Exclusive: Transgender Miss Netherlands Winner Speaks Out After Backlash
Newsweek. "I'm proud of that and the night was amazing."Kollé started her career as a model and was inspired to join the Miss Netherlands pageant because it "gives you an opportunity to speak and use your voice.""You can talk about what you want to change in society or what you think you can offer," she explained, and added that she is "surrounded by many Queer friends and so many drag queens," which led her to fall in love with the pageantry of their performances."Let's make my Queer community proud by doing this," the model said.Despite clear support from her competitors and both the reigning Miss Universe and Miss Netherlands on the night, there was a swift negative backlash on social media to her win.Some people argued that a transgender woman shouldn't have been allowed to compete, let alone win, and according to Kollé, she even received death threats."They see us as monsters, and my daily DMs are full of people wishing me dead," she said.But Kollé expected to be inundated by online trolls after winning, and that has only emboldened her to speak up more for her community."Wishing me dead and telling me to suicide, those things are terrible to write, but at the same it's only lifting me up because I get a bigger platform than I could ever dream of," she said defiantly.The interest in Kollé's win has been huge and she's done a number of media interviews "because of this hate," which shows that even for a progressive country such as The Netherlands, there is still a long way to go for transgender rights."The only thing I want to say to the haters is 'thank you, because you're giving me a bigger platform than I can ever imagine," she explained.In 2001, The Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex.
