A row has erupted online after First Lady Jill Biden gave a transgender woman from Argentina a ‘Women of Courage’ award during an International Women’s Day ceremony.
Biden yesterday presented awards to 11 recipients at the White House, one of whom was Alba Rueda, an Argentinian politician who became the first openly transgender lawmaker in Argentina to hold a senior political position in the country.
Rueda, the Special Representative on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity of Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has spent her political career fighting to end the discrimination of LGBTQ people in Argentina.
But in response to Biden presenting Rueda with the ‘Women of Courage’ award, social media users have accused the First Lady of ‘encouraging the diminishment of women’ and ‘erasing women’.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has been a vocal critic of President Joe Biden, tweeted: ‘It’s International Women’s Day – a good time to remember that the Democrats can’t even tell you what a woman is.’
Sanders has previously said that Biden ‘is the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is’.
Radio host Dana Loesch, a former spokesperson for the NRA, tweeted: ‘Nice of FLOTUS to encourage the diminishment of women on “international women’s day”. Erasing women is abusive.’
Meanwhile, Karoline Leavitt, the Republican nominee for the House in New Hampshire who lost against Democrat Congressman Chris Pappas in November, tweeted: ‘Why are the Democrats working overtime to push the trans agenda?
Other Twitter users said it was ‘disgraceful’ that Rueda, a transgender woman, received a ‘Women of Courage Award.
‘There is a war on women,’ one said, while another wrote: ‘Imagine this sort of thing is a real slap in the face to real women nation wide.’
Another Twitter user wrote: ‘Honest question to my followers: Are you okay with this? Are you alright with a biological man getting this award over a biological woman.’
Rueda was presented the award at the ceremony alongside 10 other recipients from Afghanistan, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Poland and Ukraine.
Among the winners was the first female general to serve in the Mongolian armed forces, along with advocates for protecting indigenous lands in Costa Rica and ending discrimination against people with disabilities in Malaysia.
Rueda, who featured in TIME Magazine’s TIME 100 list in 2022 and the BBC’s 100 Women list in 2021, served as Argentina’s Undersecretary of Diversity Policies between January 2020 and May 2022.
