As early as 2019, the Italian Islamic Confederation began the process to acquire a 99-year lease of the abandoned and blighted former Nebiolo type foundry, a 20-minute walk north of Turin’s city center, to build a Mosque with a large student dormitory, garden, and library that would serve the entire neighborhood. In those prepandemic days, Turin’s mayor was Movimento 5 Stelle Chiara Appendino. Partito Democratico’s Stefano Lo Russo succeeded her in 2021. With Appendino’s support, and then with Lo Russo’s, in late March 2025 the mosque project, partially funded by the Moroccan Minister of Islamic Affairs, with designs by Vittorio Jacomussi of De Ferrari Architetti, received its final set of approvals, and is now slated to begin construction in 2026. The Aurora neighborhood, where one of us lives when not teaching in the United States, is a fascinating example of an integrated multicultural Italy, with local and international students, retirees, young families, and a mix of people who have arrived more recently from various parts of the world, including African and Asian countries, Muslims, and practitioners of other religions. While reactions on the ground might vary, many people in the neighborhood welcome the revitalization of the existing abandoned industrial building, and look forward to the increased safety and sanctity of a structure with shared common spaces. As Walid Bouchnaf, coordinator of the Confederation, recalled in celebration of the plan’s finalization, the oldest university in the world in Fez was indeed born within the walls of a mosque, and this new development brings with it the prospect of shared learning and knowledge across cultures.Footnote 1
While locals talked among themselves, party politicians swiftly released their reactions, both positive and negative. On the one hand, many applauded the plan in the name of cultural progress and the attention to a somewhat neglected area of the city. Current Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia (Siblings of Italy) party treaded lightly in their response to the new addition to the neighborhood, given their reputation for xenophobia: city councilor Ferrante de Benedictis of Fratelli d’Italia, affirmed the importance of integration—hardly a mainstay value of his party—breezily referencing that 13th century Federick II, King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, taught us as much. De Benedictis followed by paternalistically scolding that “those who have a mosque, also have the duty to handle and report those who enslave women, deal drugs, and contribute to the degradation of a neighborhood with their own behaviors.”Footnote 2 It is at this point that his and his party’s political agenda becomes clear. De Benedictis was not alone in sensationalizing and protesting Muslims’ treatment of women, citing recent incidents in Turin’s Islamic community, as a morally acceptable position from which to register dissatisfaction with the mosque. Augusta Montaruli, a current member of the Chamber and a former member of Meloni’s government, stressed that “In the wake of the news of a woman kept against her will in her own home, a victim of torture and abuse in the name of Allah … we invite the Islamic community to promote a major initiative on respect for people and the removal of violent people who use religion as an improper shield. … [The community] has the duty to take action to contain and report those who enslave women.”Footnote 3 It is noteworthy that Montaruli’s parents immigrated to Turin from the southern region of Puglia before her birth, and were thus likely subjected to pronounced racism in the north during that period, not unlike the experiences of current immigrants today.Footnote 4 She was joined by local Fratelli d’Italia politician Patrizia Alessi, who added: “The left always talks about equality, but with this mosque project we can see that women continue to be isolated from men in the prayer hall. A further step is needed to emphasize that women should not be discriminated against.”Footnote 5
While we are not surprised to see De Benedictis, Montaruli, and Alessi protesting the building of a new mosque, it is confounding to see them doing so in the name of a feminist cause: the protection of women from religious and cultural oppression. As members of Fratelli d’Italia, they join a lineage of a party that was not only co-created by Prime Minister Meloni just over a decade ago, but also that, according to many, is the direct descendant (through Movimento Sociale Italiano first, and Alleanza Nazionale later) of the defunct Partito Nazionale Fascista of the first decades of the twentieth century, whose driving force was Benito Mussolini himself. We find this behavior to be an increasingly typical example of a contradictory and disorienting position that repackages conservative and traditionalist tropes under the mantle of a vague mission aimed at the protection of women. In this particular instance, these three party leaders join a larger movement on the right that criticizes the way Muslims treat women, especially the traditional custom of wearing a veil, which they see as a form of oppression. Perhaps most notably in France, the “veil