Far-right Polish politician Dawid Szóstak has announced that he will leave his anti-LGBTQ+ Confederation political party after revealing his relationship with intersex model Michalina Manios, who was a finalist on the 2011 season of Poland’s Next Top Model.

During her appearance on the show, Manios explained that she was assigned a male identity at birth and was raised in that gender identity until she was 18 years old, something she said felt like being imprisoned. At that point, she then legally changed her gender to female.

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“Functionally, I developed as a woman, but unfortunately, I was assigned a male identity, not any other,” Manios said, according to Euro News. “My body and mind developed toward femininity, but my genitals didn’t. I was ashamed to go to physical education classes because I was embarrassed.”

Intersex individuals have innate variations in physical traits that differ from typical expectations for male or female bodies, including variations in reproductive organs, hormones, or chromosome patterns. An estimated 1.7% of infants are born intersex — roughly the same number of people born with red hair. 

In announcing their relationship, Szóstak said that he and Manios met online. “I liked the photos Michalina posted,” he said. “They radiated a lot of energy and femininity.” He also said they bonded over their shared Catholic faith and respect for traditions.

“Everything happened quite naturally. We became a couple,” he explained. “We have respect and understanding for each other.”

Szóstak remained in his political party during the start of their relationship. In 2019, Confederation party leader Sławomir Mentzen said, “We stand against Jews, homosexuals… taxes, and also the European Union!”

Szóstak mentioned his leaving of the party in a recent interview, saying of him and his partner, “We want to focus on what’s important,” meaning their relationship and well-being over political battles, Edge Media Network reported. He deleted his social media account after publicly discussing his relationship with Manios.

“Visibility is crucial,” said a spokesperson from Poland’s leading LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, the Campaign Against Homophobia, regarding the couple’s relationship. “When public figures share their truths, it chips away at stigma and ignorance.”

At the start of 2020, Poland’s anti-LGBTQ+ Law and Justice Party (PiS) began declaring regions across the country as “LGBT-free zones” in an attempt to remove LGBTQ+ “propaganda” from the public as a form of “Western decadence” that “threaten[s] our identity, threaten[s] our nation, threaten[s] the Polish state.” Both the U.S. and the European Union condemned the zones as violations of human rights.

By early 2020, roughly one-third of the country had established “LGBT-free zones.” However, the PiS party suffered defeat in the 2023 national elections. Then, in 2025, the party’s last of the state-sanctioned anti-LGBTQ+ zones was finally eliminated.