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.
I’m gonna need a pen and paper for this one.
So like, according to the organizers, if they were born with a penis, it doesn’t matter if they transitioned, they are considered men.
This trans man (a person born with a vagina who transitioned ) is entering the contest, because if trans women are considered men, trans men are considered women.
So this dude is entering a “female” beauty contest to show how dumb the rules are. He is allowed to do so because said dumb rules make him a woman in the eyes of the organization.
I’ll summarize:
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The contest organizers don’t accept trans women (AKA assigned male at birth, transitioned to female)
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This means that they are being transphobic, they aren’t treating trans women as women.
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The person in the article is the opposite, assigned female at birth and transitioned to male. AKA a trans man.
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This person is considered a woman by the beauty contest despite identifying as male.
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He entered the beauty contest as a form of protest and to bring attention to the blatant transphobia.
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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 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.
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.
On the one hand, that might work. On the other hand, who gives a fuck about the rules in a contest with arbitrary standards?
People who insist on pushing themselves into every possible corner of society will focus on anything that is unequal no matter how meaningless.
What is this word salad? Could you rephrase using your own words, please, instead of parroting something you think you heard?
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Friend, I’m going to try to be gentle, and honest, and I hope you will listen with an open heart and mind.
I came out to myself, and my wife and kids about a week ago. I was born with the mind, the spirit, the personally, the essence, whatever, of a woman 37 years ago. I have been living as a man, conforming to society’s rules for 37 years. It took me four days, two hours at a time, to feel 40% of the way you do, just by waking up.
Note: I don’t know what gender you are. I don’t actually give a flying fuck. The point is, if you want to go sit in a sauna with your peers, you can. I can’t. All the normal experiences you had, weather you was born as a girl, and was annoyed that your mom made you sit still so she could fix your hair, or as a boy playing catch with your dad or working on the family car, you got that. You got to go to prom wearing what you want. Hell, you can go take a shit at the mall without people giving you dirty looks.
I can’t.
Trans people don’t want to insert themselves anywhere. Society wants to exclude them from everywhere. It may seem pointless that it’s just some beauty pageant, but imagine you have this beautiful car you built, by hand. You even had to so much custom shaping and fabrication, but goddamn is she pretty. Let’s take her to a car show, shall we? Wait… You can’t show off the car you’ve literally spent years on? After all this time, after you spent all this money, all this time, hiding away. You are scared. This isn’t a mass manufactured car, what if you get made fun of? It’s fine, it still has the shape of a car, and it’s so pretty, and you are so proud!
What… it isn’t allowed? It is a gorgeous car though… They say it isn’t actually a car, just a bunch of shit someone slapped together. You can’t just take a Ford, strip it down to it’s frame, rebuild it peice by peice, and still call it a car. You cheated, and it’s wrong. Hell, for good measure, they tell you you can’t even register to drive it. It now sits in your garage. Collecting dust.
If you don’t understand my allegory, you are you, the car is your true sense of self, your “transgenderism” if you must call it that, the car show was gonna be the pageant but I spaced out and it became representative of society as a whole for a minute…
You are absolutely right that we want to be accepted. You’re accepted. Why can’t I be like you? Why do I have to be scared my step brother is going to beat the shit out of me just because I have to take a piss? You can go to the store and just… Grab a gallon of milk without having to worry about some bigot stalking you and hurting you just because you wore yoga pants because you think you have a nice ass. I’m nervous to step into my own backyard to have a cigarette without an entire man-costume on. You can literally put on whatever the hell you want, step outside, and and shout at the top of your lungs “I’m here!” And nobody will bat an eye.
If I put on whatever I wanted, stepped outside, and met you for the first time, pleasant as can be, your preconceived notions would be that I’m some weird bundle-of-sticks-word that need to go inside and has no place in society.
TL;DR: Trans people are people too
Yeah that’s a lot of words I’m not reading.
I don’t care if you want to whip your neogussy out in public. But insisting on getting into a random beauty pageant? That’s not important. Like literally who cares.