question” has been at the forefront of national politics for at least three decades as France has long condemned all religious symbols in schools and in public life, for a long time.Footnote 6 At the same time, the left, in Italy as elsewhere, has embraced the veil as a feminist symbol and the manifestation of a choice based on individual freedom. Indeed, the right’s behavior hides a dislike for visible Islamic practices (mosques, veiled women, worship customs) and for their “invasion” of traditionally Christian spaces. This, in turn, hides a dislike for any form of migration, an omnipresent and popular position on the agenda of conservative leaders, Meloni included. Rather than the more easily condemnable language of xenophobia, the right speciously hides behind carefully expressed rhetoric, often ostensibly aimed at women’s well-being. Scholar Sara Farris calls this practice femonationalism to demonstrate how racist initiatives are hidden behind supposed feminist causes (and feminist language), often by parties or politicians who have a thin resumé when it comes to advocating for women’s equality.Footnote 7
The recent set of events in Turin reminded us of the seemingly global practice of the right not so much to dance across elusive language or posturing, but to full on appropriate and manipulate the language of the left into divisive, violent, and punishing concepts to maintain power, often through confusion and disorientation. In the United States, we find an especially clear example with the successful manipulation of the word “woke,” a term that originated in 1960s Black vernacular and found its way into the mainstream in the 2010s following greater visibility of police and vigilante killings of unarmed Black people across the country. While its original significance from the Civil Rights Era might have undergone a first appropriation by a popular left in the late 2010s to signal awareness of systemic oppression across a number of marginalized groups (not just BIPOC), the right has more recently managed to demonize the term into a rallying cry for conservative politics despite widespread misunderstanding and misuse.Footnote 8 We also see this tactic used to devastating health consequences with the feminist motto “my body, my choice,” which has been appropriated in the United States by the right as a defense for the antivaccination movement. In the introduction to their coedited issue on the concept of disorientation in the journal Culture, Theory, and Critique, Niall Martin and Mireille Rosello consider the multiple facets of this concept, including the pleasurably curious reaction to the challenges that can arise when one is disoriented, not just confusion or alienation.Footnote 9 This impulse echoes the queer phenomenology that Sara Ahmed celebrates in her eponymous work where she underscores the potential to “convert” the negative feelings associated with disorientation into positive ones.Footnote 10 While we acknowledge this potential, and share in the enthusiasm for the agency that is inherent in such a conversion, we see this concept differently in the political context, and also when there is intentional manipulation and usurping of language that is intended to be antiracist or to work toward equity into a rhetoric of obfuscation.
We are interested in precisely this creation of confusion through rhetorical somersaults on the Italian political stage, specifically how the Meloni-led right appropriates feminist language and ideals to further neoliberal economics, neoconservative morals, and a nationalist agenda that is incontrovertibly hostile to women, not to mention non-white people, migrants, and LGBTQIA+ communities. The decisive turn toward the right in the world order adds a momentum that we find troubling on its own, and especially so when read across cultural shifts jolted by the manipulation of language. With the 2024 American presidential election and the left’s continued inability to comprehend its outcome, set against authoritarian positions and practices from the leaders of Russia, Israel, Iran, China, and North Korea, confusion, rather than clarity or transparency (to use a favorite word of the left that might soon be on its way to being transformed into a tool for the right), has become an invaluable tactic to distract the masses.
We are reminded of Hannah Arendt’s work on totalitarian rule and her warnings of the corruption of thought as an important part of the tyrannical process. This tyranny, she wrote, “begins with the mind’s submission to logic” a kind of rules based logic that she contrasts with “thinking,” which she describes as “the freest and purest of all human activities.”Footnote 11 Arendt goes on, famously, to describe achieving success of this unthinking process of tyranny when people have “lost contact” with each other and “the reality around them,” losing “the capacity of both experience and thought. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”Footnote 12 We see a very tangible danger where the manipulation of rhetoric is part of this process of unthinking, that the confusion and disorientation that it breeds has the potential to lead to a state of unthinking, and thus of mass control.
