by Jules De Bellis

The femminielli are both gender non-conforming people and traditional entities of the city of Naples. They could be described as effeminate men who live and feel like women and who practise forms of sex labour, but not necessarily. The femminiello identity intersects the concepts of homosexuality, transvestism and transgenderism and contextually transcend their meaning. This paper analyses the coexistence of both sacred (Madonna) and profane (Whore) archetypes in the characterization of the Neapolitan femminielli.