Images with Prime Minister Meloni and other well -known women in Italy, tricked and distributed on a pornographic site with hundreds of thousands of subscribers
Giorgia Meloni Photo: Marco Iacobucci / Sopa Images / Shut / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
A pornographic website has sparked indignation in Italy, after publishing photos tricked with a number of women on the public stage, including Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Elly Schlein, the opposition leader, according to The Guardian.
The photos, accompanied by vulgar and sexist legends, were based on images taken from either social networks or from public sources, which were then tricked and published on the Italian platform “Phica”. The website has over 700,000 subscribers.
Ident images from various rallies, from TV interviews or even during the holidays, when the politicians in question were dressed in swimwear were also tricked. The photos have been modified so that certain parts of the body look bigger or suggest sexual hypostases.
The scandal relaunched the debate in Italy about misogyny and gender -based violence and comes a week after the Meta's decision to close the Facebook page “Mia Moglie” (my wife), where men were exchange intimate photos with their wives or with unknown women.
The website was launched in 2005
Phica, a word that alludes to a term in the Italian slang for “vagina”, was launched in 2005 and seems to have worked unpaid until several politicians in the Democratic Party (PD), a center-left formation, announced that they have filed a complaint. Authorities are now doing research.
Giorgia Meloni, whose sister, Arianna, was also targeted by the site, did not comment on the subject when she was approached by reporters on Wednesday night, according to Corriere della Sera.
Among the well -known women whose photos have been tricked and published on the site are Paola Corttellesi, actress and director of the successful Italian film about domestic violence C'è Ancora Domani (still tomorrow), and the influence of Chiara Ferragni.
Valeria Campagna, a PD politician, was among the first to file an official complaint, causing other people to take an attitude, in what the press in the country describes as the “method of Italy”. An online petition that requests the closing of the site has collected over 150,000 signatures.
Alessandra Mussolini, the daughter of former fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and a member of the Liga party, and Daniela Santanche, the Italian Minister of Tourism were also targeted.
In the petition on the Change.org website, a study conducted in 2019 is invoked by the University of Milan. According to the research, 20% of Italian women faced a certain form of unconsessual distribution of intimate photos.
In July, the Italian Senate approved a draft law that introduced for the first time a legal definition for feminicide in criminal law, sanctioning it with life imprisonment and tightening the punishments for crimes such as harassment, sexual violence and “revenge porn” (pornography as a form of revenge).