Arendt teaches us that “Masses are not held together by a consciousness of common interest and they lack that specific class articulateness which is expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals.” Moreover, in Nazi Germany, “The fall of protecting class walls transformed the slumbering majorities behind all parties into one great unorganized, structureless mass of furious individuals who had nothing in common except their vague apprehension that the hopes of party members were doomed.”Footnote 13 It was of great consequence for the birth of this new terrifying “negative solidarity,” to borrow Arendt’s term, that the unemployed worker and the small landowner hated the status quo and the powers that be and from there grew an angry complacency that enabled the horrors of totalitarian regimes. The feminism that followed in post-WWII years was an antidote to this. It was founded in (positive) solidarity. Today, once again, we are witnessing the fracturing of solidarity groups and the formation of angry masses, the very ones who are currently electing far right leaders. What happens when those leaders are women? We are interested in the dynamics of this phenomenon.
1. Neofascist/neofeminist
In this essay, we continue our work on understanding conservative women in Italian politics and society. We draw, in part, on our previous work regarding Giorgia Meloni’s particular brand of feminism that began with an online study day in January 2023 organized for the American Association of Italian Studies, and followed with our coedited special issue of the journal g/s/i (gender/sexuality/italy) in 2024.Footnote 14 Since Meloni’s election, we have been interested in answering, primarily, one question: Could a conservative woman like Meloni be considered a feminist? Put in another way: Can a right-wing type of feminism exist? Giorgia Meloni is an intriguing, complex, intelligent, and highly contradictory woman who, in spite of her strong Catholic faith, never married and is a single mother, while also the leader of a G7 country and of the most conservative coalition since Mussolini’s times. With Meloni’s unusual success in mind, we wondered why conservative women tend to fare better in politics, and thus expand our project toward a deeper analysis of the kind of feminism that blends family, individualism, and conservatism.
Our essay, “Donne di destra/Women of the Right” focuses on the historical, cultural, and political reasons behind Meloni’s victory in 2022, almost exactly one hundred years after Mussolini’s own ascent to power, as Italy’s first woman Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri (Prime Minister).Footnote 15 As progressive feminists, we oppose most of Meloni’s positions on migration, on LGBTQIA+ rights, on human rights, on welfare, and her nationalist politics rooted in early membership in the now defunct neofascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano. We wondered what to make of a leader who embodies both exclusionary politics and a dignified, calm presence against misogyny, and clear feminist traits. We asked ourselves if conservative women like Meloni practice a form of feminism, and if so, what does it look like? To answer this, we turned to some of those scholars who helped articulate a more inclusive feminism, such as Silvia Federici, who defines “women” as a political category encompassing trans, nonbinary, intersex, agender, and queer people, and Chiara Bottici, who insists feminism must oppose oppression of all perceived as women.Footnote 16
In the first part of our article, we trace the genealogy of conservative women in Italian politics. While second-wave feminism in the 1960s and 1970s was tied to labor, family, and peace movements, right-wing women emerged in the 1990s, when Italy’s “first republic” party system collapsed and Silvio Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia rose. It was Berlusconi, we argue, who at least in part reshaped culture as well as politics, even opening space for conservative women like Irene Pivetti, Mara Carfagna, Mariastella Gelmini, Alessandra Mussolini, and Giorgia Meloni herself to rise within hierarchies that still upheld gender inequality. For those who are familiar with Berlusconi’s involvement in sex scandals, this may appear to be contradictory: he denigrated women in his media outlets and in his private life, but it is undeniable that the neoliberal climate he helped to establish enabled conservative women who assimilated into right-wing politics while appropriating some key elements from feminism. This, we think, was very different from what was happening on the left. As Jennifer Piscopo’s study of Latin America shows, left populists often undermine feminist gains through “policy mitigation” or “defensive dismissals.”Footnote 17 Similarly, the Italian left’s support for women has often been unreliable.
