Loredana, 65, smokes a cigarette at her kitchen table in Naples’ historic centre. Her street used to be home to 30 other femminielle, all of whom have moved away except Loredana. © Savin Mattozzi 2026

“My father told me he didn’t want any faggots in his house,” Loredana Rossi, 65, says while she sits at her kitchen table, taking sips of coffee between drags of her cigarette. 

She was 23 years old in 1984 when her parents kicked her out of their home after her mother found her one morning with mascara around her eyes that she failed to clean from partying the night before. 

“In those days, most femminielle were thrown out of their homes,” Loredana says, referring to Naples’ historic trans community, which has existed for hundreds of years and has played an important role in shaping Neapolitan culture. “As soon as our parents found out our gender, there was automatic shame. They’d kick you out, and you’d end up on the sidewalk. You had just lost everything.”

While there has been a slow but steady improvement in how members of the LGBTQ+ community in Naples are treated, many in the city continue to face high levels of violence and exploitation. It is amid these frequent attacks, both physical and legislative, that some femminielle are looking to the past for the energy to move forward and fight for their rights.

Next to Loredana’s kitchen table, a wall is adorned with old photos of her parents, herself and awards she has won over the years. © Savin Mattozzi 2026 

Loredana is now the vice-president of the Naples Trans Association (ATN), but the events that followed her being kicked out of her home have shaped who she is today.

“I was on the street for three days with 30.000 lira in my pocket and a friend who never left my side.”

It was this friend who introduced Loredana to other femminielle who eventually found her a place to stay and to teach her the only way to make money at the time: sex work.

“They taught me how to put on a condom with a bottle,” she explained. “The day after I left the house with this pigeon-shit-colored wig, I put myself under a lamppost. That was a trauma… It wasn’t like anything I had done before. I felt so alone and ridiculous, as if a piece of my dignity was taken away. For two days, I felt so strange, as if I had been deleted, but then it became a routine and your new life.” 

Loredana would go to Piazza Municipio, where she would meet up with other friends, some of them also femminielle from different generations, sharing stories about the community. She recalls even hearing stories from some older femminiell’ who had participated in the Four Days of Naples, an important chapter in Neapolitan history where femminielle were on the front lines. 

Between September and October 1943, Naples became the first major European city to liberate itself from Nazi forces through a popular uprising, in what would come to be known as the Four Days of Naples. Through guerrilla tactics like small ambushes, blockades and improvised bombings, Neapolitans forced the Nazis to retreat out of the city, one day before the entrance of the Allied troops, conquering Italy from the South. 

The participation of femminielle in the uprising went largely unrecognized for decades. It was only over the past decade that this hidden history became more widely published. Still, by then it was too late to gather many oral testimonies, despite the community’s significant role in the urban guerrilla warfare.

Before the uprising, femminielle also played an important role in Neapolitan society. Since many of the men were forced to fight in World War II and the women took on men’s roles, working in factories and shops, femminielle took care of families in the neighbourhood by cooking and cleaning in their homes. 

“I was so curious to listen to these stories and continued to ask so many questions,” Loredana said. “When I learned these things, it helped me recognize who I am. I think it also helped other people.”

Exactly ten years after Loredana was kicked out of her house, she herself was part of a new kind of resistance. 

In 1994, when the neo-fascist party Alleanza Nazionale, precursor of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, entered for the first time the government in coalition with Silvio Berlusconi, far-right violence against trans people increased. Loredana explains that there were organized beatings of trans women on the street by gangs of men on scooters and in cars. These gangs would go to popular areas where femminielle would do sex work at night and systematically attack them. 

“They felt legitimised, like they were the bosses now. They would beat us up and throw us in the garbage bins,” she said. “One time when they came up to my friends and me, I was able to run away, but they beat my friend with the butt of their gun.” 

The next night, she and dozens of other femminelle sex workers all gathered along Via Marina, a long street running along Naples’ harbour. Loredana told them to bring whatever they could to defend themselves. “I told them it’s better to end up in jail than it is to be killed.”

When the gang arrived, the group of femminielle started yelling and taunting them. To their surprise, the gang left without an altercation and never returned as an organized group. 

“That was a real resistance we did, and it was with our own bodies,” Loredana says, slapping her hand against her chest. “We never gave up. It was us who paid for these fights, us whores. And back then it was dark, even darker than it is now.”

