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Riv. Sessuol. - Vol. 36 - n. 2-3

Aprile/Settembre 2012

Gender and State violence at the G8 in Genoa

M. MENEGATTO*, A. ZAMPERINI**

Summary
Psychosocial studies generally connect State violence with
undemocratic and totalitarian system that trample down human rights. In fact scientific literature is poor in the state
violence practiced in democratic societies. If the international
observers agreed that in Genoa there has been a heavy suspension of human rights during the G8 summit, it remains
to be investigated how it has concretized itself and what kind
of suffering has generated. By articulating the concepts of
social delegitimization and psychopolitical trauma, in this
article we analyze the collective violence suffered by female protesters.
Key words: gender, state violence, psychopolitical trauma, social delegitimization.

Introduction
In public opinion the 2001 G8 in Genoa is sadly noted in military terms, such as battle of Genoa, urban
war in Genoa and similar. The town was transformed into
a fortress: the place in which the summit physically took
place, the so-called red zone, was separated from the rest
of the city by barriers and iron grating five metres high.
The airport, the stations, and ports were out of bounds for
free circulation. Helicopters flew over the urban space at
low altitude. The deployment of forces of law and order
remind us of a real and proper state of assault.
While politicians and functionaries began the work on
their agenda, different processions marched through the

streets of the city, put to fire and sword by the black bloc.
Between the forces of law and order and demonstrators
there were violent conflicts. In Piazza Alimonda, from inside a defender, attacked by a group of demonstrators,
a policeman fired two pistol shots, killing the twenty-three
year old Carlo Giuliani. Just before midnight the same day,
about 300 police officers broke into the Diaz school, the
press venue of Genoa Social Forum and dormitory. An English journalist, Mark Cowell, who at that moment found
himself in front of the school was overwhelmed by a platoon of police: he was subjected to a violent beating and
was close to being killed. Inside the school, the police began to treat the sleeping demonstrators with ferocity. The
final result of the operation was about 69 injured, three
very seriously, one in a coma; and 93 arrested of whom 75
were taken to the Bolzaneto police station.
The approximate balance of two days of clashes is given by some statistics: 253 people arrested, 606 injured,
6200 tear gas bombs fired by the police, 20 pistol shots,
50 billion lire of damage and one death (Italian Parliamentary, 2001). According to Amnesty International
(2001) in Genoa, during the G8, the most serious abuse
of human rights in a western country since the Second
World War took place. Little or nothing however has been
done to get to the bottom of how it happened and what
consequences such a human rights abuse has had. The main
trials held, the itineraries of which have not yet been completely closed, regarded the Diaz school and the Bolzaneto
police station. The trial process has been systematically blocked by the Italian authorities and the public institutions
have in fact isolated the public ministries entrusted with
the investigations. Such behaviour has contributed to making even more precarious the pact of trust between citi-

* Clinical and community psychologist, researcher at the Italian Society of Psychosocial Science for Peace; email: marialuisa.menegatto@sispa.it.
**Professor of Social Psychology and Interpersonal Relationships at the University of Padua; email: adriano.zamperini@unipd.it.
Copyright 2012
CIC Edizioni Internazionali, Roma
C.I.S. - Centro Italiano di Sessuologia

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zens and state. What is more, the absence in Italy of a law

on torture has forced the judicial process to fragment the
conduct of the forces of law and order. Instead of re-conducting all the behaviour to a specific case in question, to
be precise the crime of torture, this has been considered
one to one: a kick, cutting off hair etc. So that this fragmentation has created a failure to reach a vision of togetherness, leaving a question unanswered: how to understand and what to call what happened in Genoa in
2001?.
In the opinion of the writers, the instruments offered
by social psychology to investigate collective violence can
contribute towards putting some light on this abuse of human rights. For this reason through a research project, now
ten years later, they have tried to reconstruct the events that
occurred in Genoa according to a perspective of psychosocial analysis; a first summary of these results is collected in the volume Wounded citizenship and psychopolitical trauma (Zamperini, Menegatto, 2011). In this paper, after a brief review of the concept of collective violence, research will be presented, carried out through the
testimony of women held in Bolzaneto prison, a centre originally thought of for identifying the demonstrators arrested which has instead become a place of oppression, outside any democratic regulation. The final objective is to
reach that whole vision of violence exercised on women
at Bolzaneto which is still missing in scientific literature.
Collective violence
There have been innumerable offerings by social
psychology to explain the aggression and violence, on
which, for reasons of space, we are unable here to dwell
on (for a review, cf. Krah, 2001). Instead we shall take into
consideration the World Report on Violence and Health

Figure 1 - Types of violence (source: Krug et al., 2002).

