Italy is often imagined as a place of sensual freedom, the land of bisexual Roman emperors, marble bodies painted across cathedral ceilings, and histories filled with fluid desire. But what happens when a culture romanticizes fluidity while erasing the people still living it?
For Italian bi+ activist, researcher, and organizer Aurelio Castro, modern bi+ activism has become an act of excavation. In this episode of Embracing All of Me, Aurelio explains how today’s organizers are rebuilding histories that were ignored, flattened, or quietly rewritten by both mainstream society and LGBTQ+ movements themselves.
“We had to reconstruct our story,” Aurelio says. “So the bi+ people who come after us can hear it.”
In this episode of Embracing All of Me, Aurelio reflects on growing up in Sicily, discovering language for their identity through online fandom communities, and being told at just 15 years old that pansexuality was “just a trend.” Instead of shrinking, they walked away and began building spaces where bi+ people could finally see themselves.
“Visibility without protection just puts targets on our back,” Aurelio explains.
That tension, between visibility and safety, runs through the entire conversation. While Italy carries a long history of sexual fluidity dating back to the Roman Empire, Aurelio shares how modern bi+ people are still erased, dismissed, or pressured to simplify themselves into more socially acceptable labels.
In Castro’s 2021 study of Italian non-monogamous men, bisexual participants described consensual non-monogamy spaces as “a positive and safe space for bisexuals/Bi+ people to explore and reaffirm their identities, constantly challenged by biphobia, invisibility, and erasure.”
Aurelio’s work challenges that silence directly. From helping organize Italy’s first bi+ Pride march to co-creating international bisexual research conferences, they are helping preserve stories that were never properly archived. “We had to reconstruct our story,” they say. “So the bi+ people who come after us can hear it.”
The episode also explores polyamory, masculinity, queer media, fandom culture, and why so many bi+ people gravitate toward animation, gaming, and storytelling spaces where imagination makes room for identities the real world often refuses.
More than anything, this conversation is a reminder that there is no single “correct” way to be bi+. There are only people learning how to stop cutting themselves into pieces just to survive.
“Please take care of yourself,” Aurelio says near the end of the episode. “Being bi is amazing.”
