The recent Miss Universe pageant was iconic because it was the day that Angela Ponce made history by being the first ever transgender contestant in the pageant. In its entire 66-year history, the pageant surprisingly reversed a longstanding policy in 2012 pushed by then-owner Donald Trump that participants must be “naturally born” women.
There was even a controversy that President Trump’s administration is thinking about pushing laws to block transgender people from military service.
Angela Ponce being allowed to participate in the pageant opened up a universal discourse on transgender rights. To some, it was a pleasant surprise. Angela Ponce was welcomed with loud applause everytime she went onstage. To others, it was a “revulsion” of the pageant. People posted on social media that Miss Spain did not deserve to be in the pageant because she was not a “real woman.”
This was what Miss Spain had to say about it:
“Simply for us all to understand that we are human and that we must make all our lives easier together. That reality for many people is going to change. If I can give that to the world, I don’t need to win Miss Universe, I only need to be here.”
One step for Angela Ponce, one giant leap for humankind.
The crowned Miss Universe, Catriona Gray of the Philippines, showed her support for Miss Spain by saying in a TV interview on The Bottomline, “I’m open to it, because individually, I see beauty queens more than a physical aspect. We represent something — that has to be what we’re there for. And she has a purpose. She is that voice for the transgender community.”
When Agence France-Presse asked Ponce about how President Trump pushed the policy on banning transgenders from the pageant, she replied, “I always say: having a vagina didn’t transform me into a woman. I am a woman, already before birth, because,” she continued while pointing at her head, “My identity is here.”
Besides the pageant stage, another area where trans women are discriminated is in the sports field. When talking about sports in a gender light, the first question to ask would be: Why do we still divide sports into men and women categories when both are equal?
The most common argument for that is how men and women may be equal, but can never be similar. Men and women are just simply, point blank, no-doubt-about-it not physically equal.
Let’s look at the Science to settle this debate once and for all. According to a study by MacDougall, Miller, Sale, and Tarnopolsky about the differences in physical strength and muscle fiber characteristics between men and women, they found out that men have a natural physical advantage that would make competetive sports unfair to women.
Their research has shown that women are approximately only 52% as strong as men in the upper body and only 66% as strong as men in the lower body.
So here comes the interesting part. If we consider trans women as women, is it fair when trans women compete in sports in the female category?
Some people would argue, “No, it is not fair because a trans woman is physically a man — bigger, stronger, and not women.”
To say such a thing is to not know what makes a trans woman different from a man.
We always fear what we do not understand, so let’s get educated together, courtesy of Rachel McKinnon who is a trans athlete herself.
In an interview with Alistar Mogawon of BBC Sport, McKinnon explained that before and after transition, trans women would take the testosterone-blockers along with the female hormone oestrogen. She also revealed that due to her transition, her muscle mass and strength were both reduced.
In addition to that, according to McKinnon, before being able to compete, trans athletes have to undergo a test that measures the amount of testosterone in their bodies before they can be allowed to play. This is because there are set limits, and if they fail the test, they will be disqualified from competing.
This shouldn’t be a question of “Can trans women participate in sports?” but a question of “Should our current laws on competitive sports be reviewed and updated?”
I am a small person, and my sport was chess from Elementary to High School. In College, I also joined physical sports such as soccer, badminton, and basketball. What I have observed was that even when playing with strictly cis females, there was still a huge difference in height and strength between the players.
Taller and bigger women are allowed to compete against shorter and smaller women, and we still call that “fair”. In fact, the difference in height and strength between men and women is not so different from the difference between men and other men, and women with other women.
Maybe the talk of how men are stronger and women are weaker is due to the traditional standard of telling women not to lift weights or work out hard because it will make them “grow unattractive muscles” while men are encouraged to work out extra hard and lift heavier weights because they have been told that more muscles will make them attractive.
Telling a woman that she cannot do something just because she is a woman is dicrimination, and telling someone repeatedly that he or she should not do something because of their gender is oppression. This only further proves how hard women have been oppressed for centuries. When you look deeper into it, men have been oppressed too, albeit in a different way. I mean, can you believe that men are discouraged to cry, cook, clean, along with other activities that are considered to only be “for women”?
The International Olympic Committee’s charter has seven fundamental principles of Olympism, and their fourth principle states, “The practice of sport is a human right.” To not allow trans women to compete merely because they are trans is depriving them of this human right, and alienating them even further from society.
In the side of the law and legal procedures, one of the dangers of not considering transgender and transsexual women as women is that they would not be protected by gender-related laws, such as when they become suspect to a crime. Since she will be technically considered as a man, a male police officer will legally be allowed to touch and search her. Also, if she will be considered as a man, then she will be forced to use the men’s bathroom — where she is in danger of being verbally abused or disrespected.
Nevertheless, whatever side of the debate you are on, what we can all learn from Angela and Rachel is that we should not let society tell us what we can and cannot do in the same way that we should not let others tell us who we can and cannot be, because only we know what we can do, and only we can control our identity.
Let me leave you with a homework: when asked whether you are a lover or a fighter, do not answer one or the other. Be both. They are not mutually exclusive. You can fight for love just as you can love to fight for what you believe in. Another thing we can learn from them is that when we believe in something, we should not be afraid to stand up for it.
The underlying issue here is that we do not really know how to communicate well to one another. We find it hard to listen and empathize, which is how wars typically start. If you believe that trans women are women, comment below. If you believe that trans women are not women, comment below too. Because only through discourse, not force, can we ever solve our problems.
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