Around 100 transgender men enter Miss Italy pageant to protest ban on trans women

 

Over 100 transgender men entered the contest in protest after the Miss Italy pageant forbade transgender women from entering. Only individuals born with the gender given to them could compete in the Miss Italy competition, according to the organizers.

Shortly after the first transgender lady was named Miss Netherlands, Miss Italy's organizer Patrizia Mirigliani decided to forbid trans women.

Mirigliani expressed her disgust for pageants that strive "to make the news using strategies that... are a bit absurd" in an interview with the Italian news source Il Primato Nazionale. She added that only those classified as female at birth could compete for the title of Miss Italy.

Federico Barbarossa, a transgender activist, heard Mirigliani's remarks.

In an effort to draw attention to the pageant's treatment of trans women, Barbarossa entered the competition under the dead name he was given at birth.

Barbarossa said that he found Mirigliani's remarks "amusing" in an interview with NBC News and added, "Well, I was assigned female at birth."

As a result of Mixed LGBTQIA+, a charity organization he collaborates with, sharing his pageant entry on Instagram and urging other trans guys to enter the competition to demonstrate support for trans women, his application went viral.

Now that over 100 trans males have entered the pageant, many of them have mistakenly advanced to the next round of the competition despite not technically satisfying the technical requirement of being assigned female at birth.

The pageant organizers "really have to go through every single application," according to Barbarossa, who expressed his hope that they will "think better next time."

He said that it's awful that trans women are being excluded from competitions because the organisers "would never think that a trans person might even aspire to win a beauty pageant, because we're seen as this kind of, like, three-headed monster."

Additionally, he hopes that rather than just prohibiting transgender persons, people will think about their opinions in the future.