Dem
51
GOP
49
Have you ever heard of malicious compliance? As its name suggests, it's a technique wherein one or more people follow the rules/follow their orders, knowing full well that doing so will have the opposite result from what was intended.
We've had a fair number of items about Americans trying to impose their anti-trans views on others, and that blowing up in their faces, so how about one out of Italy? Beauty pageants are, let's face it, kind of dumb, but nearly all nations still have one, including the land of the Caesars and da Vinci. And the woman who is currently overseeing the Miss Italy pageant, one Patrizia Mirigliani, is no fan of trans people. So, despite the fact that the world just witnessed its first trans national pageant winner (Miss Netherlands Rikkie Kollé), Mirigliani sniffed that trans women would not be allowed to compete in her pageant.
Undoubtedly you can see where this is headed. Trans men may not have the gender identity that Mirigliani prefers, but—in large part because Italy makes it tough to change one's legal documents—they do have the correct letter on their driver's licenses. And that is what matters for purposes of the Miss Italy contest. So, over a hundred trans men have now signed up for the competition.
Consequently, ipso facto, what was meant to be an exclusionary event has effectively turned into a nationally televised trans pride rally. Malicious compliance, indeed. Too bad that Italian, like English, does not have a direct translation for "schadenfreude." (Z)