Vladimir Luxuria
She organised Italy’s first Pride and in 2006 became the first openly transgender member of a national parliament in Europe.
Vladimir Luxuria grew up in Foggia in southern Italy and moved to Rome in 1985 to study foreign languages and literature. She graduated with a thesis on Joseph Conrad. In Rome she performed in cabaret, where her gender ambiguity became her trademark; her chosen surname means “lust” in Latin. For a time, unable to find a conventional job as a trans woman, she did sex work.
She became a central figure of Rome’s queer scene, directed the famous “Muccassassina” parties of the Circolo Mario Mieli and on 2 June 1994 organised Italy’s first Pride in Rome, which drew around ten thousand people. She acted in theatre and films and hosted television shows.
In 2006 she was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Communist Refoundation Party – the first openly transgender member of a national parliament in Europe and the second in the world, after Georgina Beyer in New Zealand. The campaign was marked by insults: Alessandra Mussolini shouted that it was “better to be a fascist than a faggot”, and opponents pelted her with fennel. In parliament a deputy objected to her using the women’s toilets. Luxuria gave up her flamboyant outfits there, saying parliament was “not a discothèque”.
She lost her seat in 2008. The same year she won the reality show “L’Isola dei Famosi” and gave half of her prize money to UNICEF. She later hosted the show herself and remains one of the best-known queer voices in Italy.