Charlotte Ross

Visions of visibility: LGBT communities in Turin

Recent anti-discrimination campaigns by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) activists in Italy have increased the visibility of these communities and individuals, but have not resulted in the desired improvements to legislation. In light of this situation, this article analyses modalities of ‘visibility’ as defined and desired by the active LGBT community in Turin, host city for National Pride 2006. The Pride committee scheduled an unprecedentedly ‘visible’ year-long programme of consciousness-raising and cultural events that went far beyond the more usual one-day march. Drawing on a series of interviews with members of the committee and of the lesbian community conducted in Turin in March and June 2006, the discussion explores social, cultural and political visibility in this LGBT community as it hosted National Pride. I think people live in a state of non-visibility, lacking self-acceptance; there are gay men and lesbians in Italy who are in hiding. (Andrea Benedino)1

Critical Approaches to Gender and Sexuality in Italian Culture and Society

Abstract In exploring the development of critical debates on gender and sexuality in contemporary Italian culture, this article focuses on three issues that, it is argued, have shaped this evolution, at times limiting its scope: the interdisciplinary character of these fields; the varying levels of attention devoted to different modalities of gender and sexuality, which have seen more attention devoted to women/femininity than to men/masculinities; evolving theoretical discourses on gender and sexuality and arising tensions, particularly between Anglophone poststructuralist conceptions of gender and Italian sexual difference thought. I suggest that while perceived or actual failures to engage with Anglophone critical discourses provoke frustration, some recent scholarship in Italian offers productive critical innovation, interweaving Anglophone theories with Italian thought. This and other recent work goes some way towards addressing persistent gaps in critical analyses of sexuality and gender in an Italian context.

Imagined communities: initiatives around LGBTQ ageing in Italy

LGBTQ ageing is an under-researched but vital issue, given the cultural invisibility of older LGBTQ individuals and Italys ageing population. This article explores initiatives around LGBTQ ageing, considered in relation to the hypothesis that LGBTQ populations may develop effective strategies for ‘successful ageing’, by establishing queer cultural spaces and support networks. After a brief contextualisation of key issues the author focuses on a case study of a lesbian community in Bari which is planning a residential arrangement for ‘older lesbians’. Drawing on interviews conducted in January 2011, the coping strategies or forms of ‘resilience’ developed by this community are identified and analysed. It is argued that while plans for a residential facility remain unrealised, this community demonstrates a degree of ‘resilience across the life course’, through reciprocal support, and socio-cultural and political innovation. However, interviews also reveal the difficulties of progressing from an ‘imagined c...

Donne nate male, amicizie colpevoli e quelle profonde come una parentela: Marise Ferro's queerly desiring women

This article offers a reading of Marise Ferro’s works, which have received scant critical attention, but which constitute important instances of queer representation. Focusing on a series of novels published between 1932 and 1972, it reveals how Ferro revisited the topic of desire between women many times, perhaps more than any other Italian author in this period, despite suffering censorship during Fascism. Drawing on queer theory and work on “intimate friendships” (Vicinus), this article argues that Ferro’s portrayals of same-sex love are characterized by complexity as she both challenges heteronormativity and condemns perverse desires. Her depictions of queer longing bear the imprint of bio-medical pathologizations of congenital homosexuality, but also encourage empathy, and, strikingly, while death and misery abound, her desiring protagonists are not killed off, as happens in many texts that represent non-normative sexualities. The reception of Ferro’s novels is also discussed: while supported by Arnoldo Mondadori in the 1930s, early work received quite negative reviews, particularly in relation to perceived sexual degeneracy. In the few analyses published recently, there is no mention of her approach to queer sexuality. By contrast, the present article engages critically with her challenging work, and reappraises her representations of desiring women.

Italian Medical and Literary Discourses around Female Same-Sex Desire, 1877–1906

There is a widespread view that desire between women has historically been virtually absent or at least invisible in Italian culture; this has been compounded by the persistent taboos surrounding lesbianism in Italy and the absence of sustained critical debate on the subject.1 However, scholars are now beginning to explore the issue, excavating silenced histories, unearthing tales of discrimination, abuse and sexual subterfuge, and revealing the presence of a public discourse on desire between women in post-unification Italy, particularly in scientific publications.2 Indeed, as Chiara Beccalossi argues in her study on female same-sex inversion in Italy and Great Britain, far from being a taboo subject, by the 1890s female same-sex practices had become quite a ‘fashionable’ topic in Italian medical and psychiatric journals.3 This chapter builds on such studies to suggest that in addition to being rather a popular theme in Italian positivist science of the period, the question of desire between women was attracting attention in several different fields, producing a variety of discourses that circulated across textual genres, from science to literature, including both more mainstream novels and erotica. As I will show below, these discourses ranged from outright condemnations of female homoerotic desire and non- normative embodiments of sex and gender, to voyeuristic depictions of sexual intimacy between women and to more or less overt endorsements of ‘Sapphic’ love.