A male runner, identifying as a woman, finished second in a women’s 400-meter sprint event on Monday and will advance to the semi-finals in the Paralympics.
Fabrizio “Valentina” Petrillo, 51, has the degenerative eye disorder known as Stargardt disease and competed in the women’s T12 classification of the Paralympics, which is for visually impaired athletes.
Petrillo began publicly identifying as a woman in 2018 and started hormonal treatment in 2019. Prior to that, he won 11 national titles in three years in the category for males with visual impairment, the BBC reported.
Petrillo said that, prior to identifying as a woman, he was “sexist.”
“Until four years ago . . . Fabrizio would have given you the idea he was sexist,” Petrillo said in a 2021 interview. “He was a tough guy who’d speak dismissively of women and then be a woman in his private space.”
In 2021, more than 30 female “Master” athletes signed a petition to the president of the Italian Athletics Federation and the ministries for Equal Opportunities and Sport, arguing against Petrillo competing in women’s divisions, according to the BBC.
According to RadFem Italia, a feminist advocacy group, lawyer Mariuccia Fausta Quilleri sent a letter on behalf of 30 athletes asking for Petrillo to have a separate changing room at the 2023 Italian Masters Championships in Ancona, which was granted.
In response to having a designated changing room, Petrillo suggested in a post on Facebook that he had been treated like “plague victims” (“appestati”) and compared his critics to Nazis. Petrillo further compared those who protested his awards ceremony to Hitler denying a handshake to Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics.
“I am a victim of gender hatred, as serious as xenophobia towards an athlete who is not considered Italian because of color, like Paola Egonu,” Petrillo said in an interview, referencing a female Italian volleyball player of Nigerian descent. (“Sono vittima di odio di genere, tanto grave quanto la xenofobia verso un atleta che non è considerato italiano perché di colore, come Paola Egonu.”)
In response to comments on social media about opposition to seeing males in the shower rooms, Petrillo stated that he showers in a bathing suit and cannot see women due to visual impairment. Petrillo further dismissed complaints by saying, “I don’t believe that the person who wrote that comment has never seen male genitals.” (“Non credo che chi ha scritto quel commento non abbia mai visto dei genitali maschili.”)
In an interview, Petrillo recalled a euphoric experience of trying on his mother’s skirt at age nine but did not tell anyone because a “transgender cousin” had been thrown out of the house. Petrillo told Fanpage Italia in 2020 that he would wear his wife’s clothes, put on nail polish, and wear makeup when she was not present. The couple is now divorced.
Petrillo had previously adopted the name “Vanessa.”
“For me, Vanessa represented the first part of being a woman,” Petrillo said, according to the Daily Mail. “Vanessa would spend hours putting her make up on, she always had to be perfect, she was always taking photos of herself.”
The documentary 5 Nanomoles: The Olympic Dream of a Trans Woman (“5 nanomoli – Il sogno olimpico di una donna trans”) follows Petrillo’s pursuit of gender-related treatment and journey to the Paralympics.
Translations by the author.