<
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-men-enter-miss-italy-pageant-droves-trans-women-are-told-cant-co-rcna96727>
"More than 100 transgender men have entered the Miss Italy pageant this week,
according to an activist leading a protest against recent comments by the
pageant’s organizer, who said trans women wouldn’t be allowed to compete.
The comments came after another European pageant, Miss Netherlands, crowned its
first transgender winner, Rikkie Valerie Kollé, this month. About a week later,
Patrizia Mirigliani, the official organizer of Miss Italy, told an Italian
radio station that Miss Italy wouldn’t allow trans women to compete.
“Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news using strategies
that I think are a bit absurd,” Mirigliani said, according to the Italian news
outlet
Il Primato Nazionale.
She added that Miss Italy has historically allowed only people who were
assigned female at birth to enter, “probably because, even then, it was
foreseen that beauty could undergo modifications, or that women could undergo
modifications, or that men could become women,” according to
Il Primato
Nazionale.
Trans activist Federico Barbarossa, who lives in Bari, a town in southern
Italy, said that he became angry when he saw Mirigliani’s comments but that he
was “also kind of amused by it, because I was like, ‘Yeah, well, I was assigned
female at birth, but they would reject me because I look like a boy, and they
would consider me as a boy,’” he said in an interview with
NBC News.
Barbarossa decided to enter the pageant under his deadname, or the name he was
given at birth, as a form of protest in solidarity with trans women. Barbarossa
shared a screenshot of an email he received confirming his registration on
Instagram, and then the local LGBTQ nonprofit group he works with, Mixed
LGBTQIA+, shared his entry on Facebook with a statement encouraging other trans
men to do the same."
Via Esther Schindler.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
