‘Don’t invalidate trans women as women’: Pia Wurtzbach speaks up on Pride Month

Pia Wurtzbach. Image: Instagram/@piawurtzbach

In celebration of Pride Month this June, Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach talked about learning more about the LGBTQIA+ community and how to affirm them.

Wurtzbach stressed the importance of upholding LGBTQIA+ rights and being receptive to these, as seen on her Instagram post today, June 25.

“Learning is always a two-way process,” she said. “[We] listen as we understand each other’s points of view.”

The beauty queen and model defined being an ally as “someone who gives a sense of a safe and affirming space for our loving community.”

Wurtzbach wants to provide “higher platforms” for discussion, where members of the LGBTQIA+ community could address their concerns. She explained that “we can discuss our differences and remind ourselves that we are together on this journey, and achieve our shared goals for equality.”

“Let me just make a stand that our friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ community have the right to take up space in our society,” Wurtzbach said. “[That] their voices should be heard, that we don’t invalidate [transwomen] as women.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1rT5HD4iO/

LGBT is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. It is an umbrella term used to refer to the whole community, according to the LGBTQIA Resource Center of the University of California, Davis. Some use the term LGBTQIA to raise awareness on other sexual orientations included in the community, including queer, intersex and asexual.

Sexual orientation is someone’s “enduring physical, romantic and/or emotional attraction to members of the same and/or opposite sex,” as per the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). People do not necessarily need to have a specific sexual experience to know their sexual orientation. The organization said that some do not need to have any sexual experience at all. JB

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