A tiny French village made historical past over the weekend by electing the nation’s first overtly transgender mayor.
Marie Cau, who gained the election Saturday in Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes, in northern France, mentioned her gender wasn’t a difficulty throughout the marketing campaign and that voters selected her for her social packages.
“What’s stunning is that that is stunning,” Cau, 55, advised Agence France-Presse. “They didn’t vote for me or towards me as a result of I’m transgender; they voted for a program and for values.”
A enterprise supervisor with a background in schooling and agriculture, Cau has lived within the village for greater than 20 years and ran on a platform of environmental sustainability.
Residents of the 600-person village, situated close to the Belgian border, elected Cau and her fellow “Deciding Collectively” candidates to the native council on March 15.
Then on Saturday, the newly elected council members made Cau the mayor in a virtually unanimous resolution, in line with the BBC.
Since she started her transition about 15 years in the past, Cau mentioned she hasn’t skilled discrimination and that “persons are sort, regardless of some blunders.”
She mentioned she seems to be ahead to the day when her gender will likely be a “nonissue” — however acknowledged that her election exhibits “that transgender individuals can have regular social and political lives.”
France’s minister of state for gender equality, Marlène Schiappa, congratulated Cau on her historic victory.
“Trans visibility, and due to this fact the battle towards transphobia, additionally requires the train of political or public obligations,” she tweeted.
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