You certainly seem to care, sparky.
Okay, I’ll make it simple since your reading comprehension leaves something to be desired: your bias is keeping you from allowing people to be themselves. The fact you don’t see a problem with an entire subsect of people being excluded from an event shows that you are a disgusting person that shouldn’t be allowed in public.
I’d say you’ve diluted this otherwise poignant allegory with a tablespoon or so of word soup.
What is this, word salad?
What is this, a kindergarten reading level?
Holy shit touch grass
Is that it that “activists want to insert themselves and their cause into every possible area of society“ or is it maybe that trans people are actual living breathing humans who are a part of every possible area of society, and they have the right to exist and live their lives in peace, same as you?
The only people in the story that are “forcing” anyone are the bigots who are actively attempting to ban trans people from competing, but they’re doing it poorly. Not surprising, since most bigots lack critical thinking skills.
It’d help if you weren’t spewing bigoted nonsense.
Do you did understand the first time ;)
It’s not hard to understand that you’re a bigot.
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.
They are absurd and it’ll probably be a good thing when we’ve got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It’s quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that’s just one thing, and I’m not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.
One of the contest’s rules says you can’t participate if you willingly had a nude photo took in your lifetime. Good luck proving that (not even considering how it’s a honeypot for revenge porn to surface)
That they don’t allow nude photos is super revealing about what these “beauty” pageants are really about.
What, if I might ask? I’ve always found the requirements just a hodgepodge of random stuff with no coherent purpose whatsoever.
Though I would watch one that was a contest between surgeons. I imagine it’d start pretty tame, but the first time a girl with cat ears wins, were only like 5 years from the really crazy shit
This would be hilarious if it happened.
Does saline glow under a blacklight?
Only if you drink enough Gatorade 😂
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?
Farmers, farmers mums
which would be a good thing
Based
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?
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?
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Except it is a contest for very fake women.
Trans women are women, asshole
They aren’t biological women. There’s a huge difference between an woman grown up from 0, and a “woman” who had weird surgeries and medication much later. You can’t change scientific truth, no matter how much you cuss
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Biologically incorrect.
How is it degrading and limiting?
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Biological sex is just a made up thing and there are no definitions that actually work universally for every human. Thats actually the scientific truth.
Gender is made up. Sex is not. Not taking any sides just correcting you
Oh fking hell. Biology is an actual science. It’s not religion, it’s not astrology, it’s not gender theory
Biological sex, male and female, in any species, is one of the foundational truths of biology. You need to go back to middle school sir/mam
There are about as much intersexuated humans as they are redheads.
Lots of species only have “1 sex” since they reproduce asexually (including some neat lizards).
Fungi went a bit overboards and you’d lack fingers to count most of them.
It’s like imaginary numbers, stuff is always a little more complicated than you were taught in middle school :)
You are so objectively wrong… and fortunately for me: I don’t have to listen to you, and will now use that authority to make others not have to listen to you for you violated the civility rule of the instance!
Ok, since you’re the expert, what defines gender?
You should stop refering to middle school biology and check out university biology. And maybe also stop refering to outdated knowledge that’s been disproven.
Except for the hundreds of millions of species of lifeforms for which male and female biological sex is not part of their biology. But what do PhDs know about biology? they just scientifically study the core tenets of life.
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.
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What if I have a fabulous dick, but the rest of me is blah?
No need to brag to those of us whose entirety is eurgh
Just crop those parts out of your OnlyFans posts.
That depends on what you’re allowed to wear for the swimsuit section.
Then you put googly eyes and a little rhinestone pantsuit on it and stick a video up on…well, I guess YouTube wouldn’t take it.
Pornhub, maybe?
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The last time I tried that the police were called.
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Just got to find the right contest, friend
Put my dick in what now?
“Instructions unclear” popped into my mind immediately.
Zorque is envied by every gent,
’Cause it’s fab when he pitches a tent
Every saint and sinner
Can each be a winner
When his dick’s in the beauty pageant
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.