134

edited on behalf of the World Health Organization by Krug

et al. (2002), as it provides a worldwide analysis of the rapport between violence and health.
The report defines violence thus: The intentional use
of psychological force or power, threatened or actual,
against oneself, another person, or against a group or community that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation (Krug et al., 2002, p. 5). It should
be emphasized that beside the traditional reference to physical force, the introduction of the term power broadens
the dimension of the phenomenon, inserting acts deriving
from relationships of asymmetrical power which may be
threats and intimidation. It also offers a representation of
violence crossing two dimensions: the nature of violence
(physical, sexual, psychological, involving deprivation or
neglect) and the receive for the violent act (by which we
mean self-directed violence, interpersonal violence, collective violence). The horizontal array in Figure 1 indicates the victims while the vertical array reports the way in
which they are affected.
Without going into the details of each type of violence, in itself quite comprehensible, in consideration of the
subject herein confronted we briefly examine only collective
violence. According to the report of the World Health Organization, Collective violence may be defined as: the instrumental use of violence by people who identify themselves as members of a group whether this group is transitory or has a more permanent identity against another
group or set of individuals, in order to achieve political,
economic or social objectives. Various forms of collective violence have been recognized, including: a) Wars, terrorism and other violent political conflicts that occur within or between states; b) State perpetrated violence such

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Gender and State violence at the G8 in Genoa

as genocide, repression, disappearances, torture and

other abuses of human rights; c) Organized violence such
as banditry and gang warfare (Krug et al., 2002, p. 215).
On the basis of this taxonomy what happened in Genoa during G8 in 2001 can be classified as State violence, resulting ascertained the temporary suspension of human rights by the forces of law and order. A state which,
however, unlike the various examples quoted in the report
by the World Health Organization does not present the
characteristics of a dictatorial state, rather that of a democratic state. And can a democratic state produce collective violence analogous to that found in countries where oppression is the system?
Social delegitimization
To exercise with impunity abuses of power inside a State a civic discharge of victims is often required (Zamperini, 2001), that is a social process capable of transforming the figures of alterity in enemies, thus passable for
moral exclusion. One of the more noted psychosocial theories elaborated in order to understand the basis on which
collective violence emanates is the theory of social delegitimization (Bar-Tal, 1989). Delegitimization means that
process of cognitive categorization through which characteristics are associated with a group which are so negative as to make socially plausible and morally acceptable its physical and psychological expulsion. A goal
which is reached when individuals and groups are perceived
as beyond the confines within which norms and values are
applied guided by criteria of equity and justice. It is the
position occupied with respect to the perimeter of the moral which determines different treatment aimed at opinion
and social action. Anybody, inside or outside the community, may be the target of violence and prevarication.
With the difference that when the damage is inflicted inside it is more likely to be considered an unjust action, to
which requests for repair can follow, while when the target is outside, it is much more likely that some violence of
rights is not perceived (cf. Opotow, 1990).
Bar-Tal (1990) identified five main strategies through
which delegitimization operates. With dehumanization a
group is labelled inhuman, enrolling its members on a register of diversity in the human kingdom; the linguistic labels mainly used refer to an inferior race, to the animal
world and even supernatural (for example demons).
Characterization on the basis of trait characterization aims
at describing a group according to personal elements which
are extremely negative and therefore not tolerable; portraying the components of a group as transgressors of fundamental rules means banning them from society and its
institutions as they are annoyingly deviant. The use of political labels renders a group similar to a specific political
entity that threatens the constituent values of a collective,

creating a serious danger for it to be able to function and

survive. Outcasting leads to considering the members of
delegitimized group as violators of the socially shared
norms: reference is to social actors not organized and regards the person as a whole, differently from recourse to
trait characterization which concerns specific attributes of
the subject. Finally, through group comparison negative identification and perception is made of a particular group of
people, attributing to them a strongly negative label; the
labels attributed are symbolic and represent the most undesirable groups of a certain culture.