Our analysis also found that right-wing women manipulated feminist concepts: conservatives such as politician Daniela Santanchè and Prime Minister Meloni exploited slogans like the already mentioned “my body, my choice” for conservative ends, strategically reframing women’s liberation in terms of neoliberal “lean-in” equality. So, we wondered, is there such a thing as conservative feminism? Seeing women’s voices heard is always positive, but Meloni’s example is disorienting for feminists, to say the least. We identified an unlikely case of a right-wing feminist in Mussolini’s granddaughter Alessandra, a former actress, model, and singer with a medical degree, who entered politics through Movimento Sociale, like Meloni, but shifted alliances frequently. Mussolini has made homophobic and transphobic remarks, yet she also played a key role in Italy’s much needed 1996 law against sexual violence, a rare bipartisan achievement. More recently, Mussolini has supported LGBTQIA+ rights, rejected gender-binary EU passports, and promoted abolition of the so-called tampon tax across Europe. Could Alessandra Mussolini, we asked ourselves, be considered a feminist? We think so.
In similar fashion, Meloni has at times advanced measures such as free childcare, lower taxes on sanitary products, and a defense of Italy’s abortion law. But critics show that she has rolled back commitments (trying to raise VAT on sanitary products, for instance), showing that her prowoman rhetoric serves nationalist, natalist, and even xenophobic goals: urging white Italian women to have more children to counter demographic decline. Neoliberalism is central in Meloni’s policies, as it institutionalizes femonationalism, reorganizing reproduction to serve capital. Thus, Meloni’s limited prowoman gestures mask a corporate feminism that empowers elite women while oppressing others. She stops short at systemic challenges like the gender pay gap or paternity leave, proving reluctant to confront patriarchy directly. Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, and Nancy Fraser describe this as “equal opportunity domination:” ruling-class women sharing the power to exploit.Footnote 18 Meloni’s defense of working mothers collapses into neoliberal logic, as Italian conservative politician Daniela Santanchè also says: “Equality is made with money.”Footnote 19 These contradictions mark the limits of conservative feminism.
The last section of our study turned to feminist principles of sisterhood and solidarity. Meloni’s often-quoted personal history (her father abandoned their family when she was an infant) may explain her protective sisterhood of the family narrative, where solidarity is limited to her mother, sister, and daughter. It is this story that Meloni brings to the center when she is accused of serving the patriarchy. But it is a story that remains limited, transexclusionary, and white-centered, even if, in her inaugural speech, using traditional feminist metaphors, she listed many Italian women like Maria Montessori, Grazia Deledda, Tina Anselmi, Nilde Iotti, Rita Levi Montalcini, Oriana Fallaci, and others, as predecessors who allowed her to climb the ladder to break the glass ceiling.
When we conceived our special issue, we also attempted to move beyond the academy, to interview other Italian women who identify as feminists, young and old, white and of color, conservative and progressive. We opted for four public intellectuals, two progressive and two conservative Italian women. On the progressive side, we asked Dacia Maraini, an acclaimed, award-winning author, and a veteran of Italian feminism since the late 1960s. We also asked an Italian feminist of the third millennium, Nathasha Edirippulige Fernando, known primarily for her podcast Sulla razza (On Race). On the conservative side, we invited journalist and former far-right politician Flavia Perina, and controversial journalist Marina Terragni. Our interview questions provide a comprehensive exploration of the intersection between feminism, politics, and contemporary debates in Italy.Footnote 20 It was Terragni that we realized could be the perfect case study for this article as a complex self-declared radical feminist who also locks herself in controversies that compromise her logic.
2. Marina Terragni: A case study
A native of Milan, Terragni has collaborated with numerous newspapers and magazines, and is the author of several books.Footnote 21 In January 2025, she was appointed garante per l’infanzia (Italian authority for children and adolescents) by Eugenia Roccella, the current (at the time of writing) Minister for Family, Natality, and Equal Opportunities. In her role in this independent but government appointed agency, Terragni is tasked with protecting the rights of children and young adults. It is worth noting that Roccella herself is a conservative feminist and journalist, equally prone to controversies, and a skilled representative of the dangerous eloquence of the right. For instance, in a 2022 interview, Roccella notoriously questioned Italy’s abortion law, by intentionally misrepresenting second-wave feminists’ positions.Footnote 22 In her article on Roccella included in our edited volume, Veronica Frigeni highlights her paradoxical, contradictory rhetoric regarding feminist victories such as abortion, stressing how Roccella “does indeed take a sexual difference feminist position, but she misinterprets it, or better yet, turns it inside out.”Footnote 23
Terragni is active in online publications such as Feminist Post, a venue that gives space to a variety of discussions on women, and that is open to antitrans and antisurrogacy essays in defense of, to borrow their language, “any form of sexual and commercial exploitation and any manipulation of the bodies of women and girls.”Footnote 24 Similar to Meloni, Terragni operates within a broader historical and cultural feminist framework. She is gender-critical, and antisurrogacy, and has been a vocal critic of the Muslim veil. In our interview, Terragni provided us with a crucial reflection on the legacy of feminist movements, and an analysis of the political role of Giorgia Meloni as Italy’s first female prime minister. In the following paragraphs, we analyze our interview in light of the disorienting rhetoric of the right that is increasing all around us, from the United States to Italy. Terragni is articulate and persuasive, but in a number of instances her language is also exclusionary, which we find antithetical both historically and practically to feminism. Her specific adherence to rhetoric is at least in part to blame.