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I hope he wins. That’d be really funny.
He has to come out in slacks, his special talent should be mowing the lawn. Tuxedo print t shirt for evening gown. REPRESENT!
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.
I would love to see drag queen strong person competitions. Imagine log rolling in heels and an evening gown?
Ooh, or maybe like that next ninja whatever show. I can’t remember what it’s called. The one with all the crazy acrobatics and stuff. Imagine having to do that obstacle course where you hang from the bar and “jump” while holding the bar to the next slot, but you have to sing And I Am Telling You while you do it!
American TV could get real fucking good, real fucking fast.
Holy crapoli, I’ve tried other peoples heels briefly a few times. I have no idea how people even walk in them let alone log roll in them! That sounds like some great entertainment tbh.
Or imagine one of those lumberjack competitions where they scale the trees and top them.
This is the kind of television we need!
Imagine them having to apply makeup while running chainsaws? It’d put japanese games shows to shame!
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
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
Will they have the power to reject candidates? Maybe I’m naive to think they’ll have the trans men compete too but I wanna see how it’ll play out.
I think they totally can reject who they want… usually competitors are the winners of local beauty contest, so there’s a lot of ways to be excluded before even reaching the last decision stage. But not sure, I never really cared for it
Aw… I see. Thanks for the answers, I appreciate it.
Of course 🙌
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I’m sure that the pageant organizers specifically wanted trans men to join /s
How will the patriarchy ever recover?
If there “are no women”, because gender is just between the ears, then there are no men and there no women, so there is no patriarchy.
No, there still is. Trans men suffer from all of the same patriarchal oppression that cis men suffer from. The loneliness, the isolation, the expectation that they have no emotion. If you somehow watch trans people TikTok, The men’s biggest complaint is that they now have no friends.
So yes, the patriarchy exists even if gender is a construct. Because one of those constructed genders oppresses the others, and themselves.
That’s cool, except if only certain people with certain body configurations have the uncontrolled freedom to be themselves, that’s still a problem.
Or, as long as people who do not identify with the body they were given are ostricized, there are problems. As long as there are people who are groped because their body is different, lynched because their skin is different, or kept out of certain rooms just because of growths on their bodies they have no control over, there are problems.
Just because you remove a label doesn’t mean there isnt a problem any more.
How someone views themselves is up to them, you can’t force this to be accepted by someone else. I also think I’m very attractive, can I now make you see it that way? No ofcourse not, that would be ridiculous.
As for “gender” and “sex”, it’s complete and utter nonsense to think they are 2 different things, no real psychiatrist/psychologist or biologist would ever subscribe to that. The only people who keep using such phrases are people with a clear agenda, also people with no degree in any of those fields at all.
What IS real is “genderdysphoria”, but that’s just a fancy way of saying, as a man you can have feminine traits and vice versa… this doesn’t mean you are in a body with the wrong gender… that’s the great lie from some of the more hardcore side of the lgbtq world. Who are more about exclusivity rather then inclusivity.
So no, I’m extremely opposed to the pronoun crowd and there is nothing you can do about that, thank F for that.
In that case, is “patriarchy” the right label? Most men (racial minorities, non-cis, etc) face systematic oppression, so it doesn’t seem like gender is the problem. Seems like oppression follows class lines, not gender, race, orientation, etc.
Maybe Kyriarchy works better for you? It describes a multi layered and interactive web of stacked series of oppressive factors that encompasses race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ablism issues etc.
Though under the definitions of patriarchy men are still oppressed. Young men and the poor are held in sway and looked at as disposable pawns and labor by the patriarchs - powerful men in the lead positions, like male heads of the family, but in this instance the ‘family’ is government, military, businesses and corperations, guilds, unions and bosses. The the buy in for those men at the bottom is that even a lowly man gets to feel like they are better at least than women. The act of being a woman is an automatic sort of failure state. Hence why men behaving in a feminine fashion are a threat. It subverts the hierarchy when someone willing chooses to behave as “lesser” of their own volition and seem happier for it.