Although the situation has improved over the past 40 years, Despina Esposito, a 30-year-old Neapolitan trans woman, femminiella, and a member of ATN, explains that there are now new fights that trans women in Naples face. 

Despina, 30, stands in Galleria Principe Umberto in Naples’ historic centre. She is often texting or on the phone with people to organize sleeping arrangements for other femminielle. © Savin Mattozzi 2026

“The world thinks that in Naples, trans women are living well, that we femminielle are getting by,” she says. “Let me tell you, we are not. We are terrible, and in Naples we are living poorly.” 

Despina believes that while there has been an increase in visibility of the femminiell’ in media, for example in films like Napoli Velata by Ferzan Özpetek, historic femminielle traditions like la juta – a theatrical fertility ceremony – or things as simple as the tombola scostumata – a sexualized version of Neapolitan bingo that is usually moderated by a femminiell’ – have contributed to what Despina sees as a tokenization of the community, appropriating symbols and aesthetic of femminielle in a shallow and exoticizing way. 

She says that other femminielle reported that tourists take photos of them without their permission or approach them in search of sexual encounters. This is in addition to the violence they continue to endure daily. 

In May 2026, a trans woman in Naples was stabbed in the neck after she and her friends were attacked by a group of young men yelling transphobic slurs near Naples’ central train station.

“Here, we experience a sort of PTSD every day,” Despina says. “People tell you horrible stuff, they are physically violent, and we are raped. Rape is the norm, it is not the exception for transfemme people, especially for sex workers.” 

She explains that this reality on the ground is often obscured by the so-called rebirth of femminielle, which, for Despina, is pushed forward by newspaper articles, photographers, and filmmakers who show only the more palatable side of the femminielle community. This, she says, only serves to whitewash the difficult and often violent realities for members of the femminiell’ community. 

“Under this ‘rediscovery’ that they are making, it is pure fetishization. We are dying everywhere while they are making money on our bodies.”

Francesco Solino, a member of Arrevutamm Pride, a grassroots alternative pride network in Naples, explains that although attacks against the trans community happen regularly, it is extremely difficult to find accurate statistics on how many people are affected. 

The most recent data by Italian LGBTQ+ rights groups catalogued 127 cases of reported hate crimes against the community in Italy between May 2025 and May 2026. A severe undercount, according to Solino, who estimates that just in and around Naples, there are physical attacks against trans people every two weeks. He explains that a large part of the lack of reported crimes against trans people comes from the mistrust they feel towards law enforcement.

Erika, 22, stands inside the Galleria Principe Umberto in Naples’ historic centre in May 2026. © Savin Mattozzi 2026

“When they [trans women] are victims of violence, where can they go to file a report? In the same places of hate where they already get arrested? News comes out constantly of law enforcement molesting and raping trans women, especially those who are sex workers,” Solino says.

According to ILGA Europe, a European LGBTQ+ advocacy group, Italy has one of the worst records in Europe for the human and civil rights of LGBTQ+ people. In 2026, it ranked 36th among 49 European countries, maintaining its position as the most restrictive country in Western Europe. 

“I’m afraid, however, that we are looking at some dark times coming our way,” explains Solino. “Thankfully, there are continuously more and more people who decide to fight day in and day out.” 

While Despina and many in the community like her continue to fight, she draws on the battles of those who came before her to keep pushing forward. 

“I call them “transcestors”, they are a source of political and ethical energy. We know that you are not only fighting for the next generation, but you are also fighting thanks to the sacrifices and the difficulties experienced by the past generations,” she says. “Without women like Loredana, I wouldn’t be here.” 

Despina explains that the bulk of her work with the femminiell’ community now is ensuring that others have a safe place to stay, have access to hormones like estrogen for those who want it, that others have enough money to live and raising awareness about transphobic attacks. 

As Italy and many countries in Europe continue to pass laws that limit or restrict the freedom of people in the LGBTQ+ community, Despina says that she has no choice but to move forward.

“I don’t know how I wake up every day, but I have to wake up for myself and for my sisters in the trans community,” she says. “I am a survivor, hope is not a choice, it’s a psychological reaction. You must have hope.”

Credits

Author

Savin Mattozzi

Editing

Sofia Turati, Vittoria Torsello, Ciro Giso

Coverpage

Stefania © Savin Mattozzi