What is Martina Miccichè’s “Suburban Feminism”.

Fperipheral eminism. Spaces, support. Mutual aid and listening. But also support and attention to others. This (and more) is absent from the appeal: especially towards women and even more so in the outskirts of cities. It’s the reason why all this has ended up at the center of a new debate, that is a feminist movement that is also anti-racial and ecological in a broad sense. Because, in those thoughts, there is room for everyone: pfor nature expelled from the city, for women left on the margins of male needsfor children and their daily dreams.

He comes to tell us his story Suburban feminism (Probe), an intersectional book that reflects onsexist organization of cities and urban and institutional racism: an unprecedented and important stage for feminism because it is strongly linked to the concept of marginality. It’s the one who writes it Martina Miccichè, a young activist and photojournalist born in Comasina, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Milan who defines herself as a “political scientist” dealing with the world of inequalities, during the conferences she holds throughout Italy. And she has a lot to tell about life in the suburbs.

The book collects testimonies from realities and collectives who practice this “suburban feminism” every day and will be presented today at 6pm at Rob De Matt in Milan with Selam Tesfai. Each chapter has a focus which is also an update on the vision of cities which, as we read on the first page, are known by going to the suburbs rather than by staying in the centre.

What is the Suburban feminism?

«Peripheral feminism is a perspective and a claim, a part of that political and social movement which aims to achieve an equal society, without discrimination based on gender, class, race, identity, religion, age, disability, ethnicity, nationality, species and urban location”, says Martina. «However, there are realities that practice it every day. I think about Hippoasis of Pisa which, in the words of the manager Susanna Panini, is “an anti-speciesist refuge and a social and political space but also a laboratory of coexistence between humans and animals”.

I also think about Artemisiaa transfeminist collective born on the Brenta Riviera, which organized the first provincial Pride, or even Scobithe off-the-rails collective active in Rovereto right now is denouncing the policies of killing bears and other wild animals in Trentino and who has been carrying out the #stopcasteller campaign against the detention of bears for some time”, he adds.

From patriarchal architecture to absent services

Can you give us examples of sexist city organisation?
«It is enough to cross them to realize its unfairness, to see how the paths are designed for a unique human model and not to represent humanity in its diversity. The trace of the patriarchal system is tangible in the city’s architecture, trivially in the absence of accessible and equipped public toilets in the area. Not to mention the expulsion methods that leave clinics, safe houses, but also services necessary for working life – such as transport or, in the case of mothers, public child care services – to be sparse and sparse if not private, therefore usable only by those with greater financial resources”, he specifies.

What about urban and institutional racism?
«Just observe how much the city ​​is reticent to allocate space and resources to racialized peopleespecially when it comes to cultural or religious spaces, or how disinclined the city’s inhabitants themselves are to rent houses or accommodation on the basis of racist prejudice.

A clear example of institutional racism, however, is the strenuous defense of the presence of statues of people who took part in colonial aggressionswith related gender violence – as in the case of the one dedicated to Montanelli in the gardens of Porta Venezia in Milan”, he concludes.

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