I don’t care if you call it The Wibbly Fuck Problem. Stop worrying about what it’s called and just do something about it. Damn. Everyone always worry about the unimportant shit.
I see a lot of mouth and no trousers/skirt in this statement.
Pervert. I don’t have to show you my ass just so you don’t be a dick.
Oppression follows ALL those lines. Oppression and privilege are intersections. That’s why a woman can be black but also be rich and live a better life than a dude who’s poor.
“Patriarchy.” You use the word but you dont know what it means. We’re not talking about heads of households, we’re talking about the halls of power; which are controlled by cis men. Gender Equality advocates are not making claims that “men don’t exist,” just that gender its a highly varied spectrum. My guess is you already know this, and willfully ignore nuance so you can push a counter ideological stance. That makes you a lame-o. Sorry.
I’m not reading all that
How come
Go move to Saudie Arabia or Qatar or some middle eastern country, any country in Africa or Asia. Now come back to the west. Get over yourself. You don’t live in a patriarchal society, and you have never been more free in any time in the entire history of mankind, as either male or female, or however you may identify yourself.
“It’s worse somewhere else so the problem doesn’t exist” has always been a shit argument and you know it.
It doesn’t exist here, that’s correct.
Something being a social construct does not mean it has no real world effects. That’s kind of the point of identifying it as a social construct. HTH
And from what I’m being told by the internet, men make the best women.
Which is indeed super ironic.
Clever way of protesting it.
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.
Agree. They can’t reject them without exposing their transphobia
Absolute chads. I’m curious what kind of response this is going to get.
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 bitching 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?
It’s wrong to ban trans women from women’s sports, because trans women are women.
But they have the muscles of a male and usually beat all women-since-birth in competitions.
Yeah, Ik I’m gonna get downvoted to oblivion and I’m gonna get called TERF but that’s the reason it’s controversial in the first place
I’m trans and I actually agree with you. I don’t know the solution to make things fair, but I wouldn’t want to use a strong biological advantage over someone else.
I see it like if I’d been born with some identifiable and categorised physical advantage then I shouldn’t be competing against people without that advantage.
It’s debatable how big the difference is, however, and whether it’s a gap easily closed or not. My thoughts are that there could be an open category where anyone could compete on the understanding that there may be severe biological differences. There’s no easy solution :(
Edit: thinking about it, sporting competitions are more sex-catagorised than gender-categorised. I don’t think someone identifying as female with no physical/medical alterations from a biological male form should compete with biological females and I don’t think that should be controversial since the gender isn’t what people care about there. It’s the physical characteristics. In some sports that might provide an advantage, in some a disadvantage, but I do this it’s important to discuss! At that point, however, you’d be better ignoring gender and sex entirely and only categorising sports like ‘feather weight’ or ‘strong muscular development’ or something
Just make it body mass based
I think this is where it makes sense to go. Like wrestling, right? Just make every sport competition divided on gender if it’s that important, and then divided on the basis of body mass. Although frankly I think that would make every sport ten times more boring than it needs to be. Like smaller athletes usually need to figure out a way to still compete, and that’s where part of the fun is, both in competing and watching. If an athlete feels disadvantaged, they’re just lazy and not training well or enough.
Then again, I do think sports should be less owned by massive corporations and media companies, and move more to their dimension of play, admiration for each other and self-improvement. Not saying sports shouldn’t be jobs and not have money go in and out, but they should center that dimension a lot less.
I mean… some cis women are born thicker and taller than others which might be an advantage over other women, biologically. Yet, nobody disqualifies those women from competing. It just means everyone else has to be twice as competitive and work around their physical limits. Sports are largely about overcoming one’s performance limits. Like, a shorter basketball player can still play basketball and be really good at it, it’s all about how they train, what they focus on and how they play. And it’s about how good they are at dealing with the space around them and controlling their body. This was always the case, always in the history of sports. Being a stronger athlete was never a problem before, and now suddenly it is? It doesn’t make any sense, and it’s just an excuse for bad athletes who don’t wanna git gud to demand special treatment. I’m speaking as a cis woman who’s bigger than most other women around me. Not my fault that I can accidentally throw other chicks to the bleachers without even being aware of them, and I’m still a woman no matter how other people see me. So yeah, this whole discourse affects me too, because trans people being targeted also targets any person who was born intersex or just different.
