Pacquiao can help put trans issue to rest

Before I go into that delicately hot topic, please indulge this old fart if I greet myself and the wife Arlene a happy 38th wedding anniversary. Let me blow loving kisses as well to Ker, Ohn, and Bogak, products all of that marriage. And to Tantin who had gone ahead. Only very very few know of this milestone, or remember, or even care. So there blow I my own horn.

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I came upon this news from the Agence France-Presse datelined Melbourne that a transgender basketball player named Lexi Rodgers was disallowed by Basketball Australia from playing in a semi-professional regional league for women. In a nutshell, BA implied it needed more time to navigate the complex waters of transgenders in sports.

Earlier, in March 2022, Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania kicked up a storm when she won an NCAA Division I Championship in women's 500-yard freestyle, beating in the process an Olympic silver medalist. Thomas, born male in 2000, competed in the university's men's swimming team from 2017 to 2020. She transitioned to a woman in 2021.

In a previous, and more frivolous, article where I touched a little bit on the issue of transgender, I have said, and will repeat, that I am confused by the subject and therefore am not an authority to go beyond the simple view that a person born with a penis is a man and that a person born with a vagina is a woman.

It is therefore best to let the experts speak. And by experts I do not mean analysts who merely analyze but those who have actually been there and have lived out the issue in real time. Based on such criteria, I find no better expert, no more authoritative voice, than supercelebrity Caitlyn Jenner, who transitioned to a woman in 2015.

In light of the Lia Thomas affair, Jenner, speaking to Piers Morgan in an interview widely available on YouTube, said "I don't want biological boys competing against biological women or girls in sports. It's just not fair." To those who do not know, Jenner was born a man named Bruce. He was a super athlete, winning decathlon gold in the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

And if he is up to it, I would like to challenge someone who probably is an even bigger celebrity than Jenner to step into the picture to try and finally put the issue to rest because it is getting to be very exasperating. The person I have in mind is no other than our very own former pound-for-pound king Manny Pacquiao.

Let me be very clear. I do not think Manny Pacquiao will ever transition into a woman. There is not a single effeminate muscle in him to even suggest he might do the impossible. That is not what I am challenging him to do. All I want is for him to try out for a slot in the Philippine Olympic women's boxing team and see what the reaction of IBA might be.

I make the suggestion because I think fairness is more central to the issue of biological males competing against biological females in sports than is transgenderism itself. Jenner has said it very pointedly but I think Pacquiao can be more credible and persuasive. All I want is to see how the world reacts to Pacquiao fighting women in the Olympics.

Pacquiao doesn't have to feel like a woman. We know he doesn't. All he has to do is claim to be one, for the sake of the argument. We want Pacquiao to put a check on what appears to be the new way of winning fame and fortune in sports, that if you can't hack it as a man, then be a woman.