The research
The present study analyses collective violence employed by the police force inside the Bolzaneto prison during
the days of the G8 against the demonstrators arrested. The
data has been defined by demonstrators testimonials provided during the first trial from 12 October 2005 to 14 July
2008 in Genoa. Nothing was previously known about what
happened in Bolzaneto. The trial was the first time that victims and perpetrators were called together publically to
testify and this narrative reconstruction (cf. Darley, 1999)
remain the only binding material to throw light on what
happened.
The trial contained n=179 public hearings and n=361
witness reports were collected, n=208 demonstrators
spoke during the trial, classified as 162 Males and 46 Females. These transcripts of witness textual data were processed with Atlas-ti, a quality software analysis programme. This paper focuses on the collective violence perpetrated on female victims: n=46 (media=24,5; range 16-42).

Results
Bar-Tals theory has so far been applied to analyze the
collective violence perpetrated inside the Bolzaneto prison. Next to the classic theory two new ways of delegitimization have emerged from that research: the first consists in making the delegitimized assume a specific behaviour; in the second the members of the ingroup (agents
and health workers) send the delegitimized environmental messages which refer to hostile symbolic frames. Thus
we have defined 3 types of delegitimization: one definitional
delegitimization as Bar-Tals model and in addition behavioural and environmental (cf. Zamperini, Menegatto,
2011).
The analysis from a gender perspective shows that references to phenomena of delegitimization are n=252 out
of a total of 46 testimonials, with an average of 5,4 for each
woman. The use of outcasting is the most frequent, with
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a total of 86 mentions, in particular for the definitional with

73 mentions in 46 cases. Trait characterization follows with
a total of 65 mentions; 55 political labels; 29 mentions of
dehumanization, 17 of group comparison. We did not find
the categories of behavioural trait characterization, behavioural dehumanization and environmental group comparison. Definitional delegitimization is stated as the most used
by the delegitimized in the case of female victims (see Table 1).
OUTCASTING
Definitional
In this case delegitimizing strategies draw from the
broad classification of outcasts in the history of mankind.
All types of women that different communities exile to the
margins or even reject from the circle of us. In the language of the delegitimized the woman is considered as an
outsider for the most part for sexual reasons by the use of
terms like whore, bitch, slag, prostitute, lesbian;
one example from reports: I heard a man who said: Hit,
hit her because even if theyre women, women are
mainly slags; or for socio-racial reasons by terms like
jew, gypsy, or social conduct like revolutionary. A
language aimed at attaching to demonstrators an outsider
identity.

TABLE 1 - STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL DELEGITIMIZATION.

Strategies of
social delegitimization
Frequency Total
%
Outcasting
Definitional73
Behavioural 7
Environmental
Trait characterization
Definitional50
Environmental
Political lebels
Definitional24
Behavioural 8
Environmental
Dehumanization
Definitional22
Environmental

136

33

65

26

55

22

15

TRAIT CHARACTERIZATION
Definitional
In this category the qualifying strategies used refer to
a use of appellatives aimed at throwing discredit on people like shes an Italian piece of shit, housewife, you
stink, you make me sick, what a load of rubbish,
youve got a beard in your armpits or in these examples
of communication exchanges between two women, a demonstrator and an agent: I went to the bathroom, had a
pee and the flush didnt work and this agent began to insult me saying I was filthy, that at my home I didnt flush,
that Im dirty .
Environmental
In this category delegitimization declines in gestures
which, directly or indirectly, put the woman demonstrator into a context which communicates negative characteristics. From a report: One told how she always had to
go to the toilet with the door open and was insulted, spat
at, while the door was open.

29

12

17

100

Behavioural
In this specific case women are forced to sing fascist
songs or to assume postures which go back to fascist ideo-

252

Environmental
From 19th century it is possible to have symbolic resources to create an environment that expresses social exclusion. From reports the smiling agent emerges to welcome the women demonstrators saying: On arriving I
heard an agent say Welcome to Auschwitz; or the threatening tone informing: That he should have raped us as
their agents had done in Kosovo.

POLITICAL LABELS
Definitional
Results show how these linguistic methods register the
demonstrators as politically belonging to the left or extreme
left. The stops are the target of delegitimization through
the frequent use of the appellative communist or describing the political danger in terms of black bloc.

