UK beauty pageant requests competitors are ‘genetically born female’
A UK beauty pageant has altered its terms and conditions after it came under fire for requesting competitors are “born genetically female”.
Beauty pageant hosts Galaxy Pageants UK received a wave of criticism after it listed the bizarre request in its terms and conditions for entering the competition.
In order to compete in the Manchester-based pageant, aspiring beauty queens were told that they could not compete even if they had legal recognition of their assigned gender.
Under the 2004 Gender Recognition Act, any trans woman who holds a Gender Recognition Certificate – whereby she becomes a fully legal female and her original birth certificate is amended to female – is not legally obliged to divulge that she was assigned legally male at birth.
In a response to the pageant’s terms and conditions for the event, which will take place of March 25 in Chorley, frustrated members of the public asked the pageant “for a response” to the “blatantly illegal” stipulation on their Facebook page.
(Galaxy Pageants UK)
However, the terms and conditions of the competition appeared to change today (January 18) after PinkNews reached out for comment.
Galaxy Pageants UK, which was established in 2008, produces the Mrs Galaxy, Ms Galaxy, Miss Galaxy, Miss Teen Galaxy & Junior Miss Galaxy competitions in the United Kingdom.
The competitions are linked to the Galaxy International Pageant, with the winners of the UK competitions flown out to the international ceremony in Orlando, Florida, to compete.
English is the official language of the UK Galaxy Pageant. It is a requirement for delegates to speak English.
As well as this, aspiring beauty queens are required to have “25 percent of the heritage” of the country they compete in, and although the about page of the organiser’s website states that, “unlike most other pageants women can be mothers and/or married,” the terms and conditions stipulate that any competitor “must not have ever had a child.”
“Our terms and conditions for the UK Galaxy Pageant states that the legal gender of the contestant must be female and so, we have no further comment with regards to this matter,” said director of Galaxy Pageants UK Director, Holly Pirrie.
