1y ago

Trans men enter Miss Italy contest to protest anti-trans ‘women from birth’ rule

More details: https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/07/26/miss-italy-trans-men-trans-women-ban/

368 comments

This happens when transphobes forgets that trans men exists lol.
- I'd love to ~~watch~~ forcefeed them a plate of their, "you will always be a woman" words.
- They exist? Thought they were a fairytale
  
  I know three.
  In fact, come to think of it, I only know two trans women, so I know more trans men than trans women.
  
  Fairy*
- And how they're probably even the majority of trans people (seriously, like I see x2 trans men than trans women)

Mod here. Just want to openly and unequivocally state... I will remove your comment if you're transphobic. I will refer to trans people to let me know if you are being transphobic. I will ban you if you make an egregiously off colour comment. and I will take pleasure in doing this. Fuck your transphobic bullshit, go somewhere else. Nobody wants you here.
- Cis guy here. Based mod.
- Thanks for everything you do to keep this community safe. I know it can't be easy.
  
  idk, I just got to yeet like at least a handful of transphobes into oblivion so.... was pretty fun.
- Fucking A right. n
  You are amazing, brave people and deserve a place in society where you are loved . M
- 👍
- Thank you so much!
- God bless it I fucking love lemmy! 😄
- Uhhh???? Based??????????
- Thank you for not being reddit.
- Lol
- What a hero
- Bruh, just do your job/hobby. Mods acting high and mighty is a big part of what made reddit so toxic.
  
  This is my job: to make perfectly clear what is and isn't allowed. In no uncertain terms I will make sure this place is as free from transphobia as possible.
  
  The good thing about Lemmy you can move to another instance with free speech.

I mean... it's supposed to be a 'beauty contest' so why shouldn't they compete?
Not that I don't think the entire concept of a competition over beauty is stupid, but they exist, so why not just see who wins?
- It's funny because the original trans sports bans were justified by saying that they would have an unfair advantage. This beauty pageant ban is just transphobes saying that trans women are unfairly attractive lmfao.
  
  Biological males do have higher metabolism and muscle growth (and a higher muscle-to-fat ratio), which would be advantageous in these ridiculous competitions.
  
  Biological males do have higher metabolism and muscle growth (and a higher muscle-to-fat ratio), which would be advantageous in these ridiculous competitions.
- These contests are full of ideology, so a trans person has a significant advantage over the others. There aren’t enough heartwarming and sob stories in the world to compensate for that.
  On the other hand, I don’t really care if those kind of competitions are unfair. If they help trans people convey a message, that’s probably the best thing that can come out of them.
  
  Ah yes, the competitions currently banning trans women definitely have a positive bias towards them.

I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying "no surgical modifications"... because doing things like facelift, nose-job, breast/buttox implants, cheek lifts, wrinkle removal, etc, are obviously unfair advantages (in a beauty contest) for those who have the money pay for it; and having a generic blanket rule like that would have accomplished the same thing they were trying to accomplish without being so blatantly transphobic... so a rule like what they have only proves that they are both despicable AND dumb. The entire notion of beauty pageants is outdated and stupid if you ask me.
- Lol, you implement that and basically all beauty pageants stop existing. Which would be a good thing, mind you. But I've never met a pageant contestant in my life that isn't … let's say … heavily enhanced by medical procedures.
  
  You’ve met a lot of beauty pageant contestants yeh? How many?
  
  which would be a good thing
  Based
- I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying “no surgical modifications”…
  How are you intending to prove that that? Only the bad surgery makes itself obvious.
  
  Like any kind of contest, finding rules violations is hard and not foolproof. It's like sports that forbid using steroids - competitors do regularly take those substances while training, then quit taking them for competition and go uncaught. Competitors who are discovered later to have been violating rules are stripped of titles.
  That said, I don't think it's a very controversial concept that a beauty pageant shouldn't be a contest about who could afford the best surgeons. Well - as I said earlier I think beauty pageants are absurd to begin with, but if they have to exist I don't think it should be a contest between surgeons.
  