23

Group comparison
Definitional14
Behavioural 3
Total

86

Behavioural
In this category women demonstrators assume a series
of behavioural types which usually characterize the outsider. For sexual activities: Open up your legs, if you dont open them well open them for you; or for more humble activities like She wanted to be sick, she asked several times: Can I go to the bathroom, I feel ill, can I go to
the bathroom? and they always said No until she vomited (...), she asked for something to clean up with and they
continually said No, even telling her Now clean up with
your tongue, we dont care if youve made a mess.

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logy: We were made to queue and make the fascist sign and
sing faccetta nera.
Environmental
In this category we find the police forces promoting the
anthems and songs of fascist stamp or which go back to
the right wing dictatorial system. For example: One, two
three, cheers Pinochet.
DEHUMANIZATION
Definitional
This category relegates the women demonstrators to
the animal kingdom, stripping them of human attributes. The agents confront them with terms such as
pigs, leech, rats. An example: I shyly asked if I
could wash myself again and he said, replying unpleasantly,
he told me to go away because he says: Now you want to
wash yourself again, youve been sleeping with the rats till
today.
Environmental
The withdrawal from humanity is completed inserting
in the prison environment elements with which it is related such as space of reclusion for animals. The agents relate animal verses to instil fear in those detained: They imitated dogs to scare us.
GROUP COMPARISON
Definitional
Here delegitimization is organized in ascribing to the
outgroup the essence of negativity, before a virtuous ingroup. For example addressing the women with the
name housewives of shit.
Behavioural
At the behavioural level the group comparison is shown
through extolling the forces of law and order, that is the
social category to which the pole of positivity is attributed: During this wait along the walls of the corridor they
made us say: Long live the penitentiary police, they made
us repeat it.

Citizenship shock or psychopolitical

trauma in a gender perspective
Figure 2 provides a photograph of the suffering endured following the collective violence perpetrated in Bolzaneto on the female victims. This suffering was defined
by us citizenship shock or psychopolitical trauma, distinguishing two main dimensions: a) the consequences
on the plane of morbidity and social disability; b) the consequences at political-institutional level. A bipartisan analy-

sis to signal that the intentionally produced traumas at a

collective level always have a multidimensional nature: of
individual, physical and mental health; psychosocial;
psychopolitical.
Consequences of health and disability
At these dimension the form of morbidity is manifested through the physical health like the block in the menstrual cycle, problems in eating and weight loss and urinary tract infections due to the inability to go to the bathroom when needed. One form with which the psychological violation is manifested is the victim suffering a sense of guilt, deep disorientation and loss of subjective control, besides emotional instability. Diffidence, mistrust and
hypervigilance increase. Sleep is disturbed by nightmares
of persecution, insomnia and frequent panic attacks. For
a lot of women it is also necessary to resort to psychotherapy
and pharmacological therapy. A serious existential condition
which also affects family, professional and care relationships. One woman affirms having Had to divorce from
her partner following these events. Where however family
ties have held they have been burdened with anxiety and
apprehension. As in the following case which required the
intervention of family therapy:
They were never apprehensive parents and after this
episode they became also a little, they too a little paranoid. In the sense I had to call every day, if I didnt
there were there was a lot of worry for anything I did
and they tried to prevent me from going to demonstrations or just evenings in social centres, so every
situation which then could be... I dont know, that
what happened might happen again.
Or further social ostracism which often accompanies
the stigmatized (Zamperini, 2010) expulsion of the woman from the workplace. Finally woman report the incapacity to undress during subsequent medical visits. In
fact, in Bolzaneto prison the women having suffered profound humiliation, mortification of the corporal self (Goffman, 1961) due to having seen their clothes stripped from
the doctors and having had to do press-ups in the nude
in front of them.
Political-institutional consequences
Results show how for the female gender the wound of
citizenship is expressed through a general mistrust of the
police, an institutional body by whom they now no longer feel protected or safeguarded. So that any contact with
people in uniform triggers fear and activates tactics of avoidance. A factor risk which could later lead to not reporting crimes and abuses against them, to get information or
help. Finally even small daily accidents carry negativity like
an accident by car and also travel by train involves the fear
of the uniform.
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Figure 2 - Consequences of psychopolitical trauma.

