Patrizia Mirigliani, patron of the beauty pageant, issued a trans-men prohibition earlier this month, claiming that only "women from birth" would be allowed to compete in this year's Miss Italy pageant, sparking the outcry.
Rikkie Valerie Kollé, 22, became the first transgender woman to win the title of Miss Netherlands on July 8. This revelation prompted Mirigliani to make the above comment.
The patron thought it was "absurd" that trans women could enter beauty pageants, and said Miss Italy wasn't jumping on the "glittery bandwagon of trans activism."
Across Italy, trans guys have been signing up to compete as a form of protest against the regulations' exclusive stance. Federico Barbarossa, a trans activist, told la Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, "When I heard about the absurd regulation, it came spontaneously to me. I was assigned to the female gender at birth, but I’ve always felt like a boy."
“We hope that the gesture will arouse the media clamour needed to put these issues back at the centre and that many other ‘women at birth’ register en masse for the competition to make fun of these positions out of time, above Italian law.
“They would reject me because I’m a boy and I look like a boy, while if a trans girl registers, she is rejected because she is not considered a woman: what’s the point, then?”
Speaking to la Repubblica, Elia Bonci stated, "I took courage, used my deadname and signed up for Miss Italy because fighting transphobia is intersectional and even though I'm not a trans woman, I've decided to fight for their rights."
He went on to say that the event is more than a beauty pageant, as it is also a part of Italy's cultural heritage.
“Excluding trans women automatically means excluding them from history, [pretending] they don’t exist.”
Bonci commented, "It's amazing how transphobic and trans-exclusive regulation is somehow rather pleasantly inclusive for trans men," in an Instagram post announcing his enrollment.
Addressing the “women from birth” comment, Bonci said the statement “is not clear, and because it is “confused between birth-based sex, gender identity, and everything transgender related”, it still allowed female-born trans men to sign up.
He went on to say: “For this reason, I invite all trans kids to submit their candidacy. I really want to see the face of who will have to examine the demands when they find themselves in front of these handsome males.
“The era in which you could be transphobic ars*holes without any consequence is over.”
