The femminielli who formed the Resistance

Article by Luigi Mastrodonato published in L'Espresso on 27 September 2018.

“When the insurrections broke out, the femminielli took to the streets shooting alongside the rest of us. They were homosexual males disguised as women, present in dozens in the neighborhood where they used to gather on land in the Piazza Carlo III area."

Antonio Amoretti is probably the last partisan still alive to have fought during the Four Days of Naples. That distant September 27, 1943, one of the harshest and most glorious insurrections in the city's recent history broke out, which went on for four long days and led to the liberation of Naples from the Nazi-Fascists one day before the arrival of the Allies. Amoretti's field of action was precisely the area of ​​Piazza Carlo III, in the San Giovanniello district, today a succession of majestic and elegant buildings where bars, hotels and shops stand out. The road is the one that leads from Capodichino Airport to the city center, which makes the neighborhood a transit point for thousands of buses, taxis and cars. What is now a crucial crossroads in the city's road network in 1943 was, however, a symbolic place for the survival of Naples as we know it now.

The revolt was the last chapter of weeks of exasperation over the executions, looting and roundups carried out by the Nazi occupiers. An extraordinary measure by the Prefect ordered the call to compulsory labor service for all males between the ages of 18 and 33. Of the 30,000 Neapolitans who met the established criteria, only 150 showed up and the German forces began raids to find the mutineers. Mothers and wives took to the streets to face the occupiers so as to hinder the Nazi-fascists and protect their children, husbands and lovers. However, there were other protagonists in the barricades of some districts, San Giovanniello in particular. THE sissies, traditional figures of Neapolitan urban culture and in some ways the 'ancestors' of the future LGBT movement.

An exhaustive definition of femminiello was given in 1983 by Pino Simonelli and Giorgio Carrano in Masques, Revue des Homosexualités. “Feminielli are men who live and feel like women: dressed and made up like women. Often prostitutes but not necessarily: every alley has its own girl accepted by the community." Defined as the ancestors of transgenders, the femminielli were a community that did not respond to the logic of modern transsexuality, that did not use hormones and cosmetic surgery and did not claim particular political and civil rights, and that possessed a gender identity that differed from social expectations dictated by the male gender.

“I remember very well this group of people who distinguished themselves alongside us in the fight to free Naples from Nazi-fascism” Antonio Amoretti, today President of the Anpi of Naples, explains to me. The association has for some years been engaged in the work of historical reconstruction of the role of the femminielli in the fighting of those days.

Next to her, the Arcigay of Naples, through President Antonello Sannino: "When there was the barricade in San Giovanniello the femminielli were on the front line, according to the logic that they had nothing to lose: they had no children, the family had them repudiated and society respected them culturally but within certain limits" he explains to me. “Used to facing the police and power, the femminielli did not back down in the face of the Nazi occupation”.

The courage of the femminielli is well represented by Vincenzo's story. In her forties, she sold cigarettes, food and handkerchiefs while in the evening she prostituted herself on the street. “They called him Vincenzo 'o femminiello and he was a real boss of the San Giovanniello district, in the good sense of the term” tells me Rosa Rubino, a transsexual now in her seventies, very close to Vincenzo and who grew up under his protective wing.

“He told us several times about his participation in the Four Days, about his contribution in erecting the barricades to prevent the Germans from entering the neighborhood”. Rubino links his friend's protagonism in the insurrection to the role that Vincenzo had in the neighborhood. “He was a fixed presence on the street, a point of reference and this explains why during such a strong moment as the Four Days he was on the front line of the fighting.” Vincenzo was also among the protagonists, 40 years later, of the local protests against illegal post-earthquake building in Irpinia.

