Identity Abroad: Finding Community
August Ricciardi
I think I got lucky, traveling to Pisciotta. It’s a very small town in the south of Italy, and characteristic of small towns is an inherent sense of community. In a little place like that, you see the same faces every day, and by the end of the first week, the shop owners all know your breakfast order and greet you informally over the counter. Even among strangers, I felt safe. Like if I told anyone that I was queer, they would take it in stride.
That being said, I never got the chance to test it. It’s not that I was actively hiding it, it’s just that it never really came up. Sense of community aside, I was still a stranger, a tourist, and nobody was going to poke into my love life. People were friendly without overstepping, and didn’t ask for details that weren’t volunteered on their own.
I think that if I didn’t pass as a man, my situation may have been more complicated. I am a transgender man, having recently celebrated my two-year anniversary of starting testosterone, and I have a full beard and a deep voice. Those two things mark me solidly as a man to most strangers; nobody questioned my identity or misgendered me. I didn’t have to fight to be recognized. If I’d taken the trip before I’d started hormone replacement therapy, I’m not sure how people would have referred to me. There may have been some people who would have looked at me askance if I referred to myself with masculine adjectives (Italian is a romance language; everything is gendered), and the clues embedded in my language would have been ignored, in favor of their perception of me. But I also believe that some people would have been willing to see me as a man if I’d introduced myself as such.
In addition, I was put at ease by the fact that there were many other queer students on the trip with me. To my knowledge, Purchase has a large proportion of queer and trans students relative to other colleges, and my friends and I, in what little time it took to get to know each other, rapidly became comfortable sharing these parts of ourselves. Having people with shared experiences at your side is always a blessing, especially in an unfamiliar place.
And no matter where you are, it’s important to remember that you are never alone. I think Americans especially tend to view the world with a U.S.-centric lens, and we forget that foreigners may have experiences in common with us, but queer people do exist all over the world. There’s no way to know for sure whether a stranger is queer just at a glance, but over the course of my time in Pisciotta, I think I recognized other people like myself. I had no confirmation that this recognition was anything more than wishful thinking, but that feeling of “You’re like me” was a comfort all the same.
If I were to give any advice to other queer students traveling abroad, I would say: do some research beforehand so that you understand the political climate of your destination, but also keep in mind that people are not their government; individual citizens do not draft laws. See how you feel after a few days of being there and find students that you feel as though you can be yourself around. If you struggle to find a community in the place you’re staying, form one of your own. Be safe, and exercise caution when necessary, but don’t hide if you don’t have to.