That time Italian fascists exiled a bunch of gay guys to an island & accidentally created a M4M utopia

Hello, readers! Today’s queer history lesson takes us to Italy under the reign of Mussolini. 

Picture this. It’s the 1930s in Italy. You’ve perfected color-mixed outfits right down to the white, pointed-toe boots that are now en vogue, and you walk out of the house looking like a dapper dandy every morning. 

Life’s not too bad except for little Benny Benito and his plan to round up and sequester all the “degenerates” and, man oh man, are you ever sitting on a secret.

Or rather, you were sitting on it last night, and it’s making sitting at work a little tricky today!

Mussolini isn’t exactly known for being super tolerant about, well, anything. His answer to most problems was a little stabby stab. Seriously, he was expelled from school twice for stabbing his classmates. This man was the opposite of chill.

Eventually, you get rounded up under suspicion of being one of these “degenerates” and sent to the island of San Domino. When you get there, you realize that it’s… kind of a paradise, actually.

In 1938, around 45 men (mostly from Catania) arrived on this Mediterranean island as part of Mussolini’s morally bankrupt campaign against homosexuality. Marked by pink triangular badges, they probably wore them with more style than any Boy Scout ever could. 

The island of San Domino in Puglia became one of the biggest middle fingers to Italy’s leader during Mussolini’s reign. It was already inhabited when the gays arrived. They just made it infinitely more fabulous. Gay-tanamo Bay, if you will.

Now, look, I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of being labeled “degenerate”. It was not all shirtless dance parties and getting to express your gender as freely as one could while still being under a fascist regime. While those were real things that occurred on the island of San Domino, the label led to the mass murder of millions, caused hundreds of thousands of people to flee Europe, and in the case of these queer men, brought shame and disgrace to their families which could have a real impact on their families’ social and economic realities.

But as far as internment goes, leave it to the gays to find ways to express queer joy in bad times.

San Domino is part of the Isole Tremiti, a series of islands used in the 20th century as penal internment camps. In 1911, for example, 1300 Libyans who said “no consent” to Italian rule were rounded up and brought to Tremiti. So it’s unsurprising that it would be where gay guys arrived after being rounded up either. 

Mussolini couldn’t have predicted that if you sequester a bunch of homosexual men on a sparsely populated island prison they will find a way to turn it out. And that’s what he gets for underestimating their ability to turn the party even when resources were scarce.

Set in the romantic Mediterranean, where the sunlight dazzles off the cerulean sea, San Domino was a magical enclave of diversity and acceptance where gay men lived, loved, and laughed amid one of history’s bleakest periods. It became a gay Club Med that shielded its queer residents from the pressures of existing in a heavily conservative and Catholic mainland Italy.

Queer Alcatraz was pretty liberal as far as penal colonies went. Once they arrived, the men did what gay men have done from Mykonos to Fire Island and created a community. The guards helped greatly in this regard, as they didn’t police as hard during the day as Mussolini would’ve liked.

As one survivor remembered fondly in an interview with gay magazine Babilonia, “In those days if you were [gay], you couldn’t even leave your home, or make yourself noticed–the police would arrest you. On the island, on the other hand, we would celebrate our Saint’s days or the arrival of someone new… We did theater, and we could dress as women there and no one would say anything.”

Instead of serving as a cesspool of despair, the island was a vibrant, bustling queer oasis where men could live openly, liberated from the prejudices they had faced in larger towns. Stripped of their freedoms, they found liberty in one another’s company, in the covert connections that sparked amidst the olive trees and azure waves.

Again, not to downplay the underlying horror of the situation, men would arrive on San Domino in handcuffs, clearly marking them for locals as prisoners. And island residents had no contact with them, although, as local Carmela Santoro recalled, “We would go and watch them get off the boat… all dressed up in the summer with white pants–with hats.” Internment was not going to stop these dudes from serving a look. There are no small catwalks, only small-minded fascists.

A daily ringing bell marked a strict 8 PM curfew, and the men slept in a dormitory guarded by police. The dorms seemed to have been the worst part of the experience, as they had no electricity or running water.

The threat of fascism and Mussolini’s temper loomed large over the inhabitants’ daily lives, but despite everything, they created something beautiful out of their forced seclusion.

Of course, not all of them had such a gay ol’ time. For instance, a priest-in-training, Orazio L, was brought to the island and begged for a chance to join the army and then rejoin the seminary to avoid bringing shame to his family.

But overall Mussolini’s attempt at “queer cleansing” inadvertently resulted in one Italy’s biggest gay havens since the halcyon days of Ancient Rome.

Sadly, the paradise was not to last.

In 1939, the internment camp ended and the men lived under house arrest in their hometowns, isolated from the world as Mussolini’s Italy joined Hitler at the start of World War II. Other gay men were interned on islands in Tremiti during WWII, but there was never another community the way that there had been in San Domino. 

Today, San Domino stands as a testament to the resilience of the queer community. When life handed these guys lemons, they made Limoncello and threw a fabulous party (albeit one that ended every night strictly at 8 PM). Even in the darkest times, they managed to find strength and unity, reminding us that there’s always a glimmer of hope.