Another day, another shot fired in the culture war between the trans community and everyone else.

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This time we’re in Italy for the ‘Miss Italy’ pageant where the debate over whether trans women can enter the competition has been taken up a notch yet again. Miss Italy’s organiser Patrizia Mirigliani said the following earlier this month:

I will not update the beauty pageants entry regulations which excludes trans women.

Miss Italy contestants should be women from birth and I have no plans to jump onboard the glittery bandwagon of trans activism.

Should have picked your words a bit more carefully there Mirigliani because this statement just invited trans activist Federico Barbarossa to encourage a bunch of trans men – who were obviously born as women so are free to do as the please – to enter the competition to highlight ‘the absurdity’ of Mirigliani’s statement.

Here’s what he had to say:

My goal is to trigger, through a joke, a reflection on the absurdity that only those assigned female at birth can compete.

Someone imagines us as three-headed monsters who could never aspire to win a beauty contest, because even the media representation often brings forward narratives that fetishize our bodies.

With this campaign, we are giving visibility to the truth of trans people.

Geez. What a mess. I’m not going to attempt to summarise the arguments on either side here or even hope to come to a conclusion, but I will say that this act of protest IS going to get people talking about it and also be really funny if they decide they have to let all these trans men come in and compete. They almost certainly won’t though, let’s be honest.

As for the rest of it, who the hell knows? Doesn’t seem like there’s ever going to be any compromise made between the two sides, so probably just years more of dumb stuff like this going on and people arguing in the comments. What a time to be alive.

For more of the same, remember that trans teacher who wore giant prosthetic breasts to class. Some of these people don’t do themselves any favours.