A trans-identified male who has referred to himself as a “poly, kinky trans lesbian” has announced his bid to run for a seat in New York’s state assembly. Émilia Decaudin, 24, is known for having successfully petitioned to end a suffrage-era Democrat Party policy that stipulated one man and one woman be nominated to represent each New York district.
Speaking with local press, Decaudin revealed his intention to unseat Assemblymember Juan Ardila, who is facing mounting pressure to resign following allegations of sexual assault. Decaudin had previously endorsed Ardila during his campaign for the post. If successful, Decaudin would be the first trans-identified male elected as a legislator in New York.
Decaudin was first elected to the Democratic state committee in 2018 to represent part of Westchester County. The following year, he declared that he identified as a woman, at which time he spearheaded an effort to change a century-old parity provision fought for by women in the suffrage movement.
In 1920, women’s rights campaigner Eleanor Roosevelt, along with the League of Women Voters, proposed distinct Male and Female District Leader roles in an effort to ensure that women could gain access to an entry-level position in political party leadership.
At Decaudin’s urging, the requirement that two corresponding party officers be “one male and one female” representative was altered in July 2020. Members of New York state’s Democratic Party would instead be represented by officials of “different genders” or who were otherwise both “non-binary.” The resolution also added “gender” and “gender identity” as protected characteristics to the Party’s diversity clause.
Writing for the Gotham Gazette, Decaudin framed the provision as one which excluded people who did not “identify as being exclusively either women or men,” and claimed that the policy “barred” such individuals from public office.
“The gender binary, in 2019, in New York, ultimately is an outdated concept because it simply just doesn’t reflect reality for a growing number of people,” Decaudin told the Daily News.
In his resolution, Decaudin stated: “In the age of Donald Trump and an increase in transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, racism, sexism, and their intersections, which also target and marginalize non-binary individuals, our Party must take an active role in standing up for the unrepresented and underrepresented among us.”
Decaudin’s amendments to the parity resolution were adopted, and he ran for and was elected as the Female District Leader for New York City’s 37A district in Queens alongside Jesse Laymon one month before the policy technically went into place.
In response to Decaudin’s appointment to the role, an anonymous woman created a petition to have him removed from the position.
“In October [2019], City Democrats insisted that changing the rules ‘would NOT affect the gender parity of (half of the seats reserved for women) outlined for elected office seats such as District Leaders,” the Care2 petition stated.
“This has proven to be untrue – as was expected by feminists. District 37A will now be represented by two white men, despite the fact that the District as a whole is a ‘majority minority’ District, largely consisting of Hispanics, and does, in fact, also contain women, who have now been deprived of a representative.”
The petition was removed by Care2 shortly after it was created in response to complaints from trans activists.
In addition to effectively erasing the policy designed to protect women’s access to political positions, Decaudin also has a history of making derisive remarks about women that he labels “TERFs” – an acronym for “trans exclusionary radical feminist.” The term is frequently used to incite violence against women critical of gender ideology.
While Decaudin was petitioning to alter the sex parity policy, women on social media pointed out that Decaudin was not, in fact, female. In response to his critics, Decaudin tweeted in October 2019: “TERFs and SWERFs and truscum can suck my girldick.”
Like TERF, “SWERF” is a similarly insulting acronym used to demean women who are opposed to the sex industry – especially prostitution and pornography.
As is the case with many other trans activists, Decaudin supports the “decriminalization of sex work.” In 2021, he shared his support for Decrim NY, an organization headed by a trans-identified male named Cecilia Gentili which calls for the full legalization of the prostitution industry.
“Sex work is work, DecrimNY is on the verge of success, anything less than full decrim results in the incarceration and deaths of vulnerable trans women of color, and making the issue part of your knee-jerk cavalcade of hits against your political opinions makes you complicit,” he wrote.
Other questionable tweets by Decaudin read, “I’m kinky,” and “I want to cuddle. I want to make out. I want to explore our intersecting sexualities and kinks.”
In May, Decaudin called Democratic politician Maud Maron a “vicious, unrepentant transphobe” after she expressed support for renowned author JK Rowling and opposed gender surgeries for minors.
Bizarrely, last year Decaudin said he had been the victim of harassment by an unidentified woman. He claimed he had been drinking at a bar when a mother approached him and referred to her “young daughters” as “vaginas” while telling him he was not a woman. No evidence for the anecdote has since surfaced.
A similar complaint of “misgendering” was made by Decaudin in 2020 about the NYC Health System after he says he was categorized as “male” during a health check.
Although he has been an elected representative, Decaudin has revealed that he uses a “TERF blocklist” on Twitter and at the time had blocked over 13,000 accounts.
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