The Miss Italy beauty pageant has taken a step back in diversity and inclusion efforts as the organization banned entry from transwomen.
Miss Italy’s organizer, Patrizia Mirigliani said that she would not update the current rules to accommodate gender barriers and would not jump aboard the “glittery bandwagon of trans activism”.
Commenting on the Netherlands’ latest victory in trans-inclusion in the Miss Netherlands pageant, when the first transwoman was crowned, Mirigliani said: “Lately, beauty contests have been trying to make the news by also using strategies that I think are a bit absurd.”
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“Since it was born, my competition has foreseen in its regulation the clarification according to which one must be a woman from birth,” declares Mirigliani.
In protest, more than 100 trans men have used Mirigliani’s defence of “woman from birth” to enter the contest.
Italian trans activist, Federico Barbarossa was the first to take the step and now more than 100 applicants have followed suit.
According to Out Magazine, Barbarossa said: he wanted to “trigger, through a joke, a reflection on the absurdity of some logics out of time and out of the world […] With this campaign, we are giving visibility to the truth of trans people.”
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Featured image: @laviniaabate / Instagram