Our conversation with Terragni unfolded across three main axes: feminism’s political affiliations, the complex relationship between Meloni and feminist discourse, and the tension between feminism and LGBTQIA+ movements. Terragni strongly rejects the idea that feminism has ever been politically neutral. She emphasizes its historical connections with the political left, and she insists that a significant sector of feminism continues to look toward the left, even though the left no longer engages effectively with feminist concerns. Terragni recalls philosopher Luisa Muraro and author Lia Cigarini’s 1994 reflections on Forza Italia’s Irene Pivetti’s election as President of the Chamber of Deputies: while the left reverted to a rights-based discourse rooted in parity and disadvantage, the right positioned women as protagonists without the defensive posture of demanding equality.Footnote 25 This inversion, according to Terragni, demonstrates that right-wing politics could sometimes channel women’s aspirations more effectively than the left. Terragni’s thoughts on Muraro and Cigarini open the door to the possibility of a dialog with what we might call conservative feminism.
Today we think of feminism as multifaceted. Indeed, we encountered several key instances of feminist scholarship that problematize the very core of the idea of feminism and that acknowledge the existence of various kinds of feminism. For instance, in their dialog on “Fascist Feminism,” looking back at early twentieth century Great Britain, Sophie Lewis and Asa Seresin recognize the existence of “fascistic” feminists comparing them with today’s gender-critical feminists, especially when it comes to the “sacralization of cis female fertility” and “the homoerotics of sameness.”Footnote 26 They also trace similarities between fascist rhetoric and contemporary transexclusionary practices. They argue, even though they do not fully elaborate on this point, that acknowledging certain feminist fascist tendencies—rather than denying their existence—could strengthen antifascist transfeminist groups, and conclude stressing the importance of “honoring the history of feminist and/or lesbian anti-fascism even as we—indeed because we—insist on being attentive to the non-synonymity of feminism and anti-fascism and the collective arts by which they are, always contingently, made synonymous.”Footnote 27 We find Lewis and Seresin’s recognition of (very) conservative feminism to be essential for our discourse, especially regarding Terragni’s rhetoric. On this note, asked whether feminism should proceed independently of political affiliation, Terragni cautiously affirms that it should, invoking Simone Weil’s 1957 On the Abolition of All Political Parties as inspiration for overcoming partisan conditioning. She also reframes the discussion by rejecting the “women’s question” and instead positing the problem of “the excess of the masculine” as central to contemporary crises.
Regarding Giorgia Meloni, Terragni unequivocally states that Meloni is not a feminist, since she does not define herself as such, and her choice must be respected. However, Terragni also stresses that Meloni’s relationship with feminism is “alive and complex.” While it is undeniable that the visuals of Meloni as leader, holding ground with other heads of state who are deeply rooted in performances of the strongman as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, spark power-driven fantasies of conquest for women of any age, it is difficult to separate such a victory from the very patriarchal systems of hierarchy that feminism contests. On certain issues—such as surrogacy and gender identity—Meloni and Terragni’s position converge to recognize that without feminist advances, she could not have attained her political success. But her decision to adopt the masculine form “il presidente,” rather than the feminine “la presidente” could be seen as a declaration that her achievements do not rest on quotas but, rather, on merit and political neutrality.Footnote 28 Regarding her potential as a role model, Terragni affirms that Meloni’s leadership normalizes women’s ambitions and expands horizons for younger generations, making her an unavoidable symbol, regardless of feminist labels. The symbolic power of a woman leading the country outweighs linguistic debates about titles.
