "Amica" - A popular women's magaizine.

2) MLI - Movimento per la Liberazione della Donna or Women's Liberation Movement.