A 50 year-old trans-identified male from Italy is set to become the first man to compete in a women’s category at the Paris Paralympics. Valentina Petrillo, whose birth name is Fabrizio, who competes in the women’s T12 classification, for athletes with visual impairments, and currently holds 8 women’s running championship titles, despite failing to earn even one while competing as a male.
Petrillo has been diagnosed with Stargardt disease, a disorder of the eye that causes retinal degeneration over time. Due to this visual impairment, he has been permitted to compete in both matches designated for women with disabilities, as well as those which are not.
At the Paralympic Games, which are scheduled to run from August 28 to September 8, Petrillo will run in the women’s T12 200m and 400m. He was cleared to compete against female athletes, despite being a man, by International Paralympic Committee (IPC) President Andrew Parsons. The IPC works closely with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the two have self-described as “strategic partners.”
Speaking to BBC Sport, Parsons revealed that the IPC does not enforce an official position for or against allowing men to self-identify into women’s sport, but rather “[allow] individual sports to make their rules in terms of transgender,” which results in rules that are “different from sport to sport.”
“Some are coming with different positions on transgender, or with the criteria to allow them or not to allow them, so I’m not surprised by the repercussions of it,” Parsons said. He added that he hoped the sporting community would “unite” on policies dealing with gender identity.
According to the World Para Athletics Championships guidance on participation, “an athlete shall be eligible to compete in women’s competition if she is recognized as female by law.” But their policy book goes on to note that it will “deal with any cases involving transgender athletes in accordance with the IOC’s transgender guidelines.”
Petrillo first changed his name to Valentina and began taking estrogen in 2019. The following year, he began competing against female athletes and has since broken multiple Italian women’s running records.
Speaking about his personal history with the BBC in June 2021, Petrillo said: “Until four years ago, if you’d talked to Fabrizio (the name Petrillo was given at birth), Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist. He was a tough guy who’d speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space.”
Mariuccia Quilleri, an athlete and lawyer who has represented several female athletes who oppose Petrillo’s participation in women’s races, told the BBC that inclusion had been chosen over fairness and “there is not much more we can do.”
Some of the female athletes that Petrillo has defeated in races have told Quilleri that they feel “discriminated against.” As early as 2021, just two years after Petrillo began competing against women, more than 30 female Master athletes signed a petition opposing men being permitted to identify into women’s sports.
Among the signatories were Cristina Sanulli and Denise Neumann, both of whom had previously won world and European Masters titles and have been regarded as the best in their events – but were outpaced by Petrillo at the Master’s Athletics Championships in Arezzo in October 2020.
As previously reported by Reduxx, in March 2023 Petrillo competed in and took first at the 200m race for women aged 50 to 54 at the Italian Indoor Masters Championship in Ancona. In the process, he also broke a women’s running record.
Leading up to the race, women’s rights advocacy group RadFem Italia contacted government officials to ensure that Petrillo would not be granted access to the women’s locker rooms. In response, Petrillo was provided with a designated changing room specifically for him at the race grounds.
During the controversy, Petrillo allegedly stated, “The state recognizes me as a woman, male genitals do not count.”
Petrillo soon after lashed out in a Facebook post wherein he equated criticism of his presence in women’s sports to Nazism, telling detractors they were “on the same level as Hitler” and comparing sex-based sports categories to a 1936 ban on Jewish athletes.
Upset at being denied the use of the women’s locker room, Petrillo wrote, “In Ancona, you made me have a terrible time, it is not fair… you’ve relegated me to a ‘dedicated’ locker room,” a situation which he claimed was similar to the segregation of those called appestati, or sufferers of a plague.
In July 2023, Petrillo seized the bronze medal in the women’s 400m T12 running competition at the 2023 World Para Athletics Championships in Paris, thereby qualifying for the 2024 games.
In September 2020, Petrillo raced in the women’s 100-, 200- and 400-meter competitions at the Italian Paralympic Athletics Championships in Jesolo, despite having not undergone the procedure euphemistically labeled sex reassignment surgery.
Additionally, Petrillo had not altered his identification documents, which still listed his sex as male, though this did not deter him from being granted permission to enter the match. He won first place in all three races and therefore qualified to represent Italy at the Tokyo Olympic Games.
At the last minute, however, the Italian government intervened and barred Petrillo from competing against women with disabilities at the Paralympics in 2021. The International Olympics Committee (IOC) had just announced updates to guidelines for trans-identifying competitors stating that male athletes must keep the levels of their testosterone below 10 nanomoles per liter for at least 12 months in order to participate.
After being awarded three gold medals at the Paralympics qualifiers, Petrillo dedicated his victory to Bologna-based trans activist organization Gruppo Trans APS, headed by a trans-identifying male named Milena Bargiacchi.
“I dedicated to them my victory in my favorite race,” Petrillo told OutSports. “Gruppo Trans supported me in my darkest hour, and they helped me find the answers I needed when I was questioning my identity and my life.”
Gruppo Trans lobbies for males to be allowed to compete in women’s sports and frequently employs Petrillo as a representative. He has spoken for Gruppo Trans on several occasions, and the organization is backing a documentary film about Petrillo’s life called “5 Nanomoles – The Olympic Dream of a Trans Woman.” The title is a reference to the maximum testosterone limit set by World Athletics in 2019 for trans-identifying males in order for them to be eligible to compete against women.
Petrillo has stated that he used to “try on his mother’s clothes” when he was younger, a behavior that until recently was considered a symptom of a sexual disorder known as transvestic fetishism. He has also said that prior to declaring a transgender identity, Petrillo would steal his wife’s clothing. While describing a memory of “touching” his mother’s skirt for the first time, Petrillo said, “It was an incredible emotion. It was like touching heaven with your finger tip.”
In addition to partnering with Petrillo to campaign for males in women’s athletics events, Gruppo Trans also discusses “trans adolescents” and offers a variety of “training” programs through their website. Corporate diversity management training, courses for health care workers, and gender identity workshops for teachers are all available, as are lessons for children intended to be provided by instructors at schools.
Gruppo Trans’ website has a section dedicated to outreach for crossdressers, where counseling and Zoom sessions are offered. The point of contact is a man called Charlotte Verniani, who runs a lingerie and sex shop and engages in a fetish practice called “female masking,” a sexual activity which involves men donning a silicone “female” face mask, or, on occasion, a full-body silicone “woman suit.” Verniani, who works with Gruppo Trans alongside Petrillo, has stated that he believes that transvestites are “the last slaves.”
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