  Does saline glow under a blacklight?
- On the one hand, that might work. On the other hand, who gives a fuck about the rules in a contest with arbitrary standards?
- So, no contestants who have had their wisdom teeth removed? No one allowed who has had a C-section? No cancer patients who have had biopsies done?

Elia Bonci, who also spoke to la Repubblica, said: “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.”
much respect to all that followed!
- I'm confused. If they are using a dead name how are they not trans?
  
  They are trans men, who the organizers consider women as opposed to the trans women who can't compete because they consider them men.
  
  Think the others were missing the point - they are trans men. Their dead name is their dead female name.
  The ruling was to prevent trans women from competing, so while they can't stand for trans women, they'll stand for all trans.

This is deliciously rich. They really painted themselves into a corner with that one!

For context, Miss Italia is no longer broadcasted on important tv channels and almost no one watches or care about who wins now. Years ago (10?) it was a big thing and winners would make commercials and do movies/series and be remembered for life. But it’s too an old school concept now
Anyway, I love this turn of events
Source: Italian
- I'm glad to hear Italy is moving past its Berlusconi era.
- Does this mean we won't be able to see it live? Or at all?
  
  I just googled it, apparently it might come back to the first national tv channel for 2023, we'll see, anyway it was streamed on the official website before that and for the last 4 years

I hope he wins. That'd be really funny.
- Imagine a buff, bearded person that identifies as male wins in a contest that measures female beauty
  
  I know right? It'll finally make pagents worth watching.
  We should also get drag queen bodybuilding competitions. If everything is going to be reality TV for a while (support the strike, by the way) I'd at least want them to be entertaining.
- He has to come out in slacks, his special talent should be mowing the lawn. Tuxedo print t shirt for evening gown. REPRESENT!

YES. This is EXACTLY what I’ve been saying!!! Like honestly, as a cis woman from Italy I’m so embarrassed by this nonsense. Like, cutting trans women out of the competition at this moment just means people are recognizing that trans women are “unfairly” more good looking than cis women. Which, personally, is true in my case but you don’t see me removed about it. Fuck yeah trans dudes, trans chicks and non-binary buddies.
- Wait what? I get why someone would forbid trans women from participating in female sports events, but why TF can't they go to beauty contests?
  
  Because excluding trans women from sports was never actually about fairness. It's about normalizing excluding trans people from aspects of public life.
  
  It's wrong to ban trans women from women's sports, because trans women are women.
  
  Ok, hold on, why would you forbid trans women from competing? Because of “unfair advantages”? First off, trans women who completed their transition don’t have a male body. They have a female body. And some athletes are naturally better at some sports than others. Like, shorter basketball players are naturally disadvantaged at basket, which is why they need to train twice as hard as taller players or switch to another sport. Also, every whiny white woman complaining about trans women doing better than them always forgets to mention the athletes winning are still the cis ones, which destroys the idea that trans women have an advantage.
  The point never held up either in sports nor anywhere else. And it was never about sports anyway.

Clever way of protesting it.
- Agree. They can't reject them without exposing their transphobia
- How is it clever? It’s a woman entering a contest for women. It would have been funnier if she had entered a Mr universe contest.

Absolute chads. I'm curious what kind of response this is going to get.
- "You're not beautiful enough for a contest about female beauty with your male presentation, therefore we reject your application"
  Cold and passive-agressive, just like an actual organisation would answer

This is fantastic, while having them obviously in drag is delicious, it would be even more stark if some of them present as traditional male too and really bring the point home.

Well, if you can’t tell, does it matter?

Wait, they have to tell the organizers such sensible details?
Are they required to be virgins too?
- You're thinking of Miss Vatican.

Beauty Pageants are uglyphobic.
- Bodybuilding competitions are fatphobic

hah, this one is funny!
Also, echoing @Imotali@lemmy.world's comment below (unfortunately you can't sticky comments on lemmy): comments that express hate towards any group are a violation of instance guidelines. BE NICE.