Meloni’s choice signals, for Terragni, a model of female sovereignty distinct from the logic of equal opportunities. Furthermore, according to Terragni, in the culture of the right, the notion of female sovereignty is in conversation with maternal authority, which is neither contradictory nor unprecedented. Similarly, religion scholar Gil Anidjar attempts to assign the adjective “maternal” to the notion of the political, moving away from the thinking that politics is inherently paternal, patriarchal, and fraternal. His ideas flip the subject from the mother to the concept of sovereignty, arguing for an inherent sovereignty in the work of mothering, and thus setting up the association of some sort of maternal practice of rule.Footnote 29 For the most part, historically, as most queens were related to the maternal, it was largely in their capacity to produce heirs, reducing them to a role of laborer, or, more romantically, furthering a lineage for the good of society, while also retaining power in a single family. Such a depiction hardly displays the noble grandiosity of the ways in which kings maintained power, which was by force, or if through diplomacy, then through some sort of divine innate nobility granting them magnanimous thinking. More often, however, the reality is that women leaders, both historically and presently, still operate within the structures and indeed the rhetoric of power regardless of whatever ambition queens or female heads of state might inspire in the minds of children with aspirations for greatness.
More to the point, put plainly as cultural and literary scholar Anke Gilleir does, “female leadership did not equal feminism and […] did not come with implications of sisterhood.”Footnote 30 When have women in power, whether in democracies, monarchies, or corporations, made structural changes that alter the practices of hierarchy originally intended to retain and consolidate power? Often, even when elected, they must operate within both the cultural and structural norms of the current system. As leaders, they maintain an executive authority, and they must constantly prove their worthiness through masculine models. One way to understand this dynamic is through the medieval myth of the double body, as Farris reads Meloni’s insistence on the already mentioned preference of il presidente instead of the grammatically correct la. As Farris traces a history of female monarchs across Europe, Asia, and Africa, she also points out that these women operated in extremely hostile environments.Footnote 31 Furthermore, as recent as 2025, the news broke of an Italian Facebook group dedicated to shaming and humiliating Italian female politicians across the right and left, including Meloni and Elly Schlein, the leader of the Democratic Party of the left.Footnote 32 Membership to the site, the name of which is a sexist slur, increased, and only slid when the fear of being prosecuted began to emerge.
Our questions to Terragni also addressed relations between feminism and the LGBTQIA+ community. During this part of the conversation, Terragni recalled the historical alliance between feminism and the gay movement, noting that the latter borrowed strategies of organization and struggle from feminism. However, this alliance weakened during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. According to Terragni, the emphasis on gender self-identification and the absorption of feminist agendas into queer politics have produced conflicts, especially regarding women’s rights and protections. In Italy today, she identifies a division between progressive feminism and gender-critical feminism, which emphasizes female difference and what she sees as queer hegemony.
A further source of conflict is surrogacy, which radical feminism denounces as exploitation and commodification of the female body, while progressive feminism remains more open. Despite these tensions, Terragni acknowledges emerging spaces of renewed dialog, citing groups such as LGB Alliance and Gays Against Groomers that collaborate with gender-critical feminism. She insists on distinguishing between LGBTQIA+ organizations and the broader, diverse population of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans individuals, many of whom do not align with the agendas of queer politics. We could then consider Terragni’s position as an example of what Serena Bassi and Greta LaFleur, borrowing from Enzo Traverso, call “a distinctively postfascist feminism.”Footnote 33 Bassi and LaFleur recognize that conservative feminists are making “a number of overtures to liberal feminism (mired as these may be in ambivalence and contradiction),” but their principal purpose (as we can see in Terragni as well) remains the clear support of “the renaturalization of the heteronormative sexual order.”Footnote 34
In sum, we feel that our interview positions Terragni as a critical feminist voice navigating the complexities of Italian politics and global debates. With her answers, she challenged assumptions about feminism’s ties to the left, articulated a nuanced reading of Meloni’s role, and highlighted ongoing fractures between feminist and queer/trans agendas. What we find “disorienting” about Terragni is that, while she can be nuanced and lucid, she also promotes strictly binary visions. Her feminism is based on biology and sexual organs, whether biological or through surgical adaptation, and her rhetoric, even though more complex than Meloni’s, is constrained by her antitrans, antisurrogacy, and antiveil positions. Regarding the latter point, Terragni takes a different path to arrive at similar conclusions as the antimosque Fratelli d’Italia representatives in Turin who blatantly hide behind supposed feminist stances to convey their disapproval of the new mosque. For instance, in a 2021 online debate with scholar Maryan Ismail about the paradox of the Muslim veil as a symbol of freedom, Terragni repeatedly wonders if young Muslim women who live in western countries and enthusiastically embrace the veil are acting entirely on their own will, or if they are instigated by what she calls “a certain Islam” that has both cultural and economic power over them.Footnote 35 While she acknowledges the rhetoric of freedom surrounding the veil, she does not accept it. For her, the leftist position is the one that is disoriented.