What’s your idea of what a trans woman’s body looks like, exactly? Like, do you think a trans woman is just “a man in a dress”? Because that’s just straight up inaccurate in every way. HRT changes trans people’s bodies and how those bodies work. That’s why we say “trans women are women and trans men are men”. Like, would you think making someone with the body of Buck Angel compete in women’s competitions would be fair? Google Buck Angel, look at him and then come back at me.
Hormones are not going to reshape someone’s body structure
Except they do. Literally look at any picture of a trans woman before and after transitioning. Their bodies literally change in every sense.
“Oh their fat is accumulated in other places”
I’m talking about internal stuff
Given a long enough time on the right hormones, and most (not all) of that advantage disappears. “While absolute lean mass remains higher in trans women, relative percentage lean mass and fat mass (and muscle strength corrected for lean mass), hemoglobin, and VO2 peak corrected for weight was no different to cisgender women. After 2 years of GAHT, no advantage was observed for physical performance measured by running time or in trans women. By 4 years, there was no advantage in sit-ups. While push-up performance declined in trans women, a statistical advantage remained relative to cisgender women.”
There’s also a large band of ability within people. Michael Phelps has a genetic advantage, but his accomplishments are still celebrated.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/advance-article/doi/10.1210/clinem/dgad414/7223439?login=false
Here is my question though, and if you have any info I’d love to see it. Do performance enhancing drugs interact in men and women the same way? I ask since not all enhancing drugs are banned.
If yes, how do these interact with tans people? Would a trans woman be able to get more positive effects from the drugs?
It’s rare that I see someone type a comment that mentions everything I want to say. You rock!
Because excluding trans women from sports was never actually about fairness. It’s about normalizing excluding trans people from aspects of public life.
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.
Bone and muscle structure won’t change because of transition
You’d be surprised.
From experience, female clothes aren’t proportioned to fit trans women as well as cis women. While in your other comment you make a good point about some cis women also being outside the ‘conventional’ physical expectations for women in western society, that doesn’t also mean that trans people don’t face the same issues. We talk about these problems from a trans perspective because trans people are often targeted with legislation and rules from people who don’t understand, and are blocked from being treated as their preferred gender. A bulky cis woman might share physical characteristics with a trans woman, but their existence is also significantly less opposed.
Edit: to my first point there are a number of biological size/proportion differences between cis men and cis women that can be seen here: https://ehs.oregonstate.edu/sites/ehs.oregonstate.edu/files/pdf/ergo/ergonomicsanddesignreferenceguidewhitepaper.pdf
Oh yeah, for sure, I’m not saying gnc cis woman face the same amount of oppression as trans women. What I’m saying is, by shoving people into very restrictive, hyper-specific boxes, we end up excluding people who by definition shouldn’t be excluded. Like the cis athlete who was excluded from competing because she naturally produces more testosterone than the others. While being cis, again. Or like, all the cis gnc women who get attacked or murdered because transphobes think they’re trans when they’re not.
My point is, women aren’t all the same. Also, women who are naturally prone to packing muscles can and sometimes do go toe to toe with men in terms of height and strength. But they’re still cis women, and should compete as cis women.
But all of this is pointless anyway: this is a BEAUTY contest, and excluding trans women in this historical period is basically like saying trans women have “unfair advantages in the field of beauty” which I mean, could be, but it’s very much a self-report. There’s also the objection that “trans women do surgeries to look the way they look” which yeah, true, but cis women who participate in Miss Italia also very much do get surgery to look the way they look. Matter of fact, there have been multiple scandals about Miss Italy winners having gone through plastic surgery to win. So I mean, everything goes.
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