Trans Italy 1986-2000

Trans Italy

1960-70

1971-85

1986-2000

1986

Marcella Di Folco moved to Bologna where Movimento Italiano Transessuali had its headquarters. 

Ajita

US filmstar Ajita Wilson was arrested by the carabinieri in a brothel in Florence and tried to escape running naked through the street.

• Arduino Sacco (dir). Bocca bianca, bocca nera/Love Boat, with Ajita Wilson as Ramona. Italy 68 mins 1986. Ajita’s last film.

1987

Ajita Wilson died from the complications from a road accident, aged 27.

• Professione vacanze -  TV, 1 episode with Giorgia O’Brien. (1987).
• Patrick Conrad (dir). Mascara, with Charlotte Rampling, Romy Haag & Eva Robin’s. Be/NL/FR 94 mins 1987. A thriller with opera, incest and trans women.

1988

Lucy Salani returned to Bologna to look after her elderly parents. 

Marcella Di Folco became president of Movimento Italiano Transessuali.

Fernanda de Albuquerque, a travesti from the Brazilian Nordeste, took the professional name Princesa. She emigrated to Italy in 1988 to earn money as a prostitute and buy a sex-change operation.

1989

Luana Ricci, then still presenting as a man, had a diploma in piano at the Conservatory of Lecce and in jazz at that of Bari, and married a woman, and they had a son and a daughter.

Alessandra di Sanzo, a 20-year-old apprentice hairdresser working in Rome and living with her aunt was recruited by an agency to audition to play a trans teenager in reform school in Mery per sempre (Forever Mary). She became typecast and continued to play similar roles. For her first three films she was listed as “Alessandro”.

• Tutti in palestra- miniseries TV, 3 episodes with Giorgia O’Brien (1989)
• Sergio Corbucci (dir). Nightclub, with Dominot. Italy 91 mins 1989. Nightlight in 1960s Rome. Dominot plays a father.

  

   Alessandra di Sanzo

  
  
• Marco Risi (dir). Mery per sempre, with Alessandro di Sanzo as Mery. Italy 102 mins 1989. A teacher takes a position in a reform school in Palermo. Mery is a trans woman arrested for assault while defending herself. Wikipedia. IMDB.

1990

Fernanda de Albuquerque was convicted of the attempted murder of a woman who had stolen her money, and in Rome’s Rebibbia prison she met Maurizio Jannelli of the revolutionary Brigate Rosse who worked with her to write her autobiography, which was published in 1994 in Italy, and in Brazil in 1995.

Marcella Di Folco was elected to the Bologna City Council, and again from 1995-9.

• Marco Risi (dir). Ragazzi fuori, with Alessandro di Sanzo as Mery. Italy 110 mins 1990. Sequel to Mery per sempre. The young offenders are released, but cannot find jobs except in crime.

1991

Luana Ricci was the organist at the Lecce Cathedral, but without a contract.

• Roberto Benigni (dir) Johnny Stecchino, with Roberto Benigni, and Giorgia O’Brien as the minister’s wife. Italy 122 mins 1991.
• Ottavio Mai & Giovanni Minerba (dir). Il 'fico' del regime (da prendere come esempio in mancanza di esempi peggiori), with Giò Stajano. Italy 59 mins 1991.

1992

Giò Starace published her autobiography La mia vita scandalosa, thus being the first Italian to publish on being gay and the first on being transgender.

The first Brazilian trans sex workers begin to arrive in the small town of Lido di Classe on the Adriatic. Eventually there will be more than 200.

• Giò Stajano. La mia vita scandalosa. Milano: Sperling & Kupfer Editori 1992. Autobiography.
• Filippo de Luigi (dir). Errore fatale, Alessandro di Sanzo as Leonardo. Italy/France 100 mins 1992.

1993

Vladimir Luxuria organized gay events, and was director of the Circolo di cultura omosessuale Mario Mieli in 1993. 

Alessandro di Sanzo transitioned as Alessandra.

Robertina

Robertina Manganaro had met Count Gianfranco Torelli, a wealthy aeronautical engineer, and they dated for a couple of years until he declared that he wanted to have a child with her. The next evening she told him that she was transsexual, and did not see him again for a few years. Eventually she met him again at a dinner party. He chased her and took her to one of his estates for the weekend. Eventually he accepted her, and they were married in 1993. Gianfranco encouraged Robertina to become a fashion stilista. At age 35 she opened a studio in Paris, using her new title Comtessa.

• Gianna Maria Garbelli (dir). Portagli i miei saluti... avanzi di galera, with Gianna Maria Garbelli as Alessandra, and Giò Stajano as Paolina. Italy 105 mins 1993.

1994

Vladimir Luxuria was a major person in organizing Italy’s first gay pride festival in 1994. Roberta Franciolini gave the rousing cry: “questi vermi che ci vogliono schiacciare devono andare via (these worms that want to crush us must go)”.

