Dismantling stereotypes through influencing: Italian LGBTQ+ parents¿ Instagram fight for inclusion

Issues of sexual politics have been at the forefront of contemporary political and societal debates, with Southern Europe displaying growing recognition of LGBTQIA+ civil rights. This comes with the exception of Italy where, despite declining birth rates and a “pluralization of arrangements of intimacies and family lives” (Monaco & Nothdurfter 2023: 476), conservative organizations and right-wing populism have gained traction (Franchi & Selmi 2020; Scandurra et al. 2020). Their antagonistic backlash to changes in family structures and roles argues against the recognition of same-sex couples’ parenting rights in the name of ‘natural order’ and ‘natural family’ (Monaco & Nothdurfter 2023), leaving Italian LGBTQIA+ parents to contend with a contradictory and incomplete legal scenario while the status of their rights continues to fall well-below Southern European standards (ILGA-Europe 2024). Through digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016) of ten accounts of LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers on Instagram, the contribution investigates how they use such platform to contend with social expectations and integration, negotiate identity-based stigma, embody activist roles for civil rights, and potentially grant Italians access to alternative models of gender and sexuality. The contribution will value individuals’ agency in defining themselves while at the same time allowing for critical analysis of advantages and contradictions that might arise when such narrations happen in the context of influencer culture. Given the lack of symbolic LGBTQIA+ figures and events in Italy, and the predominance of both traditional gender roles and the heterosexual nuclear family, studying LGBTQIA+ parent-influencers can provide a valuable glimpse into these subjectivities’ cultural and social presence.