LGBT+ History Month Italia: Building Bridges Between Universities, Education and Activism

by Chiara Beccalossi 

The first edition of the LGBT+ History Month Italia was celebrated in April 2022 and since then, hundreds of events are held in April each year to celebrate queer Italian histories. LGBT+ History Month Italia (https://www.lgbtplushistorymonth.it/) came to life as Italy was emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic in the summer of 2021. I was working on an editorial project at the time with a small group of Italian academics and queer activists, half of whom had been working in an anglophone country and exposed to initiatives such as LGBT+ History Month and Black History Month. In one of the many online meetings that took place in that summer, we enthusiastically decided to bring the LGBT+ History Month initiative to Italy as a way to raise the profile of queer history beyond academic circles and to build bridges between academia, schools, queer activism and society at large. We formed a coordinating committee and launched LGBT+ History Month Italia at the Florence Queer Festival on 22 September 2021. Between September 2021 and March 2022 we created a website and contacted academic colleagues working on LGBTQ+ issues, LGBTQ+ organisations and activists throughout Italy to explain the initiative and inviting them to join the first edition in April 2022.

While the United States celebrates LGBT+ History Month in October and the United Kingdom in February, the coordinating committee chose April to commemorate the first gay and lesbian public demonstration, which took place in Sanremo on 5 April 1972. It was here, more than fifty years ago, that the Centro Italiano di Sessuologia, a Catholic-inspired organization, and the direct predecessor of the groups that today support conversion therapies, had organised an international conference on ‘sexual deviances’. In line with the official medical positions of the time, the conference advocated the idea that homosexuality was a sickness. We should remember that it was only in 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the classification of mental illnesses in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), and the World Health Organization (which we heard a lot about during the Covid-19 pandemic) only removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), another essential text used by psychologists and psychiatrists around the world, in 1990. So the conference the Centro Italiano di Sessuologia organised was not in itself exceptional, but what happened in the streets of Sanremo on 5 April 1972 was unexpected. The newly-formed FUORI! (Italian Revolutionary Homosexual Unitary Front), which gathered a modest group of activists from both Italy and other countries, decided to organise a public protest against the pathologisation of homosexuality.

Around forty people participated, including members of the Front homosexuel d’action révolutionnaire (FHAR) from France, the Movement Homosexuel d’Action Révolutionnaire (MHAR) from Belgium, the British Gay Liberation Front, and the Internationale Homosexuelle Révolutionnaire (IHR). This was the first public demonstration for gay and lesbian rights in Italy. The activists gathered outside the conference venue and greeted the delegates with leaflets, posters (in Italian, English, and French), and signs with slogans such as ‘Psychiatrists, we’ve come to cure you’, ‘Psychiatrists, shove your electrodes in your brains’, ‘Normality doesn’t exist’, ‘First and last conference of sexphobia [sessuofobia]’ and so on. Although the number of demonstration participants was not large, the impact was enormous: major national newspapers reported the news with photographs, and the national television corporation, RAI, broadcast the demonstration in AZ, un fatto come e perché, which aired on 6 June.

Since then, the demonstration on 5 April 1972 has gained symbolic value within the Italian queer community and has often been referred to as the ‘Italian Stonewall’, although the characteristics of the protests of the American LGBTQ+ community were rather different from those of the Italian community. In fact, the Stonewall riots were among many, and not even the first, uprisings that took place in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco between 1965 and 1969, and in the US, the LGBTQ+ community protested against the systematic police raids on queer establishments. Instead, the peaceful Sanremo demonstration denounced the pathologization of homosexuality, not government-sanctioned violence.

In line with LGBT+ History Month in other countries, the Italian version aims to share histories that have never been taught in Italian schools, histories marked by persecution and discrimination, and individual and collective mobilisations against discrimination, solidarity, and fabulous people. LGBT+ History Month Italia is also an opportunity to reflect on the rights that have been achieved and those yet to come, identifying and challenging current inequalities in the name of a more open and inclusive society.

More than 140 individuals – including university professors – and Italian LGBTQ+ associations pledged their support in the first edition of the LGBT+ History Month Italia. Libraries, bookstores, and cultural events such as the Lovers Film Festival in Turin  also offered their support to the initiative. A particularly important show of support came from LGBT+ allies: the Società Italiana delle Storiche, the Casa Internazionale delle Donne in Rome, and a few universities such as the Università degli Studi di Enna “Kore” with Silvia Antosa who organised a number of public talks,  and several departments such as the Centro di Storia Culturale at the University of Padua, the Ogepo Unisa (Interdepartmental Gender Studies and Equal Opportunities Centre) at the University of Salerno all organised events to support LGBT+ History Month Italia in 2022.  Some of the initiatives universities, schools, LGBTQ+ associations, bookshops and various organisations organised have been documented on the LGBT+ History Month Italia website.

From the outset of LGBT+ History Month Italia we wanted to involved high school teachers. We partnered with the Rete Insegnanti & Educatrici/ori Lgbtqi+ Maria Silvia Spolato to reach teachers, and some have organised events during LGBT+ History Month ever since. Two teachers also joined the coordinating committee in 2023.  Yet the situation in Italian schools is grim for those teachers who work hard to make their classes more inclusive. The current government has unleashed its propaganda against ‘gender ideology’, as they call it, and organising events to celebrate LGBT+ History Month Italia has become increasingly difficult in the current political climate. In September 2024, the government approved the Lega politician Sasso’s resolution, which committed the government to developing guidelines on sexual and emotional education. These guidelines aim to ensure freedom of choice (particularly for parents) on sensitive issues to avoid any influence that might ‘endanger a free and conscious development of adolescents’. The associations and teachers that have long advocated against homolesbobitransphobia, patriarchal violence, and challenging the heteronormative binarism have been the targets of this resolution.

Universities have been essential for the continuation of LGBT+ History Month Italia. Conferences like those organised by the Queer Kinship Research Network at the University for Foreigners of Siena in April 2024 give academics and queer activists an opportunity to meet and discuss the past and current discrimination of marginalised people and create networks for urgent collaborations that are vital for initiatives like LGBT+ History Month Italia. Likewise, the Società Italiana delle Storiche has generously supported LGBT+ History Month Italia, helping to organise events each year. Academics continue to sustain LGBT+ History Month Italia and have contributed to the creation of a podcast series Storie Queer. Vita e momenti fuori dalla norma, which explores key historical figures and moments that have shaped Italian queer history. Some historians, scholars working in the field of queer studies, LGBTQ+ activists and artists have shared their knowledge and expertise on a history that should be taught in schools, but which remains neglected and hidden from official histories. This is another example of how LGBT+ History Month Italia is building bridges between academia, LGBTQ+ activism, and society at large.

In April 2025, LGBT+ History Month Italia will celebrate its fourth year at a particularly difficult time for the Italian LGBTQ+ community and schools, and also for universities as the Italian government increasingly attacks academics for courses on gender and queer theory. In the face of such intense ideological attacks on queer studies, it has never been more vital to create networks in universities, schools, LGBTQ+ associations, and in the piazze to regain the collective dimension and protect any forms of queer community and bond.