The Municipality's recipe against rape: "No to provocative smiles or flashy clothes". It's a storm

Banned "ironic or provocative smiles to strangers" and "too elegant or flashy" clothes , and it is better to avoid "looking insistently" or making "comments addressed to the other boy / girl".

In the storm the "recipe" to avoid incurring harassment and rape contained in a brochure that the municipality of Cividale del Friuli (Udine) has decided to distribute to schools. A handbook that the students define as "unacceptable", above all because it starts from "advice" given to women, potential victims of gender-based violence, rather than from a prevention strategy that starts with the aggressors.

"Our demands concern the education of affectivity within schools, for a real change - is the point of the students - We don't want opinions on how we should dress". The brochure in question is called "Preventing aggression, fighting violence", published by the municipality of Cividale del Friuli (Udine) and the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. An initiative that the mayor, Daniela Bernardi (Lega), continues to defend: "I am happy that the brochure, written by psychologists, which we have been producing for three years, has finally been read by the students of our schools with a critical spirit".

At the Paolo Diacono national boarding school , students hung signs condemning firm sentences on the walls of the institute and organized assemblies in corridors and classrooms. "We protest because we consider the sentences contained in this booklet unacceptable - says Beatrice Bertossi, coordinator of the student movement for the future - but we also contest the very opportunity of a flyer addressed to potential victims, when it is known that the prevention of gender-based violence must starting first of all from the aggressors ».

According to the mayor "the fact that the students consider the advice given 'anachronistic' testifies that they live in normal situations and without particular discomfort". The administration, he concludes, is in any case willing "to sit around a table to discuss with students and schools to understand what their actual needs are and reshape the contents of a brochure that was intended to be a moment of reflection".

(Unioneonline/D)