Olympic boxer Hergie Bacyadan marked his name in the proud Filipino tradition in his sport with his Olympic debut bout against China’s Li Qian on Wednesday. Bacyadan lost the Round of 16 middleweight match, 5-0.
He’s also the first publicly out transgender man to compete in an Olympic Games. He will be competing in the women’s 75kg classification because he has not started masculinizing hormone replacement therapy.
That distinction has left some confused and others dismayed.
Across internal social media and some conventional media covering the story, there is still an idea of Bacyadan being a “trans woman cheat” or any other anti-trans invective that comes up in discussing the issue. Such invective are things he has heard before.
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Bacaydan used his social media savvy to make his position clear Tuesday via Instagram. He stated definitively who he is and how he moves through the world.
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Trans boxer Hergie Bacyadan aims for a gold medal at the Paris Summer Olympics
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“Will never take “T” and will never be on “T”,” Bacaydan declared. “But I still consider myself as a Transman because my heart says so.”
Such outspokenness has been a part of who is he throughout his journey. Bacaydan is a voice for LGBTQ rights in the Phillippines, including publicly speaking for an anti-discrimination law after marrying his wife outside of the country last year. Such legislation has been discussed on and off in the Filipino Congress since the early 2000s.
He has spent the last year openly sharing his story in sports and discussing discrimination in sports spaces he has received. In a public service video he was a part of last year, he stated that the push by others calling for him to conform and the contact speculation and stares made him feel “like a bird without wings”.
Within his sport, there are the questions surrounding two other boxers who are believed to be cisgender women with what elite sporting bodies like the IOC term “differences in sexual development.”
In the three years since Tokyo, five world governing bodies have either banned or severely restricted transgender women in elite sports. The emergence of nonbinary athletes at all levels has sparked needed discussion as well, and you expect they will continue long after these Games, and as the countdown to Los Angeles 2028 begins.
For Hergie Bacaydan, he’s declared where his truth is. He stood and competed on it at the North Paris Arena.