Conclusion
During scenes of collective violence (war, genocide, etc.)
the rage towards women was amply documented (cf. Ashford, Huet-Vaughn, 1997; Bourke, 1999; Chang, 1997;
Staub, 1989; Stiglmayer, 1994). Despite this, such cruel
138

practices seem to be confined exclusively to those countries where democracy has been banished. In truth as shown
by the Bolzaneto affair during the G8 in Genoa, even in
democratic systems similar phenomena may be manifested.
And striking women as with men through analogous
actions of violence to those that have taken place in tota-

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litarian societies and in dictatorial regimes. The theory of

social delegitimization of Bal-Tar (1989) made it possible
to obtain a vision of the violent strategy adopted by the
forces of law and order against female demonstrators. The
scientific literature available on collective violence is so called to include state violence in democratic systems as a new
level of analysis.
In this sense, a first contribution deriving from this research is the reconsideration of the effects produced by
such violence on the plane of individual wellbeing and
health. The state of art research (for a review cf. Krug et
al., 2002) identifies the main consequences in terms of mortality, morbidity, disability. In the case studied by us we have
not found the phenomenon of mortality, but rather that
of morbidity and disability. As illustrated, the plane of morbidity has interested physical health (for example, disfunctions of the menstrual cycle, infections of the urinary
channels, loss of weight) and the mental health of women
(for example, anxiety and post traumatic stress disorder).
Effects that result as being in line with most phenomena
of collective violence. As regards the sphere of disability,
in literature a distinction operates between physical,
psychological and social disability. Together with the most
visible and certifiable physical injuries, the methods used
in Bolzaneto provoked profound psychological wounds,
almost a destructuring of the person.
The first form with which psychological disability is manifested is a sense of profound disorientation and loss of
subjective control with respect to interpersonal and social
events. A serious existential condition which as shown in
this case is reverberated in family and working relationships (for example separation, divorce, dismissal). Otherwise, the fact that the demonstrators were, for a period of
time, desaparecidos, for sure created immediate dismay.
Similar negative emotions are protracted even afterwards, producing their effects on intergenerational relationships. For different young women what was translated into an excess of apprehension and control on the part
of parents which led to family conflicts and ate into the network of social contacts. The taking of the trauma on the
psyche of the prisoner in Bolzaneto a sort of mental prison (cf. Zamperini, 2004; Zimbardo, 2007) continued its
action for years, negatively affecting the most common social abilities such as the capacity to be among people, returning to a demonstration.
With respect to this three-sided disability from data research a fourth and unpublished form of disability emerges which we can call political. The immediate wound
of citizenship or rather the stripping of human rights
has eroded profoundly subjective systemic trust. That resource regarding normal functioning of social institutions
and which is fed by the expectation of stability of a certain social order, continually renewed in its expected and

regular functioning. What is more, faced with the spreading of complex systems in daily life, the individual, even
for the limited powers of control that he can exercise, encounters greater difficulty and even an emphasized
psychological vulnerability. In fact, with the expanding of
abstract systems the institutions one is ever more compelled to place trust in the unknown. Since people who occupy and represent the knots of access to these systems operate to prove themselves worthy of trust. In the attempt
to make a bridge between personal trust and systemic trust.
Where personal trust as in the rapport with a friend
is prevalently fed by affective elements, that system is based essentially on technical competence, on good reputation
and on the civic sense of the representatives of the various
institutions. On this plane, psychopolitical trauma damages
enormously systemic trust, creating a lasting psychological breakdown with time. Any contact with people in uniform sets off anxiety and active avoidance tactics. Shaking
and panic attack those who should instead be able to turn
to those wearing uniform to ask for information or to obtain help. For example, during one incident, although being
in the right one does not call the policeman because of the
fear of not being believed and so passes to the side of being
in the wrong. Even those not performing police duties, but
in wearing a uniform exercise roles of administrative control (like the railway ticket inspector) is invested with (apparently) irrational fear.
Political disability that is the unease felt in returning
to the role of subject of rights in a country of rights which
marked the women struck with social delegitimization in
Bolzaneto shows an unpublished form of deficit produced by State violence in a democratic system. A subject on
which insufficient attention has been paid and which we
believe deserves further investigation.

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