FEMMINIELLI. LOS TRAVESTIS NAPOLITANOS EN EL ÁMBITO DE LO SIMBÓLICO SAGRADO

Abstract

Naples presents an interesting case of institutionalized transvestitism in the metropolitan milieu, where the social actors are known with the name of femminielli. They are individuals that recognize themselves with a femenine identity, flaunted through their conducts, dresses, appearance, etc. They are the protagonists of a series of acts directed to state, exhibit permanently and legitimate that they belong to the female gender, from the rites of matrimony to the figliata, the rite of a symbolic giving birth. In other contexts these ceremonies and rituals, the presence, sometimes protagonic, of the femminielli gives testimony to their privileged relationship in the milieu of the symbolic sacred. In this paper I present the first findings in a research that is still in progress, that describe the presence and the role of the femminielli in some rituals that are associated with luck and death; Neapolitan Tombolone, a popular game of women and femminielli, Neapolitan kabbalah, called Smorfia; both rituals can be associated with a popular cult to the “souls in the purgatory” and the Marian cult at the Sanctuary of Montevirgine.