That same year, in an interview, Terragni spoke disapprovingly of transpeople who “claim the unilateral right to proclaim themselves a woman or a man, beyond any surgical, pharmacological or even administrative process. I self-declare and self-identify in my sexual identity and I demand that the community recognize it, without a peep.” Terragni thinks that “this undermines the symbolic dimension of the human being” since “the masculine and feminine are rooted in bodies. This is not a matter of fantasy. The sexual binary—male, female—is an incontrovertible fact. No theory can subvert this fact.”Footnote 36 For simplicity’s sake, let us accept such a physical binary even though biologists increasingly understand sex designations on a spectrum and not in the strict binary to which Terragni is accustomed.Footnote 37 The main problem with Terragni’s reasoning is that she breaks her own logic, since to insist on biological difference is to insist on the preservation of so-called natural or traditional inequalities. As Giorgia Serughetti has argued in her book Potere di altro genere: donne, femminismi e politica, by contrast, the difference in sexual difference theory is not in conflict with equality.Footnote 38 As for Terragni, the kind of “incontrovertible” difference that she stands by is very much grounded in a conservatism of hierarchies.
3. Ongoing differences
Gender-critical and conservative feminists seem to always be behind the curve. What they consider feminism in the twenty-first century is often an idea of women’s independence that second wave feminists fought for in the 1970s. For conservative feminists, a group that includes our case study, Marina Terragni, scrutinizing the female body always elicits a strong reaction. It is within these groups that conservative women, such as Giorgia Meloni, Eugenia Roccella, and Daniela Santanchè, find a place to thrive. These women do not present themselves as gender-critical, but, rather, as successful examples of womanhood, and of feminism, too. Skillfully subverting feminist tropes, in some cases they appear as defenders of girls’ and women’s rights against the dangers of transfeminism and (in their view) oppressive religious and social systems, such as Islam. In reality, they may be playing a much more dangerous game, creating a vulnerability for what Arendt saw in 1930s Germany and communist Europe, which was the coming together of “apparently indifferent people whom all other parties had given up as too apathetic or too stupid for their attention.” As she saw it, “The result was that the majority of their membership consisted of people who never before had appeared on the political scene. This permitted the introduction of entirely new methods into political propaganda, and indifference to the arguments of political opponents.”Footnote 39 As feminists, we find it deeply disturbing that these new methods usurp rhetoric that was intended to bring people together, rather than create division.
In this spirit, we believe that the conversation would benefit if progressive feminists came to terms with these women and their feminism (accepting that, like in the case of Meloni, they might not even call it feminism). Conservative women are prominent on social media. They have visibility. They have influence. They have power. And people listen to them. At the same time, in the name of solidarity, one of the fundamental values of feminism, we recognize that not all traditional second wave feminists are gender-critical. Sexual difference theory is founded in difference, acknowledging difference, and creating space for difference. If we continue to follow this model, in which we still believe, that also means making room for different feminisms. As we learn to distinguish and see the nuances, we welcome honest (and hard) conversations in all feminist communities.
Author contributions
Conceptualization: J.G., O.F.
Conflicts of interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Left-Wing Populism, Democratic Erosion, and Patriarchy.” The Loop. March 23, 2023. 
Open access
