The Milan pool protest

On July 4, 1980, on a Milan summer afternoon, a group of about fifteen trans women entered the Lido di Milano — a sports center with a swimming pool in the San Siro area — and carried out what would become the first public protest for transgender rights in Italy [1][2]. That seemingly simple gesture triggered a chain of events that within two years led to the passage of Law 164 of 1982, Italy’s first legislation recognizing the right to legal sex reclassification [10]. This is the story of that afternoon and what followed.

The context: Italy at the end of the 1970s

The Constitutional Court ruling of 1979

To understand the 1980 protest, it is necessary to take a step back. Until the late 1970s, trans people in Italy lived in a condition of total legal invisibility. There was no law allowing the reclassification of sex on identity documents, and those who underwent gender-affirming surgery abroad found themselves with a body that did not match their official records [7].

In July 1979, the Constitutional Court issued ruling no. 98/1979, in which it stated that the right to obtain recognition of a sex different from the one on official records — acquired through surgery — was not among the inviolable rights of the human person [12]. With this ruling, the Court appeared to close every possibility of legal change for trans people, generating frustration and a sense of urgency within the community.

The first mobilizations and the role of the Radical Party

The ruling, paradoxically, functioned as a catalyst [2]. In October 1979, Enzo Cucco and Enzo Francone — activists connected to FUORI! (Fronte Unitario Omosessuale Rivoluzionario Italiano) and the Radical Party — drafted a bill in response to the Court’s ruling [2]. Contact with the parliamentary world was immediate: the Radical Party, led by Marco Pannella, had made civil rights battles a defining feature and embraced the cause of trans people.

A key role was also played by Marzia Siclari, an artist who advised the young activist Pina Bonanno to write directly to Pannella to interest him in the issue [2]. That contact proved decisive: the Radical Party made its headquarters available for meetings of the nascent transsexual movement.

July 4, 1980: the protest

What happened at the Lido di Milano

On the afternoon of July 4, 1980, around 5:00 PM, a group of about fifteen trans women entered the Lido di Milano, the public swimming facility in the San Siro area [1]. The facility was crowded: families, children, bathers seeking relief from the summer heat.

The women gathered in a sit-in demonstration and, after attracting the attention of those present, removed their swimsuit tops [1][3]. The gesture was accompanied by a banner that, according to accounts, read: “We are transsexuals, enough with discrimination” [3].

Pool staff intervened immediately, ordering the demonstrators to cover up because toplessness was prohibited by regulations. The response was as simple as it was devastating on a logical and political level: since they were identified as men on their identity documents, they had every right to remain bare-chested, exactly like any other man in the facility [1][5].

It was a calculated provocation that exposed — literally and figuratively — the absurdity of the Italian legal system: the State considered them men, but their bodies told a different story. If the State wanted to treat them as men, then it had to grant them men’s rights, including that of swimming bare-chested. If, instead, it considered them women, it had to recognize their gender identity on documents [9].

The police intervention

The protest lasted about an hour. Then the police arrived. All the demonstrators were detained and taken to the police station, along with four journalists present as witnesses [1]. The demonstrators were charged with public indecency [1][3] — an accusation that, once again, rested on a contradiction: if they were men, as their documents stated, a bare chest could not constitute public indecency.

Among those detained was Pina Bonanno, originally from Catania, who in subsequent years would become president of the Milan chapter of MIT (Movimento Italiano Transessuale) [2][4]. Bonanno was one of the organizational forces behind the protest and one of the central figures of the Italian trans movement during those years.

The media coverage

RAI documented the event with a brief television report showing two of the demonstrators walking bare-chested among the pool’s bathers [3]. The footage had a significant impact: for the first time, the issue of trans people’s conditions entered Italian homes through state television. The newspapers of the time — including the Corriere della Sera — reported on the protest the following day, helping to fuel a debate that had until then been confined to activist circles [1].

After the pool: from protest to law

The birth of MIT

In the spring of 1980, shortly before the Lido protest, the trans activists had organized formally by founding MIT — Movimento Italiano Transessuale (today Movimento Identita Trans), headquartered in the same offices as the Radical Party in Piazza di Torre Argentina in Rome [8]. MIT is considered one of the oldest transgender rights groups not only in Italy, but in the world [8].

The pool protest gave MIT enormous visibility and a public legitimacy that accelerated the entire political process [7]. The movement demonstrated its ability to use its bodies as a tool for political claim-making, in a form of activism that anticipated practices later common in contemporary social movements.

The demonstration in front of Montecitorio

On October 31, 1980, MIT organized the first national demonstration for trans rights: a march that departed from the Radical Party headquarters in Piazza di Torre Argentina and reached Montecitorio, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies [2]. The activists — it is said — explicitly threatened the Christian Democrats to “repeat the pool spectacle” if their demands were not heard.

During that day, Pina Bonanno and a MIT delegation were received by several deputies and, most importantly, by President of the Chamber Nilde Iotti, who formally promised the first legislative intervention in favor of trans people [2]. A second demonstration was held on March 10, 1981, followed by a meeting between the activists and the vice-presidents of the Justice Commission.

MIT also brought its testimony to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, internationalizing the issue and putting further pressure on the Italian legislature [2].

The parliamentary process

Radical Party MP Franco De Cataldo was the main parliamentary point of reference for the trans cause [2]. De Cataldo introduced the bill in the Chamber on February 27, 1980 — thus even before the pool protest, demonstrating that the legislative initiative and street activism proceeded in parallel. However, it was precisely MIT’s mobilization that unblocked the parliamentary process, which risked stalling in committee proceedings [7].

