Iona Italia is a Scots-Parsi blogger affiliated with several anti-trans publications, including Quillette, Areo, and Queer Majority. Italia has written extensively about sexual promiscuity, mixed-race stigma and shame, depression, 18th-century British journalism, and anti-transgender ideologies.
Background
Iona Italia was born May 25, 1969 in Falkirk, Scotland after being conceived in Pakistan. Italia’s birthing parent was from Scotland, and Italia’s seminal parent was of northern Indian Parsi descent living in Pakistan. Italia wrote, “My surname, Italia, has nothing to do with the country of Italy. It’s a common Indian Parsi name that probably originated in a corruption of the words “ita walla” (literally ‘brick man’) and perhaps signifies something closer to the English “Mason.”
Once their birth tourism plan was completed, Italia’s parents returned to Karachi with their Scots citizen half-Parsi child. Italia’s birth parent got cold feet quickly, as had happened with a previous sexual tryst that produced a child. Italia wrote: “I left Pakistan at age 8, my mother died about a year later and my father two years after that [in 1980], after which I grew up completely British.”
Italia stated: “I was at boarding school. In the holidays, I spent time with my much older sister. She was 19 years old, my half-sister on my mother’s side, who I did not consciously meet until that stage, and with a few aunts, and a few times with non-relatives also assigned by the state. I left that entire culture behind at that stage. I rediscovered it much, much later.” According to anti-trans activist Razib Khan, the half sister has a greater age discrepancy than that: “Though raised in Karachi, Pakistan, as a child, Italia was orphaned at ten and grew up in Britain, under the supervision of her half-sister (on her mother’s side), who was nearly twenty years older.”
Italia has also described a strong sexual interest in younger men since getting divorced from a noted academic neuroscientist.
Despite being in a similar situation as many trans people regarding “passing,” Italia has leaned into sexism in the way racists have persecuted Italia since childhood.
After friend Bruce Chadwick committed suicide, Italia wrote: “Our situations were similar in many ways. We were the same age, both had troubled family relationships (Bruce with his mother; mine—strikingly similar—with my much older half-sister). We were both former academics. We both made imprudent financial decisions and bad life choices and ended up trying to scrape together a precarious living freelancing. But, in my case, although I have struggled with depression and its ugly companion demons, regret and self-reproach, all my life, I’ve never known suicidal despair.”
Italia attended Cambridge University, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1991 and a doctorate in 1996.
From 2022 to 2024 Italia published a blog called The Second Swim and 18 episodes of an accompanying podcast.
Anti-transgender activism
Italia is the managing editor and at Quillette and the UK editor at Queer Majority. From 2020 to 2023, Italia was editor-in-chief of Areo Magazine.
Podcast
Italia hosted 145 episodes of the anti-trans podcast Two for Tea from 2018 to 2023.
References
Italia, Iona (May 25, 2022). The Skin I’m In. The Second Swim https://www.drionaitalia.com/p/the-skin-im-in
Books
Italia, Iona (2012). The Rise of Literary Journalism in the Eighteenth Century: Anxious Employment. Routledge, ISBN 9780415651516
Italia, Iona (2018). Our Tango World vol.1: Learning & Community. Milonga Press, ISBN 978-1999755188
Italia, Iona (2019). Our Tango World vol.2: At the Milonga. Milonga Press, ISBN 978-1999755195
Resources
Iona Italia (ionaitalia.com)
X/Twitter (x.com)
Substack (substack.com)
- drionaitalia
- The Second Swim (drionaitalia.com)
LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Quillette quillette.com)
- Iona Italia
- quillette.com/author/iona/