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Neapolitan Social-Transgenderism: The Discourse of Valentina OK

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Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality ((PSLGS))

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Abstract

The chapter discusses, through the methodology of cultural anthropology, the character-person Valentina OK. Valentina was a transperson who used aesthetic surgery as transvestism and internalised the values of the femminiello culture, thus establishing continuity between old and new practices. Valentina used new communication media to circulate a social message: she was able to build a strong bond with children, using the positive tools of her personal diversity to mediate conflicts and adolescent crisis. Her social function in the Naples area is examined here after briefly showing how different cultures accommodate non-binary gender. Valentina’s case contributes to a fuller understanding of queer: as a transperson, she was indeed ahead of her time while also an original reinterpreter of the past.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Valentina died in September 2014.

  2. 2.

    On these comparisons see: Zito E. and Valerio P., Corpi sull’uscio, identità possibili. Il fenomeno dei femminielli a Napoli, Naples, Filema, 2010; Ferrari F., Non gender specifico nel XXI secolo nell’Asia Meridionale. “Trickster”, n.3. università di Padova 2007; Butler J., La disfatta del genere Meltemi, Rome 2004; Zito E. and Valerio P. (eds), Genere: femminielli. Espolarioni antropologiche e psicologiche, Libreria Dante & Descartes, Naples, 2013; D’Agostino G., I Femminielli napoletani: alcune riflessioni antropologiche, in Genere: femminielli. Espolazioni antropologiche e psicologiche, Libreria Dante & Descartes, Naples, 2013; pp. 75–106; Callender Ch., Kochems L. M., The North American Berdache, “Current Anthropology”, 24, 4 (Aug.–Oct.). 1983; Héritier F., Dissolvere la gerarchia. Maschile/femminile II, Raffaello Cortina, Milan, 2004; Herdt G., Guardians of the Flautes. Idioms of Masculinity, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981.

  3. 3.

    As I will clarify in the following paragraphs, femminiellos meet up on the occasion of traditional celebrations like weddings and christenings. The vicolo (the narrow street where she has her home, a basso, a one-room flat at street level where eyes peep in and out) is the place where social relationships are maintained.

  4. 4.

    In seventeenth-century England, men known as Mollies conducted weddings among themselves, as well as enactments of childbirth (Norton 1992). They were not widely accepted like the femminiellos : in fact, they were criminalised.

  5. 5.

    For more details about Valentina OK and the changes in postmodernist Neapolitan culture , cf. Di Nuzzo (2007, 2009, 2013).

  6. 6.

    Victoria Goddard ’s research confirms the essential role of women in conserving group identity in the marginal classes in Naples. Maternal power is consolidated through the control and exclusion of males from areas of domestic skills. Victoria Goddard, “Women’s Sexuality and Group Identity in Naples”, in The Cultural Construction of Sexuality, ed. Pat Caplan (London: Tavistock, 1987). See also Sydel Silverman, “The Life Crisis as a Clue to Social Function” in Anthropological Quarterly, 40 (1967): 127–138.

  7. 7.

    Pasolini P. P., La napoletanità, in Saggi sulla politica e sulla società, Walter Siti and Silvia De Laude (eds), vol. I, Milano, Mondadori, 1999, pp. 230–231.

  8. 8.

    Giddens A., Identità e società moderna, Napoli, Ipermedium, 1999.

  9. 9.

    See footnote 3.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Educazione, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Fisciano, Italy

    Annalisa Di Nuzzo

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  1. Annalisa Di Nuzzo
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancashire, United Kingdom

    Paul Baker

  2. Literary, Linguistic and Comparative Studies, University of Naples “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy

    Giuseppe Balirano

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Di Nuzzo, A. (2018). Neapolitan Social-Transgenderism: The Discourse of Valentina OK. In: Baker, P., Balirano, G. (eds) Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95327-1_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95327-1_9

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