De Cataldo made significant changes to the original draft by Cucco and Francone: he insisted that legal sex reclassification occur through court ruling — rather than through administrative channels — and that the Civil Code be directly amended [2]. This approach, which was more legally robust, helped make the law acceptable even to more conservative sectors of Parliament.

The passage of Law 164

On April 14, 1982, the Italian Parliament definitively passed Law no. 164, entitled “Regulations on the rectification of sex attribution” [10]. President of the Republic Sandro Pertini promulgated it, and it was published in the Official Gazette on April 19 [10].

The law established that:

• The rectification of sex attribution could be ordered by court ruling when, including through modification of sexual characteristics, the person was recognized as being of a sex different from that indicated on the birth certificate.
• The ruling of rectification entailed the modification of civil registry records and the possibility of entering into marriage.
• The process required a judicial procedure including medical and psychological expert assessments.

Italy thus became one of the first countries in the world to have comprehensive legislation on the recognition of gender identity [6] — a distinction that, more than forty years later, is often forgotten in contemporary debate.

The legacy of the protest: from 1982 to today

Law 164 between achievement and limitations

Law 164 represented a historic achievement, but it was born as a compromise. The judicial process it required was long and complex, and for decades it was interpreted as necessarily requiring gender reassignment surgery — an interpretation that the Court of Cassation and subsequently the Constitutional Court have progressively overcome, recognizing that legal sex reclassification can occur without surgery [6].

More than forty years after its passage, Law 164 remains the only legislation governing gender-affirming pathways in Italy. The trans community largely considers it outdated compared to the legislation of other European countries. On the occasion of the first Trans Pride in Milan, held on May 4, 2025 — on the anniversary of the law’s entry into force — activists called for profound reform that takes into account the community’s real needs [11].

Access to public spaces: a debate still open

The issue raised by the 1980 protest — trans people’s access to gender-segregated public spaces — remains highly relevant today. In Italy, access to changing rooms in swimming pools, gyms, and sports facilities is regulated by the sex indicated on identity documents. For trans people who are at the beginning of their gender-affirming journey, this means having to use spaces that do not correspond to their identity, with significant consequences in terms of gender dysphoria, psychological distress, and, in many cases, renouncing access to those places altogether.

The gender-affirming process in Italy takes on average no fewer than four years, and only after about three can the person obtain the legal reclassification of name and gender. During this period, the transgender person lives in a condition of bureaucratic limbo that daily exposes them to situations of embarrassment, discrimination, and potential danger.

Some facilities have introduced gender-free changing rooms and bathrooms as an inclusive solution, but these are isolated initiatives, not supported by national legislation. Legislative Decree 81/2008 on workplace safety provides for separate facilities for men and women, without contemplating alternative solutions for non-binary people or those in transition.

A forgotten founding event

The Milan pool protest holds a particular place in the memory of the Italian trans movement. MIT defines it as the beginning of “45 years of struggles” and considers it its founding act [8]. Yet, outside the community and academic circles, the event is little known.

This oblivion is significant. The history of the Italian trans movement is often told starting from Law 164 or, at most, from international influences such as the Stonewall riots. The Lido di Milano protest demonstrates instead that the Italian trans movement had its own specificity and originality [9]: it did not simply import models from abroad, but invented its own forms of struggle, rooted in the specific contradiction of the Italian legal context.

The political meaning of the protest

The body as a tool of struggle

The brilliance of the July 4, 1980 protest lies in its logical structure [9]. The demonstrators did not break any law — or rather, if they did, it was the State that found itself in contradiction with itself. By removing their tops in a public place, the trans women forced the authorities to choose: either recognize them as women (and thus recognize their gender identity), or treat them as men (and thus admit that a bare chest did not constitute an offense). In either case, the State’s position was untenable [5].

This strategy — using the legal paradox as a political weapon — proved effective not only on a media level, but also on a legislative one. The protest made concrete and visible what trans people had been denouncing for years: the Italian legal system was incapable of handling their existence.

Collective action in an era of marginalization

It is important to remember the social context in which the protest took place. At the end of the 1970s, trans people in Italy lived in conditions of profound marginalization [7]. Many were forced into sex work as their only source of income, were systematic victims of violence, and had no access to any form of legal or healthcare protection. Hormone therapies were often administered in a clandestine and dangerous manner.

In this context, organizing a public action, showing one’s face in a crowded swimming pool, and facing arrest and criminal charges represented an act of extraordinary courage. The fifteen women who entered the Lido di Milano that afternoon risked not only legal consequences, but also social retaliation in a deeply hostile society.

A thread that reaches to today

The Milan pool protest is not a closed episode in history. It is the starting point of a path that, through Law 164, the battles of MIT, the Constitutional Court’s rulings, and contemporary mobilizations, reaches to the current situation of trans people in Italy.

The questions posed on that July 4, 1980 — who decides what gender we are? Who determines which spaces we can access? How do we reconcile lived identity with the identity recorded on documents? — are the same ones that drive today’s debate. And the method chosen by those fifteen women — making the contradiction visible, using one’s body as a political argument, refusing invisibility — continues to inspire trans activism in Italy and around the world.

The next time the access of trans people to public spaces is discussed, it is worth remembering that in Italy, that debate began in a swimming pool in Milan, on a summer afternoon over forty years ago.