Kidnapped Abroad, Threatened at Home: An Interview with Sociologist Anna Simone on Aisha Silvia Romano’s Homecoming

When Silvia Romano, the 23-year-old Italian aid worker who was held hostage by the terror group Al Shabaab for 535 days, landed in Rome on May 10, 2020, her reception was anything but warm. Italian media snapped photos of her arriving at Ciampino Airport, but what caught the attention of public wasn’t her emotional reunion with her mother but the green jilbab she was wearing, a long and loose-fitting garment worn by some Muslim women. What followed was a hailstorm of online threats and abuse, and resentment toward the government, whom many suspected had paid for her release.

Romano had gone to Kenya volunteer with the Italian charity Africa Milele, at an orphanage in Chakama, when she was kidnapped by the terrorist group on November 20, 2018.

After months of investigations and secret negotiations with Italian authorities, Romano was released in Somalia in May of this year. During her captivity, she had voluntarily converted to Islam and changed her name to Aisha.

Italian right-wing extremists and the public moved quickly to weaponize her case. Many criticized the government for having paid a purported $4 million ransom to the terror group, a claim that Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio vehemently refuted. Others criticized her aid work altogether, an enterprise that populists already don’t view positively. Then, of course, there was her conversion to Islam.

When Romano returned to Italy, people online speculated that her conversion to Islam masked a potential relationship with one of her kidnappers that resulted in a pregnancy, scrutinizing how Romano had kept a hand on her stomach when she arrived in Italy. Others attacked her appearance, and her uncle reported that she had received hundreds of rape and death threats.

Some members of Italian institutions also participated in the hate campaign against her: Nico Basso, the municipal councilor of the town of Asolo, wrote in a post on Facebook (which was immediately deleted) that she should be hanged. Italian MP Alessandro Pagano, who belongs to the right-wing party Lega Nord, described Romano as a “neo-terrorist,” associating her conversion to Islam with membership to the terrorist group. He later apologized for his comment following public outrage and condemnation from his peers.

When Romano returned to her hometown Milan, leaflets appeared near her home complaining of paying ransoms with taxpayer money to release captive NGO workers. Days after her return, a glass bottle was thrown near her apartment window facing the street.

Threats against Romano brought the administrative jurisdiction of the Ministry of the Interior in Milan to evaluate the possibility to assign her a security detail, but that decision is still pending.

Most of the insults and comments against her came from accounts associated with the right-wing and populist political arena. But Romano was not their first target.

In 2014, when Italian aid workers Greta Ramelli and Vanessa Marzullo were kidnapped in Syria, much of the negative public response included sexualized insults, which insinuated that the women had sex with their abductors. But when three men — Sergio Zanotti, Alessandro Sandrini, and Luca Tacchetto — were kidnapped by various terrorist groups, and later freed by the Italian government between 2019 and 2020, none were targets any hate campaigns, even though Sandrini and Tacchetto had also converted to Islam during their captivity.

We spoke with Anna Simone, a sociologist and a professor at the University of Roma Tre who studies deviant behavior and social change, about what Romano’s case says about the sexist dimensions of hate campaigns. She has analyzed several hate campaigns against female protagonists in Italian news, including against Romano, to better understand how women and men are scrutinized differently by the public.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Women Under Siege: Did you notice any trends when analyzing the attacks on Romano?

Anna Simone: I have analyzed around 500 social media posts for six months. Romano received insults from all directions of Italian politics, but most came from the neo-sovereign and neo-nationalist arenas. Everyone attacking her attacked her physical appearance and sexuality.

While I only analyzed Facebook and Instagram comments, both platforms had the same dynamics, and we can attribute the negative comments to sexism. Such comments came from women too, but most of the insults came from men.

Did abuse only come from the right-wing arena?

AS: No. On the left, especially from the radical and extra-parliamentary leftist political arena, there were fewer insults and violent speeches, but they did still focus on her conversion to Islam.

Her conversion to Islam has been seen as treason to Western culture, which, according to their perspective, is based on Christianity. They think Western culture helped free her, and then she turned around and became Muslim.

What did you notice about the role social media has played in this hate campaign?