This constant presence of the femminielli in the historical urban dynamics of Naples has made them among the protagonists of the local anthropological reality. This is confirmed by Paolo Valerio, professor of Clinical Psychology at the Federico II University of Naples, President of the Gender Identity Culture Foundation and scholar of femminielli. “The fact that a term, femminiello, which does not exist elsewhere was invented in the Neapolitan language is symptomatic of the importance of this figure in urban culture and local anthropology” he explains to me. “It's a bit like the Ladyboys in Thailand or the Muxè in Mexico. Naples has stood out as a city that has allowed these people to express themselves more freely and even carve out a social role for themselves - caring for the elderly and children in addition to the more classic prostitution".

During the Four Days, the presence of dozens of femminielli in the streets engaged in fighting the Nazi occupiers can be traced back to various causes, including prostitution. Many femminielli had clandestine relationships with the men of their respective districts, so their interventionism must be read partly in the same sense as the women who took to the streets to hinder the forced deportations of their husbands to German labor camps.

The protagonism of the femminielli then went hand in hand with the mere spirit of survival. “Rejected by their family, they defended themselves and their land” continues Sannino, who underlines how the Nazi occupation of the city, with the resulting curfews, clashed with the daily life of the femminielli, suffocating their habits and customs and therefore the existence itself.

The contribution in numerical terms that the femminielli gave in those four days of urban insurrection was modest, but not insignificant. “There were a few dozen who fought with us in the neighborhood” Amoretti still remembers. “Of course, there were many more who gathered in their terrace in front of the former Gloria cinema, but in any case there was a good representation of their community fighting alongside us”.

All these elements remained hidden for a long time. The protagonism of the femminielli in the Four Days, however, is emerging today both through the oral stories of older people, including those belonging to the post-war Neapolitan LGBT community, and through written sources coming from the various national and local archives - the association's archive national partisans and that of the Campania resistance institute in particular. The exponents of the Neapolitan female community of those times have all died today, which complicates the research work. “There is only one person left” Sannino explains to me, “in 1943 he was about ten years old, but until now it has been impossible to talk to him”. Andrea – fictitious name – grew up in the San Giovanniello district and from an early age frequented the homosexual community, later becoming a sissy himself. Today, now over eighty, he still perceives that state of siege resulting from decades of discrimination and does not want to share his memories of the role that his community had in those four days of popular uprising.

The contribution of the femminielli to the liberation of the city was not celebrated in the slightest, not even after the war was over. Only last year the former councilor for equal opportunities of Naples, Simona Marino, mentioned "women, homosexuals and femminielli" among the protagonists of the revolt - in a letter sent to the President of the Republic on the anniversary of the insurrection.

The war activism of the femminielli however contributed to establishing them even more as anthropological protagonists of certain Neapolitan neighborhoods. “After the insurrection the femminielli continued to be present in the San Giovanniello district, as and more than before, with their ceremonies in the terraneo” Amoretti tells me. With their customs, their customs and their meeting points, the role of the femminielli in Neapolitan local daily life remained strong until the 70s and 80s. Then the urban and social transformations, the micro-local consequences of globalization and the development of new expressive and cultural forms linked to the LGBT world have overshadowed a group that is a protagonist of the Neapolitan social reality. However, this has not affected the legacy that the femminielli have left to the city.

Today there are around 3 thousand transsexuals living in Naples, and although episodes of transphobia and discrimination are repeated, the provision of ad hoc social services such as counseling centers, listening points and shelters, as well as the political activism of some of them, they tell a good story about a city that has learned over the centuries to be more open-minded. The revolt against the Nazis of 1943, with heterosexuals and femminiellis fighting side by side, was indeed one of the main lessons of integration in contemporary Italian history. This, moreover, in a historical moment characterized by confinement, violence and massacres against homosexuals and transsexuals.

“The fact that today Naples has one of the largest transsexual communities in Europe and is one of the most gay friendly cities in Italy is above all the fruit of the history of femminielli” explains Sannino proudly. The feminine legacy left to the history of the city does not stop here, however, and the President of Arcigay Napoli is keen to underline it: "Without the contribution of women and femminielli, some areas of Naples as we know them today would no longer exist" he concludes . “They would have been razed in 1943.”