An effigy of a male-to-female transgender person was burned by a Swiss town as part of an annual spring festival tradition.
In the Swiss town of Bassersdorf, the community at the end of April celebrate their Sechseläuten spring festival with a tradition of burning the “Böögg.” The snowman type character, in a similar manner to the British tradition of burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes in November, is made of hay and placed on top of the bonfire.
By burning the Böögg, the harsh weather of the winter is burned away, and an estimation for the summer weather is given. Fireworks are placed into the top of the Böögg’s head, and the time it takes for the head to explode predicts the upcoming weather. The shorter the time it takes, the nicer the summer is set to be, according to tradition.
The most famous Böögg burning takes place in Zürich, which this year burned the effigy in its traditional form of a snowman. However, in Bassersdorf, the town instead creates the effigy of someone or something that is negative, or disliked, with previous effigies being in the form of Kim Jong-Un and former Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi.
This year, Bassersdorf created the “Diversity Böögg,” with the effigy the form of a male-to-female transgender individual.
Christian Weiss, the brains behind the event, told Züri Today that the crowd initially did not know what the figure, which had lipstick, breasts, a tie and a skirt in rainbow flag colours, and a half bald-head was meant to be.
Spectators discovered the effigy was meant to be a transgender person when the wind blew up its skirt, to reveal a penis beneath, at which point many of the onlookers “grinned,” according to Weiss.
Ob‘s der Diversity-Böögg aus der Gemeinde Bassersdorf nächstes Jahr auf den Schechseläutenplatz Zürich schafft? Für alle Nichtzürcher zum Vergleich noch das Orginal. pic.twitter.com/Ig65CltVpZ
— Nico (@Tardent_Nico) June 4, 2022
“People should be able to determine what exactly was burned there,” Weiss said. “On Facebook you can now choose the gender from a selection of many options. It was the same with Böögg this year. It has different characteristics and there is something for everyone.”
The “Diversity Böögg” name came about as German has gendered language, so “Der Böögg,” with ‘der’ being the masculine equivalent of ‘the’, wouldn’t have exactly fit, Weiss explained.
He noted they chose the effigy because they wanted it to be topical, but light hearted, so stayed away from topics such as the war in Ukraine, or the COVID-19 pandemic.
While apparently most people found the Diversity Böögg rather funny, one 82-year-old attendee filed a criminal complaint, arguing the transgender effigy was “inhuman,” and was a “trans distorted image” meant to discriminate against a marginalised community.
Helena Trachsel, the director of the Equal Opportunities Office of the Canton of Zurich, said it was “not possible to burn a doll symbolically because of an external characteristic,” and that “any degrading gesture that violates a person’s integrity is inadmissible.”
In response, Weiss told Tagesanzeiger that the symbolism simply wasn’t there, and that anyone who wanted to take away a message from the Diversity Böögg should understand it as being against “rampant narcissistic hypersensitivity and the pathological lack of humor.”
