
Scandalous Practices
Homosexuality, Male Prostitution, and Sexual Citizenship in Post-Fascist Italy
Alessio Ponzio(Author)
Temple University Press,U.S.
Will be published approx. on 26. March 2027
Book
Hardback
418 pages
978-1-4399-2526-3 (ISBN)
Description
From the 1940s to the 1970s, homosexual men in Italy began to express themselves authentically after years of silence under Fascist repression. In Scandalous Practices, Alessio Ponzio deftly recounts the socio-cultural shifts that occurred for queer Italians during this period.
In tabloids and other publications, journalists sensationalized same-sex male prostitution, dramatized scandalous homosexual murders, and portrayed homosexuality as devious, dangerous, and threatening to the "new" post-war masculinity. Homosexual Italians responded to this public shaming and these negative stereotypes through resistance. As part of an ongoing struggle for gender and sexual equality, they established networks and created public discussions that engendered pride, rights awareness, and a political commitment to emancipation.
Ponzio meticulously details how Italy as a nation and culture dealt with emerging representation of queer sexuality through a reinvention that fomented self-understanding and self-representations. Instead of marginalizing it, the popular media unintentionally made homosexuality understandable to many who did not know what it was or could not make sense of their own desires. Scandalous Practices illustrates how this new sexual knowledge spread publicly across social classes and fostered the development of positive queer identities and communities.
In the series Sexuality Studies
In tabloids and other publications, journalists sensationalized same-sex male prostitution, dramatized scandalous homosexual murders, and portrayed homosexuality as devious, dangerous, and threatening to the "new" post-war masculinity. Homosexual Italians responded to this public shaming and these negative stereotypes through resistance. As part of an ongoing struggle for gender and sexual equality, they established networks and created public discussions that engendered pride, rights awareness, and a political commitment to emancipation.
Ponzio meticulously details how Italy as a nation and culture dealt with emerging representation of queer sexuality through a reinvention that fomented self-understanding and self-representations. Instead of marginalizing it, the popular media unintentionally made homosexuality understandable to many who did not know what it was or could not make sense of their own desires. Scandalous Practices illustrates how this new sexual knowledge spread publicly across social classes and fostered the development of positive queer identities and communities.
In the series Sexuality Studies
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Philadelphia PA
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
48
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-4399-2526-3 (9781439925263)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Alessio Ponzio is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities (History) and Director of the Centre for Sexual and Gender Diversity at MacEwan University. He is the author of Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany and La Palestra del Littorio. L'Accademia della Farnesina: un esperimento di pedagogia totalitaria nell'Italia fascista, and the coeditor of La prostituzione nell'Italia contemporanea. Tra storia, politiche e diritti. He is the book review editor at the Journal of the History of Sexuality.