This is a pretty awesome way to protest and show solidarity. These trans men are ballsy as fuck and I salute them.

I'd be more interested in protesting the fact that it's now legal to grope women in Italy.
The landmark decision involved a school janitor who jammed his hand into a 17 year old girl's panties.
Pick the hill you want to die on.
- Both. I choose both.
- I'm sure they care about both of those things.
  
  It seems like a particularly neanderthal legal development.
- "Why do this one good thing when you should be doing another good thing instead?"

He is like: "I used the transphobia to destroy the transphobia"

So I thought I would look at the modlog in this thread
A comment was removed starting with
Not really seeing [...]
by @Whirlybird@aussie.zone
Heavily downvoted sure, but what rule is it breaking?
- They were banned for transphobia. Finish that comment. Don't cherry pick their words. Transphobia and bigotry are against the rules here. As a cis person, I don't get to decide what is transphobic; trans people do.
  
  I don't think they got banned? not sure
  I didn't post the whole comment precisely because it got removed by a mod.
  In my view, the moderation of a forum should be based on rules, not on individual's judgements.
  
  If we can tell the differences between woman, why do different rules apply depending if youre born woman or not?
  Besides having an opinion about something that doesnt affect you, seems quite reasonable is it not?
- I think the issue is that there is no such thing as a "biological woman". Manhood/womanhood is an issue of gender, not sex, and gender is something that we collectively made up whose meaning varies from person to person and from culture to culture. The only person who is capable of saying "Person McFaceface is/is not a woman" is Person McFaceface.
  Even if we were to interpret their comment to mean "sex", that isn't a simple binary yes/no kind of question. There is no single trait that determines maleness or femaleness, and lots of people have traits indicative of both sexes or of neither sex (or they were born that way then surgically altered shortly after birth), and sometimes those traits are so hidden and so internal that the person themself doesn't know about it.
  
  But do you think it deserved to be removed? You could have answered that directly to the commenter
  IMO, this is too strict.
- Is being a terrible person with bad takes against the rules? I haven't checked.
  
  Thee has't did challenge the hive mind, anon prepareth to receiveth downvot'd to oblivion

Let's goooo guys! top spot is ours

Isn't this malicious non-compliance?
- No, because trans men are "biologically women" and are thus specifically allowed by this approach. It's the same kind of conflation that causes the bathroom issues. People only seem to understand that trans women exist and think they are the same as trans men. Reminding people that trans men exist hopefully gets peoples brains working.

It eould be a Interesting Idea to make a Trans-Fenake Fashion Show as Protest.

Ok sure. But it's not really an effective protest as they're fulfilling the requirement to enter the competition. Because the competition is steered by judges they will simply eliminate the trans men in the first round.
The rule is there to make sure the judges are not sexually aroused when they see a trans woman.
A greater means of protest would be if the non-trans competitors all quit the pageant. But their look is their only talent, so they won't.

What is protest part? Not sure it is malicious compliance either because contestant was not rebirthed as woman. Not that it's possible unless you are buddhist.

Trans Europe Express

Would they win in a contest that has female beauty parameters tho? It's like judging an M based on how similar it looks to an F
- That's not the fucking point, clownshoes!
  
  Then what is it?

Has anyone ever seen a "woman from birth"? Like a whole-ass adult woman popping out of somebody not appreciably larger than her? Ready for a beauty pageant at zero minutes old?
Completely independent of gender, people should know that "women" are adults and have zero overlap with "children" or especially "newborn infants".
Or is this a bad translation from the Italian?
- Perhaps it should say "female from birth". But anyone with basic reading comprehension would understand this. Probably you know this and are being unnecessarily pedantic/argumentative.

Men don't understand no, I've heard this before...
- In what way? I don't understand how that pertains to this.
- I hope this is a joke?

368 comments