Alessandra di Sanzo was hired by the Rome fashion designer Egon von Furstenberg to walk the catwalk in a bridal dress. The Church took umbrage as she was a known transsexual.

Marcella Di Folco opened in Bologna the world's first gender identity clinic managed by transsexuals.

• 
  Aurelio Grimaldi (dir). Le Buttane, Alessandra di Sanzo as Kim. Italy 85 mins 1994. The lives of a group of prostitutes in Palermo including Kim who is trans.
• Fernanda de Albuquerque with Maurizio Jannelli. Princesa. Rome: Sensibili alle foglie, 1994.
  

1995

Princesa (Fernanda de Albuquerque) became the most celebrated transsexual in Italian song when Fabrizio De André (1940-1999) sang about her on the album Anime Salve, 1995.

• A Princesa: depoimento de um travesti a um líder das Brigadas Vermelha. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1995. The Brazilian edition.
• Jerry Calà (dir). Ragazzi della notte, with Alessandra di Sanzo as Giovanna. Italy 102 mins 1995. Young people and discos.
• Maurizio Lucidi (dir). Il prezzo del denaro, with Alessandra di Sanzo. Italy 90 mins 1995.

1996

• Luciano Manuzzi (dir) La tenda nera, with Alessandra di Sanzo. Italy 90 mins 1996.

1999

Movimento Italiano Transessuale, became the Movimento Identità Transessuale.

Fernanda de Albuquerque’s autobiography was picked up by film director Henrique Goldman. She worked with him on pre-production, but committed suicide before filming started.

2000

Rome hosted the first World Pride 1-9 July. The event was put on by Cultura Omosessuale Mario Mieli along with InterPride. City officials had promised to put up 300 million lire (€150,000) for the event, however, bowing to ferocious opposition from the Vatican and conservative politicians, Rome's leftist mayor, Francesco Rutelli, on May 30, 2000 withdrew logistical and monetary support. Hours after his announcement, Rutelli mostly reversed himself in response to harsh criticism from the left. He restored the funding and promised to help with permits, but declined to back down on a demand that organizers remove the city logo from promotional materials.

The event was staunchly opposed by Pope John Paul II and seen as an infringement on the numerous Catholic pilgrims visiting Rome for the Catholic Church's Great Jubilee. Pope John Paul II addressed crowds in St. Peter's Square during World Pride 2000 stating, in regards to the event, that it was an "offence to the Christian values of a city that is so dear to the hearts of Catholics across the world".

The organisers of World Pride claimed that over 250,000 people joined in the Millenium March to the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus, two of Rome's most famous ancient sites. It was one of the biggest crowds to gather in Rome for decades. Among the scheduled events were conferences, a fashion show, a large parade, a leather dance, and a concert featuring Gloria Gaynor, The Village People, RuPaul, and Geri Halliwell.

Sylvia Rivera was a guest of honour, and was acclaimed as the Mother of all gay people.

Sylvia Rivera & Marcella Di Folco at World Pride

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Marcella Di Folco persuaded the Equal Opportunities Minister to set up a Gender Identity Commission.

At age 42 Robertina Manganaro had her first fashion show at the Milan Pret-a-porter, which cost her a million francs. "I do not do fashion to make money. I have money to make fashion". Even so there are limits: "If I have ever been discriminated against as a transsexual, it is as a fashion designer".

• Gianfranco Mingozzi (dir) Tobia al caffè, with Giorgia O’Brien. Italy 98 mins 2000.
• Davide Tolu, with a preface by Iole Verde. Il viaggio di Arnold: storia di un uomo nato donna (The Journey of Arnold: Story of a Man born as a Woman). Roma: Edizioni Univ. Romane 292 pp 2000.
• Walter de Gregorio. "Der raffinierte Schnitt: Die Transsexuelle Robertina Manganaro präsentierte ihre erste Pret-a-porter Kollektion – mit Erfolg". Sonntags Zeitung, 8. Oktober 2000. Online.

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For these 3 postings, the following were consulted:

• Angela Caldarera & Friedemann Pfäfflin. "Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment Surgery in Italy". International Journal of Transgenderism, 13, 2011. 
• Eleonara Garosi. "Under Construction: Becoming Trans in Italy". E-pistime, 2,2, 2009.
• Eleonara Garosi. "The politics of gender transitioning in Italy".  Modern Italy, 17, 4, 2012.
• Amanda Madigan.  "How Italy's Anti-Mask Law was Weaponized". Gay & Lesbian Review, Jan-Feb 2023.
• Marzia Mauriello. An Anthropology of Gender Variance and Trans Experience in Naples: Beauty in Transit.  Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• Julieta Vartabedian. Brazilian Travesti Migrations: Gender, Sexualities and Embodiment Experiences, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

wikipink.org    EN.Wikipedia(LGBT history in Italy)  IT.Wikipedia(Movimento Identità Trans, Fuori!)