AS: Social networks generate very divisive trends to which everyone follows without thinking, so it is the device itself that generates these methods of speaking [that are] very similar to those happening in stadiums or sports bars. These dynamics more closely resemble the logic of street gangs, a phenomenon similar to teenage bullying. I'm not sure everyone really thinks about what s/he writes on social media channels. In such context, it is very easy to fall into the trap of insults.

Traditional media also plays a role in this. The truth is that even traditional journalism has become gossip, and therefore uses the same categories of social media to follow trends.

A few weeks before Romano's release, three Italian men kidnapped in different countries were released with government intervention. Why did they not have the same media coverage — or outrage — as Romano?

AS: Because they are men. Because they did not have on Muslim dress when they got off the plane. And because their physical appearance and their lovers didn’t interest anyone. No one would think of rummaging through the private life of a kidnapped and then-released male aid worker.

Can you explain that insidious sexual component of the abuse against Romano?

AS: Yes. Men are rarely sexualized, and people involved in hate campaigns never consider insulting men with sexist comments. But when a woman becomes the principal character of a narrative, there is suddenly an irrational reaction in people who don’t realize that their reaction has a sexist undertone.

Inciting rape was among the worst comments I found. Such a desire to see a woman raped also happened to other women involved in Italian newsworthy events. For instance, hate campaigns started against Ilaria Cucchi, the sister of Stefano Cucchi, a man who was beaten by law enforcement and died under custody. As Ilaria asked for justice for her brother, she received harassment and online threats from police officers. Another hate campaign was against Carola Rackete, a German ship captain who docked a migrant rescue without authorization in the port of Lampedusa. The episode ignited a hate campaign against her with sexist comments because she brought refugees to Italy.

What is it about women that’s so triggering?

AS: There is some intolerable, dark element that is unleashed every time a woman does something considered “strange” when compared against the traditional female stereotype. It’s like an automatism.

Social media hate campaigns against women protagonists start when they do something that goes beyond the borders of feminine normality stereotyped by post-patriarchal systems and societies (which have traits more violent than the classical patriarchal system).

[Post-patriarchal societies] can’t tolerate that a woman can travel the world alone or live in dangerous places while doing her job. They accept women who hold institutional roles more favorably, and only when they’re not in charge.

When people want to criticize a woman’s work, they use stereotyped labels related to sexuality and beauty.

In other words, it is hard [for people] to accept female freedom.

What do you mean by post-patriarchal systems?

AS: The post-patriarchy is the crisis of classical patriarchy. It frightens men and also some women, who are afraid of not being loved anymore if they speak for themselves, if they practice their freedom. Hate and violence are the consequence, a sort of revenge for the lost primacy of men.

In reality, sexism towards women has always been there; the difference is, with social media today, it is more visible, more public, and has fewer filters. This phenomenon will continue until those men and women understand that the freedom to be themselves is an achievement for everyone, not a predatory instinct or threat to men’s freedom.

Is that how you would rationalize some women also targeting Romano with sexist comments?

AS: Many women [believe] that a woman should fit a precise archetype if she wants to be considered a woman. People don’t consider women as linked to their desire for freedom, but rather a sort of serial stereotyped identity.

Would you say that there are also traits of xenophobia alongside sexism in Romano’s story?

AS: Absolutely, yes. Sexism in recent years has been increasingly linked to racism. We live in an era of the permanent construction of the “other,” the scapegoat. Islam is almost always associated with fundamentalism and terrorism, for example. Many episodes of explicit racism against immigrants take place using the defense of “our women.” These episodes refer to social change due to migration, which brings out irrational and ancestral instincts of anger and fear that often result in neo-sovereignty and neo-nationalism.

In Romano’s specific case, there was [everything] to attack: she is a woman; she is a cooperator; she has become a Muslim; Italy likely paid to free her — it is for all these reasons that she has become a target of public opinion.

She has also been attacked by some feminists, too, likely because from a Eurocentric and ethnocentric point of view, they think that a woman who has become a Muslim must be considered an enemy of female freedom a priori. This thought is obviously false because women’s freedom can also go in the direction of the freedom to choose their religion.