Philippines: Wrestling: Fighting starlets between the sexes

The hall goes wild as Chelsea Marie struts in. She walks around the ring to her music, high-fives the fans’ hands, and walks through the narrow aisles like she’s on a catwalk. Then she climbs up the ring, pushing up the ropes to climb through slowly and lasciviously. She loves the attention. Just as the 400 people present apparently love them too.

When the ring bell rings, four fighters race against each other in the Blackbox Theater in Manila, the capital of the Philippines: it’s for the title of the Manila Wrestling Federation, the largest wrestling league in the Philippines. As always in wrestling, the characters who fight each other in a stunt show correspond to a few common archetypes: one of them is the cross-section of Wonderwoman; another is masked like in Lucha Libre, Mexican wrestling; the third appears like a fighting geisha.

But then there is Chelsea Marie: a trans woman. This makes the 31-year-old Filipina special in many ways. After her fight in the ring, she will laugh and say to herself: “I don’t have a made-up character.” In the ring, it’s just her. “In wrestling, I love the idea of ​​women who hit it hard and are crazy about it. That’s what I want to be, a sexy version of that.”

The development of this Chelsea Marie is sensational, just the way it is. After all, the world of sport is strictly divided into men and women. People who do not fit these binary categories are repeatedly excluded from competitive sports or subject to harsh conditions. People who are trans, for example, often have a strength advantage, it is said.

The most prominent example of this is the South African middle-distance runner Caster Semenya, who is not trans but has more male hormones than most women – and, according to critics, this gives her a competitive advantage. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has ruled that Semenya must take medication to lower her testosterone levels if she still wants to take part in competitions.

It’s about the conflict of “fairness or inclusion,” as Sebastian Coe, President of the World Athletics Association, described it. What is more important: fairness, that there are equal chances of success among the participants? Or inclusion so that everyone can participate? The last word in this debate seems to be far from being spoken. But so far there has been a clear tendency in high-performance sport towards fairness, at the expense of inclusion, just as Sebastian Coe’s association prefers.

However, the two-time 800 meter Olympic champion Semenya still refuses to take the appropriate medication. She is still taking legal action against the association; a new edition of the proceedings is expected for 2024. And Semenya is by no means the only case that is causing a stir. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, New Zealand trans woman Laurel Hubbard competed in women’s weightlifting, but only because her testosterone levels were low enough.

Hubbard had previously had little career as a male weightlifter. After transitioning to womanhood, she quickly became second in the World Championships in 2012. Hubbard explained at the time: “Ten years ago the world probably wouldn’t have been ready for an athlete like me, and maybe it still isn’t ready today.” In any case, the discussion about gender categories continues to be heated.

But in wrestling, where the fights are just for show, so there is no competition at all? There is no contradiction between fairness and inclusion. And in the Manila Wrestling Federation (MWF) they try to use this to their advantage. Watching on the sidelines is Veronica Shannon, the League’s founder and co-head. She is a trans woman herself, and she says of the MWF that it is inclusive. »Everyone is welcome here!«

Shannon herself had her transition in the ring of this wrestling league in 2018. “People here watched me go from Mike to Veronica,” she says in a loud voice as a match between two very muscular men takes place in front of her. The culture here is very open – more open than anywhere else. »Before I took this step, I had discussed coming out with people from professional sports, and they often said that there was no place for LGBTQ people.«

But the fact that Veronica Shannon was supported by people was great, she thinks. Wearing a long skirt and letting her curly hair fall loosely over her shoulders, Shannon now has big plans for the league: “We’ve finally been on national television recently and we want to grow even further. We want to become the WWE of Southeast Asia.« The WWE is the largest wrestling league in the USA and therefore in the world.

A core part of the growth strategy is Chelsea Marie. She, who wears a tight, white and red two-piece suit with a plunging neckline, is the only trans woman in wrestling worldwide, and she is one of the most popular figures in her country’s biggest league. At the moment she is giving interviews every day. She’s still a bit overwhelmed by this herself: »To be honest, I never had the big dream of becoming a wrestler: I mean, I’m not in the USA, and I’m trans. How is that supposed to work?”

She said she knew she was trans as a child. She first got the courage to try wrestling in 2016 when a reality show was on television that portrayed American female wrestlers in and out of the ring. “I love reality shows,” exclaims Chelsea Marie and laughs. »And then I thought: Hmm, these are interesting. I want that too!” In 2019 she wrote to a few wrestling leagues for the first time and asked if she could apply. »The MWF responded and offered me to train with them.«

However, they had hardly had any experience with a trans person in the ring there either – the co-founder Veronica Shannon acts more as a spokesperson for the league. Today, Chelsea Marie remembers her uncertainty before joining: “There was an announcement internally that a trans person was coming. Everyone was offered the opportunity to leave the league if anyone had a problem with it.” And she had actually expected that. “But everyone stayed!”

The Manila Wrestling Federation does not correspond to the cliché of an exclusively muscle-bound macho world. Because that’s the case, Danielle Hill is a fan of the league. “Of the five leaders of this league, three are women,” the student calls out over the noise. »The MWF considers itself to be a women-led organization. And it is also one of the league’s concerns to bring gender issues to the fore.”

Danielle Hill knows all this very well because she is writing her master’s thesis on this topic at the University of the Philippines in Manila: A sociological look at the role of women in a traditionally male domain. Hill also includes trans women. And this is of great importance for the success of the league: “Because the MWF presents itself as progressive, many people think: ‘Oh, I can come here without feeling uncomfortable, just because I might not be cisgender!'”

Ernesto Baque Bunag, a beefy guy in the hall as a spectator, wouldn’t disagree: “Women’s wrestling is cool. If it’s always just men fighting, it gets boring at some point,” says Bunag, while browsing in a small fan shop that also offers T-shirts with Chelsea Marie’s likeness. »The men are of course physically stronger. But I would say that women are now just as popular as men. And Chelsea Marie especially.”

The Philippines is a paradoxical case. The predominantly Catholic country has no anti-discrimination law that would legally protect trans people. A change of name or gender is not possible. Trans people often engage in sex work and also suffer violent crimes. Nevertheless, they are in a relatively good position: trans people become politicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs – and are now starting out in wrestling.

Sociologists explain this by saying that before Spanish colonialism, which ruled here for more than 300 years, a tradition was established that thought of gender less binarily and more in a continuum. To this day, trans people are often referred to as “bakla,” which can be translated as “gay man,” but stands for a kind of third gender.

By the way, Chelsea Marie lost the fight among the four women. She had previously boastfully announced that she was the strongest in the ring anyway. But the other three wrestlers teamed up to take her out. The winner was Super P., the Filipino version of Wonderwoman, with a costume and cape in the country’s colors red, blue, yellow and white.

But she can’t just be cheered after the victory. She pays respect to her greatest opponent: »Chelsea Marie: There was no trans wrestler before her. And she simply jumped over this hurdle!” The hall cheers again. And Chelsea Marie dreams that one day she can make a living from these shows. But first she has to earn her money differently the next day: “I dance and am a dance teacher. As a background dancer on TV and so on. But what pays the bills is live streaming.«

And if the big money from wrestling isn’t to be had in the Philippines in the future, then maybe she’ll go to the USA to join the WWE at some point. In any case, her role would be new there too.