Just a few weeks after Rikkie Kollé, a trans woman was crowned Miss Netherlands, Italy decided to ban transgender women from entering the national beauty pageant.
The event’s controversial organiser Patrizia Mirigliani declared the news on “Radio Cusano.” Following this, more than 100 trans men from the country entered the competition in protest of this rule.
Mirigliani told the station that she is not going to get onto the “glittery bandwagon of trans activism.”
“Since it was born, my competition has foreseen in its regulation the clarification according to which one must be a woman from birth.
“Probably because, even then, it was foreseen that beauty could undergo modifications, or that women could undergo modifications, or that men could become women,” she was quoted as saying by “Il Primato Nazionale”.
Miss Netherlands, Kollé was shaken by the news and felt that Mirigliani was intentionally grabbing at her. “This is so sad. Instead of moving forward, it seems that we are only moving further back,” she shared on Instagram.
One of the activists spearheading the movement is Federico Barbarossa. He told “NBC News” that when he saw Mirigliani’s remarks, he was incensed, but he was also kind of amused by it.
“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 told the news outlet.
“What are you waiting for to sign up? The King of Kings is the King of Kings,” Barbarossa wrote on Instagram.
According to Barbarossa, more than 100 trans men have reportedly entered the contest so far after the campaign became a hit online.
IOL